Ethanol: A second Bush catastrophe?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Jan 31 2007, 10:29 AM) [snapback]383256[/snapback]</div>

Yes, even wind, solar, and geothermal are finite. They are finite because fusion is finite. Stars burn out when they run out of fuel. When the sun burns out, there will be no wind, solar, or geothermal energy. Will this happen soon, no, but it will happen. Energy is limited!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Jan 30 2007, 03:00 PM) [snapback]382928[/snapback]</div>

says who?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(nerfer @ Jan 30 2007, 02:47 PM) [snapback]382918[/snapback]</div>

Butanol, compared to ethanol, has a higher energy density(it's closer to gasolene than ethanol), isn't limited to sugars, doesn't have the affinity for water, and doesn't require a conversion. Plus it's less dangerous in a spill than either ethanol or gas.

That no conversion bit is bigger than you think. Yes, an E85 conversion is cheap on the manufactoring line, but there are a lot of cars out on the roads which don't have it. And most people won't have the means to convert their current car, much less to buy a new one. Flex-fuel engines are also inefficient. My Ranger is rated 17/22 on gas and 12/15 on E85. Ethanol's lower enegry content plays a part, but it is also a high octane fuel. To burn it efficiently in an ICE you need higher compression, but we use low compression engines for flex-fuels and mix E85 with low octane gas. Even with improvements to the engine and fuel mix, a dedicated ethanol engine will still be more efficient than a flex-fuel.

And the big advantage of the no conversion positive. You can pump it through exsisting gasolene pipelines. Ethanol can't, and needs to be trucked to where ever it's needed.

Yes, the butanol used in industry comes from petroleum, but it used to be made by fermentation with bacteria. The ABE process is what was traditionally used. Named for the acetone, butanol, and ethanol products. BP and DuPont, among others, are looking into improving it for butanol output. It was originally used for the acetone.

The company in the original link has a patented process where they claim to get has much butanol from corn as ethanol from traditional fermentation. The process also yields hydrogen gas.

 

Can Butanol be made from the same production plants that make ethanol? Slight adjustments? major adjustments? or rip it down and put up a new facility?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jhinton @ Jan 31 2007, 10:36 AM) [snapback]383259[/snapback]</div>

And another factor to consider is that ethanol actually takes more energy to produce than we can get out of it so the only advantages of it go to the corn and automobile industries. The corn industry makes a boatload of money selling their corn and the car companies can keep producing gas-guzzling fleets of pickups and SUVs.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ShellyT @ Jan 31 2007, 11:22 AM) [snapback]383290[/snapback]</div>

Thanks, that was a real eye-opener. Clearly you could make this from cellulosic stock same as ethanol, as the first step in cellulosic ethanol is to break the cellulose into sugars. Have not found yet whether this alows direct conversion of cellulose without that first step, but it also works on some materials not useful for ethanol (e.g., whey discards). I found it interesting that bio-butanol was a commercial industry from 1920-1950, but was put out of business by cheap oil. So rebirth under expensive oil seems plausible. Current (petro-based) price is $3.75 a gallon. Quotes on bio-based prices that I found on the web seemed implausible so I will not repeat them.

So, better than ethanol, for sure.

The only question to me is whether it can be made cheaply from celluolosic feedstock. Otherwise, as with ethanol, my take on it is that there isn't enough food or enough capacity to grow food to allow much of it to be made from existing food stocks, per my "all the corn in the US" post above. Plus, we don't want to lose mor of our topsoil every year just to be producing fuel.

 

Go Darwood

yea Ethanol, Go USA

Up the price of corn

Help OUR farmers!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Darwood @ Jan 31 2007, 11:50 AM) [snapback]383313[/snapback]</div>

They are both a fermentation process so an exisiting ethanol plant should only require little modifications.