according to a recent news story i saw, brazil gets 40% of their power supply from sugar cane ethanol plants ......

it was a pretty insightful story/segment

saying that, maybe this will get some of our farmlands back that have just been eaten up by gov't and banks in last 20-40 years...

BaconatedGrapefruit:

You sound like a blowhard one-topic genius who has been waiting his whole life for this topic to come along.

Can the pompous attitude and shut up. No one gives a shiat what you have to say.

By the way, whatever happened to those hydrogen engine thingys that were supposed to replace our current engines and produce only water as a biproduct? Can anyone give me a followup article, I would appreciate it.

Thanks.

that popular mechanics article is a hoot.
Let's compare fuel effectiveness, across wildly different types of vehicles.

So what if vehicle weight varies by a thousand pounds here or there? We're testing the fuels right?

/sigh

while you MIGHT be able to reduce the "cost", you will NOT be able to make it negative ...
solar, wind and burning scrap is NEVER enough
Plus, did you NOT read the part about soil and water?

where do you frow the corn once there is no dirt or water?

I love how no one seems to give a crap about the amount of farmland used to feed cattle (which is an insane amount), but when someone suggests Ethanol, everyone becomes a land activist.

Unfortunately, no combination of the "alternatives" (which aren't, but are more exactly inferior replacements) will allow us to continue doing things as we've been doing them. It is physically impossible, and neoclassical economics is not physics. That is a major source of confusion here.


OK I am going to give 1 example that uses existing technology and would not require me to believe in any "fantasy" about creating energy...

In a totally uncomplicated and single solution to the problem (this is NOT what I believe would happen but it completely eliminates the need for me to believe in energy faries coming to save us...

A) We all convert to battery powered cars - the technology is already there - its just expensive (but cleary not fantasy)

B) We build 500 new nuclear plants to provide the energy requirements of all the vehicles (also existing technology which is markedly improved from when we LAST built a nuclear plant in the country AND again not fantasy)...

We already have the electical distribution network in place (although likely to need upgrading to handle increased loads)..

So basically if the NEED was there, I have just provided a glimpse of the future that doesnt involve the need to eliminate the word automobile from our vocabulary, nor does it require me to rewire my "neoclassical" brain to believe in magic energy faries. Oversimplified and stupid as my example is, it is still a "viable" if not practical alternative to what you suggest.

Adman12: This is typical on Fark, where the pumped-up schoolyard "political" environment makes a lot of people assume every issue is a matter of all or nothing, right and wrong, winners and losers.


You Sir, are my new Fark hero.

Hydrogen is an excelent carrier of energy however the problem it is suposed to be solving is where do we get the energy from to begin with? What no one who loves the hydrogen fuel cell can answer sufficiently is where do we get all this hydrogen to begin with. (Electrolysis being a very ineficient way to store energy)

dc0012c

"Look, biatching about the cost of processing and distillation of ethanol without comparing it to petrochemical extraction and processing is useless. There's no benchmark. Plus, as has been stated here before, plant sugar-based fuels are based on a sustainable, renewable source, not a fixed amount fossil-based source. "

Not true, petrochemicals are required to make ethanol . . .

"Ethanol requires more energy to produce than it stores ergo it is a negative carrier of energy."
Like every single energy store under the sun.
Batteries, oil, ethanol, hydrogen, plants, animals, etc.

Restating the second law of thermodynamics does not show one energy store to be better than another.

"Not true, petrochemicals are required to make ethanol"
required?

mathmatix [TotalFark]

"according to a recent news story i saw, brazil gets 40% of their power supply from sugar cane ethanol plants ......"

Brazil also has a huge fossil fuel supply they neglect to mention is being consumed in order to fuel these ethanol plants at every stage of production.

Let's get off this rocky ball of crap and build a Dyson Sphere! Sure we'd have to dismantle a good portion of the solar system to do it.....but hey who really wants to see Uranus anyways?

the_whitney_brown: I don't know if you're still reading this thread...
I own 2 hybrids, the honda civic and honda insight. If you wanna easily get your money's worth, get the insight. If you want a smoother ride but less emphasis on saving gas, get the civic. You'll make your money back by 200,000 miles. If you want to showoff and people to notice how much you care, get a prius. You'll never make your money back on that since its got a huge price tag and doesn't do as well as the insight in terms of efficiency. Before you drive though, read www.greenhybrid.com - as there's many strategies that can make big differences with hybrids. Many of which don't involve driving like an old lady (e.g., accelerate briskly when the light turns green to utilize the IMA efficiently)

My old car got 1/3 the MPG as my insight, so as far as I'm concerned I'm only paying $1.00/gallon. I got a great deal on my insight anyways since they're not that popular.

I am all for ANYTHING that will allow us to tell the Middle East to fark off forever.

Yes required, our soil has reached the consistency of a sponge, for each growing cycle we both add all the amonia required to grow our food (derived from natural gas) and keep it from being eaten by pests with, you guessed it, pesticides (made from petroleum).

To make the problem a little more palatible consider that it takes 10 calories of fossil fuels to produce every 1 calorie of food that you consume.

Now imagine that instead of consuming it you tried to make it into fuel again. If the distillation process is free of entropy (not possible) you are still losing 9 calories of energy for every 1 calorie of "fuel" you produce.

It turns out Ethanol use consumes fossil fuels faster than just using the fossil fuels to begin with.

Fizpez: "A) We all convert to battery powered cars - the technology is already there - its just expensive (but cleary not fantasy) B) We build 500 new nuclear plants to provide the energy requirements of all the vehicles (also existing technology which is markedly improved from when we LAST built a nuclear plant in the country AND again not fantasy)..."

How much lead and cadmium and other metals go into these hundreds of millions of batteries, and where does it all come from? Well, it has to be mined, which these days means strip-mined, because metal ores assay miserably these days. All of this has to be processed and refined and manufactured and disposed of and replaced when the batteries are spent.

As to the idea that we're going to build 500 nuclear power plants just to generate electricity for electric cars (or to do electrolysis to make hydrogen for hydrogen cars, each sporting a million dollar fuel cell), I call that fantasy. But suppose the project went ahead...how much uranium ore must be strip mined and processed and refined and enriched (after we've cannibalized all of the nuclear weapons for fuel, of course) to power these 500 nuclear power plants dedicated exclusively to charging car batteries?

I'll give you a hint: Today, about 5% of the world's electricity is generated in nuclear plants. If 100% was generated this way, we'd use up all the high grade uranium ore in about six years. Then we'd be forced to strip mine lower-grade uranium ore, which is a vastly more energy intensive endeavor - so much so that it becomes an "energy sink" into which you pour more energy than is produced. Might as well burn the fossil fuels used for it directly.

Oh, and then there's the "electricity tax" you'd have to assess in order to maintain the roads.

i am REALLY interested in reading the Popular Mechanics article. Is it going to make me ROTFLMAO, like the 'Debunking the 9/11 Conspiracies' article did? 20 minutes of my life GONE!

"Restating the second law of thermodynamics does not show one energy store to be better than another."

If I'm not totally off my rocker the problem finding a new energy source rather than a new battery otherwise the most logical thing to do is figure out how to turn hydrogen and carbon back into a hydrocarbon eficiently.

fossil fuels are not required to make ethanol. We were making ethanol for more than 2000 years and many of those years was pre-fossil fuel days.

Its interesting how nobody mentions how much energy was required from the earth over a long time period to create the oil. Making energy from dirt and solar energy (ethanol) is a whole different story than simply pulling it from the ground.

The real solution is simple.........Fusion

Then it really wont matter how much energy is poured into making a gallon of liquid energy since it will come from the near limitless supply of a fusion reactor.

/Don't think electric will replace the IC motor for a long long time.
//I will still drive em
///gonna be the old man who still drives his model A around the block

The sad thing is that all of our problems stem from protectionist laws passed 50+ years ago to protect Hawaiian sugar growers. Since sugar import tarriffs are so high, everyone turned to using corn syrup and now the corn producers have a huge amount of power so they force high tarriffs on imported ethanol and quelch the production of sugar cane. Shows how the impact of a law can be far reaching. That little tarriff on sugar has probably cost the U.S. 50+ billion dollars by now.

FWIW, sugarcane ethanol is MUCH cheaper/easier/efficienct to produce than corn ethanol. One of the experts in Brazil stated this is why they'll be 100% foreign-petrolium-free as of Aug 2006. I think it could work in the USA, but I believe the corn/soy farmers probably have more clout than the sugarcane farmers. There's plenty of swamp land down here in FL just waiting to be dozed & turned into cash cows.

StretiCentV Thanks! I'm actually looking at the Honda Accord Hybrid (2 kids in carseats to consider fitting into whatever I drive). Haven't test driven one yet, but probably will.

Why does submitter seem GLAD that ethanol is not a solution? Is he a big supporter of that brutal, freedom hating regime, Saudi Arabia??

"B) We build 500 new nuclear plants to provide the energy requirements of all the vehicles (also existing technology which is markedly improved from when we LAST built a nuclear plant in the country AND again not fantasy)..."

Thanks to Carter the breeder design nuclear reactors are illegal in this country and without the option of burning the much more common U-238 and essentially making our own fuel (and yes plutonium, oh no so scary) we are looking at a severe shortage of viable nuclear fuel not to mention tons of thoroughly mixed radioactive waste we need to secure for (whips out calculator) longer than I can even conceive of nuclear energy is not an option.

Breeder reactors would solve everything you damn dirty hippies with no concept of how much you farked our options worrying about how plutonium might fall into the wrong hands .

canyoneer

Exactly...I'm a big fan of nuclear, but let's not kid ourselves that it'll solve all our problems. There simply isn't enough uranium to go around. Fast-breeder reactors or thorium based reactors could improve this situation somewhat. But even there you're only going to get a few more decades of production (assuming most power is produced from nuclear).

"The real solution is simple.........Fusion"

Fusion is still a pipe dream, with existing technology (see France Britain and other terorist states that are headlessly running their shiite off reactors the US decided to ban with the fear if we do it then other countries might do it, wow that really worked) we could have as close to the holy grail of energy supply as we can get without an actual holy grail: an energy plant that CONSUMES its own hazardous waste and PRODUCES its own fuel!

Oil is just money and politics, when it gets hairy enough and people are poor/rich enough (or more accurately when it takes more energy to pump the crap out of the ground than people are willing to put into it) breeder fission reactors will be all the rage.

Breeder reactors now!

I'll give you a hint: Today, about 5% of the world's electricity is generated in nuclear plants. If 100% was generated this way, we'd use up all the high grade uranium ore in about six years. Then we'd be forced to strip mine lower-grade uranium ore, which is a vastly more energy intensive endeavor - so much so that it becomes an "energy sink" into which you pour more energy than is produced. Might as well burn the fossil fuels used for it directly.

Ill give you a clue - I pulled those numbers out of my rear end - I have NO IDEA how many nuclear plants it would take - could be 50 could be 5000 for all I know - my point is not that what I proposed is THE solution - the point I am making is that we have the capablility (independent of cost) to not eliminate automobilies....

A few things I do know - we could probably power the country for years by reclying reclaimed plutonium from nuclear weapons where the matierial is enriched to 20-30 times the level necessary for electrical generation. So 55 pounds of weapons grade plutonium is about 1000 pounds of nuclear rod fuel.

Cadmium and lead are not the only types of batteries and you claim that all of these metal are being "strip mined" is just your attempt to sensationalize and politicize how people might feel about the need to get these metals.

Fuel cell stacks cost no where near 1 million dollars - last I checked a 30 kilowatt sized stack which would power a house was in the 30 - 50k range - and since fuel stacks are for hydrogen to electrical energy generation really dont apply to my example at all - but yet again you're totally ignoring any economy of scale involved in increased production -

Basically what youre telling me is this : a) You believe cars SHOULD be eliminated (not that they need to be) b) every economic and technological model that has fueled the world for the last 100 years will suddenly fail because it supports your assertion in a.

OK forget about nuclear - we cover arizona in one giant solar cell and get the electricity that way... again just so you dont miss it - this is not a REAL suggestion but points out that eliminating automobiles has no basis in reality - there are economic and technologic solutions which I am SURE vast majorities would prefer to getting rid of cars....

Whitney_Brown: Before you buy an accord, you should know one thing though...
The accord hybrid outperforms the standard accord siginifcantly. The 0-60 time is a full second lower. You won't save a ton of gas with an accord (40 mpg is considered good with an accord)
Thats why the accord is having trouble finding its place in the market. I recommend also checking out an 06 civic as they've improved the leg room issues that existed up to the 05 model (i have an 05 and the rear leg room isn't great)
Definitely check out www.greenhybrid.com and read what people are saying about their cars. They have seperate forums for each type of hybrid.

http://www.argee.net/DefenseWatch/Nuclear%20Waste%20and%20Breeder%20Reactors.h tm

Read this for more info on breeder reactors.

retrosteve: Unfortunately, Bush's new love, Hydrogen, isn't an answer either:


I think it is, but not the way that they are talking about getting it. Research, that is the key. If you are on a planet that is covered in it then find a way to convert it to power

Cerebral Ballsy: Ethanol is easily produced from other sources than corn. Such as garbage sludge. Read and learn:

http://www.checkbiotech.org/blocks/dsp_document.cfm?doc_id=10651 (no html skilz)

Okay, read it. Sounds good, but if it's so easy to make ethanol from garbage, why are the plants I hear about being built use corn? I would assume garbage would be cheaper than corn.

Is this really do-able?

Since Uranium-238 is one of the more abundant elements in the Earth's crust, Breeder Reactors make it possible to have an essentially unlimited source of fuel for nuclear reactors - which means an unlimited supply of electricity.

From above article.

Sean M: One of the experts in Brazil stated this is why they'll be 100% foreign-petroleum-free as of Aug 2006.

And I'm delighted to cheer them on toward that goal, but they have an Equator running through their country which tends to guarantee production independent of season. The US has more seasonally-limited production.

Easy answers are for The Daily Show jokes.

Useless otherwise.

At leat ethonal can come from replenishable bio matter.

It is the differace between taking water from a pool that is being refilled by a trikle from a faucet, and taking water from a pool that is being refilled by a gushing river.

Contrary to mis-information created in the 80s Oil reserves are not being replenished, and only the increases in technolgy and refining methods has more oil become available. That is why there is a need to switch to renewable resources as a way of fueling

personally I think Bio-Diseal is better then Ethonal

Too many number, where's the bewbees?

Now that Big Oil is in direct struggle with Big Corn for dominance it is no longer safe for anyone to bend over. Looks like a good opportunity to spend some quality time with the Hemp for Everything crowd.

Ethanol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.

/How am I the Weeners this?

//filterwned :(

Blend ethanol and gas.
Use cellulose ethanol.
Stop making excuses for not trying!

My $0.02

I'd love to be able to sell my grass clippings to Big Ethanol.

Wake me up when gasoline hits $5.00/gallon.

/*Yawn*

Some guy actually crunched the numbers on estimated that a single gallon of gas requires about 98 tons of plant matter to form. This is why the oil economy is unsustainable. We are like Paris Hilton blowing her trust fund in a year. We are doing the equivalent with the vast energy stored in oil over many millions of years and using it all up in less than 200.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-10/uou-bm9102603.php

I am the submitter and after all these years this was my first accepted post. It even inspired a great discussion, so I am going to feel really proud of myself for the next few hours.

/wants a plugin hybrid
//kind of hard to find in the midwest
///will likely settle for an efficient Corolla
////Why has nobody pointed out a better use for ethanol - DRINKING!

For all of you touting breeder reactors: Please cite one example of a breeder reactor anywhere in the world that has ever been a commercial/technical success. From what I can gather, breeder reactors are the eternal promise of the future and the persistent (expensive) failure of the present.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." -- Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.

"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom." -- Robert Millikan, American physicist and Nobel Prize winner, 1923.

There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now; All that remains is more and more precise measurement." -- Lord Kelvin, speaking to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1900.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." -- Charles H. Duell, Comissioner of the US Patent Office, 1899.

"No economically viable alternative to fossil fuels is possible" Fark.com 2006

The study quoted on the page is really old and contested. The USDA did the same study and found the energy output of ethanol equal to 1.3 gallons of gas to every 1 gallon used in the process. I'm not saying one is better than the other, just that neither is conclusive.

Technology is always changing, so who knows how efficient we'll get making ethanol.

In the meantime, mortgage your house and buy oil commodities by the bundle.

Nice rebuttal, Savonola.