Posted on 07/28/2007 7:45:52 PM PDT by P-40
Some people are just too infatuated with biomess along with all the other mythical solutions of "alternative energy" hoping to somehow capitalize on utter nonsense and have taken a defeatist attitude toward turning the tide of nonsense back on the leftists and just accepting the defeats as permanent, just lying back and enjoying the rape of commonsense!!!
Take a look at the World Book someday. Look up corn and see the hundreds of products that come from it. Then stop making this dumb argument. Or, go back to the 6th grade.
Wood and grasses have more energy than corn. Lokk for unhappy corn farmers in about 5 years.
“...If it’s using wastes for feedstocks, fine, but croplands should not be used for fuel production. Ethanol is not a good fuel, either...”
What other Country on the face of the earth grows food in order to burn it?
Just curious ................... FRegards
Yeah, duh, huh? Why make fuel from it and endanger our food source? I know what comes from it, and using it for fuel, not that we could ever grow enough, only endangers us. It's not as dumb an argument as your nasty replywas dumb.
There are many power boiler designs optimized for biomass fuels — hog fuel boilers with a traveling grate, bagasse boilers, recovery boilers. No aux fuel needed in most cases.
The Aclu is already preparing briefs to stop this progress,(I assume)
When you burn wood in a fire, you get more energy out than you put in. Sunlight puts the energy in through photosynthesis. Wood is not very useful to burn in most applications, though, since it is difficult to transport and distribute. A process that turns that energy into liquid fuel would solve at least the transportation and distribution issues. This process purports to do this. It is certainly feasible, from an energy content standpoint.
“Great, another process that uses more energy that it makes,”
I thought I read somewhere that it takes less energy to make this ethanol than crude. Considering the cost of offshore rigs and artic drilling, this might make sense.
I’d be interested in reading that if you can find it.
I think this old argument that "it takes 1.x BTUs of energy to produce 1.0 BTUs of product" is very deceptive as it appears as if you must add some extra energy from a second source to produce the product. I don't think it works that way.
I believe the truth is that you add, for example, 1.5 units of feed stock into the system and produce 1.0 units, you have "expended" only the 0.5 units in the process. It is a positive gain. This is how crude is turned into gasoline, by putting 1.x BTUs of crude energy in, and getting 1.0 BTUs of gasoline energy out. The crude can't be burned in a car, but the gasoline can, so a fraction of loss in the process is OK.
Similarly, if you took 1.5, or even 2.5 or 3.5 BTUs of cudzu and turned it into 1.0 BTUs of ethanol, that's still a positive gain, because the cudzu is worthless to power a car, but the ethanol works.
These actual numbers floating around are "true", but they're deceiving, because it appears as if some second source of energy is being added to produce the product that results in some kind of negative return, and that's not the truth.
I've used lots of "I think" wording in here. I can't find a source on the net where this is verified, but I have heard this argument made in the past, and it explains why these processes are done when it would seem on the surface as if there's some sort of fraud going on.
Actually, this article indicates that the process makes its own fuel. Also, the feedstock used can be zero tillage stuff like saw grass that you can mow twice a year with 9’ high yields. That means not a lot tractor fuel to bring in tons of material. No intensive fertilizer either.
..................
Cellulose ethanol is made from the non-food portion of renewable feedstocks such as cereal straws and corn stover. Iogen is claiming 75 Gallons per ton of straw, with roughly 2/3 of the straw being converted.
According to Iogen Corporation, the agriculture residues used to make cellulose ethanol also contain lignin - a material that can be burned to generate power to run the cellulose ethanol facility. Because of this ability to produce both fuel and energy, the US Department of Energy life-cycle analysis states that ethanol from cellulose reduces greenhouse gases by 90% compared to gasoline.
Ethanol is one of the fuel options that:
reduces overall CO2 emissions from vehicles
runs in today’s cars (as E10) without any need for automobile modifications or changes to the fuel distribution system and
is economical in comparison with all alternatives including many vehicle technology solutions
Cellulose ethanol has two unique advantages over conventional ethanol made from corn.
the greenhouse gas emission reductions from cellulose ethanol are three times greater than those from grain based ethanol on a life cycle basis.
cellulose ethanol is made from a plentiful and renewable resource, the non-food portion of agriculture crops (e.g. straw, corn stalks and corn cobs).
LP will end up owning it.
That old oil versus new alcohol is a silly argument since the CO2 we put in the air will still be there until new plants or processes suck it back out.
There’s only one type of CO2; it doesn’t come with a date attached.
Actually, it would be 'feed', as intended, if given to livestock or a dray animal. The product would be different food, some of which could be used for transport until it became 'food-time', and the byproduct is fertilizer ...................... FRegards
And if you look into the traditional process of making and using ethanol, it amounts to the same thing. This article is not about that traditional process, however.
Ah yes - the 'traditional' use of ethanol! A charred Oak cask, filled with the appropriate mixture of ethanol and water, then put in a shed for ten or twelve years.
'Sigh'. Those days are over now, but they were fun! ................... FRegards
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