Green Trust
i recently saw somewhere that ethanol takes more enery to produce (via oil petrol planting/harvesting/refining/transporting to place of sale). if this is indeed true, what is the point of even trying to use ethanol at all??
thanks/cheers
Because it's not true ......
And even if it was, it takes more than a barrel of oil to produce a barrel of oil, and we are tied to foreign producers, and a polluting, greenhouse gas producing fuel. Instead we could have a clean burning, carbon neutral homegrown fuel that benefits our own economy.
the only real problem that I see with ethanol as an alternative fuel is that if it became widely used, and the population keeps expanding, people will have to compete to use crops for either food or fuel...
FOOD OR FUEL, that is the question..
(not that we aren't already having to make that decision with our dino-cars!!)
Ah, but the beauty is that we don't need to make that choice. Both food and fuel can be made from the same bushel of corn. Just because you take the ethanol, that does not mean you have destroyed the food value. Dried Distillers Grains are already used for animal feed.
See http://journeytoforever.org/
biof...ofuel_food.html
thank you I was not aware of that! now I have no known issues with the use of ethanol as fuel
Check out the following for the life cycle costs of gasoline, diesel, ethanol, and biodiesel:
http://www.b100fuel.com/
archives...esel_has_v.html
The whole issue of ethanol vs food is only a problem so long as corn starch is the only source of ethanol. However, the future of ethanol production is ethanol from cellulose. The MAJOR advantages of making ethanol from cellulose are (1) a MUCH wider variety of starting materials can be used to make ethanol, and (2) virtually ALL of the biomass output of a plant can be used to make ethanol. So in the case of corn, the ears themselves can be used as food for humans and animals, while the stover (ie the stalks, leaves, etc.) can be used to produce ethanol (and more ethanol per plant than you would get from using just the kernels, at that). The same goes for all other plant waste. In addition, ethanol could also be made from sawdust and other wood waste produced by the lumber industry. And finally, energy crops could be grown that are able to grow in areas that are unsuitable for traditional agriculture. Remember that only cellulose is needed. And ALL plants produce cellulose in abundance. There is NO reason why this cellulose could NOT come from a plant that is able to grow in marginal soils with little water in the vast expanses of unused land in, say, Arizona or Nevada.
Also check out http://journeytoforever.org/
biof...ofuel_food.html
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