E85: The other white gas

[cjolley]

Here is some info about 85% Ethanol fuel.

http://www.e85fuel.com/e85101/flexfuelvehicles.php

Neither of my cars is compatable.

[Wombat]

E85 costs energy to produce, has lower energy density than gasoline, and still pollutes. Though cheaper per gallon than gasoline, the decreased energy means roughly the same $/mile, and that's WITH government subsidies. So why should we consider using this stuff?

[Claymonkey]

I think the only good point is that it's renewable. That and if you ramp up production it SHOULD get cheaper. Do we have any pollution comparisons to gas? Can it be improved to be as good as say... biodiesel?

[Dr Mordrid]

E85 costs energy to produce, has lower energy density than gasoline, and still pollutes. Though cheaper per gallon than gasoline, the decreased energy means roughly the same $/mile, and that's WITH government subsidies. So why should we consider using this stuff?

Actually using the new processes discribed in a recent issue of Science ethanol returns 126% of the cost of its production while gasoline only returns 85%. It's also relatively cleaner than previously thought, so it helps from that end. Given that it only costs $185 USD worth of addons to existing vehicles to run it, and many US models already can, you have to ask where else can you get that much gain for so little investment?

Dr. Mordrid

[Brian Ellis]

The problem with ethanol is that we could not hope to produce nearly enough of it. To feed a human requires ~10 kJ of energy per day. To run an ordinary car an average 40 km/day requires ~100 kJ of energy. Therefore, 10 x as much land would be required to produce the ethanol crops as for the human food crops. As Dr M would say Pffft!

Then there is another problem. The conventional way of producing ethanol is to make a mash of sugar-containing vegetable matter (fruit, corn, malt, sugar cane/beet etc.), and allowing it to ferment. However, the yeasts that are used for this die off as soon as the alcohol content of the liquid reaches 14-18%, the rest being essentially water. The only practical way of separating them is by distillation, producing 96% ethanol, 4% water, which is an azeotrope which is difficult to separate further. The energy required to heat the mash for distillation is generally somewhat higher than the energy contained by combusting the alcohol. Pffft!

Another point is the E96 fuel is OK for an ICE, provided it has been designed for that fuel (ie, you cannot fill a conventional petrol/gas car with it). Nor can you mix E96 with alkane petroleum products (e.g., petrol/gas) to produce E85, E30 or E10, because of the water, so the E96 has to be rectified to produce E100 to form the mixtures. This is another energy-intensive process. Pffft!

There are other ways of generating ethanol, suc as depolymerisation of cellulose, but these are no better. GM crops (e.g., modified sawgrass or hemp) on non-arable land may yield slightly better energy yields, but the holistic energy balance sheet is always negative.

IOW, this is, and must remain, a niche technology which, at the best, can spin out precious petroleum reserves.

[borat]

More than 50% of cars sold in brazil run off PURE ethanol, it would be cheaper than crude (at current prices) if brought to large scale production as they have done in brasil, and who cares about the pollution saving, lets face it - china and india between them will churn out more pollution over the next 50 years than we have over the past few hundred as they industrialise as cheaply as possible (coal). Ethonal prices can be kept stable by making it a domestic farming product, the price of crude is at the mercy of whoever gets hold of it in the middle east and decides to be a pain (iran at present). Free yourself from arab oil and you stabilise the energy market and provide US citizens with jobs refining it instead of making terror nations rich enough to fund nuclear programs.

If brasil can do it, the USA can package it up, perfect it and sell it on as cheaply as possible like only it knows how.

[Dr Mordrid]

Not to mention that many new production methods are nearing market here in the US including methods that use biotech that are highly efficient. Hell...there are probably enough grass clippings in the US every week to power 2-3 Chicagos

Dr. Mordrid

[Brian Ellis]

And how much chemical fertiliser, made from oil, will be required to foster the industry? It would be FAR more fuel efficient to have anaerobic composting of all your grass clippings, farm waste, sewage waste etc., collect the natural gas as fuel and use the residues in lieu of chemical fertilisers. This would be viable for any collection area of a 20 km radius (rural) or where there are, say, 50,000 inhabitants in single-family housing units in a similar area.

We compost our garden waste although it is not viable to collect the gas on a small scale, but all our veggies and fruit are grown with the end result. At the moment, we are drowning under a surfeit of oranges, lemons, mandarines, clementines, grapefruit, pomelos and mandores, none of which has seen a grain of chemical fertiliser. Later on, we'll have ample peaches, apricots and nectarines (they are coming into bud just now).

Note, we are not organic, as we do use a little fertiliser on the grass and a minimum of pesticides on the fruit plus snail bait in moderation. We encourage insectivorous insects (mantes and ladybirds) and spiders, reptiles (lizards, chameleons and geckos), birds (swallows, redstarts, shrikes, bee-eaters etc) and mammals (hedgehogs and bats) to minimise the use of pesticides.

[Dr Mordrid]

Fertilizer? Not much. Many new hybrids don't require fertilization due to the incorporation of genes & associated microbes from nitrogen fixing plants like legumes. Corn is on the short list and already being used in test crops. This takes crop rotation out of the mix since you're growing the crop and getting the benefits of the rotation crop in one growing season.

Also: you should see the corn crops in the midwestern US. You can drive from Ohio to South Dakota without getting out of 9-10 foot high corn fields, and that isn't even a large percentage of the US crop. Try driving through 1400 miles of this sometime without falling asleep at the wheel from highway hypnosis;





And a lot of this corn goes into long term storage after processing because it's just too much for feed, eating or export. In fact the federal govt. actually pays many farmers NOT to put their fields into corn production in an effort to brace up prices.

Process all those excess corn kernels and the husks and stalks from the whole crop and that's a huge amount of ethanol.

Then there are the similarly hybridized alfalfa and canolas.

Dr. Mordrid

[Brian Ellis]

Stupid use of GM. Nitrogen isn't the only use for fertilisers. They also need P and K, which you cannot get out of the air, as well as many trace elements. It would be plain stupid to have monoculture without replacing these elements in the soil. By the 3rd year, your yield would be way down and the plants so weak that any new pest or disease would have a field day.

If, as you say, there is overproduction of monoculture corn, then it would be a lot wiser to go to 3 or 4 year crop rotation, including one year pasture. That would reduce chemical fertiliser needs by more than half and increase yields. This is still done in many parts of Europe, where wheat yields per hectare are nearly double that of the USA. Even here, where crop choice is more limited and arable land is a precious commodity, many fields lie fallow between years of winter wheat. The only monoculture (other than fruit/olive/carob trees) is in one region where the only crop is the humble potato (3 crops/year). This is a catastrophic notion, as it is quite usual for 1 crop to be bad and the farmers then protest because of loss of income.

[borat]

Brian you have a really good point there, so much of what we alreas use and throw out without thinking (grass clippings, sewage as you point out) could harvest very decent amounts of energy if the infrastructure was there and we need to wake up to this.

The problem as i see it is that shell/exon and all the oil giants have guaranteed revenue from their current oil pumping contracts, therefore why would they ever bother funding something like crop/waste processing when it would end up as a free open market to distribute the stuff? And without big investment to provide the processing and channels to consumer markets that is needed to make these ideas reality, they stand no chance. I think its one of those rare occasions where the govenrnment really needs to push hard to get oil dependance as low as possible.


What i disagree with you on is that ethanol production would require oil, brasil has pushed for large scale ethanol use specifically because they dont want to be stuck with expensive oil, if you want proof that it can be done, look to brasil. And i bet that there are slightly more efficient ways of doing it than they do.

[DukeP]

Making ethanol by fermenting is NOT the way to go.

Luckily, theres other methods.. Keep your eyes peeled for an article in nature, comming this spring..



Edit. In fact, I have little believe in Ethanol as anything than an vital constituent of my Scotch.

The only way to diminish a countries dependency on fossil fuels is by applying pressure and tehcnology - through legislation. In Denmark, all powerplants are required to deliver at least 30% of their energy from renewable sources (most chooses 50% wind, 50% biofuels). Further, no powerplant may operate at an average efficiency of less than 78% (I think this requires a mixed power/central heating production? Thermodynamics is a bitch).

Eventually all power would be from renewable sources.

THen people just have to drive electric (or hydrogen) powered cars.

~~DukeP~~

[Kooldino]

Compared to gasoline, you have to run about TWICE as much alcohol to burn the same amount of oxygen. There is an advantage to this: alcohol has a higher octane rating than what we're buying at the pumps. When tuned for it, more octane = more power. And in that case, we could get more power out of even smaller engines.

It has other downsides too, for example it will make the fuel system more expensive (alcohol tends to corrode rubber fuel lines, etc). And your cruising distance will go from around 300 miles to 150 miles (so you'll be at the gas station twice as often). And, as menitoned before, there's obviously some debate as to whether or not it will be more cost effective in the end.

But, if anyone were to adopt alcohol to run their cars on, I think Europe is a good place to start. For what they pay for gas, they have much more to gain than the US would, for example.

[borat]

we've got small scale biodiesel pruduction going on the UK, only problem is the government decided that it would be a good idea to place a 30p/litre($2.50/gallon) tax on it so now its just as expensive as regular diesel.

If ethanol is such a nightmare to crop/process and use then can someone please tell me how a country like brasil(nice place but way less cash and infrastructure than the states) has managed to get 50% of their cars running on it?

[Dr Mordrid]

They can't but won't admit it. Same way they can't explain why many US states already use E10 extensively without such problems or why E85 is becoming popular in some smaller regions even though the infrastructure hasn't been fully developed.

Get that infrastructure developed and the genie's out of the bottle IMO, especially with hybrid E85 vehicles coming fast.

Dr. Mordrid