Ethanol or oil?

Question

And why?
Here are a few points to ponder:
Corn prices are nearing all time highs, it's $4.00 a bushel now. And other grain prices are on their way up.
Burning oil produces greenhouse gasses.
Plowing a field releases greenhouse gasses from the soil.
Millions of acres of land will be taken out of conservation programs and planted with grain next spring.
America produces 75% of the world's corn and approx 20% will be used for ethanol production next year, up from less than 5% 3yrs ago.
U.S. corn exports are down this year, mainly due to the higher prices. Poor countries cannot afford it anymore.
Corn is the primary feed for U.S. pork, beef, and poultry production, so their prices will be rising also. Corn accounts for roughly half of the cost to raise an animal to market size.
With increased ethanol production, everyone will be paying more for food.
With higher food prices, many more people around the world will go hungry or starve to death.

So, what is the solution?

Brazil uses sugar cane, but there are not many places to grow sugar cane in the U.S. The only widely grown sugar producing crop we could use here would be sugar beets. But extracting the sugar and fermenting it would not be economically feasable.
The alcohol produced from the plant fiber is methly alcohol and is not as easily used as a gasoline replacement due to its higher viscosity.

Answer 1

How about conserving a little

Answer 2

First of all, you need to differentiate corn ethanol from cellulosic ethanol (like the Brazilians produce). Ethanol itself is very economical, but ethanol from corn is not necessarily. The only reason America has been pushing for Corn ethanol so much is because we have a lot of corn (as you mentioned). Ethanol from sugar or mashes is much cheaper to make and more economical than oil.

As for the CO2 question, the huge benefit of ethanol is that can be more easily incorporated into our existing hydrocarbon economy without the global warming problem. Yes, ethanol, like other hydrocarbons releases CO2 when combusted. But that CO2 was originally taken from the air to make the plant in the first place. So, you have a closed carbon loop where CO2 is constantly taken from the air to grow the plant, then released back when ethanol is combusted. So, ethanol fuel is not a net contributor to greenhouse emissions (like petroleum based fuel)

Your primary issue seems to be corn, not necessarily ethanol. The answer here is to produce ethanol from non-corn sources.

Answer 3

US corn producers, like ADM, are richly subsidized by your tax dollars. When your money is calculated in, it costs you and me about $1.50 to produce $1 worth of ethanol. ADM loves it. Check out Brazil's ethanol program. It's the one US corn producers don't want you to know about. It's self-financing, and it doesn't use corn! ADM hates that one. ADM and Purina would not be able to keep their hand in your pocket, because sugar beets aren't subsidized.
As for the larger question of feeding the masses and encouraging a cleaner environment, I have 2 thoughts. 1) There's enough food to go around. The problems are politics, and distribution. 2) We could all use a little education about how to reduce what's sometimes called our "environmental footprint" -- sell your car, ride the bus, buy a bicycle, and walk more. Stop driving a 6,000 pound SUV to drive a 60 pound child to soccer practice. Insulate your home. Turn down your thermostat and buy a sweater. Turn off lights. UNPLUG appliances (count the digital clocks in your home. Everyone of them is keeping some electrical machine on standby, burning fossil fuel while you don't use it.) Oh, and help UNICEF - it's one of the very few worldwide food distribution networks. Hope this helps.

Answer 4

I think your facts are more so your fears. Don't worry about possible negative effects of everything and anything.

I saw one study that says it takes more energy to produce ethanol than one gets from the ethanol produced.

I saw a study that said, if the entire US were covered with corn corps, we will not be able to replace the oil we are now using.

In Iceland the government has mandated that the country switch from fossil fuels to hydrogen power. But it is a small country, and they can make hydrogen with the enormous extra amount of geothermal energy available.

Scientists are constantly coming up with new ideas. We may one day have fuel cells in our basements, using natural gas to make electricity for our homes and to charge batteries in our cars.

Answer 5

I am opposed to large scale ethanol. It seems to take more energy than it yields. Maybe on a community or farm scale it might make sense.

I strongly favor continued primary dependence on oil (and natural gas) but with displacement of demand using a combination of (1) plug in hybrid cars with "vehicle-to-grid" (V2G) efficiency gains, and (2) a very specific biofuel option. The only biofuel option I support is one that produces bio-char and the use of it to create terra preta nova.

Bio-char (aka agri-char) production can be through biomass pyrolysis (ala EPRIDA, or BEST Energies) or a using a solar furnace to produce methane. Sequestering the bio-char in soil allows the energy generated from the biomass to be carbon negative.

This makes terra preta nova technology the only carbon negative oprtion for energy production available to date

An important benefit of bio-char is dramatically increased soil health and biomass productivity.

A concern I have is that market forces will drive folks doing pyrolysis to choose to produce more energy / less char. For this reason I favor the solar furnace sub-option where there is a choice.

Answer 6

Nuclear energy is the only economically sensible answer at the present time. It takes the energy equivalent of a gallon of ethanol (85,000 BTU) to make a gallon of ethanol using corn, so trying to use it as a substitute for petroleum is a fool's game. Wind power and solar electric power are possibilities, but neither is commercially viable at this time without subsidies.

Answer 7

Ethanol, with the flexibility to combine with water, will artwork wonders to get water out of the backside of a gasoline tank. it could enhance useful octane rankings so as that a gasoline engine could have larger compression and provide us extra advantageous gasoline mileage, no longer from the ethanol, yet from the gasoline with its larger octane score. If we burn ethanol or gasoline/ethanol mixture in an engine that has a low adequate compression score to burn the gasoline devoid of the ethanol, we don't get that mileage enhance. we generally attempt to earnings bio-diesel with ethanol devoid of thinking different thoughts like EESU as a potential of storing capability for mobility. ok. Bio-diesel may be made out of diverse substrates. as can ethanol. all of us too generally get into discussing bio-diesel or ethanol as though there have been precisely one substrate and one approach of processing. while we finished this sort of communicate we've left lots of thoughts unconsidered. No ask your self we finally end up going lower back and re-discussingg it 1000 situations with 1000 diverse mixtures.

Answer 8

The best reason in my opinion to use Ethanol over oil is foreign dependency.

While Ethanol is very inefficient: you get lower gas mileage and it takes 3 gallons of water to create 1 gallon of Ethanol.

If you only had two resources oil or Ethanol, I would choose Oil for efficiency.

But if you did had the resources we have today, as one of the other answers stated, Nuclear power is the best way to go.

Answer 9

Here's a pro-ethanol website to look at, but don't expect it to replace gasoline too soon.

We have a lot of investment in gasoline engine technology, and to change that is going to take time - about the amount of time it will be to consume all the gasoline we can easily extract from the earth.

http://www.greenfuels.org/ethanol/terms.htm

Answer 10

It's only the next step towards an infinite and planet friendly supply of clean energy. We cannot jump from oil to the final answer. Ethanol is merely the next stage of this ever evolving technology. So it's not the answer but a step towards it. I think hydrogen power will eventually solve this but it won't be anytime soon because they are to expansive.

Answer 11

Move to swicth grass, or use sugar cane like in Brazil ( we all could use a little less sugar.