Reply #10: It's interesting to note that the fossil fuelophiles kept talking Energy Balance all the time UNTIL

[JohnWxy]

Wang showed that the energy balance for gasoline is actually negative (.81 : 1 ) i.e. for every 1 unit of energy you put into drilling for, transporting and refining the oil you get out .81 units of energy in the final product. For ethanol, the latest figures recorded in studies (2004 time frame) are 1.67 to 1 for a 67% gain (1.77 to 1 - for dry mill plants, which the majority of ethanol plants now being built are). And Wang has stated the latest ethanol plants are turning in numbers of over 1.9 to 1. So now some fossil fuelophiles don't want to talk about net energy balance anymore.

Actually, Dr. Wang has always said JUST using Net Energy Balance alone is not so useful as there are more aspects to the use of a fuel - such as GHG emmissions. Ethanol releases less GHGs than gasoline and as less fossil fuel is used in the farming and producion of ethanol this will only improve.

from a report by Michael Wang:

"Though self evaluation of ethanol’s energy balance is easy to understand, it may not be useful to fully understand true energy benefits of fuel ethanol. A more complete way is to compare fuel ethanol with the fuels to be displaced by ethanol (i.e., gasoline). GHG emissions were simply ignored in some debatable studies."

AND as ethanol production uses less and less fossil fuels the GHG reduction numbers for ethanol will keep improving. As farmers learn they can use less nitrogen fertilizer, the GHG numbers for ethanol will only improve (fossil fuel is used in making nitrogen fertilizers). Iowa farmers reduced their usage of Nitrogen fertilizer by 16% and maintained or improved their yields compared to neighboring states farmers.

Other current developments include the application of ultra-sound to the ethanol production process (ultra-sound applied to the corn slurry before the fermentation stage produces much smaller particle size) results in a 30% gain in alcohol yield. Future ethanol plants will incorporate this in there designs.