It takes 2.7 gal of water to make 1 gal of Ethanol! How much water to make a gal of gas? 92.5 gals

[JohnWxy]

http://www.micorn.org/resources/busting_the_myths.html


Myth: It takes more water to produce a gallon of ethanol than it does to produce a gallon of gasoline.
FACT: It takes only 2.7 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol, significantly less than the 92.5 gallons of water is takes to produce a gallon of gasoline.



To put ethanol production into perspective, it takes:

1,851 gallons of water to refine a barrel of crude oil.
150 gallons of water to make one Sunday newspaper.
24 gallons of water to make one pound of plastic.

[madokie]

1. Interesting to say the least

I hope you have some asbestos undies on :-)

[JohnWxy]

3. you got any number for water consumption?

[sofa king]

2. How many gallons of gas does it take to produce a gallon of ethanol?

"The two scientists calculated all the fuel inputs for ethanol production—from the diesel fuel for the tractor planting the corn, to the fertilizer put in the field, to the energy needed at the processing plant—and found that ethanol is a net energy-loser. According to their calculations, ethanol contains about 76,000 BTUs per gallon, but producing that ethanol from corn takes about 98,000 BTUs. For comparison, a gallon of gasoline contains about 116,000 BTUs per gallon. But making that gallon of gas—from drilling the well, to transportation, through refining—requires around 22,000 BTUs."

Which suggests that it takes more oil to make a gallon of ethanol than one ever gets back. In Brazil, using sugar cane, this doesn't seem to be as much of a problem. But burning the last six inches of North American topsoil through our cars is going to mean someday soon we will have no oil, no corn, and no soil left to grow anything else.

http://www.slate.com/id/2122961/

[RC]

6. Which is why the bu$h administration thought it such a good idea.

And for bonus points, making ethanol from corn would take food crop land out of production, driving up the price/cost of our food.
Lose, lose, lose all the way to bankruptcy. Don't forget how much oil our military is using by fighting them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here. I bet they are not using any ethanol.

[GliderGuider]

9. The only ethanol they use over there

is the Jack they drink at night to blot out the memories of what they did during the day.

[Laelth]

10. Thank you. Using ethanol for fuel is a bad idea. n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[HBravo]

4. Interesting but it needs to be pointed out that

1 bushel of corn needs 3000 gl of water.
1 bushel = 56 lbs.
1 gal ethanol needs about 22 lbs.

[dkf]

5. Can't believe that was missing

Only 1 gallon of water to grow corn = dead corn

[GliderGuider]

7. Hmm. How about 925 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol?

http://www.ecoworld.com/waters/corn-ethanol-water.html

According to these folks:

Corn is one of the better temperate crops to use as a primary biofuel feedstock, since cellulosic extraction isn’t here yet and sugar cane doesn’t grow in Iowa. Using corn as an example, a good ethanol yield is about 480 gallons per acre per year, which is based on 160 bushels per acre, and 3.0 gallons of ethanol per bushel. How much water corn needs varies greatly, and the range we’ve arrived at for this analysis is between 300 and 900 cubic meters per ton. Our source for 900 m3/ton is from a reference to UNESCO’s “The Water Footprint of Nations,” and our source for 300 m3/ton is from Colorado State University.

Since a bushel of corn weighs about 70 pounds, based on a yield of 160 bushels per acre, expressed in tons the per acre yield of corn is about 5.6 tons. This means, at the lower figure of 300 cubic meters of water per ton of corn, the average acre of corn requires 1,680 tons of water per harvest cycle, which equates to 444,000 gallons of water for every 480 gallon yield of ethanol. Clearly, from this perspective, the 3-6 additional gallons of water required after harvest to refine each gallon of corn ethanol is not the critical factor.

By just counting the water involved in the fermentation and distillation you are lying.

[GliderGuider]

8. Or maybe 1568 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol?

http://www.newenergychoices.org/index.php?page=ethanol_irrigated&sd=ru

# Corn growing in the traditional Corn Belt states (Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Indiana) is rain-fed and requires no irrigation. But 15% of U.S. corn acreage is now irrigated, mostly grown in the states of Nebraska, Kansas, Eastern Colorado and the Texas panhandle.5

# Water consumed by corn crops in these areas is estimated to be nearly 18 million acre-feet – most of which is taken from the Ogallala aquifer.6

# For corn that is irrigated, water consumption estimates vary widely and depend on the area of the country considered. Irrigated corn grown in Pennsylvania requires 500 gallons of water per bushel, whereas Arizona corn needs upwards of 6,000 gallons per bushel.7 Overall, the national average amount of water consumed to produce a bushel of corn on irrigated farmland is 2,200 gallons.8

# A bushel of corn can produce about 2.8 gallons of ethanol. Therefore, based on the national average ratio of 2,200 gallons of water to produce one bushel of corn on irrigated land, one gallon of ethanol takes some 785 gallons of water to produce. But since the amount of water required to grow irrigated corn varies across the country, the ratio of water per gallon of ethanol also fluctuates. For example, on the irrigated corn acreage of southwestern Nebraska it takes 1,568 gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol.9

[JohnWxy]

14. The number quoted in OP is for converting corn to ethanol. When considering water for growing corn

You have to realize that while "a bushel of corn needs approximately 4,000 gallons of water in a growing season. ... much of the water taken into a corn plant is released back into the air through transpiration. In fact, one acre of corn gives off about 4,000 gallons of water PER DAY through evapo-transpiration, according to the USGS.1 Aden. “Water Usage for Current and Future Ethanol Production.
(removed link as it didn't work.)

{ I found some data on corn harvested and water usage. I got a production weighted average of 43 gal per gallon of ethanol produced for water usage to cultivate the corn. to that you can add the 3 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol produced used at the ethanol distillery (see link to survey below). here is the link to spreadsheet: http://sites.google.com/site/truthisstrangerthanfictionx/Ethanol_water_mile.xls }

When an Ethanol distillery (they like to call them "Biorefineries") makes ethanol they also produce a feed supplement for cattle. The Protein portion of the corn is recovered and is used as a high nutrient cattle feed supplement. A portion of the water used in making ethanol is also used to produce this feed supplement. In 2008 the Ethanol industry produced in addiion to over 9 billion gallons of ethanol, over 26 million tons of cattle feed (23 million metric tons of distillers grains, 3 million metric tons of corn gluten feed, and 600,000 metric tons of corn glutenmeal). This was "roughly equivalent to the combined annual amount of total feed consumed by cattle on feed in Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado — the nation’s four largest fed cattle states."_Renewable Fuels Assoiation.

Here is a link to the results of a survey of ethanol plant operators. They report using 3 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol produced which is actually better than the design specs of most of the newer ethanol plants today. The plant operators expect to bring water consumption down more with with process modifications and further design improvements.

http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/AF/557.pdf

An analysis of the latest survey conducted by the RFA revealed that freshwater consumption in existing dry mill plants has declined to 3.0 gallon per gallon of ethanol produced, in a production-weighted average (Wu 2008), a significant drop of 48 percent in less than 10 years (Figure 18). This value is 17% lower than a typical dry mill design value ─ 3.6 gal/gal (Keeney 2007). In fact, some existing dry mills use even less by process modifications and production of WDG co-products in dry mill plants (as compared with DDGS) (Wang et al. 2007). Water use can be minimized further through process optimization, capturing of the water vapor from the dryer, boiler condensate recycling to reduce boiler makeup rate, etc. The ethanol industry maintains that net zero water consumption is achievable by water reuse and recycling using existing commercial technology and with additional capital investment.


http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:RB3C1_aqFVQJ:www.ethanolrfa.org/objects/pdf/outlook/RFA_Outlook_2009.pdf+ethanolrfa+water+to+make+ethanol&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us


Page 24

”More efficient use of water is a trend that will continue within the ethanol industry. New technologies promise to more efficiently use and recycle the water required for cooling towers, boilers and other pro-cessing components. Engineering and design firms estimate the average water use per gallon of ethanol produced is likely to continue to drop substantially in the next several years. One such firm estimates water requirements will soon be reduced “…to less than 1.5 gallons per gallon of ethanol produced. ”Some ethanol producers are now using waste water, or gray water to produce ethanol. "


~~
~~
"corn requires large amounts of water to grow; a bushel of corn needs approximately 4,000 gallons of water in a growing season.
... much of the water taken into a corn plant is released back into the air through transpiration. In fact, one acre of corn gives off about 4,000 gallons of water per day through evapo-transpiration, according to the USGS.1 Aden. “Water Usage for Current and Future Ethanol Production.

..."what often goes unreported is that nearly nine out of every 10 corn acres in the United States are rain-fed and require no irrigation other than natural rainfall. Further, because most ethanol production occurs in the central Corn Belt where corn is primarily rain-fed, NREL says “As much as 96% of the field corn used for ethanol production is not irrigated at all.”

Page 26
CoProducts: Feed co-products represent an increasingly important share of profit opportunities for ethanol producers.
~~

FEEDING THE WORLD,FUELING A NATIONIn 2008, U.s. ethanol producers utilized approximately 3.2 billion bushels of corn to produce nearly 27 million tons of high quality livestock feed (23 million metric tons of distillers grains, 3 million metric tons of corn gluten feed, and 600,000 metric tons of corn glutenmeal) and 9 billion gallons of clean burning, renewable ethanol. To put these production volumes in context, consider that the amount of feed produced by the ethanol industry in 2008 is roughly equivalent to the combined annual amount of total feed consumed by cattle on feed in Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado — the nation’s four largest fed cattle states. Source: Renewable Fuels Association
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[GliderGuider]

16. See below.

[brooklynite]

11. The issue has never been Gas vs Ethanol...

Its been EThanol from Corn (the American crop), vs Ethanol from Sugar Cane or other products.

[kristopher]

12. Actually it is ethanol versus battery electric drive.

Both ethanol and batteries are best viewed as means of energy storage.

[msongs]

13. time to ditch the internal combustion engine, 1800's technology, NOT keep it gasping nt

[TxRider]

17. ROFL, electric motors and batteries are 1800's tech as well

Windmills even older.

Guess we should ditch them as well...

[GliderGuider]

15. How about one gallon of water per gallon of oil?

If you're just going to look at the refining aspect of things, I have a calculation here from Robert Rapier's blog:

Water Usage in an Oil Refinery

There has been much controversy regarding the amount of water used to produce a gallon of ethanol. Considering just the usage in the ethanol plant (ignoring any irrigation requirements for the corn), this amounts to about 4 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol produced:

New Research Paper Finds Water Availability Critical to Growth of Ethanol Industry

Generally, an ethanol plant will use 10 gallons of water per minute for each 1 million gallons of ethanol produced. A typical 50 million gallon plant, would need 500 gallons per minute of water.

There are no publicly available records on water use by ethanol plants in the United States, the authors found, with the exception of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

Minnesota plants use a range of 3.5 to 6 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol. Average water use has declined from 5.8:1 in 1998 to 4.2:1 in 2005.

Authors of the paper said 4 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol is a good estimate with the current technology.

I have frequently been asked how this compares to the water usage for an oil refinery, and each time I do some back of the envelope calculations and come up with about 0.5 gallons of water per gallon of crude oil processed. But the question comes up often enough that it is worth documenting.

According to an article in the February 18, 2007 Billings Gazette:

Here are the top users of the Billings Public Utilities Department

TOP WATER USERS (GALLONS PER YEAR)

1. Billings Heights Water District, 848 million.
2. ConocoPhillips Refinery, 456 million.
3. PPL Montana, 53.4 million.
4. Casa Village Mobile Home Court*, 49.6 million.
5. St. Vincent Healthcare**, 39.6 million.

The ConocoPhillips refinery in Billings processes 62,000 bbls of crude oil, or 2.6 million gallons per day. The reliability of most refineries is in the 90-95% range, so if we assumed 92.5% on-stream time, the refinery processes 2.6 million * 365 * 0.925, or 879 million gallons of crude oil per year. The water usage then amounts to 456 million/879 million, or 0.52 gallons of water per gallon of crude oil processed.

So if you're only going to look at refining and not include any water costs outside that boundary, it looks like oil still uses less water than ethanol. I wonder where the ethanol boys got 92.5 gallons?

[JohnWxy]

18. Oh my! You didn't read my reply (no.14) where I said I computed water used to grow corn!

link to Cmt 14 => http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x225581#225702


this is what I said there: "I found some data on corn harvested and water usage. I got a production weighted average of 43 gal per gallon of ethanol produced for water usage to cultivate the corn. to that you can add the 3 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol produced used at the ethanol distillery (see link to survey below). here is the link to spreadsheet: http://sites.google.com/site/truthisstrangerthanfictionx/Ethanol_water_mile.xls } (I show my calculations for others to check. I could have made a mistake.)

So what that means is... I added the water used to raise the corn.

If the 3 gallons of water is just for converting the corn to ethanol then just get figure for growing the corn and add it to the refinery water usage to get your final number.


I believe we should include all the costs of any alternative. .. regarding that MORE later. Watch this thread. THere are other things to consider than water usage.

[JohnWxy]

19. Two words for your consideration: EXXON Valdez -

20 years after the spill the effects are still being felt. "Pacific herring — a keystone of both the commercial fishing industry and the marine food web in Prince William Sound — were spawning at the time of the spill, and were hit particularly hard. "The herring stocks still haven't recovered,"


http://www.durangoherald.com/sections/News/Earth/2009/02/12/Alaskan_oil_spill_prompts_action/


The spill contaminated 10,000 square miles of ocean and 3,200 miles of coastline, ruining the environment and taking down the economy in Cordova, a town of 2,500 on Prince William Sound. Half the residents were directly involved in fishing and the other half - owners of motels, stores, markets and restaurants - counted on their good catches to pay their own bills.

The fish runs, pink salmon and Pacific herring, collapsed in the early 1990s. The salmon came back in 1996 but the herring, the main forage fish of whales, seals, sea lions, bigger fish and sea birds, never recovered, Ott said.

~~
~~

The extent of the hit on herring wasn't seen until 1992 and 1993. A computer model that wasn't updated predicted 120,000 tons of herring would return to the sound to spawn in 1993. In reality, 20,000 tons returned and many of them were diseased, she said.

"Overall, the situation is pretty grim," Ott said. "The spill monkey-wrenched an entire ecosystem so (Prince William) sound is recovering unevenly because it was 'oiled' unevenly. The elements of the ecosystem are interconnected."





Time magazine


Pacific herring — a keystone of both the commercial fishing industry and the marine food web in Prince William Sound — were spawning at the time of the spill, and were hit particularly hard. "The herring stocks still haven't recovered," says Colburn.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1887165,00.html#ixzz0cWrwq00K

[JohnWxy]

20. Oil contamination of oceans in general

http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/oceancolor/additional/science-focus/education/shuttle_oceanography_web/oss_122.shtml


The amount of petroleum products ending up in the ocean is estimated at 0.25% of world oil production: about 6 million tons per year. Seagoing tankers carry 60% of all oil extracted. The oceanic pollution is caused when these ships flush their tanks with seawater. A smaller percentage comes from passenger ships and freighters draining water ballast from their fuel tanks (Monin and Krasitskiy, 1985).
The greatest volume of petroleum products dumped into the ocean is carried there by rivers. It represents more than triple the quantity coming from all tankers and other ships. Oil and other petroleum products are discharged into rivers and the ocean by many industrial enterprises, including oil refineries and oil storage installations, The quantity of petroleum products dumped each year into the sewage network by gasoline stations twice exceeds the amount resulting from ship disasters.
Locally, especially in coastal regions, a sudden spill of oil into the sea can have catastrophic consequences that are usually short-lived. In the case of the Kharg Island spill in the Persian Gulf, the flow into the sea has been nearly continuous since 1982. As a result, an entire fishing industry has been destroyed, complete populations of some fish species are now extinct in that habitat, and desalination plants have become inoperative. It is unlikely that the Persian Gulf waters will return to normal in this century.


I wonder what the volume of the Persian Gulf is in gallons???

What is the volume of water, in gallons, fouled by these discharges? 6 million tons per year will foul a volume of water many times the volume of oil disharged. I couldn't begin to guess how much water that would be. And how do you value the loss of marine life?

[Name removed]

21. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[JohnWxy]

22. looking at ALL the costs, how many lives does a gallon of gas cost?

or did you think Cheney invaded Iraq because the people who attacked the WTC were there?

Cost of Iraq war

~~
~~

Here are some statistics on what the Iraq war (taken from think tanks such as the Brookings Institute and from the media) has cost the U.S. as of 1/21/09 due to Bush’s folly of inserting us in the middle of a civil and religious war:

4,231 U.S. soldiers killed; 30% of them younger than 22 years old

30,984 U.S. soldiers injured, with 20% of them having serious brain or spinal injuries

30% of U.S. soldiers develop serious mental health problems within 3-4 months of returning home and suicide rates in the U.S. Army hitting an all-time high in 2008

One TRILLION DOLLARS (that’s $1000 billion) through October 2009 in U.S. taxpayer money (this figure was updated 10/25/09)

$390,000 per year to deploy just ONE U.S. soldier
142,000 – 148,000 (depending on whose statistics you use) troops in Iraq currently
513,000 U.S. troops deployed since 2003; 197,000 of those more than once and 53,000 more than 3 times
According to February, 2007 Congressional hearings (and that was two years ago so the number is probably much higher now) an estimated $10 billion wasted and mismanaged in Iraq

Now add to those staggering numbers the impact on the Iraqi people:

An estimated more than one MILLION Iraqi citizens killed as of August, 2007 (according to the Opinion Business Research survey); the official documented number around 100,000
2.25 million Iraqis displaced inside Iraq and 2.25 million Iraqis who are now refugees in Syria or Jordan as of May 2007; an additional 840,000 people displaced since May 2007 – a total of well over 5 MILLION Iraqis displaced

A note: Syria has refused to allow the 1.5 million who came there to work so many of the refugees have been forced to send their daughters – even as young as 5 or 6 – to clubs to dance to get money unofficially, becoming the family breadwinners. The girls make usually $20 to 30 per day in the clubs and the fathers of these girls act as pimps for work outside the club. These girls and their families are casualties of the U.S. War on Iraq.
(more)
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I wish everybody when they pump gas into their car would think not how much it costs them a gallon in cash but what the human costs of that gas are.

[GliderGuider]

23. Time to start a new thread.

You started off trying to claim that producing ethanol to 3% of the water that producing gasoline does. Now that your argument has been shot full of holes you're dragging in stuff like this.

IMO water use is a red herring issue. Most water used in any industrial or biological process doesn't vanish, never to reappear. But it can change its location (as in pumping it from the Ogallala aquifer to irrigate corn) or be polluted to unusability like in the tar sands. Trying to decide how much water use matters in any given process is problematic.

I agree with your argument about thinking beyond the cost in dollars. However, for me that is what has kept me from using biofuels of any sort in my car. I agree that oil sucks. I personally can't wait for the day that we don't use any hydrocarbon fuels at all. But you'll never advance your case for ethanol by using mendacity and misdirection.

[JohnWxy]

26. don't acuse me of dishonesty in my appeals. I addressed the water issue in the thread (at link):

As I said, I don't know what the final answer for water "usage" to obtain gasoline is.

"What is the volume of water, in gallons, fouled by these discharges? 6 million tons per year will foul a volume of water many times the volume of oil disharged. I couldn't begin to guess how much water that would be...."

I just think the calculation as it stands doesn't include all the water consumption involved. I used the EXXON Valdez example because it points out that when there is a spill it takes many years for the environment to recover. THe water "consumption" in the EXXON-Valdez case also involves a whole fishery being decimated, a food source virtually wiped out and livelihoods extinguished. THIS kind of water 'consumption' is something more than just competing for a resource. This water is ruined for it's most basic purpose - to enable living things to survive.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=225581&mesg_id=225912
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The amount of petroleum products ending up in the ocean is estimated at 0.25% of world oil production: about 6 million tons per year. Seagoing tankers carry 60% of all oil extracted. The oceanic pollution is caused when these ships flush their tanks with seawater. A smaller percentage comes from passenger ships and freighters draining water ballast from their fuel tanks (Monin and Krasitskiy, 1985).
The greatest volume of petroleum products dumped into the ocean is carried there by rivers. It represents more than triple the quantity coming from all tankers and other ships. Oil and other petroleum products are discharged into rivers and the ocean by many industrial enterprises, including oil refineries and oil storage installations, The quantity of petroleum products dumped each year into the sewage network by gasoline stations twice exceeds the amount resulting from ship disasters.
Locally, especially in coastal regions, a sudden spill of oil into the sea can have catastrophic consequences that are usually short-lived. In the case of the Kharg Island spill in the Persian Gulf, the flow into the sea has been nearly continuous since 1982. As a result, an entire fishing industry has been destroyed, complete populations of some fish species are now extinct in that habitat, and desalination plants have become inoperative. It is unlikely that the Persian Gulf waters will return to normal in this century.


I wonder what the volume of the Persian Gulf is in gallons???

What is the volume of water, in gallons, fouled by these discharges? 6 million tons per year will foul a volume of water many times the volume of oil discharged. I couldn't begin to guess how much water that would be. And how do you value the loss of marine life?
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What is the water impact of making gasoline? I don't think it's been accurately calculated. The water fouled by obtaining oil must be counted too, although I doubt that it is.

The economic cost of gasoline most definitely supports biofuels. If you considered all the costs. (There are economic costs to securing mid-East oil too.)


I then sought to remind readers (after considering the water usage issue) that when you look at the issue of the "cost" of gasoline, it involves more than just the economic costs. THis is not intended as misdirection. It is just something I think this is worth reminding people of(which you agreed with).


To Me it's not about winning debates (with some of the people on THIS site?????)., it's about clarifying an issue. WE do not have the luxury of taking very long to get around to cutting GHGs. There is no other cost effective alternative to the ethanol we are now producing that will produce comparable GHG reductions - NOW. Can it be produced more efficiently? YES (e.g. CHP, closed-loop). Can it be USED more efficiently? YES (turbo-charging and D.I. to take advanatage of the higher octane). Will we develop more efficient technologies or feedstocks in the future? I sure as hell hope so! But feedstocks or technologies Hoped-forin-the-future don't get you GHG reductions RIGHT NOW. But RIGHT NOW, what else do we have? Name one.

[bhikkhu]

24. Thats like saying smallpox is better than malaria

The figures are pretty arbitrary anyway, depending on how a plant is set up, but neither is a sustainable or clean solution for anything. Lifestyles must change away from massive frivolous energy consumption; ethanol is a side issue, really.

[PavePusher]

25. How much of the water is continuously recycled...

and how much is put back into the run-off stream (and with what pollutants/additives)?

As long as what is released is clean and close to the volume initially contained, no problems.