Ethanol Fuel

[Quest]

the usual protocol is someone will find an interesting article or news, post it and wait for a discussion to germinate.
=)
hows about the other way round...

i have been reading about how enthanol and biomass will be the fuel of the future.
how can this be???
common sense tells us that this will be a net negative energy gain. the amount of energy it takes to grow, water and maintain the corn or sugarcane + the energy it takes to process them into enthanol > the energy the enthanol will release.

what do these plants grow on? crude oil itself???
=)
is the world deceiving itself?
like the hydrogen fuel nonsense.

to me, the only net energy gain will still be from crude oil. the energy to pump it out from the ground and process it pales in comparison to the energy the oil can unleash.
plus we have plastics and other stuff like kerosene leftover!

does someone have an article on how enthanol is so miraculous?

[Killfile]

On the surface you would appear to be right. Using modern methods, farming pretty much anything for ethanol would seem inefficient. The oil we presently use for fertilizer, running our machinery, running the distillation equipment, etc would seem to balance out whatever energy gains we might get from the end product.

But of course, the rabbit hole goes deeper than that.

How the Ethanol Economy would work

Lets take Farmer Smith as our example. Farmer Smith runs a cattle farm out in Nebraska and manages a couple thousand head of cattle. This means his cows graze during the summer, but that he has to provide them with food during the winter. To do this, Farmer Smith raises corn, which he then feeds to his cattle when they can't graze. He sells the beef - and that's how Farmer Smith pays the bills.

Fix that in your head - because you have to realize how we're doing things now.

Enter the ethanol economy:

Farmer Smith runs the same cattle farm in Nebraska. When he harvests the corn in the summer, it goes into a silo for storage until winter. Since the ethanol economy went into place, Farmer Smith doesn't spend as much cooling his corn silos - instead he lets the corn ferment a little in the silo - turning into a substance farmers call "Sour Mash." Exxon sends a tanker truck by ever few months and siphons off liquid from Farmer Smith's sour mash which gives him an extra source of income. When winter comes, Farmer Smith takes the sour mash and feeds that to his cattle. The cows find the Sour Mash easier to break down, so they gain weight faster.

In the mean time - Exxon takes the liquid from Farmer Smith's sour mash and runs it through a distillation process along with the liquid from everyone else's sour mash crop. The resulting ethanol is then mixed in with existing gasoline supplies - which are then sold at the pump.

What has to happen first

First off - oil isn't expensive enough to justify all this yet. Of course, the source is pretty inexpensive - as we're just talking about using a waste product, but the process takes time, infrastructure, and money. When Americans are paying $3.50 a gallon for gas - ethanol will seem affordable.

Secondly - most cars aren't calibrated to run on an ethanol fuel source. With the average lifespan of a car being about 15 to 20 years, and with almost a quarter BILLION cars on the roads in America alone, it will be a very long time before we can treat gas-o-hol like standard unleaded. For a long time, you could buy unleaded and leaded gas - and if we go over to gas-o-hol, many gas stations will have to put in additional pumps.

Finally - cars aren't the only things that run on gas. From speed boats to 747s, we need gasoline and gas like products to run basically every form of transport we use today. These things are going to need to be converted as well. Then there's the military, power generation, and the list goes on and on.

PS: This is all assuming that I understood your message. I'm having a hard time following your post - but nothing that some punctuation and capitol letters wouldn't solve.

[arke]

Secondly - most cars aren't calibrated to run on an ethanol fuel source. With the average lifespan of a car being about 15 to 20 years, and with almost a quarter BILLION cars on the roads in America alone, it will be a very long time before we can treat gas-o-hol like standard unleaded. For a long time, you could buy unleaded and leaded gas - and if we go over to gas-o-hol, many gas stations will have to put in additional pumps.

Eh? I just checked Wikipedia and it states that at 10% mixture of ethanol and gasoline is known as gasohol (or here, E10), which is the only fuel I've ever used for my vehicles. Unless you mean something like E85, which I believe Brazil is using more of now thanks to flex fuel cars.

[Killfile]

Right - sorry. I didn't know that the 10% mixture was actually called gasohol. Since we're talking about an "oil-replacement" or "gas-replacement" system, while no actual percentages were specified, something in the range of 85-90% sounds about right.

The idea being that ethanol wouldn't be an additive to gas, but gas an additive to ethanol.

Good catch arke.

[Quest]

killfile,

from what you said, then the production of ethanol can only be viable as a by-product of the farming process. it can never be solely grown and harvested for fuel.
so my gripe here is: whats witht current hoo-ha that we can replace oil with ethanol in the future?
with bush and branson talking it up as the saviour of the environment.

also, the fact that oil price is sky-high can never change the fact that this ethanol-as-fuel concept is a net energy loss process.

arke,
100% ethanol is highly corrosive to current engine models.
10% is tolerable i guess.

=)

[vtwahoo]

the production of ethanol can only be viable as a by-product of the farming process. it can never be solely grown and harvested for fuel.

But what's the problem there? Although we don't need to increase food production (we currently make enough food to feed about 10 billion people a 4000 calorie a day diet---the problem lies in distribution networks) it could hardly hurt.

Brazil will soon challenge the United States in agriculture as India has in IT and China has in manufacturing. And it realized early on that it couldn't afford to build an economy on oil. It's done a reasonably good job in that endeavor.

I'm just not sure that I see a problem here.

[Quest]

vtwahoo,

my problem is i am annoyed that people are touting ethanol and biomass as fuel replacements for crude oil when they are obviously not.

=)

[Killfile]

I don't think that ethanol is a -=complete=- replacement for crude, but it would be possible to reduce crude usage by 3/4 by using ethanol as a substitute for SOME of our crude consumption.

The hydrogen economy, which you seem skeptical of, is really the ultimate solution. Hydrogen isn't an energy source in its own right (it makes up a trivial amount of the Earth's atmosphere) but it is a great way to store energy.

Since you can generate hydrogen by running an electrical current through water and since that current can be generated by coal fired plants, wind plants, nuclear plants, natural gas plants, tidal, fusion, or geothermal systems - running things off hydrogen allows you to change your energy source without changing your energy storage system.

In other words, producing hydrogen to run your car is easy - but producing gasoline to run your car is both hard and requires pumping it out of the ground.

Moreover, burning hydrogen creates water and heat - which is great because water is where we got the hydrogen in the first place.

Ethanol is an intermediary solution. We we really need to be doing though, is a research project that rivals the Manhattan and Apollo projects. No sitting president has yet been brave enough to do it - but what we need is a multi-billion dollar commitment to building a working fusion powered electrical infrastructure.

Do that - and we'll be not just energy independent, but the most powerful economic force in the history of the world inside of a generation. Fusion has the potential to be the most significant technological innovation since the industrial revolution.

[Sortep]

Ethanol may not be. However, diesel engines were originally designed to run on vegetable oil and can do so without any retrofitting. Wille Nelson has proven this repeatedly. Recycling restaurant oil is an option as well to boost product to meet demand. The problem with most thought processes on this issue is most people have the "one engergy source to rule them all" mentality. The only realistic way to overcome our oil addiction is to have as many options available to us suiting our specific needs. If we can cut down our oil consumption to only that for creating plastics and the like, we'll definately be on the right track until we find another universally suited energy source like petroleum. (Pssst hydrogen fuckers)

[Edit: Killfile was quicker than I on this one. ]

[vtwahoo]

my problem is i am annoyed that people are touting ethanol and biomass as fuel replacements for crude oil when they are obviously not.

=)

Agreed. But at least we're talking about it. That has to be a good start.

[Quest]

killfile,

i agree that hydrogen is a battery than a fuel source. and a battery is always a net energy loss product. the energy that goes into creating the battery is much more than the energy the battery itself will release.

i used to think that water may be a potential fuel. like you said, electrolysis will separate the hydrogen and oxygen which can be burnt to release energy and water. however this process is highly unstable as the hydrogen and oxygen may react immediately upon release and cause an unwanted explosion.
till we can form a process that will overcome this volatility, water-as-fuel is only dream.

recently i thought it through and realised that water-as-fuel may also be a net energy loss product. the amount of electrical energy required to break the bonds of h20 may far exceed the explosive energy released by recombining the h2 and 02.
if it were possible to run a tiny electrical charge through the water in exchange for h2 and 02, recombine them for energy and water, and then use the energy to break the water down again for more energy, that would be a fantastical perpetual energy machine.

so the best hope in my view is still nuclear, where immense energies can be obtained by reducing the mass of matter. thus resulting in a net energy gain.

sortep,
yes, a prudent option would be to diversify mankind's energy sources. but how many net energy gain sources can we think of? sun, wind, water, oil and nuclear. thats all we have.
the rest are net energy loss.
also, the saying "addiction to oil" is similar to "addiction to food". simply, there is no addiction. society needs energy for the development of our species as much as individual needs food.

[Killfile]

I thought it rather obvious that hydrogen as a battery and electrolysis as a means of generating said hydrogen would be a net energy loss. The Second Law of Thermodynamics, one of the fundamental underpinnings of the way our universe functions, basically dictates this. Indeed -in EVERY process, mechanical, electrical, chemical, or otherwise, there is a net energy loss to heat.

You seem to be missing the point though. There is nothing -=wrong=- with that net energy loss. What we need to be most concerned about it not the energy itself, but the percentage of it that is derived from fossil fuels.

Ethanol, for example, allows a -=greater=- percentage of the energy we consume to be extracted from plants and other renewable resources. Hydrogen allows us to generate power in any manner we see fit and consume it on the move - opening the door to the possibility of cars that (indirectly) run on wind power, tidal power, geo-thermal, solar, or even fusion power.

As to electrolysis as a dangerous process - you can preform it yourself with a nine volt battery, a glass of water, and some wires. It's not a power source - but it is a useful means of transporting power. As for methods of containing the hydrogen and making the entire process safer - there are 10 or 12 really obvious methods I can think of off the top of my head.

Most notable would be the use of a palladium lattice to store the hydrogen, or simply using a U shaped container so that the hydrogen and oxygen gases wouldn't mix.

[Sortep]

Well we certainly aren't putting enough into the pebble bed reactors as far as nuclear goes. It's definitely stigmatized do to the rush of the cold war and ignorance of safety precautions.

Hydrogen to become feasible would have to come directly from the water in a controlled electrolysis reaction. The eletrolysis and combustion would only be stable if they occurred in same chamber. The poses a variety of problems, first and foremost as you mentioned, the energy required to do this. Though not insurmountable, we would definitely need to put far more research into catalysts. It would still be an energy loss car, being as it would probably require hybridization with battery cells as well. Right now the reaction's efficiency (including energy lost in generating electricity) is about 20% to 40%. For it to become a feasible option, we would require at 70% efficiency.

Further more if we did diversify our energy sources to the full spectrum of sun, wind, water, nuclear, and in some cases geothermal. Our dependence on oil would at least be halved.

I personally am of the belief that it will be pebble bed reactors, and some form of hydrogen engines, along with solar cells, hydroelectric devices, and more geothermal power sources that will wean us off petroleum.

[Quest]

isnt it amazing that both of you managed to post within minutes of each other twice in a roll?
=P

killfile,
yes. i am aware of the differences between fuel as an energy source and fuel as an energy battery. what i am concerned with is fuel as an energy source. i know that every process has a net energy loss.
however, with oil as well as nuclear we need not concern ourselves with creating(for lack of a better word) that energy as they already have that potential energy within them.
however, with ethanol or biomass, we are concerned with creating energy which is impossible.
i would define my use of creation here as: the transfer and consolidation of energy for future use.

so from my point of view, oil and nuclear are net energy loss. we are concerned with the extraction of energy not creation.

the bottomline is that if we use negative energy fuels, we are deluding ourselves that we have found a sustainable source of fuel. in actual fact, we are subsidising the creation of energy with oil. the oil will run out faster and when the oil runs out, the subsidy will stop and we will realise this delusion.

regarding the process of electrolysis of water, i am curious.

how would a U-shape container separate the gases? i think that the gases are not intelligent enough to know that one should go into one end of the container and the other into the other end.
also the gases would also be released within the water, how do we separate them when they are dissolved inside the water?

sortep,
i completely agree with your vision of future energy fuel and battery.

edited: rephrasing and typos.

[Killfile]

Ok - I guess I wasn't clear enough.

If a given farmer has to burn X amount of oil to raise the corn that he's going to feed to his cattle, and can, by changing his methodology somewhat, burn the SAME amount of oil to raise his cattle and allow the fermentation of his corn into Sour Mash - than we can extract ethanol from the Sour Mash with no change in the amount of energy expended by the farmer.

That Ethanol can then be placed in gas supplies, meaning that the cars that burn it will burn less gasoline per mile traveled, getting the difference in energy from the converted biomass of the farmers corn.

So in mathematical terms.

Farmer's oil usage = A
Car's oil usage = B
Ethanol energy potential = C

Right now: Total Oil Energy Used = A + B
With an ethanol economy: Total Oil Energy Used = A + B - C

As to the separation of gases, you're right that the gases aren't smart enough to self separate -- but we don't need them to be.

Imagine a U shaped container full of water. We place electrodes (one positive, one negative) in the water at the tips of the U. Current will run through the water between the electrodes, following the path of the container - completing the circuit and splitting water molecules. Hydrogen, with it's positive charge, will be drawn to the negative electrode, while oxygen will be drawn to the positive one. If we have separate gas gathering apparatuses above each side of the U, the gases emerge from the solution pre-separated.

Didn't you do this experiment in high school chemistry?

[Quest]

killfile,
wouldnt the cows have less to eat if the farmer sells some of their feed to the corporation?
does ethanol release the same amount of energy per unit as gasoline?
wouldnt the gases have a chance to meet halfway at the center of the container?

nah, i didnt have such an experiment in secondary school.
i blame my top-down government for it.
=)

[Killfile]

The cows don't have less to eat, because the portions of the corn that are metabolized by yeasts into ethanol aren't the same as those that are metabolized by cows into glucose. It's a difference in how the digestive systems of most grazing animals work. Moreover, since most grazing animals actually have a multi-stomach system to break down these tough fibers, the fermentation process actually improves the efficiency of the digestive system in these animals.

As to how the U shaped separation occurs, it goes back to the charge. Remember that water is an ionic bond - which means that Oxygen captures the electrons from Hydrogen. When we rip this molecule apart, the resulting charges on the atoms make hydrogen positively charged and Oxygen negatively charged. They will follow the magnetic field created by the current through the water to the electrode opposite their charge -- so what you'll see is a stream of hydrogen bubbles forming around the negative electrode and oxygen bubbles around the positive one. In fact, if you use nails or some other iron compound as your electrode, you'll see that the nail with the positive pole attached to it will rust MUCH faster because of all the extra oxygen.

[Quest]

hmmmm i understand the ethanol economy picture much clearer now.
what did the farmer do with the liquid in this 'sour mesh' prior to the ethanol economy?

regarding the electrolysis,
i have the impression that even though the separated oxygen and hydrogen will move in accordance to the magnetic field, there will still be a chance that a stray oxygen will meet with a hydrogen. because one traveling from left to right and the other from right to left from opposite ends of the container will probably meet.

i will be going off to bed now
=)

[Killfile]

Sour Mash isn't produced much at the moment - and those that do produce it tend to discard the excess liquid before feeding it to the cattle or other livestock. The real problem with ethanol is that it requires substantial changes to the infrastructure to put into place, and once in place, still requires -=some=- oil supply to keep running.

In other words, if we assume that fossil fuels will run out eventually, ethanol only puts the problem off. It's a stop gap measure, like a spare tire or duct tape.*

Real energy independence requires something more innovative - and long term.

* That isn't completely fair. In reality you can fix anything with duct tape. Chuck Norris actually re-attached California to the United States following the great 1908 Earthquake with nothing more than Duct Tape and the a few well place roundhouse kicks.

[vtwahoo]

The cows don't have less to eat, because the portions of the corn that are metabolized by yeasts into ethanol aren't the same as those that are metabolized by cows into glucose.

Not to mention that tons of corn rot every year and is discarded because we produce so much of it.

In other news, several African states are again facing widespread famine.

There's something wrong with the world.

[TheDarkness]

well just a little side note on the whole discussion here but rather soon we will HAVE to start replacing fuel. I mean it's a god given fact that the crude oil resources as we use em atm to make products like fuel will soon run out. Ergo even if it will be less profitable in some ways we won't have much of a choice anyway. On that note it might be best to start with mixing fuel sources as stated somewhere above so that cars can slowly be build toward a point where they no longer require oil based fuel

[panasonic]

ya, we cant just do a massive leap from fossil fuels to w/e ppl come up w/ later on. we as humans need to slowly adapt and eventually figure a way out of this dilemma