Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Perspective: Does Ethanol as an Automotive Fuel Make Sense?

Perspective: Does Ethanol as an Automotive Fuel Make Sense?
The short answer to this is a resounding NO!
The principal reasons given for using ethanol as a fuel in our internal combustion engines
are, namely, the reduction of our dependence on foreign enemy produced oil and the
reduction of harmful emissions, including carbon dioxide. These do not pass the laugh
test. First, 50% of our oil is supplied by Canada and Mexico and the rest is supplied about
equally by friendly Saudi Arabia and the United States. Secondly, no one believes that
the energy generated from ethanol as a fuel exceeds the fossil fuel energy required to
create it, thus it is hard go believe that emissions would be significantly reduced. You can
judge this for yourself by reviewing the steps required to plant, harvest, and process
ethanol.
Ethanol (ethyl alcohol) found in alcoholic based beverages such as wine and rum is
derived from the natural fermentation of the sugars in grapes, sugar beets and sugar cane.
By contrast starch from corn and other grains must first be converted to sugar before it
can be processed to ethanol.
The key steps to manufacture ethanol from corn include:
· Preparing the soil for planting
· Planting and weeding the corn
· Harvesting the crop
· Shipping it to an ethanol refinery.
· Chopping, pulverizing and separating the starch
· Converting the starch to sugar.
· Fermenting the sugar to about 10+% ethanol
· Separating the ethanol/water from the non-fermentable residue
· Distilling the ethanol to a concentration of 96%
· Drying the ethanol\water to achieve ethanol at 99+% required for use in gasoline
· Shipping the ethanol by truck to a gasoline refinery
Each of these steps consumes energy to run the: (1) tractors to till, plant, weed, and
harvest the sugar and starch bearing crops, (2) trucks to ship the crops to the ethanol
refinery, (3)motorized equipment at the ethanol plant to pulverize the materials and pump
them into fermentation tanks, (4) boilers to distill the ethanol, (5) pumps to remove the
ethanol from the drying agents, (6) trucks to haul the ethanol to the gasoline refinery, and
(7) the pumps in the refinery to mix the ethanol with gasoline.
When you combine all these steps, you realize that an awful lot of fossil fuel-derived
energy is required to produce a fuel that is less efficient than gasoline. Therefore, it is
hard to believe that there is a net increase in energy.
Moreover, from a monitory standpoint, corn can only compete with fossil fuel if the
farmer and refiner are subsidized by the taxpayers, you and me. Billions of dollars of
subsidies are paid farmers to grow corn for this use, and the current tax law being
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considered in Congress extends those subsidies. By contrast, ethanol manufactured in
Brazil from sugar cane and sugar beets, is less expensive than U.S.corn derived ethanol,
but tariffs our government applies to Brazilian ethanol erase that inherent economic
advantage.
Now, our government wants to increase the ethanol concentration from 10% to 15% in
gasoline. This presents additional problems. Foremost are more expensive stainless steel
tanks and/or Teflon lined fuel lines needed to withstand the steel corrosion problem
indigenous to ethanol. Additionally, because the energy derived from ethanol is about
34% less than gasoline, the engine compression will need to be increased to boost the
octane level of ethanol. This will require a variable turbocharger
If you take into account that the world is running into a shortage of arable land from
which to produce food as well as water to irrigate the crops, why in the world would you
risk real life food and water supplies to deal with the theoretical idea that global warming
is man made?
Now, if we really want to convert our trucks and cars to fuels that would decrease our
dependence on oil, burn cleaner in our engines and produce less carbon dioxide, we
should convert them to liquefied natural gas (LNG).When combusted, natural gas
produces the least amount of carbon dioxide and none of the noxious hydrocarbon and
benzene effluents. Moreover, the United States has huge reserves of shale-derived natural
gas that are being tapped as we write.
We doubt that there would be sufficient savings converting from gasoline to a LPG fuel
system, so it is likely that it would have to be subsidized. Setting asside why we should
change from gasoline at this time in the first place, if we did decide that this is a good
idea, why not subsidize the conversion to natural gas instead of converting to food-stuff
derived ethanol. Conversion to LNG would have the added advantage of creating new
jobs required to produce the gas, compress it for delivery, modify the transportation
vehicles to use it and modify the gas stations to deliver it,
In summary, it’s time to get the government out of this foolhardy venture! The idea of
using food-based material to replace fossil fuel is economically unsound, and subsidizing
the program to boot is absurd considering our burgeoning national debt. More
importantly, it is morally wrong! There is a significant and increasing number of persons
on this planet who are living at starvation levels due to the shrinking supply and
increasing price of food. This is a problem here and now, versus the uncertain and
threoretical impact that man-made global warming may have at some future date.
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