They're referring to the whole cycle, not just what happens at an ethanol plant. That would include trucking the ethanol to the stations, driving tractors in the corn fields, running irrigation pumps and well pumps, producing fertilizer from petroleum, and plowing and reseeding the fields.

You can't get energy for nothing. An arrangement with a power plant just means that the energy your ethanol plant uses is reduced because the power plant is passing the cost of production of that energy to its other consumers. They are basically subsidising the production of ethanol at your plant.

 

Uh, that bucket isn't made of plastic is it????? To obtain valid data the testing must be done under repeatable labratory conditions or the results aren't worth the time expended nor of any emperical value. What are the conditions of the test? Some of these old cars sit for days, weeks or months with no activity. Going to be difficult to create a set of valid test parameters.

 

not for me

 

Uh, I'm a design engineer. Automotive, in fact. I'm familiar with all that stuff. I didn't feel the need to go into volumes of detail, given the infinitesimal odds that anybody was going to quit "bench racing" and actually do the experiment.

 

You'd be the fastest turtle in town.

 

Nah, it would have to drip somewhere ELSE for THAT to happen.....

 

Now thats funny, and I don't care who you are...........Larry the Cable Guy

 

I know exactly what they're referring to. I've read the studies. The thing is if you apply that exact same thinking to oil production it then takes more energy to make gas than you get out of the gas. I'm saying you can not apply a set of variables to one product and say it takes more energy to produce it than you get out of it if you aren't going to apply those same variables to the comparison product.

And for the power plant I am perfectly aware of the fact that energy isn't free. Energy use, it's costs, and how to best handle it is what I do for a living. What is going on is that the ethanol plant is saving piles of cash for the power plant by condensing their waste steam for them. I think that means that consumer's electricity is subsidized by the ethanol plant. Here's what we do.

The power plant runs a steam turbine at extremely high pressure. The waste steam that comes off of that process is at 300 lbs. steam pressure. For 30 years the power plant would run refrigeration compressors (powered by electricity) and tube condensers to drop that steam down to a liquid which then goes to flow cooling ponds to temper with other makeup water. This steam is still really high pressure to the process factory world at 300 psi. The ethanol plant sits right next to the power plant and pipes the steam from the power plant to the ethanol plant, uses the BTU's remaining in the steam to heat it's process, then sends the condensate back to the power plant. This means no cooling to condense steam at the power plant, no boiler running at the ethanol plant.

-Justin

 

This is exactly our point. We think you can apply those variables, and when you do, it shows the true cost of producing a gallon of ethanol compared to the cost of producing a gallon of gas.

I agree if you light a match to ethanol it would burn cleaner than the gallon of gas. What we are saying is if you look at how much pollutants that gas puts into the air combine with extracting, refining, shipping, etc. and then compare that to the TOTAL amount needed to produce the gallon of ethanol it will be less.

True, measuring those variables is difficult if not impossible to get a precise measure. That still should not deter finding an estimate for those values which should be reasonably accurate. There are several studies out there on this very thing (if you wish I can cite my sources). Each one I have read restates the same thing: Ethanol pollutes more than gasoline over its "life cycle".

Now if ALL ethanol plants were has contentious as yours about the environment then this conversation would be a mute point and ethanol production could be ramping up as we speak. The fact is that not all of the ethanol refineries will be lucky to get the setup your plant has.


I'm all for cleaner burning fuels, just haven't seen a strong argument for ethanol to be the replacement fuel for gas. Not just because of this one point but you could argue the food shortage issue, rising food prices, depletion of arable land, and others. Each with their own direct and indirect relation to ethanol production. Yes, I understand that there are solutions to each of these issues, but I have yet to seen any follow through from our dear congressional leaders to fix them.

 

As much as i hate to keep beating my head against the wall, here goes again. There is so much idiotic scare information in here, its just overwhelming to try and respond to it all.

Let's just briefly take a look at the TRUE costs of obtaining a gallon of gas.

1. We have to kiss Saudi ***. They still have the sweetest, easiest to get crude. We still get more than half of our oil from people who would love to kill us. You can't just fix that by saying "drill drill drill".

2. Massive offshore oil rigs have to be created, polluting the environment. Substantial equipment is needed for onshore drilling as well. Much pollution is created in the drilling. How much of this crap is spilled into the oceans and land thus polluting groundwater.

3. Supertanker and pipeline crude spills cause pollution for decades. I'm not convinced alcohol would be as devastating. It evaporates.

4. How many people die doing their jobs in the oil industry each year. Offshore work is especially dangerous. What's the human cost? People die all the time flying to and from offshore rigs. Many lives have been lost when these rigs go down in bad weather. Search on "oil rig helicopter fatalities" and "oil rig fatalities" and "oil rig disasters"

5. A substantial amount of energy and effort is needed to drill for oil. Mud is used to lubricate and remove tailings from the hole. Mucho pollution. I interviewed to be a wire line engineer back in the 80s. They use highly radioactive sources which when lost miles down in the hole will pollute groundwater for 1000s of years.

6. Oil has to be pushed out of the ground or ocean floor from many many miles below. High pressure pumps and or steam is needed. That's a tremendous amount of energy. A tremendous amount guys.

7. Nasty polluting crude has to be tankered or pipelined or trucked to refineries where a crap load of energy needs to be put into it to heat it to crack the crude down to gas. I guess a lot of you think we just pump it out of the ground and go, but that's not true. Raw crude is a thick tarlike substance. It has to be "distilled" into gasoline and other products. It takes a lot of energy to boil off the gasoline component.

Many people have died in these very dangerous oil refineries over the years. They blow up and burn down quite often. Just search on "oil refinery explosion". The refinement process is extremely polluting. You ever see the sheit coming out of the smoke stacks of oil refineries? Ever drive by one holding your nose the whole time. Come on.....give me a frigging break. This shiit is devistating to the environment. Search on "oil refinery pollution" to see thousands of articles and pictures. I guess its all Mass/Kennedy liberals putting this misinformation on the internet.

8. The end product has to be tankered to filling stations. Gasoline is more volitile and dangerous than alcohol when these tanker trucks crash and burn. It burns hotter. Same thing goes when autos crash. How many lives could be saved here?

9. Overall it takes more personnel to bring gasoline to market. That's a lot of salaries we're paying for. Because we have experience with this for a 100 years, economics of scale and much experience to gain efficiencies have been worked through over the years. The same thing will happen with ethanol and other bio fuels. It's going to get much cheaper to produce as we gain more experience.


Let's buy ethanol from all these 3rd world countries instead of giving them money. Let's make them work for it. Just about any country can grow some sort of seed crop and run ethanol plants if we set them up.

 

Let's buy ethanol from all these 3rd world countries instead of giving them money. Let's make them work for it. Just about any country can grow some sort of seed crop and run ethanol plants if we set them up.

Brazil has been manufacturing Ethanol for a number of years now. In fact they do it far more efficiently than any of our homegrown technology (pun intended) does. They make it from sugar cane which is a far superior raw material to use for production than is corn. Don't forget that other considerations come into play - politics and big oil and domestic farm lobbies.

I would much prefer buying from Brazil or another developing nation than from any Arab country too.

 

Turtle, your last post up there, has WAY too many holes in it....

better talk to Tinkerbell and then take a trip through Midland/Odessa Texas some day...from DFW to El Pisso....

And I agree it would be nice to not deal with islamics.....

so eliminate them ....

 

Gotta agree with Gene, here. I was going to reply after reading the first couple of statements I regarded as pure BS, but after seeing the sheer number of statements I disagree about both factually and politically, I just decided it wasn't worth my time.
Turtle, ya need to get out of fathead Ted land. You're just spouting a bunch of liberal nonsense nowadays.

 

Tell me what i'm wrong about Gene and 69427. Wow. The threshold of being a liberal is very low with you guys. I guess that includes anyone who keeps an open mind about new technology and is willing to change?

I was born in Texas and grew up in Louisiana. Yea, that makes me a real Mass/Kennedy liberal. All those refineries stink to high heaven and probably cause cancer. I used to hear about oil rig choppers going down on a regular basis. Yea I'll fight new offshore oil production on the east coast to the death. There's just no reason to continue to hose up the environment if we don't have to. Alternative fuels are very viable. We could pump liquefied natural gas into autos right now if someone would build them. Ethanol is just so easy. I've proved that in one day by just pumping and driving. It will be very easy to migrate to this fuel.

 

Umm 'fraid not.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/p...nt/import.html

 

Except that the corn growers lobby in the US has been successful in blocking ethanol imports or imposing high import taxes.

http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2223

There's probably no industry in the western world more corrupt than this.

 

Well, there are many Canadians on the forum that would love to kill ME. If this information is indeed correct, that is very good news.

except AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros, Morgan Stanly, BoA, Wall Street in general. Yada yada. They're all crooks. Ethics are pretty much non-existent in the 21st century.

 

You're right about needing to apply the same variables, but wrong about the conclusion. It takes way less energy to extract petroleum than what's in it - otherwise the entire industry couldn't exist. What those folks ignore is the massive amount of energy added by the earth to petroleum in the mysterious process of its formation.

That's very cool - I see how it works. I misunderstood your original statement.


Yep - she'd rip him a new one on some of those statements...


Not really true - are you aware that, in the absence of drilling, oil seeps out of the ocean floor by itself? (self polluting?)

Gasoline might be trucked the last 50 miles or so, but ethanol has to be trucked the entire way (thousands of miles)! There's no pipeline involved!

Good idea really. We tried, but the ADM lobby stopped us...

You forgot ACORN...


Ironically, one of the uphill battles the ethanol folks face is the fact that the byproducts of ethanol combustion are water and CO2. A lot of those nut cases think these cause global warming. So they are against using a cleaner burning product because of the incorrectly perceived GW idea.

 

And the one last thing I would like to say about this issue is that my only opinion on ethanol is purely selfish. Ethanol pushed the price of corn up over $2.00/bushel and I don't like it one bit. I heat my house by burning corn and was kind of fond of .99 cent corn. lol My heating bill was tripled last winter over a few years ago.

I'm just joking. But I do wish corn was under a buck again. Burning corn to heat the house really is the way to go. Especially here in the middle of farm country. Most corn burners around here have quit using it now, but not me........I just pay and play because I love my corn stove.

I do think that every opportunity to utilize industrial waste heat to make ethanol like in our local situation should by capitalized on.


-Justin

 

-------
Turtle tried the same arguments in PR&C last year. The result was not pretty.