Posted on 01/26/2007 5:55:38 AM PST by randita
Blindness on Biofuels
By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
President Bush joined the biofuels enthusiasm in his State of the Union address, and no one can doubt the powerful allure. Farmers, scientists and venture capitalists will liberate us from insecure foreign oil by converting corn, prairie grass and much more into gasoline substitutes. Biofuels will even curb greenhouse gases. Already, production of ethanol from corn has surged from 1.6 billion gallons in 2000 to 5 billion in 2006. Bush set an interim target of 35 billion gallons in 2017 on the way to the administration's ultimate goal of 60 billion in 2030. Sounds great, but be wary. It may be a mirage.
The great danger of the biofuels craze is that it will divert us from stronger steps to limit dependence on foreign oil: higher fuel taxes to prod Americans to buy more gasoline-efficient vehicles and tougher federal fuel economy standards to force auto companies to produce them. True, Bush supports tougher -- but unspecified -- fuel economy standards. But the implied increase above today's 27.5 miles per gallon for cars is modest, because the administration expects gasoline savings from biofuels to be triple those from higher fuel economy standards.
The politics are simple enough. Americans dislike high fuel prices; auto companies dislike tougher fuel economy standards. By contrast, everyone seems to win with biofuels: farmers, consumers, capitalists. American technology triumphs. Biofuels create rural jobs and drain money from foreign oil producers. What's not to like? Unfortunately, this enticing vision is dramatically overdrawn.
Let's do some basic math. In 2006, Americans used about 7.5 billion barrels of oil. By 2030, that could increase about 30 percent to 9.8 billion barrels, projects the Energy Information Administration.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Such an argument would say that it would be more efficient for all of us to plant all our vegetables, raise our cattle and pigs and build our automobiles and TV's in the workshop out back.
Not more efficient, but you could certaintly tell if you had a net energy gain or loss couldn't you. Some of this stuff is transferring coal energy to ethanol as a storage medium which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but coal energy could be more efficiently utilized in direct production of coal synfuel. Of course the envirowackos wouldn't like it.
I do as well. In the long term Oil Shale and Methane Hydrates along with coal and nuclear will provide a lot of energy for this country. In the short term we need to produce our present day resources like drilling for oil and gas and mining uranium and coal instead of letting environmentalists shut us down.
But the Pimental study is horrible. Just look at the basics of the energy content of ethanol (the finished product, not the net) and corn yields he used. It is so blatant that he cherry-picked numbers to push his claim. They do not come near typical values.
--Not more efficient, but you could certaintly tell if you had a net energy gain or loss couldn't you.--
Efficiency DIRECTLY affects the calculation of the net energy.
For example, if you set up a garage to build your own car from scratch, now remember, you have to set up the smelters, refiners, castings, paint shop, etc., you would quickly conclude that building automobiles was not cost efficient and you would stick with your mule for trips to town.
It will take me a while to get through that one. Back to you later.
The Internet is the coolest thing. Here's what I found.
The heat of combustion of a material is equal to the heat of formation of the end products minus the heat of formation of the original material.
The heat of formation of CO2, H2O and Propane are -393.5, -285.8, and -103.7 KJ/mol respectively. 3 * (-393.5) = -1180.5. 4 * (-285.8) = -1143.2.
So in the combustion of Propane the Carbon and the Hydrogen make nearly equal heat contributions.
I was just going by the energy inputs not producing the machinery which I assume would wash out in the long term. Ie just run the tractors, trucks, fertilizer factory and distillation plant on ethanol. If ethanol is a s great a claimed, then it could directly substitute for fossil fuel in all of these capacities.
Don't fool yourself, the left isn't interested in reducing oil use for the purpose of saving the environment. Worship of the environment is a leftist scheme to reconstruct society and world economics.
No, chemical process do not convert matter to energy. They store or release energy of chemical bonds in endothermic or exothermic reactions. The number of atoms of each element does not change from one side of the equation to the other.
It is NOT efficient to put everything on one farm. That is why the farmer finds it more efficient to sell his corn to somebody else to turn into food rather than processing and canning it on his farm.
--No, chemical process do not convert matter to energy. They store or release energy of chemical bonds in endothermic or exothermic reactions. The number of atoms of each element does not change from one side of the equation to the other.--
Obviously not a physics major.
Combustion is a chemical reaction, not an atomic one. I'm an engineering major so I had to pass both chemistry and physics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combustion
You may notice the equations have the same number of atoms on both sides of the equation. Matter is not created or destroyed during combustion. The chemical bonds of the atoms are changed.
--Combustion is a chemical reaction, not an atomic one. I'm an engineering major so I had to pass both chemistry and physics.--
I'm a Nuclear Engineer with post graduate studies having spent the last thirty years operating, designing and testing nuclear reactors. Please go back and ask your physics and chemistry professors for their professional answer.
You might start with reading about Einstein and Planck.
--You may notice the equations have the same number of atoms on both sides of the equation. Matter is not created or destroyed during combustion. The chemical bonds of the atoms are changed.--
You are speaking from your tilted view of physics. I suggest a little research. Did you read the link I sent you?
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