Why the push for ethanol when fossil fuel use to produce it is so high?And what about powerplants?

Question

Coal and fuel oil are still the most common fuels for powerplants and factories!!! I have read the amount of fossil fuels needed to manufacture ethanol outweighs the benefits.I am a huge believer in the use of alternative fuels and though politically unpopular believe in the increased use of nuclear power plants for our energy requirements. I guess what I'm asking is other then the political and economic benefits of ethanol why the push for it's use?I think it will take a huge mixture of different alternative fuel sources in this country to lower pollution and to heal us of our imported oil addiction!

Answer 1

I really cannot answer you about this, eventhough ethanol is for sure the most simple and easy solution in the short term. On the other hand, as a brazilian consumer, I can explain how it works in Brazil.

First of all, let me start explaining that we have been using ethanol for almost 30 years as fuel; in the beginning (long, long time ago) we had problemas with rust; but now, nobody even thinks about it. Of course our engines had to be modified and receive adequate protection.

In the last 5 years, the big hit in our country is using bi-fuel (ethanol and gas in any given combination - the engine automatically adapts to the mix); therefore, it doesn´t matter wheather the price of ethanol is high or low, since the consumer adapt its consumption to its own necessities. Our gas receives around 20% of alcohol. Four-fuel (this one includes natural gas and pure gas) are being tested.

Our buses already run with a mix of diesel and bio-diesel.

My point is: why America doesn´t start using more ethanol NOW?

1. Eventhough its corn production is not so efficient as cana de acucar (cane), it is a possibility.
2. It helps under developed countries such as Brazil and many regions such as central america or africa.
3. It may help friendly governments, not fueling terrorists with america´s money.
4. It is much more environmentally safe than oil.
5. It creates more jobs and will not end.
6. It is a transitional solution, until better technologies are avaiable. such as hydrogene.

Some people say that it is strategically wrong, because US would then depend on Brazil. In very short time(not more than 5 years), a lot of countries may produce ethanol, including Africa. Isn´t it much better than depending on arabs or Venezuela or Sudan or any other unfriendly government?

Also, ethanol from cane (as it is in Brazil) is much more efficient than the one produced from corn (US). Check the numbers:
- Energy to produce 1lt: 1518kcal x 6597
- Cost of production: US$ 0,28 / lt x 0,45
- CO2 / lt produced: 500gr x 790gr

Plus, the government pays nothing in Brazil to producers (as opposed in US) and the net production of CO2 is zero, because of the consumption of this gas during plantation.

Answer 2

I agree, we should be building new nuclear power plants right now. It's the only means we have of creating on-site, on-demand power cleanly, without producing 'greenhouse' gases. While we're at it, why don't we use that nuclear power to convert our incredibly vast resources of coal into synthetic fuel to solve a great portion of our energy needs? The technology to produce diesel, jet fuel, and naptha from coal has been around since the days of Nazi Germany. They used it produce much of their fuel, due to an Allied blockade. The USA has approximately 1/4 of the worlds coal reserves. Our coal reserves have MORE potential energy in them than the ENTIRE Middle east has in it's oil reserves. With oil hovering around $60/bbl, it's just absurd that we aren't embracing this technology as a solution right now.

Answer 3

Ethanol doesn't make sense unless the waste heat of power plants is used. The only company utilizing waste power plant heat that has been published is Headwaters.
Ethanol from cellulosic byproducts is far behind. This would prevent corn price inflation but not solve the energy consumption problem.

Answer 4

Somebody else without the facts!!! In Brazil, which has SOLVED its need for petroleum. Produces more ethanol than any other nation on earth. The plants that produce the ethanol are practically self sustaining. They use the remains of the bio crop to fire the distillers, as well as gas biproducts.

There is a methane producing facility in the U.S. that is also self sustaining and actually sells a portion of the gas produced after using it to run the plant and power the vehicles that deliver the raw waste for processing.

Ethanol and other alternative sources of energy WILL in time free the U.S. from fossil fuel use.

Answer 5

Yes, ethanol is not the answer, and, as you pointed out, it actually saves no fossil fuel.

Nuclear is one answer, but is unpopular among the "green" movement, even though it has been proven safe. Wind power is another answer, also nixed by the "greens". Drilling off the coasts and in Alaska will help until we find the answer, but the "greens" don't like that either.

Looks like the "greens" have backed themselves into a corner. Where would they suggest we go from here?

Answer 6

Watch it there... you're peeking behind their curtain! What I wonder is why no one is talking about how with farming for Ethanol, it takes more Diesel per acre to raise the crop than they get out of it as an end product!

Answer 7

I agree, more Nuke plants. The really obscene thing is that we only import about 20% of our oil from the Mideast. SURELY, we can do without, or conserve, or replace that 20 % with some other source and tell them nihilist idiots to go pound sand?

Answer 8

Nuclear power is obscene. How DARE we produce something that is toxic in a really BIG way for 250 000 years? how can that be "clean"???

Remember chernobyl? three mile island? hmm?

and i resent the comments about us "greenies" being less-than-keen on nuclear power as if its a bad thing! of course we're going to reject something that isn't at all good for the environment!!! at least not yet anyway...maybe with a bucketload more research as to the way to get rid of the waste it might be okay, but there's PLENTY of alternatives...

What is exactly the problem with wind turbines? I'm a Greenie (and proud of it too) and see no big issue with them...if they're put in the right place!

Plus there's Hydro power. why isn't anyone talking about THE energy source which produces NO emissions? huh? okay...there are habitat issues when you build one, but if we do it sensitively, then there should be no problem. The State that I come from in Australia - Tasmania - is 95% hydro so we produce ZERO emissions in our consumption of power. ZERO!!!


cop a load of this article:

Isaac Berzin is a big fan of algae. The tiny, single-celled plant, he says, could transform the world's energy needs and cut global warming.
Overshadowed by a multibillion-dollar push into other "clean-coal" technologies, a handful of tiny companies are racing to create an even cleaner, greener process using the same slimy stuff that thrives in the world's oceans.

Enter Dr. Berzin, a rocket scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. About three years ago, while working on an experiment for growing algae on the International Space Station, he came up with the idea for using it to clean up power-plant exhaust.

If he could find the right strain of algae, he figured he could turn the nation's greenhouse-gas-belching power plants into clean-green generators with an attached algae farm next door.

"This is a big idea," Berzin says, "a really powerful idea."

And one that's taken him to the top - a rooftop. Bolted onto the exhaust stacks of a brick-and-glass 20-megawatt power plant behind MIT's campus are rows of fat, clear tubes, each with green algae soup simmering inside.

Fed a generous helping of CO2-laden emissions, courtesy of the power plant's exhaust stack, the algae grow quickly even in the wan rays of a New England sun. The cleansed exhaust bubbles skyward, but with 40 percent less CO2 (a larger cut than the Kyoto treaty mandates) and another bonus: 86 percent less nitrous oxide.

After the CO2 is soaked up like a sponge, the algae is harvested daily. From that harvest, a combustible vegetable oil is squeezed out: biodiesel for automobiles. Berzin hands a visitor two vials - one with algal biodiesel, a clear, slightly yellowish liquid, the other with the dried green flakes that remained. Even that dried remnant can be further reprocessed to create ethanol, also used for transportation.

Being a good Samaritan on air quality usually costs a bundle. But Berzin's pitch is one hard-nosed utility executives and climate-change skeptics might like: It can make a tidy profit.

"You want to do good for the environment, of course, but we're not forcing people to do it for that reason - and that's the key," says the founder of GreenFuel Technologies, in Cambridge, Mass. "We're showing them how they can help the environment and make money at the same time."

GreenFuel has already garnered $11 million in venture capital funding and is conducting a field trial at a 1,000 megawatt power plant owned by a major southwestern power company. Next year, GreenFuel expects two to seven more such demo projects scaling up to a full pro- duction system by 2009.

Even though it's early yet, and may be a long shot, "the technology is quite fascinating," says Barry Worthington, executive director of US Energy Association in Washington, which represents electric utilities, government agencies, and the oil and gas industry.

One key is selecting an algae with a high oil density - about 50 percent of its weight. Because this kind of algae also grows so fast, it can produce 15,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre. Just 60 gallons are produced from soybeans, which along with corn are the major biodiesel crops today.

Greenfuel isn't alone in the algae-to-oil race. Last month, Greenshift Corporation, a Mount Arlington, N.J., technology incubator company, licensed CO2-gobbling algae technology that uses a screen-like algal filter. It was developed by David Bayless, a researcher at Ohio University.

A prototype is capable of handling 140 cubic meters of flue gas per minute, an amount equal to the exhaust from 50 cars or a 3-megawatt power plant, Greenshift said in a statement.

For his part, Berzin calculates that just one 1,000 megawatt power plant using his system could produce more than 40 million gallons of biodiesel and 50 million gallons of ethanol a year. That would require a 2,000-acre "farm" of algae-filled tubes near the power plant. There are nearly 1,000 power plants nationwide with enough space nearby for a few hundred to a few thousand acres to grow algae and make a good profit, he says.

Energy security advocates like the idea because algae can reduce US dependence on foreign oil. "There's a lot of interest in algae right now," says John Sheehan, who helped lead the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) research project into using algae on smokestack emissions until budget cuts ended the program in 1996.

In 1990, Sheehan's NREL program calculated that just 15,000 square miles of desert (the Sonoran desert in California and Arizona is more than eight times that size) could grow enough algae to replace nearly all of the nation's current diesel requirements.

"I've had quite a few phone calls recently about it," says Mr. Sheehan. "This is not an outlandish idea at all."