Ethanol for dummies. Can someone please explain the basics to me?

[NNN0LHI]

If I have a corn patch that can produce 100 gallons of Ethanol yearly, and if all the equipment needed to produce that 100 gallons of Ethanol was able to use 100% Ethanol to plant, fertilize, dust, harvest, transport, and then turn the corn into Ethanol:

1. Would I end up with more gallons of Ethanol each year than I used?

2. Would I use more gallons of Ethanol each year than I produced?

3. Would it remain about the same?

I suspect this is a scam like a perpetual motion machine but I am not sure.

Don

[SoCalDem]

1. and kelloggs corn flakes will be selling for $7 a box..

:grr:

[texanshatingbush]

2. You would probably USE more gallons of ethanol......

Ethanol has a lower heat value than gasoline. Therefore a "gasoline combustion engine" would need to burn MORE ethanol to achieve the same power output of an engine running on gasoline. So you'd have to use MORE ethanol to accomplish the same work required to "plant, fertilize, dust, harvest, and transport the corn".

I guess a way of looking at it is that you get more "miles per gallon" from gasoline than from ethanol.

[robinlynne]

7. not sugar based ethanol. perhaps that applies only to the corn based US ethanol?

[wuushew]

3. I think the return on liquid fuel used is 8:1

most of your energy loss is to process heat and running distillation equipment.

[BrotherBuzz]

4. It is a scam but...

if you're growing grain, you've got a gravy train going for a change. Hell, now you should go out and buy an Escalade and help out GM.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Well, speaking on a thermodynamic theoretical level,

the growing corn converts the sunlight that falls onto it into chemical energy that is stored as carbohydrates in the plant, and these carbohydrates are then changed to alcohol in the fermentation process. Of course there are other inputs into the system, such as soil nutrients that need to be replaced by fertilizers. Also, it takes energy to plant, tend and harvest the corn. Then after the alcohol is produced, you have to distill it in order to concentrate it, which is a very energy-intensive process.

I'm told that the first attempts were actually endothermic--taking more energy than was produced. They say that the theoretical level is about 2:1--getting 2 units of energy for each 1 that gores in. We aren't there yet. More like 1.1 to 1.

[NNN0LHI]

9. That last sentence

Is that the amount of energy used just for distillation or for the entire process including everything?

Don

[Jackpine Radical]

19. Supposedly everything.

Nevertheless, straight solar, passive solar, wind, etc. make a lot more sense to me. I live in an area where a lot of corn is grown & the price is up by about 50% over a couple of years ago. Around here some people are just burning the corn in corn stoves for heat.

It's gonna be a long time before corn production stops using fossil fuel. There are 4 major fossil-fuel inputs into corn production. Diesel fuel for the farm equipment (honking big tractors, corn pickers, etc.); fertilizers (most fertilizers are fossil-hydrocarbon based); pesticides (ditto fossil hydrocarbons); and running the stills (natural gas & LP gas). Corn-for-fuel is seen by many as the latest boondoggle giveaway to Big Agra.

[robinlynne]

6. I dont know the answers to those questions, but I do know about ethanol.

in Brazil, ethanol has been around for 30 years. Ethanol is nothing more than alcohol. like the alcohol we all have in our bathrooms, or the alcohol in vodka for that matter. It can be made from just about any vegetable. It can fuel engines. There is no need to use corn. It is made from sugar cane in south america, which is cheaper to grow, does not need fertilizers, and grows faster. I would bet it can be made from bamboo, which is more sustainable than either corn or sugar cane and grows much faster. So what is good about ethanol, is that you can make it from any crop you have in any particular region. Brazil switched to ethanol 30 years ago, but the oil companies put so much pressure on the government that they moved back to oil, and are now using both. their cars can use either. brazil produces oil, but it is refined and sold back to Brazil by American companies, so ethanol is better for Brazil, oil is better for the US. Even in dry areas of the country, where few crops can grow, a native small coconut was successfully converted to fuel.

As for the ethanol program in the US, Jeb Bush is somehow in charge of it, and making large profits from it. So I don't believe our country has addressed it in any serious way yet. If one were to look at it from the environmental perspective, it would be easy enough to determine which crop is the best to use, and which would have lower environmental impact,and what the costs would be. I should add that in Brazil, when the ethanol program started, in the 70s, the government subsidized ethanol, so that when you went to the pump, you had a choice between gas at 3.00 a gallon, and ethanol at half the price. People bought ethanol fueled vehicles, and it grew. At that time the only difference was that carburetors didn't last as long in the ethanol cars, but that was many years ago.

[NNN0LHI]

12. I'm not so sure Brazil is a valid comparison

I believe most of the planting and harvesting of the sugar cane is done manually. We don't do that. Its all done mechanically here. And I don't envision that changing any time soon.

Don

[robinlynne]

14. got it. seems like corn is not the best ethanol source anyway. unless we were to use

the left-over parts of the corn. That would make more sense.

[PDenton]

8. the tractors you would use

would mostly all be diesel, so you wouldn't be able to use ethanol to make the crops. But suppose you could hypothetically, I'd imagine you would require alot of energy inputs to make and utilize ethanol from corn. Some of the energy will come from the sun, too.

Sugarcane or sugar beets are a much better source of ethanol relative to the energy input.

OTOH, even oil requires energy to extract, proces, and transport. There is no really "free" source of energy.

[NNN0LHI]

11. I meant if everything was switched over to Ethanol

The tractors. The planes to dust. The locomotives. Everything.

What then would be the net gain/loss?

Don

[PDenton]

18. The consensus is that corn ethanol

does produce a little bit more energy than it takes in. Maybe twenty percent more energy at most. Other sources of ethanol are more efficient and more competitive with gasoline. One disadvantage to ethanol is it cannot be used in a pipeline and must be transporte via truck or train.

Just to harvest 5 barrels of oil takes about 1 barrel worth of energy, which doesn't necessarily come from oil. And that's just the extraction process. I'm not too sure about the refining or transportation process, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were reduced to a 2:1 ratio in the end- twice the energy is outputted for every unit of energy inputted to make gasoline and get it to the pump.

[Orsino]

10. Think of it as energy storage...

...rather than as an energy source. Only the sunlight and CO2 are free.

[L. Coyote]

13. All you need to know if prices are going up dramatically for farmers.

So what if you have to burn half of the ethanol you produce?

So what if the price of food goes up 25% globally?

So what if this is not sustainable?

So what if the farmers investing in the numerous ethanol plants lose all their money?

So what if the future of food production is radically diminished?

It is all about making money today, building these plants.

[NMMNG]

15. National Geographic did a really good expose on ethanol

Check out their Website for more information on biofuels.

[ThomWV]

16. You Leave Out the 100 Pounds Per Acre of Nitrogen Fertilizer You'll Need To Get That Much Corn

And that fertilizer comes from Natural Gas.

[alarimer]

17. The amount of energy you get from an acre of corn is roughly the same as the amount put in

Estimates vary, depending on who is doing the estimating but it is pretty close. Because corn requires a great deal of fertilizer (made from fossil fuels) and the amount of energy required to turn corn into ethanol (this month's National Geographic compared corn ethanol to cane sugar ethanol and that made from sugar is much more rewarding in terms of what you get out of it), it is nearly a zero-sum game.

You can make ethanol out of nearly any plant material so I have no idea why we would want to make it from FOOD.

Some of the info from the article is here:
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2007-10/biofuels/biofuels-interactive.html