Interesting Fuel Consumption Observation

Methanol has less energy per ounce than 87 octane gasoline. It burns cleaner though. Right now, you are probably in the winter formula, which also has less energy per ounce.

 

you are not alone. ethanol mix has been required in WA St for over 15 years... and that requirement is YEAR ROUND

 

Although ethanol has less energy per ounce than gas, it contributes no net carbon to the atmosphere, so all the energy it does have is basically carbon-free. That's because the carbon in ethanol was taken from the atmosphere to begin with. You are being required to pay a little more per mile driven in order to slightly reduce the amount of carbon you add to the atmosphere per mile.

And of course, it creates a market for corn, which is great for farmers.

Ethanol is green. A good choice for a green car.

 

It does take energy for to make fertilizers, run irrigation systems, run tractors, "cook" corn to extract ethanol, deliver ethanol to market, etc. Some have said that the energy input of producing and delivering ethanol is close to the energy of combustion of ethanol; I don't know if this is true or not. In any case it's most certainly not a no-net-carbon fuel.

Ethanol and MTBE are both used as oxygenators in fuels, helping reduce smog in the winter. I suspect they do much more to reduce emissions than the few percent hit they involve in gas mileage. Ethanol has come into more favor recently due to the fact that any MTBE that leaks becomes a more hazardous and persistent addition to groundwater than ethanol does.

 

I have some friends who enjoy debating me on enviornmental issues. They always tend to use the argument that ethanol indirectly has a negative impact on the environment. The argument is that a farm uses lots of chemical fertilizers to grow the corn, lots of gas-engine tractors and farm tools to plant and harvest the corn, and the ethanol production facility uses energy to produce the ethanol.

I'm definitely not going to agree with them, because I honestly have no idea what kind of studies have been done regarding the 'energy cost' to create ethanol. I WOULD LOVE to put them in their place with some strong facts about the benefits of ethanol. Anybody have any good resources on the subject?

 

Opportunity for new product

How about organically and hand grown corn for 'organic enthanol'

Just being silly

Al

 

(Imaginary conversation with red necked truck driver)

Ethanol is made from corn, and what are the true energy inputs for growing corn??

Almost the entire energy input is derived from photosynthesis. The added energy to farm and refine are only a tiny portion of the whole.

That makes it a renewable resource, as long as the sun will come up tomorrow.

Fossil fuels however, will run out one day, just as certain as the sun will set.

 

We can produce corn without petroleum if we choose to do so. We did just that until not so long ago. The trade-off is that it takes more labor. A lot more labor.

It is common to assert that farms are more productive now because they use less labor (and lots of diesel-hungry tractors). I could say instead that they are less productive now because they consume so much fossil fuel.

Horses, my friends! Horses are the answer. The cities are over-crowded. We have a consumer-based economy that requires people to consume products they don't need and eat unhealthy foods in order to generate jobs so people can earn a living producing products that are bad for them and for the world.

Once the oil is gone, we'll have to go back to horses to grow our crops. Or we can make the change while there is still some petroleum left for industries that make better use of it than burning it.

When we tell our grandchildren that there's no oil left because we burned it all, they'll curse us to eternal damnation for being so stupid and wasteful and selfish. "You burned it???" "Yep. We burned it."

Even our lovely Prius are burning it.

 

To put things kinda in perspective...about 100 years ago New York City thought the automobile was a God-send. At that time the City had to dispose of 150,000 Tons of horse manure every day!!!

Until we find a renewable, efficient, and eco-friendly source of energy, I think I'd prefer the smog of 1,000,000 Hybrids over wading through and smelling the output of ~3,000,000 horses any day! I guess y'all in the plains of Canada and the US might disagree, but 150,000 tons/day......? That's just too much Green all at once. :mrgreen:

 

Never mind all that manure that squirts out the horse's butt onto the street. How about when a horse would finally expire from poor treatment, malnutrition, disease, etc? It would lay on it's side and rot until somebody hauled the carcass away.

At least when you ride a horse in a field, whatever shoots out its butt becomes fertilizer on the ground. Horses are, on average, treated much better than they used to be. They're beloved pets that receive lots of love and care.

So I would hate to return to a time when horses were the automotive equivalent of the Dodge Sprinter. At least if you neglect and kill a car or pickup truck, no guilty feelings. Folks just open the door and walk away, it happens all the time.

We can also apply efficiencies to animal production. Here in Manitoba the Hog industry is quite big, and so is all that stench from pig manure that is sitting in sewage lagoons and sprayed on fields.

Why not put the pig manure into a digester, capture the methane, and use that methane to run microturbine power plants? The sludge residue from the digester would be odorless and much easier to get rid of. There have already been pilot projects doing just that.

We really have to change our attitudes if we, as a society, want to "make a difference."

 

horses do polute also. their manure gives off methane and ammonia gas amongst other items.

i think that we need to get away from the "perfect" solution because i think that shooting for that goal is just delaying the first step towards real solutions to alleviate the problems we are facing.

that is why i use the slogan i use. because i do believe that the Prius is an excellent step in the right direction and that hybrid technology on a widespread basis will go a very long way towards addressing the polution problems along with the associated health issues.

in our search for the perfect solution, we have spent huge amounts of time and energy debating the merits of all the proposed solutions to the point that we have no solution and no real plan for a solution.

i cant admire Toyota enough for foreseeing a vision and dedicating their resources toward bringing that vision to the masses in a way that is more than acceptable to the average consumer.

Toyota realized that a solo homerun will not produce enough runs to win, so they have done it with singles and no one can argue the success they have achieved in building a reputation for quality and innovation that is second to none.

 

If everyone drove a Prius, the oil would last twice as long. That buys us a little time, if we have the political will to actually implement renewables. But since nobody but the lunatic fringe (in which I count myself) thinks oil is finite, and no politician with any actual hope of getting elected will seriously move toward renewables, we're going to end up using horses whether we like it or not.

As for the stink, would anyone in NYC even notice it? I used to live in L.A., and I can tell you that horse manure would be a big improvement over smog. And moving all that manure out of the city and spreading it on farm fields (because there won't be any chemical fertilizer) will create jobs.

P.S. I've worked on a dairy farm, so I have direct experience of both manure and smog. I ain't gonna say I like manure, but I'll take it over smog any day of the week.

 

Yep, I know what it's like working with manure on a farm, was born a farm boy. You can dig up historical accounts of living in NYC when horses were the primary transportation.

The filth, stench, and disease caused by all that sewage, human and animal, sitting on the street must have burned your nose hair right off. The closest you can come these days is a "factory" hog farm.

The manure produced by 6,000 hogs is equivalent to +300,000 humans. Consider that water is used to wash everything down and to transport the waste to the lagoon, it's a lot easier than dealing with semi-solid droppings.

More often than not, the hog sewage ends up contaminating a local waterway. Wells up to 10km from the hog operation are also contaminated. And since hog sewage is so concentrated, you can't use it as fertilizer on most crops or you will kill (Burn) the crop.

There have been good documentaries on The Documentary Channel and on IChannel (Available in Canada only on DBS or digital cable) that bring all these negative points to light.

I just think that instead of wasting something like hog sewage, it should be sent into a digester and turned into methane. The methane can be used to run space and water heaters - currently the industrial hog barns require 3-phase AC to do this - and the methane can also generate electricity if burned in microturbine power plants with catalytic converters. The sludge residue is odorless and very safe to use as fertilizer.

The net effect is turning a waste product, responsible for blighted fields and contaminated waterways, into a valuable commodity. It makes the best of a bad situation.

I remember when wood fiber at pulp and paper mills was dumped in rivers or dumped in landfills. That "waste" fiber is now turned into OSB and is used as filler in other wood products. At the time, the pulp and paper mills really screamed when they were told they couldn't just dump the waste fiber into the river, now it's a valuable commodity. That shows just how terminally retarded most large corporations are, especially when they receive direct and indirect subsidies from taxpayers.

So it takes "unconventional" thinking to change how things are done. The "old way" isn't always the best way, or we'd still have carburetors in cars, and we'd still be dumping waste fiber into waterways. We don't have to make huge, some would say "drastic," sacrifices to make the world a much better place.

Just a little bit of common sense will make things better. Therefore, it will never be done. I've yet to encounter common sense in dealing with large corporations and especially the gov. You have to force large, sluggish entities to change their attitudes.

Just as folks said "Hey, don't dump waste fiber or chemicals or mercury in waterways anymore!," we have to also say "Hey, you can't make a car or pickup unless it gets at least 35 MPG and puts out 90% fewer emissions."

 

One could of course google 'ethanol net energy' or the like and find lotsa hits. One of these is http://www.eere.energy.gov/biomass/net_ene...gy_balance.html which cites multiple sources. The ones which assert a positive net energy balance for ethanol production from corn (maize) include the energy benefit of using the waste as animal feed. That use would be saturated long before corn-based ethanol met all vehicle fuel needs, and it's not clear whether the energy balance is still positive without that contribution. The same site points out that bioDiesel fuel production from soybeans has a much better energy balance without any adjustments from secondary uses such as animal feed, roughly 3.2 versus 1.4 for ethanol.

More troubling is that those sources are all tied to the ag business, in which I include the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), and all make enthusiatic assumptions about production under optimal conditions. A prominent independent critic is Cornell Prof David Pimentel who recently calculated that typical ethanol production from corn returns as fuel only about 80% of the fuel energy required for its production, a net loss of energy.

My conclusion so far is that it's probably worthwhile to use ethanol produced as a byproduct of animal feed and corn sugar production as an emissions reduction additive, but probably not worthwhile to grow corn solely to produce ethanol for vehicle fuel. In contrast methanol and bioDiesel as vehicle fuels have a clear positive net energy balance.

One interesting tool for general energy questions is Homer at http://www.nrel.gov/homer/