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This is my favored ethanol use.
Posted on 03/12/2008 11:25:05 AM PDT by JZelle
One of the many mandates of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 calls for oil companies to increase the amount of ethanol mixed with gasoline. President Bush said, during his 2006 State of the Union address, "America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world." Let's look at some of the "wonders" of ethanol as a replacement for gasoline.
Ethanol contains water that distillation cannot remove. As such, it can cause major damage to automobile engines not specifically designed to burn ethanol. The water content of ethanol also risks pipeline corrosion and thus must be shipped by truck, rail car or barge. These are far more expensive than pipelines.
Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That's enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel — oil and natural gas — to produce one gallon of ethanol. After all, corn must be grown, fertilized, harvested and trucked to ethanol producers — all of which are fuel-using activities. And it takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. On top of all this, if our total annual corn output were put to ethanol production, it would reduce gasoline consumption by 10 or 12 percent.
Ethanol is so costly it wouldn't make it in a free market. That's why Congress has enacted major ethanol subsidies, about $1.05 to $1.38 a gallon, which is no less than a tax on consumers. In fact, there's a double tax — one in ethanol subsidies and another in handouts to corn farmers to the tune of $9.5 billion in 2005 alone.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I’m referring to the C6H6 version.
How come, with algae technology now producing diesel are so many many fellow Freepers not talking one word about it?
It is time we yell the the high heaven that an alternative to alcohol works. And it can be piped rather than trucked to our gas pumps. That my folks, is a big difference.
The switch grass hoax has long since been exposed for the scam it always was.
The Auburn study cooked the books to keep grant money coming in to the University to further fund the study. There is also very little supporting data to show all of the hidden costs or have those costs been included in the actual outcome of what the results of the study claim.
Put the same resources into actual production based on private enterprise and the results would be very different. The same problems are being seen in the corn ethanol stupidity. Without government subsidies, the costs to produce it would make it impossible for the public to afford it. It takes one and one half units of energy to produce one equivalent unit of ethanol. It’s a joke.
Anyways, I want a food stamp card for beer! The gooberment is putting me into a beer poverty state and I want help!
Beer drinkers unite!
The water necessary to grow a bushel of corn comes from rainfall.
It takes nowhere near a gallon of fuel to produce a gallon of ethanol. On my farm, it takes about 10-12 gallons of diesel to grow and harvest an acre of corn, my average yield would produce about 600 gallons of ethanol per acre (as well as 3,600# of dried distillers grain).
People don't eat the type of corn used to make ethanol, but the 450# referred to by Dr. Williams can still be used as livestock feed; in fact, it makes a much more digestible feed than the raw corn did to begin with.
Any government subsidy distorts the market, but Dr. Williams seems to be adding what he perceives to be the value of various subsidies which are, in fact, mutually exclusive. For instance, since the advent of ethanol, the market price of corn has eliminated direct production subsidies; yet, most articles by non-agriculture writers will add together the level of the perceived production subsidies with the amount of the ethanol blenders credit (which is paid to oil companies, rather than farmers)
That sort of thing.
I will graciously concede, though the latter is a direct result of the former.
I will graciously concede, though the latter is a direct result of the former.
In another life I’m sure he said public housing slums are an investment in our future that will pay off.
We are in the Ethanol Recession.
Ethanol is driving up the cost of everything, particularly food and fuel, and squandering our natural resources.
It is encouraging to see that there are people here who realize what a scam ethanol is, and what a party hack King George II is for pushing it. Paying off the Republican debt to ADM with taxpayer dollars. One more thing where GWB shows his true colors.
Do you think that it only takes the fuel you use to plant and harvest it?
The energy used to process and distill it, then ship it to market is where the gross inefficiency lies.
You also forget that farmers will grow “fuel” corn rather than “food” corn, causing food shortages, inflation and cost of living prices to skyrocket. Have you seen the price of beef lately?
or chicken, how about bread. (Wheat hit $24 per bushel recently) And what about all the woods land that will be cleared to make room to grow crops to fuel the greed of farmers?
Oh really?
I didn’t know.
well, back to the ol’ drawing board. LOL
I’m still looking at “brewing my own” biodiesel.
Of course it would be nice if they’d start drilling for oil in ANWR and along the coasts in meantime...
Ethanol is but one more example of what happens when Government gets involved in most anything. Counting only the main subsidies, not including many state subsidies, ethanol gets at least a 7 billion dollar subsidy every year. That is 5 or more Fischer-Tropsch plants we could have been building every year.
We have 40 times more energy potential in coal than oil in this country and we have single states that have more potential in coal than the Saudis have in oil. We can rid ourselves of all the turmoil and insanity in the Middle East and become energy independent in a short time frame just by using FT. Scientists at Rutgers and UNC have made significant improvements on the process and produce a fuel that burns cleaner than gasoline as well as getting a yield from most of the coal.
Shut ethanol subsidies down and let’s address this situation realistically and make choices that will meet our energy needs and get us headed towards energy independence. In the interim all the alternative fuels can be discovered or perfected. Let’s put corn back on the table and into peoples bellies, where it belongs. Don’t fall for the switchgrass option either. It has to be grown somewhere, the material has to be harvested and transported by someone to a processing plant somewhere. A lot of energy expended for gains that are low yield.
This is my favored ethanol use.
I have some familiarity with the price of beef, thank you. (Apparently you’re unaware that the price of live cattle is about the same as it was a year ago). Farmers grow very little “food” corn, if by that term you mean corn intended for human consumption; and, of course, vegetable farmers don’t grow corn intended for livestock consumption. The #2 yellow dent corn, which farmers actually grow, can be applied to the production of ethanol and still fed to livestock.
Trash-based ethanolEthanol may ultimately prove to be the lesser evil where the only alternative is expensive foreign oil.
Made you feeeeeeeeeel real good and could do wonders! Better than Hadacol -- Ethanol makes your car feeeeeeeel good too! (You are driving a three-door Liberal, aren't you?)
See also here
**More ethanol ignorance. I live in the middle of where it is being produced. The water vapor emissions from the plants alone, create their own weather systems around the area.**
You know I have lived in the Midwest all my life, visited the great Budweiser brewery in St Louis, drove past ethanol plants when the sky was clear and blue. Never heard the water vapor emissions creating their own weather systems.
You must be smoking some really good stuff.
Mr Lucky you have actually grown corn, most of the so called experts here has not. Therefore you don’t know a damn thing about it and they do.
You are an heretic for questioning the anti-ethanol crowd.
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