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92 Comments
- jerryjamesstone, on 07/11/2009, -5/+45Yah, ethanol was a FAIL from the start...so annoying that people jumped on it blindly.
- Atario, on 07/12/2009, -1/+39Biofuels are not a problem. *Corn ethanol* is a problem. If we could get on something actually viable, like algae-base diesel, it would be great.
- inactive, on 07/12/2009, -1/+16Corn ethanol sucks.
- Frixionburne, on 07/12/2009, -6/+18Or we could use hemp, which has the capabilities to produce more usable bio fuel than corn.
That, however, would be entirely too easy. - poonjob, on 07/12/2009, -6/+15HEMP makes faaabulous fuel. grows to maturity in 60 days, doesnt deplete the ground.
wait that plant is illegal haha
jesus our "leaders" are thinkers. thank god they get to make decisions :) - Chairboy, on 07/12/2009, -2/+11Here in Oregon, there are tons of cars everywhere with ethanol bumperstickers. Urge to key, rising....
- SystemicThought, on 07/12/2009, -0/+9CORN ethanol was a fail from the start. Sugar ethanol is more effective, and algae shows great potential.
- maeon3, on 07/12/2009, -0/+8Chris Martenson explains why Corn Based Ethanol is absolutely unworkable from a thermodynamic perspective: Start from Chapter 17: PART A:
http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse
Damn you science and your conservation of energy! - caintrain, on 07/12/2009, -0/+8It still drives up the market price of corn, fermented corn ethanol is bad because regardless if people eat it or they use it feed their livestock, it still drives up the price of food. You get less mileage using E85, and it takes about 3 barrels of petroleum to make 1 barrel of ethanol. Farmer's loved it because regardless of whether it was making ethanol or not, it was still driving up the selling price of corn. There's no reason not to diversify our fuel source, but using corn kernels is inefficient and pricey.
- absolutelytrue, on 07/11/2009, -3/+10Good points. But what about small to medium scale non-food biomass refinery/power plants?
- skelooth, on 07/12/2009, -3/+10Now I just wish they'd stop tainting our gasoline with ethanol. Not sure about other states but here in NY any gas I buy is 10% ethanol by volume. Introducing the ethanol to the gas did not make the price go down, did not curb my reliance on oil, and I still swear that gas has been less performant ever since.
- Hignaki, on 07/12/2009, -0/+7Okay, let me put it like this:
Right now, the fuel coming out of the pump is anywhere between 6-10% ethanol. For older, not-designed-for-ethanol vehicles (ie: the majority of cars on the road), and even for some new ones, running ethanol drops the fuel mileage you get by 11-15%. You potentially end up using 4% more petrol overall to drive the same miles. Ethanol increases actual petrol usage in a majority of situations.
What the hell? - inactive, on 07/12/2009, -1/+8Biofuels did not burn up taxpayers' dollars, the government did.
- jcc6655, on 07/12/2009, -1/+7I'm too wealthy to walk.
- TheMachine1, on 07/12/2009, -1/+7"the Department of Energy has committed $385 billion for six cellulosic ethanol plants"
Undoubtedly the author meant to say $385 million. - LuckyASN, on 07/12/2009, -1/+6You suggest I walk to my destination like a common peasant?
- Rogor, on 07/12/2009, -2/+7Biofuels, electricity, hydrogen, lpg whatever, at the end of the day the world will burn every last drop of regular petrol before it switches to anything else.
- inactive, on 07/12/2009, -1/+6Stop supporting biofuels from food sources. The farmers love it because they get extra funding from tax payers.
The truth is you don't need new sources when garbage will do it.
Thermal de-polymerization.
http://alphakat.de/index.php?option=com_content&am ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJQuVkwkp3A&fea ...
Peswiki
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iioOVevReOs&NR= ...
Waste Management solutions
http://www.wm.com/
Greenpower inc / Cleaneregy
http://www.cleanenergyprojects.com/
If politicians can't see what hundreds of small businesses are doing - actually doing over so called clean coal then shoot!
Who will employ more people? The coal mine or hundreds of these tech businesses? If you want jobs jobs jobs then here you go! Handed to you on a plate!
De-polymerization technology.
Input -> Carbon materials such as household waste, plastics, wood, paper, food products, green waste.
Output -> Carbon char - Minerals / Metal residues / Solids of silica - > Oils -> diesel - volatile gases (VG)
VG is used to run the process so it uses no new energy once initiated.
1 tonne of food waste produces
- 580lt of diesel (about $320 dollars retail bio diesel)
- calcium
- minerals
- silicates
- carbon char
- 300 m^3 VG
Water used for this process is recycled, no external pollutants are created.
http://www.changingworldtech.com/who/index.asp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWf9nYbm3ac
Korean Method
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4aCvEzvAVI&fea ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8k-TYfqXts&fea ...
Both methods can handle any carbon based waste.
If 2 plants to treat all of your cities waste you could rail to them all the waste from everything. Sorting then production. Scrap metals can be onsold. Sewerage solids can also be used. Anything that has carbon.
Heat + Pressure + Water = De-polymerization. - govtdoesnotwork, on 07/12/2009, -0/+4And, but for big-government's environmental subsidies on ***** forms of corn, we might already be doing that. But people say libertarians like me are "against the environment" when we complain about this anti-economic *****.
- fucter, on 07/12/2009, -2/+6HEMP. seriously, its awesome, and hippies can't smoke it, so I don't understand why the gov't hates it.
- Majora26, on 07/12/2009, -1/+5ummmm have you driven a car? Its exciting!
- FutureGuy, on 07/12/2009, -1/+5A huge chunk of politicians are dumb and greedy, its common sense, only a fraction of the sun's energy falling on a field would end up in the corn kernel and it requires a ton of energy to grow them, how could it ever be a efficient idea. Solar panels and batteries are the way to go.
- Nevarius, on 07/12/2009, -0/+4If they used a crop that contains more sugar like sugar cane or sugar beets the results would be much much better. Sadly the amount of energy needed to produce ethanol from corn is almost equal, and guess what energy source is used to produce it.....fossil fuels.
win win for the oil and corn industries, everyone else gets screwed. - mksmothers, on 07/12/2009, -0/+4nuclear power...just saying, go with something that actually works.
- Travelsonic, on 07/12/2009, -2/+5My problem with this article is that it paints all ethanol as problematic and detrimental, yet it only calls into question our mingling with corn ethanol.
Go figure.
Sugar, Algae, there are other ways to create ethanol besides corn - and far better ways to boot.
Buried as inaccurate. - FastTadpole, on 07/12/2009, -0/+3The "An inconvenient Truth" rhetoric that carbon causes climate change so nicely graphed and modelled for us has been thoroughly debunked. In fact, it was never backed by the the majority of scientists and experts just pushed through by the IPCC. The hockey stick output was due to a computer glitch. Wake up and realize it's maybe the sun or a natural cycle of climate change (like the medieval warm period and the recent mini ice age) and water vapor is 90%+ of the thermal blanket, not CO2, of which we produce a very low percentage of the world supply -- most is from plants and the ocean. Methane is even worse. The real science taken from ice core sample Carbon limits are just another way. IMO air pollution is bad but carbon is not the issue here. Fossil fuels are an inefficient, dirty and outdated form of energy and should have been replaced years ago but biofuels are certainly not the answer to that as proven by ethanol. The whole global warming charade just might be more about world organizations controlling how much, what kind and who should be allowed to use fossil fuels. Maybe next on the agenda is how much water each country can use as dictated behind closed doors by another committee protecting us from ourselves.
Some recent documentaries on the subject:
CBC - Global Warming Doomsday Called Off
Global Warming or Global Governance
The Great Global Warming Swindle - gfryesc, on 07/12/2009, -1/+4this didn't need a whole story. It's simple, when you burn efficient food as an inefficient fuel, it'll be a financial blackhole. It's only by government subsidies, propped up by sierra club mass hysteria that this has gotten as far as it has. In 10 yrs we'll look back at how crazy it was to actually burn food.
- HappyScrappy, on 07/12/2009, -0/+2I'm not saying corn is great. But the other options aren't good in the US either.
Slashing and burning forests to create area to grow sugar cane doesn't seem like a good long-term solution to me.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic ... - DerangedPenguin, on 07/12/2009, -0/+2Corn ethanol is the direct results of professional politicians buy votes and catering to special interest groups big Agra-business, the Leftwing environmental groups (last strong hold of the soviet era style communist movement) :Like so many other government run businesses it lacks over sight and need to make a profit to be successful, they simply just raise taxes and prop up the failing industry.
- bmcnally, on 07/12/2009, -2/+4And that is why the government should not be the one that says what solution is the best.
This is a clear example of where if corn based biofuels were forced to compete on the open market outside of subsidies, they would have failed even more spectacularly. Where will the solution come from? Colleges. Look at some of the solar cars, AI driven vehicles, and other amazing technology that is put together fairly cheaply by clubs in college. - govtdoesnotwork, on 07/13/2009, -0/+2Google, as the saying goes, is your friend.
- ramiro, on 07/12/2009, -0/+2Good to see the digg crowd is finally getting wise about this.
Some months ago, if you commented that ethanol was a non-solution, the stupid crowd would digg you down to oblivion. - areyouserious, on 07/12/2009, -0/+2Here...this is the largest ethanol producer in the world....learn a little.
http://poet.com/ - Nevarius, on 07/12/2009, -0/+2sugar beets can be produced in the US (holly sugar in colorado used to use sugar beets to make sugar)
- Naieve, on 07/12/2009, -0/+2Too bad we already wasted a quarter of a Trillion dollars on Corn ethanol. Personally I don't think we have another quarter trillion to spend...
- sndream, on 07/12/2009, -0/+2Electric car powered by a coal power plant emitt less CO2 and pollution than a gasoline car.
- inactive, on 07/13/2009, -0/+2Way to go, government.
How about you scale yourself back and let the free markets determine what people use? - inactive, on 07/12/2009, -0/+2Shoot paw, that was funny, hyuck hyuck hyuck.
- mcsenget, on 07/12/2009, -0/+2If algae based diesel is so viable, where is it?
- gkiltz, on 07/12/2009, -0/+2It boils down to energy density. Truth is, carbohydrates simply don't have as much energy density as hydrocarbons, but carbohydrates contain energy in a form that makes it extractable by biological processes. Hydrocarbons require combustion to extract any meaningful amounts of energy.
- Stewdean, on 07/12/2009, -0/+2Biofuels from biowaste - useful for some applications. Biofuels from new crops - dumb on many levels. New Scientist run a great story on this a few months ago. Essentially there is not enough land to grow the fuel needed for needs of the US, and that was on a world wide basis. But the main point was, in terms of global warming, was biofuel more green? There was no real evidence to say it was.
Other green, urm, red herrings include hydrogen powered cars and organic meat. Even electric cars will only be a major environment benefit once the energy production is sorted out. - govtdoesnotwork, on 07/12/2009, -1/+3Not only that, the legal hemp that hippie-capitalists (many of whom call themselves socialists) want competing in the formerly-free marketplace would effectively fill the air with hundreds of tons of low-potency POLLEN from all the male plants. The oil company socialists (who call themselves capitalists) don't want competition from hemp any more than the paper industry or cotton farmers, but it's weird that both sides of the debate ignore pollen in addition to political reality.
The valuable kind of pot is called "sinsemilla," which is Spanish for "without seed." Pollen = seeds = exploding joints for the hippies, you citified socialist control-freak idiots, whether or not you're so far removed from farming that you have no *****' clue about the basics of it anymore. Dammit. The cluelessness inherent in the drugwar makes me rant. - areyouserial, on 07/12/2009, -1/+3Why can't we hand this problem over to DARPA, where they can rapidly create amazing technological breakthroughs? They do it consistently with repressive military technology. Why is it that the government can only innovate rapidly when it involves a boot on the neck of a citizen?
- thevoiceless, on 07/12/2009, -3/+5It's stupid to keep pushing corn as a source of fuel, especially given it's relative inefficiency compared to sugarcane-based biofuels. I don't think that can be easily grown in the U.S., which (I think) really only leaves the algae-based diesel that Atario mentioned above.
- HippyJM, on 07/12/2009, -0/+2One thing to keep in mind is what we were using corn for before ethanol (or before it was used on a wide scale. We in America love our high fructose CORN syrup. And using a series of laws an tariffs, the corn industry has maintained a monopoly over the sweetener industry, which is millions of dollars in the US. We as a nation, are only allowed to import a certain weight of cane sugar - a far superior sweetener in my opinion, thus providing the corn suppliers with a guaranteed market for their product, keeping it at an inflated price beyond its realistic market value. Now, had we during all of this 'race for alternative fuels' we had considered removing the trade restrictions, there would have been a chance for a self regulating market to emerge.
This is not even touching on whether or not it was viable enough on a national scale, just that things were most likely ***** to begin with. - nmessick, on 07/12/2009, -0/+2I'd like to see a chart of all the alternitive energy sources and their financial viability. Right now it seems with be an Epic fail with out government subsidies (ie.. taxes) proping things up.
- tao52nyc, on 07/12/2009, -1/+2Thank you! If someone else hadn't said this, I would have. Why these plants aren't being built around every landfill in America is beyond me. I guess there's no "thermal depolymerization" lobby, unlike corn and HFCS (the reason we don't have a sugar industry in the US anymore, and everyone's obese).
- Frixionburne, on 07/12/2009, -0/+1I don't know all of the effects of ethanol in petrol, but I do know that ethanol burns at a higher temperature, putting more strain on your engine.
- ru155, on 07/13/2009, -0/+1geez, you guys are just writing an article about this now? So much for the rest of us who where screaming that this was another nice pork barrel project. Let the inventors and venture capitalists figure it out on their own. If they create new propulsion systems, let them reap the trillions in profits. Ya gotta think that most of the congressional representatives are the types who go home at night to watch the Home Shopping Network and order that Bowie knife because the deal is just too good to be true. Thanks for blowing a ton of taxpayer dollars.
For those of you who are new to this game, it's not going to stop. They'll continue to tell you (the constituents) that "more money is needed for research and efficency to improve it," but no amount of money ever will. This should be a big indicator that politicians should be nowhere close to running any of America's industries. If it's that great of an idea people will find investors who think it can be a real prosperous enterprise - let them take the risk, not the U.S. taxpayer. - mcsenget, on 07/12/2009, -0/+1Unless something better and cheaper comes along - then they will surely switch.
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