USA TODAY LEAD ARTICLE POINTS OUT ETHANOL CHEAPER THAN GAS AND

[JohnWxy]

available right now! Bush talked like we have to wait 6 yrs for cellulosic ethanol to be made practical before we hav any alternative fuels. That of course is not true. We should be making ethanol more available right now. This would create more demand and lead to increase in production. Article points out ethanol cheaper and more efficient to produce than gasoline!

Ethanol article

excerpts from article (emphasis my own):



Ethanol fuel — in the form of E85, a mix of 85% grain alcohol and 15% gasoline — is the only one of those immediately available(I think they meant to say: "only one of those immediately available" as Ethanol 10% "Gasohol" is also currently available). E85, using ethanol made in the USA from corn, isn't a science experiment or pipe dream. It's real fuel, sold now, and 5 million vehicles already are on the road with the systems needed to burn it.

Though they cost at least an extra $150 each to manufacture, they are often priced the same as conventional gas-only vehicles. You'd probably not even notice if you bought one.

Ford says the 5 million FFVs already on the road, if fueled exclusively by E85, would cut petroleum use more than 10 million gas-electric hybrid Escapes would. General Motors, pledging to build more than 400,000 FFVs annually starting this year, says a barrel of oil is saved for every 37 gallons of E85 used.

Gasohol: Common name for fuel that's 10% ethanol, 90% gasoline. It's widely available and can be used by most vehicles.
(i.e. if you can find gasohol you can use it in any car that burns gasoline and be reducing your gas consumption by about 10% immediately, and yo do not have to buy a new FFV vehicle!!-JW)


One thing they got wrong is that FFV can be set up to take advantagae of E85's higher octane than gasoline (Ethanol: 105, gasoline Premium Grade: 92-93] and get JUST AS GOOD AS MILEAGE as gasoline powered cars. Saab (GM owned) makes a 9-5 Bio-Fuel FFV car that uses Turbo charging and variable valve timing to take advantage of Ethanol85's higher octane and it gets just as good mileage as a gasoline powered car.

more on ethanol:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=35706&mesg_id=35706

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Oh not that again, Waxy! Do you have corn futures or something???

[JohnWxy]

5. ha-ha-ha. No, just think it's an underappreciated technology.

I mean you'd think the only short to medium term answer was hybrid vehicles. Ethanol is a cheaper simpler solution. Not tha thybrids should not be developed. Will need everything we can think of.

Thanks for the laugh though!

[Deja Q]

2. Where do you grow enough of it for our lopsided traffic structure?

Never mind space for growing food, do you prefer driving to eating?

[JohnWxy]

7. No way. All the ethanol studies are predicated on no disruption of

food production. No, i don't want us to run out of food! I like to eat too much!

Starch based Ethanol will not be able to replace all the gasoline (although cellulosic ethanol, based on plant and forest product waste has amazing potential). Starch based ethanol is estimated to be able to meet 20% of gasoline demand. Cellulosic ethanol is estimated to be able to produce, I think, something like about 3 times as much as starch based sources (I think this is where Bush's advisors get the "75% of gasoline demand by 2025" figure he mentioned). It is just one technology that I feel is not being emphasized enough. I feel we are really missing an opportunity here. The main thing about the starch-based ethanol is its practical right now and just needs to be scaled up in production. Hybrids are interesting but they are costly. Nonetheless, this technology should be developed and explored.

Any car that runs on gas can use ethanol 15% (or Gasohol - 10% ethanol). Right there you would be reducing gasoline consumption 15% (or 10% wtih gasohol). But we need to get ethanol production increased and as quickly as possible. OF course Ethanol85 enables an 85% reduction in gasoline consumption and atno additional cost for the Flexible Fuel Vehicle. (THere are about a coupe of million FFVs on the road right now.)

In the long run, probably the most important technology in reducing or eliminating fossil fuel use in transportation will be fuel cells. But its going to take about 20 to 30 yrs to make them practical. We must start immediately to produce some solutions. Our dependence on imported oil puts us a great risk of recession from oil supply disruption. This needs to be addressed as QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. Corn ethanol (or sugar cane or beets) offers, realistically, the quickest and most economical approach to this problem near term. Longer term we need to explore everything we can think of.

In addition to the economic jeopardy of dependence on fossil fuel is or course, GLobal Warming. If we don 't start doing something about CO2 emmissions right away we are going to be in one hell of a mess.

That's why I am so ardent about this subject. I am trying to motivate others to support this technology because we are up against a very powerful group here: the oil industry and natural gas.

I am confident that ethanol will eventually be fully developed but it would be much better, for all of us, if we didn't waste any time doing so.

[NickB79]

10. Cellulosic ethanol worries me for one reason

We have destroyed large areas of farmland already through decades of overuse and removal of billions of tons of plant matter. Currently we harvest the crop and leave the chaff (leaves, stalks, etc) lying in the field to be plowed under. We then add fertilizer, either in the form of synthetic fertilizer or animal manure, to the fields to replace the nutrients removed with crop harvesting. With cellulosic ethanol production, even the chaff is removed. This would require us to add even larger amounts of fertilizer on a yearly basis to maintain the soil.

I would think we could ship whatever waste is left after cellulosic fermentation has occurred back to the fields for redistribution, but a large portion of organic matter would have already been removed to be used for fuel. There is also the question of using up additional fuel to transport the waste back to the farms and then redistribute it across the fields. This could be alleviated a bit by building the fermentation plants close to the most heavily farmed areas of the country.

Furthermore, from what I've observed of farm fields, many of them are in desperate need of a break from farming. The old adage was that you rotate your crops, planting soybeans one year, corn the next, the alfalfa after that. The soybeans and alfalfa help fix nitrogen into the soil, providing fertilizer for the corn crop. Many corporate farms, however, no longer rotate crops. They plant a monoculture of corn in the same field for a decade or more, relying on artificial fertilizers to maintain crop yields. On NPR this week there was a report about how many of these farmers are having trouble calculating a way to make any profits this season due to high diesel and fertilizer prices.

[Old and In the Way]

3. If Ford/Cryler/GM were smart, they'd invest in ethanol and

market this as a "Buy America" product/opportunity. Maybe subsidize it by selling the consumer a discounted fuel contract with their cars to get the consumer motivated to buy their cars and reduce our dependence on ME/Exxon.

[JohnWxy]

9. I think Ford is promoting it and doing some investing in it. In the USA

TToday article it said something about Ford getting involved helping making it more available. (helping independent stations financially with the costs of adding ethanol)

[Pirate Smile]

4. I always buy the ethanol blend. It is a couple of cents cheaper

then the cheapest unleaded.

[rfkrfk]

6. look up,,, Iogen Canada ,,,

the following is not an endorsement,
I read the same news reports everybody else does
...............................

there seems to be, slow progress in making
ethanol from cellulose

................................

decide for yourself

[JohnWxy]

8. Yes, cellulosic ethanol is for a few years in the future. What Bush left

out and the USA Today article did not is that we are already producing corn based ethanol that is cheaper than gasoline and the production of which needs to be increased.(I've seen prices on teh web of $2.10 per gal vs 2.35 for reg gas and $2.55 for premium grade gas).

IF ethanol (either 15% or 85%) were more available I think people would start buying it and this would support the increase in production. But it has to be made available to people.

ANy car that runs on gasoline can use ethanol 15 (or gasohol : 10% ethanol). If you use Ethanol15 you are reducing gas consumption by 15% immediately - not 6 years in the future.

IF you can find Ethanol85 and you have a FFV (which didn't cost you any more to buy than a regular car) you can use Ethanol85 and you'd be reducing gasoline consumption by 85% (and by the way reducing GHG by 17-23% depending on whether the ethanol was made by dry mill or wet mill process).