It’s a bad solution. It takes MORE than the energy in 1.5 gallons of ethanol to make that 1.5 gallons. They claim that it’s made from the parts of the corn that are normally emitted as methane, and then what’s left, the complex carbs, are fed to the cattle, but I don’t KNOW that. I know a lot of corn has gotten diverted to this program and that other grains get squeezed out, and food prices rise.
I have liked the idea of natural gas cars for some time. Yes, you have to harden the gas tank-it can never be allowed to rupture, but we have a virtual ocean of it, it’s the cleanest thing to burn going, and it doesn’t require all that much processing. You can fill your tank at HOME (or away), and I’m quite sure you can go a LONG WAY on a tank of compressed natural gas.
The thousands of farmers who feed those distillers grains know it, and depend on it for feed for hundreds of thousands of cattle. If you eat beef it's an almost certainty that the beef was produced suing distillers grains..
Out of three semi loads of corn going into an ethanol plant, roughly two come out as livestock feed, one as ethanol.
I can send you links to various university trials supporting the above rough calcs.
Not that ethanol subsidies shouldn't end, I think they should, it's just that a lot on nonsense gets tossed around regarding the efficiency of corn to ethanol.
So what? I couldn't care less about conserving total energy. It matters greatly where that energy came from that went into making that ethanol.
If you said that it took more than 1.0 gallons of gasoline to make the 1.5 gallons of ethanol in order to save the 1.0 gallon of gasoline per tank in my car, then I'd agree with you. It makes no sense because in the end, you're not reducing demand for gasoline.
But if you said it took the equivalent energy of 1.5 gallons of gasoline and that energy was generated from a nuclear or coal or any other non-oil driven power generating plant. Then I really don't care.
In other words I'd be fine with substituting 10x or 20x or 1000x the energy from a nuclear plant for 1x the energy in a gallon of gas. As long as the total cost isn't prohibitive. As long as it meets the goal of reducing demand for gasoline and defunding terrorist states, then by all means waste a little energy and substitute.
Now that said, it did take some gasoline to grow that corn. I just don't know how much. The energy that went into the conversion process probably wasn't oil driven so I don't care about how much energy got used in that process, only about the total cost change.
Like the way you think! Natural Gas for Cars/Trucks... I’d add Nuclear for Homes/Business Electricity, and cross your fingers for Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat if it works... we’ll all have distributed Electricity in our Homes.
The tanks are absolutely solvable in cars. And you can go a very long way if the tank is large enough. In fact... this would put a + to driving a larger SUV that can hold a bigger tank and add more protection.
We have literally 100’s of years of Natural Gas and by the time Super Capacitors are there, and High Efficiency Solar Panels are there (15-25 years).
Natural Gas is damn near perfect.