E85 , In your NON E85 Vehicle......?

arabian knight · #61 05/07/11, 10:25 AM

See that is the problem here. You must covert things. Where as using a Ethanol Blend. there is no need to convert a thing. That is why for over 15 years now some of us have been using a blended EFuel. The heck with spending more for the driver to make some kind of modifications on their vehicles that IS costly no matter how little it is to switch over. But NOT ONE Penney was needed for the consumer to switch anything or buy anything or have any mechanical modifications done to his vehicle.
That is why what you are proposing just won't work, especially at this point in time with money so tight. So forget trying to say that switching over to some LNG makes sense now. It does not.
Maybe in Years down the road as with other alternative fuels but not now.
Ethanol is here to stay, lets face facts. It has been around now for close to 20 years.
Wish though it was made out of sugar cane or other crops other then corn, but this country grows corn better then any other crop out there. And the little bit that ethanol has raised food prices is very minimal, when you really get down to the base of what is happening to all prices around the world.
Sugar has been going up in price now for close to 3 years.

texican · #62 05/07/11, 01:20 PM

Le difference between ethanol and ng? You have to plant corn each and every year, and hope the rains come, in order to get the feedstock for ethanol production. Drill a gas well, and it'll produce for decades (well I'm tapped into is over 60 years old and still producing) regardless whether the rains come or not. Once drilled, it's minor maintenance only, and every year the realized drilling costs drop to nothing. There are a handful of shale wells nearby that'd run the country for a year. Compare one very small region of the country (60 mile radius) fueling America's car needs for a hundred years, compared to hundreds of thousands of acres (? or more) dedicated to growing corn, where the efficiency ratio of energy inputs to energy outputs is only, what, 5 to 15% gain? (if that).

Fully realize ng is not the answer today... neither is ethanol... only dog in this hunt is gasoline (or better yet diesel). Until the prices go to double digits, renewables aren't going to be cost efficient. I think we should look at our most viable reliable home grown sources of power, that'll work for the millions of vehicles in existence...

rambler · #63 05/07/11, 02:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by texican

Le difference between ethanol and ng? You have to plant corn each and every year, and hope the rains come, in order to get the feedstock for ethanol production. Drill a gas well, and it'll produce for decades (well I'm tapped into is over 60 years old and still producing) regardless whether the rains come or not. Once drilled, it's minor maintenance only, and every year the realized drilling costs drop to nothing. There are a handful of shale wells nearby that'd run the country for a year.

I guess that's the difference - 'here' there is no natural gas, it needs to be piped in, mostly for 1000.s of miles, by utility companies that take your land, wreck the fences and tile lines, create a mess, have strange utility shacks that make terrible noise for whatever they do, and the gas pressure seems to fluctuate that the cities tell the rural people to not use the ng to dry corn 'today' because too many furnaces in town need the gas pressure.... In short, ng is ugly, disruptive, noisy, and undependable. Some bigwig controls how much you can use, oh sorry you are screwed today....

Corn comes up every year, employs people right here, and works well in existing vehicles. Much more dependable, understandable, useable fuel source 'here' then that undependable ng.

I'm not saying this to disagree with you, but to show the differences in where one is located. 'Here' there is no contest, ethanol is a much more dependable fuel that also produces a lot of feed for our livestock. Ng only produces headaches and hardship. 'Here.'

--->Paul

Ken Scharabok · #64 05/07/11, 02:23 PM

Ah, so much 100 proof liquor mixed with gasoline.

texican · #65 05/07/11, 05:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rambler

I guess that's the difference - 'here' there is no natural gas, it needs to be piped in, mostly for 1000.s of miles, by utility companies that take your land, wreck the fences and tile lines, create a mess, have strange utility shacks that make terrible noise for whatever they do, and the gas pressure seems to fluctuate that the cities tell the rural people to not use the ng to dry corn 'today' because too many furnaces in town need the gas pressure.... In short, ng is ugly, disruptive, noisy, and undependable. Some bigwig controls how much you can use, oh sorry you are screwed today....

Corn comes up every year, employs people right here, and works well in existing vehicles. Much more dependable, understandable, useable fuel source 'here' then that undependable ng.

I'm not saying this to disagree with you, but to show the differences in where one is located. 'Here' there is no contest, ethanol is a much more dependable fuel that also produces a lot of feed for our livestock. Ng only produces headaches and hardship. 'Here.'

--->Paul

No hurt feelings here Paul...
I understand they don't grow/make gasoline/diesel everywhere either... but it somehow gets to every corner of the continent.

If civilization falls, the only fuels we have will be what we've stored, or what we can make. If I lived in ya'll's neck of the woods, and ethanol flowed like honey, I'd want a vehicle that'd run off of straight alcohol. Me, I'd love a vehicle that'd run off of straight ng distillate ('my' well makes ~30 barrels a month).

Shy of 'fuel', it'd be nice to have an ultralight 3 wheeler that'd run off a battery bank, recharged by solar panels.

Post TEOTWAWKI, (after the stored fuel had been burned) it'd be either biking, riding the horses, or hitching them to a wagon for the once a year trip into the market to do some buying/selling/bartering.

SocialAnarchist · #66 05/08/11, 06:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rambler

Brazil has a very large area of their country that is well suited to grow sugar cane, and doesn't grow corn so well. They also don't have quite as much personal transportation going on; The big cities commuter cars of course, but the interior of the country is basically dirt paths that don't get traveled so much.

Thus, they can grow a lot of ethanol compared to the amount of fuel they use.

Here in the USA only Florida and Hawaii are well suited for major sugar cane production; and in both cases it is being phased out - in Hawaii hotels are more profitable than cane fields; and in Florida the tree huggers got the govt to buy out the cane fields in favor of returning it to nature.

So, we just can't grow cane here in the USA in any amount to be worthwhile. There might be some cane that grows a little bit here and there; but it's not the high-yield, good stuff needed. It's a great idea, of course sugar cane is more gallons of ethanol per acre; but we just can't in the USA - we don't have the climate.

What we have is lots of corn, where the starch can be convered to sugar easily. And we are used to handling, storing, and working with lots and lots of corn.

After fermenting, about 17 lbs of the corn is left as good livestock feed, as mentioned, so about 30% of every bu of corn going into ethanol is returned to the food chain as feed. For those who hate ethanol - this 17 lbs of returned feed is always left out of their number crunching. When you include this obvious asset, corn ethanol comes out postive energy return, over the resources needed to plant, fertilize, harvest, haul, and distill a corn crop into ethanol and feed mash. You do get a net energy gain, tho it is not large and not _the_ answer to our energy needs, it is a step down the path and a positive one..

Some of the seed companies have developed a high-starch corn that is more suited for ethanol - you get a bit more sugar out of each bu of this type of corn. It is not devoid of nutrients, tha's just nonsense. But it is a tad more valuable to the ethanol plants vs use as regular feed.

In years past they also developed high-oil corn, which some processors were supposed to prefer; as well a special non-saturated fat soybean has been developed that much of our frier oil is coming from, look up Vistive soybeans. Many corn, soybean, and wheat plants have been bred to fill nitche markets like this, that high-starch type that works better in the ethanol plants is just another. Not that big a deal when one understands it.

There is a lot of misinformation out there about ethanol production. Some folks think it's the world's greatest answer - and it is not. It is only a small stepping stone. Some people think it's bad, or a step backwards - and that's not right either. Corn ethanol contributes a small net energy gain, as well as openning us up to alternative energy ideas, and helping our air quality. Someday we will find something else, but not in the near term.

Anyone have any idea how much it would cost to convert all the gas stationes to having a CNG/ LNG station, devlivery pipes to each one, and the number of wells and cross-county pipelines we'd have to build to make _that_ work??? Holy moly. I'd much rather depend upon the corn in my back yard than some ng pipeline coming 1000 miles out of Canada or wherever that ng is. Ethanol makes more sense for today than someof those sorts of alternatives.

--->Paul

Just to be clear I wasn't implying that we should grow sugar cane or beet sugar to make ethanol from. My point was they ran a good portion of their transportation from ethanol but many here claimn it won't work...

texican · #67 05/09/11, 11:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SocialAnarchist

Just to be clear I wasn't implying that we should grow sugar cane or beet sugar to make ethanol from. My point was they ran a good portion of their transportation from ethanol but many here claimn it won't work...

It won't work... for the same reasons WVO (waste vegetable oil) won't work. It 'will' work for one or two people in an area, if they can get the WVO for free... trouble arises, when everyone wants to run WVO, and there's only enough for two folks.

Economies of scale.

rambler · #68 05/10/11, 12:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by texican

It won't work... for the same reasons WVO (waste vegetable oil) won't work. It 'will' work for one or two people in an area, if they can get the WVO for free... trouble arises, when everyone wants to run WVO, and there's only enough for two folks.

Economies of scale.

Ultimately the same trouble with growing any fuel from the land - it can help a little bit, but it won't replace the whole load.

Minnesota mandates 10% ethanol and will support 15% if it comes to be; they also had mandated 2% biodiesel which I think got ramped up to 5% receintly.

We likely can do about 30% bio fuels one way or another to get the most of it and not disrupt food production. Beyond that we get into choices that aren't so good.

But I do support going to that 30% mark or so.

Wind energy is much the same - I'm getting surrounded by windmills about 50 miles away from me, some even closer now. I drove SE of me 100 miles this spring, and all of a sudden, there were 100s of the big towers! Wholey moley.... I had been there 18 months earlier, and I didn't see a one! Now I read in the paper that this wind development is only 50% done, so there will be 2x as many next year. Wow. But - they only make power when the wind blows, and so thewy really only are useful for 1/3 of our electricity, can't depend on more than that, build too many and they produce too much electic on windy nites, not enough when we really need it....

Same for paper recycling, or even steel recycling. With paper the fibers wear down, it's hard to do much more than 1/3 recycled paper in the big picture of things. Steel if you want top grade metal you have to refine the recycled so terrible much to remove impurities; it's better to use some virgin and some recycled to get where you want to go. Lot of recycled 'odd' metal goes into iron weights and other low-grade stuff.

I'm all for the green movement when it makes sense, and home grown fuels are the same. In my opinion and looking at the stats it seems they make some sense, but no they won't ever be the one & only replacement for all liquid fuels for everyone. Hopefully they will be apart of the answer, and help us work out a new solution. Much like other green ideas that come out, the new ideas have big problems that need to be overcome along the way, and are typically only partial answers.

Just babbling tonite, rained again, can't plant corn, getting to be time, kinda anxious and awake on it....

--->Paul

fantasymaker · #69 05/14/11, 02:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by texican

If civilization falls, the only fuels we have will be what we've stored, or what we can make. If I lived in ya'll's neck of the woods, and ethanol flowed like honey, I'd want a vehicle that'd run off of straight alcohol. Me, I'd love a vehicle that'd run off of straight ng distillate ('my' well makes ~30 barrels a month).
.

One of the problems with ethanol in mixtures is to mix it with gas it has to be close to totally water free.
getting that last bit of water out is very VERY energy intensive.
It would be much more efficient to have a dedicated vehicle that would run with 10, 20 or even 30% water in the mix. It would reduce refining costs and the energy used in refining by a lot, I think its something on the order of 50%.
Now what would that do to the net energy loss argument? heck we could even refine with solar energy on the farm!

texican · #70 05/15/11, 12:15 AM

One of the ironies of going green, is that biodiesel is actually destroying large swaths of rainforest in S America, growing soybeans to make biodiesel. Europe loves their biodiesel and are destroying the planet in the process.....