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Ethanol: On The Block?


pj8708

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Good for cars? Doesnt hurt them if they are Flex Fuel Capable. Good for MPG? Not really, no. Its about 20% LESS effecient. When running it in town I get about 9mpg, normally I get 15-16. However, the subsidies that keep it at $1.50 a gallon (here) LESS than regular unleaded, make worth my while. Saves me about $50 a month! AND its a TON better for the enviornment.

So they better keep it. I might be kinda angry, and angry soldiers=bad things LOL (kidding, of course... <_< )

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Good for cars? Doesnt hurt them if they are Flex Fuel Capable. Good for MPG? Not really, no. Its about 20% LESS effecient. When running it in town I get about 9mpg, normally I get 15-16. However, the subsidies that keep it at $1.50 a gallon (here) LESS than regular unleaded, make worth my while. Saves me about $50 a month! AND its a TON better for the enviornment.

So they better keep it. I might be kinda angry, and angry soldiers=bad things LOL (kidding, of course... <_< )

Sorry to bring you bad news but:

ETHANOL: BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT?

In the rush to promote ethanol as environmentally friendly, proponents are ignoring the fact that ethanol consumes more resources than it saves, says John A. Baden, chairman of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE).

In the cover story of the October "Consumer Reports (CU)," ethanol was compared with gasoline and diesel to see how well the alternative fuel actually conserved resources:

While diesel contains around 140,000 British thermal units (Btu) per gallon, and gasoline 115,000 Btu, denatured ethanol contains only 78,000 Btu per gallon; these numbers translate into low fuel mileage.

For example, CU tested a new Chevy Tahoe and found that in highway driving (on 85 percent ethanol), gas mileage decreased from 21 to 15 mpg; in city driving, it dropped from 9 to 7.

In marked contrast, says Baden, two old diesel ranch trucks that weigh a ton more than the new Tahoe each gets 20+ mpg on the highway at 65 mph.

Government subsides contribute to wasting resources, says Baden:

Flex fuel vehicles (FFVs) are designed to run on either gasoline or a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gas, E85; automotive manufacturers receive generous fuel-economy credits for each FFV built -- even if it never runs on E85.

This credit enables them to build more large SUVs that burn more gas than ethanol replaces; this is a perverse but predictable outcome of political forces.

But given all of this, the resources consumed by ethanol production may still be worse for Third World ecosystems, says Baden. According to Peter Huber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, if the process for producing ethanol becomes cheap and easy in poor countries, it would hasten the conversion of forestlands and other wilderness into a fuel source.

Source: John A. Baden, "Is Ethanol a Pure Green Elixir?" Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, October 18, 2006.

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=13652

Ethanol Fuel: Safe to Use, Bad to Produce

by Brian Yalung on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

We often praise the use of alternative fuel especially ethanol which is produce from natural resources such as corn and other renewable resources. While this shift has been obviously a big boost to us, we fail to see the process of producing them which is probably an issue as far as electricity use is concerned.

Apparently the amount of electricity used is high and while they boast of using coal as a means to offset this, coal is another source of producing carbon dioxide which in turn has become harmful to the environment.

http://keetsa.com/blog/health-and-well-being/ethanol-fuel-safe-to-use-bad-to-produce/

More Bad News for Ethanol.

Another brick in the wall against ethanol. Academics tasked with plotting California’s transition to a low-carbon fuel have delivered more bad news: Ethanol appears to come with a higher greenhouse-gas price tag than previously thought — higher, indeed, than fossil fuel.

California has long been a little wary of ethanol. They worry that adding ethanol at low blends to gasoline produces higher levels of certain air pollutants. But now that the Golden State is trying to tackle greenhouse-gas emissions from the transport sector, first-generation ethanol—the only kind that is actually commercially viable today—pops up as a repeat offender. That raises the question of how to actually make the transition to cleaner-burning transport fuels in the near term.

The University of California at Berkeley’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center told the California Air Resources Board that ethanol could be twice as bad as gasoline, from a carbon-emissions point of view. How? Basically by turning land now covered with trees, grass, and other natural “carbon sinks” into farmland for corn and other crops used for ethanol. (Ethanol’s dirty secret has also recently been explored by Science and other magazines.)

“Simply said, ethanol production today using U.S. corn contributes to the conversion of grasslands and rainforest to agriculture, causing very large GHG emissions,” wrote Berkeley profs Alex Farrell and Michael O’Hare in a January 12 memo to California regulators. “Even if only a small fraction of the emissions calculated in this crude way [through land use change] are added to estimates of direct emissions for corn ethanol, total emissions for corn ethanol are higher than for fossil fuels.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/01/23/more-bad-news-for-ethanol/

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Take two magnets, one bigger than the other. Put them + to + and slide the bigger magnet towards the smaller magnet. The closer the bigger magnet gets to the smaller one, the faster the smaller one wants to get away. This creates motion, which is energy in it's simpliest form. You take enough of these magnets and place them on a "T" structure that allows the arms to move closer/further away from eachother. Take your gas peddle and tie the cable to the "T" in a manner that translates into pressing the peddle brings the magnets closer together. Hook the base of the "T" to a transmission......and you've got the perfect source of free and polutionless engery. Think about it... You can hook it up to a car transmission, or a generator. Just turn the dial to how fast you want the magnets to chase eachother. If you know anything about "earth magnets", then you know how increadibly strong they are. I orded some off of the internet back then. A magnet the size of a quarter can pick up 40 pounds. I kid you not! I still have three of them stuck to my tool chest by accident, and smashed the living hell out of my finger tips on more than one instance. Google "earth magnets" and see for yourself. They're simply amazing!!

I pursued this idea in college for a contest to win a grant from some european venture capitalists. I not only won, but stunned the entire room, and had the capitalists drooling. It was for a project called CERMIT, a device the size of a beach ball that would hang on a chain under the docks of marina gas stations, with little arms that extended out about 10 feet that would float just under the surface of the water. The arms would pull in the spilled fuel into the beach ball, which in turn would seperate the pollution from the sea water through centrifuge technology "spinning". The pollution would be sent to a containment tank, and the clean water would be released back into the ocean. The idea of the magnets came from the way to make the centrifuge design work w/o the need to have electricity run to the dock. As the project evolved, the idea shifted away from CERMIT and focused strictly on the magnet idea and all of it's applications beyond. Kevin Costner's brother came up with something very similiar recentely that was used to help clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I read his plans on his device. It's similiar in principal, but lacks certain elements that my idea had that didn't require a massive cargo ship to use.

I ran into one small problem though....Mr. Newton seems think that engery can't create energy, kind of like water can't flow up hill. Life came calling, and I had to get a job and never returned to this idea, but it has always stayed in my mind for the past 10 years.

Someone smarter than me will finish this idea one day. I believe in my heart of hearts that it could work and solve so many problems of current. Granted, will probably cause other problems...but that's just life.

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Take two magnets, one bigger than the other. Put them + to + and slide the bigger magnet towards the smaller magnet. The closer the bigger magnet gets to the smaller one, the faster the smaller one wants to get away. This creates motion, which is energy in it's simpliest form. You take enough of these magnets and place them on a "T" structure that allows the arms to move closer/further away from eachother. Take your gas peddle and tie the cable to the "T" in a manner that translates into pressing the peddle brings the magnets closer together. Hook the base of the "T" to a transmission......and you've got the perfect source of free and polutionless engery. Think about it... You can hook it up to a car transmission, or a generator. Just turn the dial to how fast you want the magnets to chase eachother. If you know anything about "earth magnets", then you know how increadibly strong they are. I orded some off of the internet back then. A magnet the size of a quarter can pick up 40 pounds. I kid you not! I still have three of them stuck to my tool chest by accident, and smashed the living hell out of my finger tips on more than one instance. Google "earth magnets" and see for yourself. They're simply amazing!!

I pursued this idea in college for a contest to win a grant from some european venture capitalists. I not only won, but stunned the entire room, and had the capitalists drooling. It was for a project called CERMIT, a device the size of a beach ball that would hang on a chain under the docks of marina gas stations, with little arms that extended out about 10 feet that would float just under the surface of the water. The arms would pull in the spilled fuel into the beach ball, which in turn would seperate the pollution from the sea water through centrifuge technology "spinning". The pollution would be sent to a containment tank, and the clean water would be released back into the ocean. The idea of the magnets came from the way to make the centrifuge design work w/o the need to have electricity run to the dock. As the project evolved, the idea shifted away from CERMIT and focused strictly on the magnet idea and all of it's applications beyond. Kevin Costner's brother came up with something very similiar recentely that was used to help clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I read his plans on his device. It's similiar in principal, but lacks certain elements that my idea had that didn't require a massive cargo ship to use.

I ran into one small problem though....Mr. Newton seems think that engery can't create energy, kind of like water can't flow up hill. Life came calling, and I had to get a job and never returned to this idea, but it has always stayed in my mind for the past 10 years.

Someone smarter than me will finish this idea one day. I believe in my heart of hearts that it could work and solve so many problems of current. Granted, will probably cause other problems...but that's just life.

Genius = 1 part Inspiration + 10 parts perspiration. Maybe you just need a little more perspiration!

Newton was a pessimist.

Paul

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Good for cars? Doesnt hurt them if they are Flex Fuel Capable. Good for MPG? Not really, no. Its about 20% LESS effecient. When running it in town I get about 9mpg, normally I get 15-16. However, the subsidies that keep it at $1.50 a gallon (here) LESS than regular unleaded, make worth my while. Saves me about $50 a month! AND its a TON better for the enviornment.

So they better keep it. I might be kinda angry, and angry soldiers=bad things LOL (kidding, of course... <_< )

Sorry to bring you bad news but:

ETHANOL: BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT?

In the rush to promote ethanol as environmentally friendly, proponents are ignoring the fact that ethanol consumes more resources than it saves, says John A. Baden, chairman of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE).

In the cover story of the October "Consumer Reports (CU)," ethanol was compared with gasoline and diesel to see how well the alternative fuel actually conserved resources:

While diesel contains around 140,000 British thermal units (Btu) per gallon, and gasoline 115,000 Btu, denatured ethanol contains only 78,000 Btu per gallon; these numbers translate into low fuel mileage.

For example, CU tested a new Chevy Tahoe and found that in highway driving (on 85 percent ethanol), gas mileage decreased from 21 to 15 mpg; in city driving, it dropped from 9 to 7.

In marked contrast, says Baden, two old diesel ranch trucks that weigh a ton more than the new Tahoe each gets 20+ mpg on the highway at 65 mph.

Government subsides contribute to wasting resources, says Baden:

Flex fuel vehicles (FFVs) are designed to run on either gasoline or a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gas, E85; automotive manufacturers receive generous fuel-economy credits for each FFV built -- even if it never runs on E85.

This credit enables them to build more large SUVs that burn more gas than ethanol replaces; this is a perverse but predictable outcome of political forces.

But given all of this, the resources consumed by ethanol production may still be worse for Third World ecosystems, says Baden. According to Peter Huber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, if the process for producing ethanol becomes cheap and easy in poor countries, it would hasten the conversion of forestlands and other wilderness into a fuel source.

Source: John A. Baden, "Is Ethanol a Pure Green Elixir?" Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, October 18, 2006.

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=13652

Ethanol Fuel: Safe to Use, Bad to Produce

by Brian Yalung on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

We often praise the use of alternative fuel especially ethanol which is produce from natural resources such as corn and other renewable resources. While this shift has been obviously a big boost to us, we fail to see the process of producing them which is probably an issue as far as electricity use is concerned.

Apparently the amount of electricity used is high and while they boast of using coal as a means to offset this, coal is another source of producing carbon dioxide which in turn has become harmful to the environment.

http://keetsa.com/blog/health-and-well-being/ethanol-fuel-safe-to-use-bad-to-produce/

More Bad News for Ethanol.

Another brick in the wall against ethanol. Academics tasked with plotting California’s transition to a low-carbon fuel have delivered more bad news: Ethanol appears to come with a higher greenhouse-gas price tag than previously thought — higher, indeed, than fossil fuel.

California has long been a little wary of ethanol. They worry that adding ethanol at low blends to gasoline produces higher levels of certain air pollutants. But now that the Golden State is trying to tackle greenhouse-gas emissions from the transport sector, first-generation ethanol—the only kind that is actually commercially viable today—pops up as a repeat offender. That raises the question of how to actually make the transition to cleaner-burning transport fuels in the near term.

The University of California at Berkeley’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center told the California Air Resources Board that ethanol could be twice as bad as gasoline, from a carbon-emissions point of view. How? Basically by turning land now covered with trees, grass, and other natural “carbon sinks” into farmland for corn and other crops used for ethanol. (Ethanol’s dirty secret has also recently been explored by Science and other magazines.)

“Simply said, ethanol production today using U.S. corn contributes to the conversion of grasslands and rainforest to agriculture, causing very large GHG emissions,” wrote Berkeley profs Alex Farrell and Michael O’Hare in a January 12 memo to California regulators. “Even if only a small fraction of the emissions calculated in this crude way [through land use change] are added to estimates of direct emissions for corn ethanol, total emissions for corn ethanol are higher than for fossil fuels.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/01/23/more-bad-news-for-ethanol/

Though I live in the largest corn producing state in the US and also one of the major Ethanol producing areas, many of us realize the difficulties pointed out in the abstract above. The sustainability, food production disruption, and land use issues along with the pollution call for the elimination of Ethanol subsidies.

Thanks for the information.

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