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by Ethanol is currently the "eco-rage" amongst the green movement in America. While the fuel is easy to produce, burns clean and carries a lighter carbon emissions footprint than petroleum, the process to produce ethanol is not without its own carbon requirement. Additionally, ethanol itself is corrosive to engines and contains only 67% of the energy available in gasoline. Fortunately, scientists are not convinced that ethanol is the answer and are pursuing alternatives in the form of "designer fuels." Essentially, by using a process to create synthetic alcohol compound (like Octanol and Isoprenoids) from enzymes, scientists hope to create an easily repeatable procedure for creating a fuel with a higher energy yield. Ultimately, no alcohol based fuel has come close to touching bio-diesel's energy yield. Another designer fuel notion actually seeks to create a synthetic fatty acid to make bio-diesel easier to produce in bulk. As these solutions continue to develop, ethanol is looking weaker and weaker everyday.
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I read the same Economist article, and have heard the same "food vs. fuel" argument the other poster made for about a year now. A couple of things puzzled me though. I don't get where they can claim that it's "corrosive to engines". Ethanol requires different fuel tanks and seals throughout the fuel system because Ethanol is a solvent to some of the compounds which are resistant to gasoline. No big deal. Other than that, the only difference between a regular car and your E85 "FlexFuel" is a chip which adjusts the fuel injector flow to keep the fuel/air mixture tuned for the amount of ethanol/gas ratio with air as your current chip tunes gas and air alone now because of the slightly different burning characteristics. But corrosive to...what, your valves? I really doubt that.
Secondly, ethanol does have a lower energy content, but it also has a much higher octane. So what you say? Your current E85 model is basically a run-of-the-mill gas engine with the aformentioned tweaks to the fuel system. E85 has 104 Octane if I recall correctly. Your regular gas engine is designed to use 87 Octane. This means that an engine designed to take advantage of ethanol's octane could have a much higher compression ratio and get a lot better efficiency than "your fathers Oldsmobile". 87 Octane limits you to something like an 8:1 to perhaps 10:1 (with the latest, modern engines with all kinds of anti-knock sensors). You could get a lot better compression ratio with ethanol, meaning you'd get better efficiency because you have a longer power stroke rather than let the burned hot gas fly out the exhaust valve when it still has usable energy content. But even without the higher compression ratio and the standard engine with "FlexFuel" I only lose 15% of my mpg using E85.
Back to the "food vs. fuel" argument the other poster brought up, that's where cellulostic ethanol comes in. A lot of people argue that corn ethanol was just to get the infrastructure and the ball rolling. I think the only ones who are happy with corn ethanol are the farmers. I also am a little skeptical about the food vs. fuel argument for another reason--we've had these huge surpluses sitting around for decades and lots of fallow land the government paid farmers not to use. Maybe the huge surpluses kept the price down to make corn more affordable on the world market, but we weren't selling all of it and we weren't giving much of it away for free. Besides, there was a good article on how our cheap agricultural products and our tendency to use US based food for relief actually hurt farmers in the developing world.
All of this said, I'm much more in favor of butanol, and far more favorable toward algal-based bio-diesel, but I think ethanol has a role in getting us moving in the right direction. We get over 59% of our oil from countries which score "NOT FREE" on FreedomHouse's scale (calculated from EIA data), so every little bit helps keep us from funding our potential enemies. I know some people argue that it takes energy to make ethanol, but the vast majority of that energy comes from domestic sources anyway (natural gas or coal for fertilizer and pesticides, or natural gas for the distillation process). I was a little disappointed that the article didn't mention a company which came up with a process for butanol way before DuPont, named ButylFuel LLC.
If you really want to read some in depth arguments against ethanol, go see our old friend Rob Rapier over at his blog. He's got loads of experience in the petroleum industry, and writes quite frequently about ethanol.
Back to the "food vs. fuel" argument the other poster brought up, that's where cellulostic ethanol comes in.
Cellulosic Ethanol still has some of the same problems that Corn does--notably the use of herbicides/pesticides and more severely fertilizers. As an avid angler, the overuse of chemicals on crops concerns me. Pesticides are broad-based; they kill not only what they are supposed to kill, but every other species as well. Many of the insects they kill off are food insects for other animal populations. One thing we have noted in our local organizations is a lack of certain insects during a hatch period in waterway areas bordered by farms. This affects the populations of many creatures in the waterway ecosystem. Add to that the use of broadband herbicides, and the farm runoff causes a kill-off of beneficial waterway plants.
By far the worst offender in this trio are the fertilizers. These cause massive algae blooms, which in turn wreaks severe havoc on the populations of the creatures in the waterway ecosystem. Not only that, but most algae blooms cause odor and taste problems that are not addressable in the water treatment process.
I am stiil trying to find the original article I cited some time ago. This actually linked back to a Berkley study that confirms much of what UCS claims about fuel economy vs oil consumption.
Finally, I agree with your comments about butanol/ethanol. I also looked at this article about using mutated algae to produce hydrogen. Now if we could only get the transport-vs-efficiency level higher than 55%.
BTW..this is ldsudduth--I tried to login, but kept getting a 500 Server Error.
I've read the UC Berkeley study, by a guy named Tad Patzek if I recall correctly. I heard of his argument about a year ago about the energy balance of ethanol and I was...well, let's just say EXTREMELY skeptical of his analysis. I think he grossly overestimated the amount of pesticides and fertilizers US farmers employ. Heck, he didn't even have to guess at that figure, because the total production of all of that stuff is on a website I looked up to refute his data.
Moreover, it breaks it down by sub-set of agriculture, and fruit crops, such as Strawberries, Apples, etc. require a lot more pesticides than, say, corn. Additionally, GMO corn and soybeans (i.e. Roundup-Ready (TM)) can really economize on the herbicides and are becoming more and more resistant to pests. Before we start delving into the GMO aspect, corn and soybean varieties were being bred to be more pest resistant long before there was GMO. Again, most insecticides go toward fruit growing crops.
As for fertilizers, the most popular fertilizer for corn is anhydrous ammonia. This is because corn LOVES nitrogen and will respond very favorably up to a point of diminishing returns to increasing amounts of it. This is injected into the soil as a cryogenic liquid and doesn't run off easily. The problem with this stuff is that they use natural gas (or coal) to make it. As I said before though, the natural gas (or coal) comes from domestic sources--it's a pain in the tail to transport natural gas by ship, and even now the economics of trying are very dubious. In short, even if ethanol is energy negative (which it isn't), it matters where the energy is coming from because some sources are more palatable than others.
Cellulostic ethanol will be free from many of the concerns, perhaps all of them. Some cellulostic methods involve Willow trees. Some involve switch grass. Heck, if a few weeds grow in your switchgrass crop, chuck 'em in with the switchgrass and make ethanol out of it. I don't know if anyone would bother to fertilize any of this stuff, and crop rotation goes a long way to naturally deterring pests. Willow trees for example hang out just fine on their own for a very long time without human intervention. Some argue as well that our pest problem is due in part to our monoculture farming methods, and cellulostic crops would break some of that up.
Even if Dr. Patzeks' numbers are off, a side effect of corn-based ethanol is the increase in cost. As a pure food crop, the cost of a dozen ears of corn this year at a non-Amish/Mennonite markets in my area was (on average) around $4.50-5.00. That's at least a full $2.00 over last year. Amish/Mennonite corn prices didn't change. I asked one of the farmers, and he said that he put most of his crop up for Ethanol and had less corn to sell, so he had to raise prices to compensate. Corn grown for Ethanol, it turns out, isn't the same corn you and I eat--it's the corn that chickens, cows, etc. eat. Did you happen to notice the meat prices?
The worse side effect of all in the Ethanol 'boom' is the reduction of land in the CRP program. This directly affects the land available for wetlands, etc., which has been an unexpected benefit of the CRP program. Iowa can directly trace the recovery of native brook and brown trout to the amount of CRP land in existence. As it happens, their brook trout are genetically distinct from others in the US, making them more valued. I'm sure other states such as my own PA can trace their wild trout recovery (at least in part) to the CRP program.
Couple all of this with the subsidies that are being received by ethanol growers, and frankly the Ethanol boom is a true bust. We would be better off focusing on methods such as the algae farming mentioned earlier that do not impact the environment like Ethanol does.. We could even use rooftops of shopping malls for that program, and not need to remove land from the CRP program.
The corn we eat (colloquially referred to as "sweet corn") is different from "field corn", and you are right that it is used for animal feed. However, it is also used for human consumption as corn sweetener, corn starch, corn meal (like in tortillas), etc.
Yeah, meat prices are pretty high. However, to this point I really have a tough time getting excited about this. The farmers get a tiny fraction of the money from the food you buy and now that the raw material is more valuable, they are getting more of the proceeds. I really haven't heard anything quantifiable about how this is adversely affecting the poor in the US (many of whom get food stamps), but I had seen an article about how this is driving up food prices in Mexico beyond the reach of some of their people who buy the corn to make tortillas. That said, there is a lot of room for improvement in agricultural practices worldwide, and rising food prices would be a good incentive for them to make those reforms rather than the system of perpetual protectionist systems that encourage inefficiency.
All of that is beside the point anyway because clearly we want to move on to cellulostic ethanol (or I would like to jump straight to cellulostic BUTANOL) and bio-diesel.
I'm not totally certain that CRP is connected with ethanol or wetlands. There was a lot of land set fallow to artificially reduce production and allow the land to recover, but some states also had a separate wetland recovery program. On that point I wholly agree.
A couple of things puzzled me though. I don't get where they can claim that it's "corrosive to engines". Ethanol requires different fuel tanks and seals throughout the fuel system because Ethanol is a solvent to some of the compounds which are resistant to gasoline. No big deal.
Perhaps I misspoke. You need to replace all of the rubber/plastic hoses and fittings with metal ones before they are "eaten through" by the ethanol. At least in higher percentage blends.
Other than that, the only difference between a regular car and your E85 "FlexFuel" is a chip which adjusts the fuel injector flow to keep the fuel/air mixture tuned for the amount of ethanol/gas ratio with air as your current chip tunes gas and air alone now because of the slightly different burning characteristics.
Correct - there is some good reading in the technical documentation of the MegaSquirt community developed ECU which outlines what alterations you need to make to the programming to get an "efficient" burn of ethanol. The changes range from fuel injector timing (for the ratios), ignition timing and how to treat O2 sensor input for trim levels.
No, you quoted the original article accurately--that's what they said. I am just curious what they mean by "corrossive to engines", because the fuel system seals and plastic parts (like the fuel tank) are the only things I know of.
Ah..I found the article in Fly Rod and Reel that I referenced some time ago, it can be found here.
Some quotes on the cost/environmental issues:
All told, you and I are spending at least $3 per gallon on ethanol subsidies for a total of $6 billion per year. Without all this gravy train, Pimentel has calculated that the cost for 1.33 gallons of ethanol (the equivalent in energy yield to a gallon of gasoline) would be $7.12.
no crop grown in the United States consumes and pollutes more water than corn. No method of agriculture uses more insecticides, more herbicides, more nitrogen fertilizer. Needed for the production of one gallon of ethanol are 1,700 gallons of water, mostly in the form of irrigation taken from streams either directly or by snatching the water table out from underneath them. And each gallon of ethanol produces 12 gallons of sewage-like effluent.
Ethanol plants are gross polluters of air and water, and because of the exorbitant price of natural gas some of the new ones will be coal-fired, adding to the already dangerous mercury content of fish. The response of the Bush administration has been a proposal to relax pollution standards for ethanol production. Under the conservation programs of the 1985 Farm Bill and its successors, some farmers are bootstrapping their way toward sustainable agriculture, but corn production still erodes topsoil about 10 times faster than it can accrete.
On Being Corrosive to Engines:
How will ethanol affect your fishing, apart from possibly ruining your outboard motor? (Ethanol does this in lots of ways. Just ask David Blinken, the famous Montauk fly-fishing guide, who recently spent $25,000 pulling his deck, replacing his fuel lines and tank, extracting aluminum-oxide gum from his carburetors and basically rebuilding his twin 100-horse Yamahas.)
We need to be cautious about ethanol--and more cautious about corn ethanol.
I am quite skeptical about the insecticide, herbicide and fertilizer arguments, as I said before. You can see the entire US production of that stuff (I have to find the link, but you could probably just as easily google the same link I did). I think it was the EIA, which is looking at the total energy consumption put into producing that stuff. The vast majority of the fertilizer put into corn is anhydrous ammonia because corn responds very well to nitrogen, and only up to a point with Pottasium and Phospherous. Ammonia does not run off easily, as might be the case with, say, Urea or other nitrates. Most of your insecticides are used on fruit crops, not corn, and modern corn crops are more resistant to weeds and insects intrinsically. We've gone over that in the other post, so nothing new so far.
On the pollution from the distillation process, there are other ways other than the LNG or coal. Some designs use crop waste (like corn stalks) for heat.
As far as ethanol in an outboard motor, it shouldn't make any difference if you use E10, and E10 has been around for a long time. If manufacturers didn't meet the spec, they should get the wrath of their customers. If the customer put E85 into a standard outboard, they are knuckleheads, plain and simple. The complaint you listed there is consistant with fuel-system problems you see with putting E85 into a conventional engine--if you do it regularly, it will eat the seals, the fuel tank material, etc. I could also see how making an outboard engine E85 compatible would be tougher than making a 4 stroke E85 compatible because the fuel circulates in the crankshaft with the lubricating oil before combustion. Ethanol is loves water, so I think E85 and boats are a bad idea anyway.
Butanol, on the other hand, would work "out of the box" with regular gas engines with no modifications, and should work fine with outboards as well. Butanol is also hydrophobic, like gasoline, so it won't absorb water. Butanol is also less energy intensive to distill from the water for the same reason. Butanol clearly has a lot of advantages.
I still maintain that ethanol, including corn ethanol, has a role, at least in getting the ball rolling, but you are right--we don't want to give them a free pass to relax their pollution standards, etc. to do it.
I'm not a regular boater (ie once every few years) so I'm not sure about this one. Do board engines run with an ECU or a carburetor and distributor? That entirely drives whether you can use E85. The ECU must be able to handle it or the owner must be able to adjust the carburetor and distributor for the appropriate fuel/air ratio and spark timing to make E85 work properly.
I think you could make a carb that is set for the mix for E85, but you are right--to flex between E85 and regular gas it would certainly be optimal to have dynamic adjustment of the fuel/air mix based on the gas/ethanol mix.
The problem with using E85 for boats, IMO, would be that the E85 mix would be far more prone to absorb water on a boat than in a regular car engine, especially if the fuel sits around for a long time without getting used like a lot of boats do, which is why a lot of boaters have to use fuel stablizer for the long periods when they don't use their boat--including during the summer between excursions.
http://www.omninerd.com/news/Busting_the_Ethanol_Hype
e. References Economist article. Gets into food vs. fuel, corrosive effects on engines
f.
Finally some honest and objective debate over what is a very emotional and complex issue. Everyone, including ethanol advocates will agree that ethanol is not perfect. But when compared to gasoline and imported oil, it is winner. The hype about ethanol is driven by competition in the gasoline market – not the science. Like many other evolving technologies there is room for improvement. Many areas of improvement and concerns about ethanol production are being addressed by Congress in the proposed energy bill. The bill calls for life cycle assessments of ethanol production, the development of cellulose, impact studies, and many other checks and balances. On the vehicle side, the US Flexible Fuel Vehicle (E85) automakers are giving 100,000 mile guarantees and EPA makes them guarantee their emission at 150,000 miles – so I am not worried about performance of E10 or E85. On the corn-based ethanol side, let’s give them their due; they cracked the 100 year old stranglehold on the “gasoline only market place” which will lead the way for other fuels and technologies to evolve and bring improvement and competition to the market. If you care to get more facts, research avenues, and some interesting context to this issue, Google Ethanol Fact Book.
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You said it. by ldsudduth :: NR7 :: on 30 September 2007
Ethanol is not the panacea the media would like us to think it is. Besides the cost in production, loss of food production, and the reduced energy output; there is also a huge cost to the environment. I linked an article in a fishing website in an earlier posting (that posting currently isn't on Omninerd, alas) that discusses this cost. But, I do have a link here that discusses the best way to reduce fossil fuel consumption (and ultimately carbon emision). Not only that, it's something we can do now, with current technology,: Double our average fuel economy. We could, within 10 years, be able to have our vehicle fleet at 40mph, we could actually reduce our current consumption level slightly at the same time. A direct quote from the article:
I think it's high time we started down this path.
RE: You said it--but wait by PowerPointSamurai :: NR7 :: on 30 September 2007
Please see my post below as for the food vs. fuel argument, for one thing. As for doubling the fuel economy, Winning the Oil End Game (also online here discusses this and tons of other ways to save energy, increase fuel economy, etc. The only thing I am really skeptical in the whole book is his slapdash dismissal of the role of nuclear power. On that subject, I am even more skeptical and even contemptuous of the Union of Concerned Scientists (whom you linked). Lovins also takes a holistic look at not just the cars, but the city planning, airline industry, power production, etc.
One thing Lovins at least is ready to admit is that consumer demand, not some conspiracy, drove the rise of the super-heavy gas guzzlers. UCS seems to recognize that as well with their proposal because they give a design on their website for a SUV-like vehicle that would appeal to consumers, not some little tiny crate that wanna-be "environmentalists" seem to demand everyone drive. Lovins also states that building more fuel efficient vehicles will ultimately be more profitable because that's where the demand will be, and moreover, you won't be able to sell in many world markets unless you meet their efficiency and emissions requirements.
In the end, I'm also highly skeptical of UCS's SUV design because if I know one thing about engineering, it's that something that looks like it should work on paper often is more complex than it seems at first, and subsequent tweaks and redesigns tend to take you further and further from your ideal you are striving for.