OT Hydrogen economy, not?

I love sourdough also. Made it regularly for about 2 decades. Then tough times, contamination of the start and i killed it. It came from an 1949 Alaskan start that family provided. When my schedule gets a little better i will make a start from scratch.

It is a life form sir, (lactobacteria acidophilus) it breeds.

It is easy enough to do. Just be sure to wake it up and feed it once a week or two.

Gosh Don, it is quick and easy to make your own. And it freezes well, especially after cooking.

Sourdough is based on a pH-mediated equilibrium of a yeast and a bacteria. Legend has it that people journeying West in wagon trains has their starter yeast go bad, get sour, but they had no way to fix it. By the time they got to San Francisco, they'd developed a taste for it. People who make sourdough keep a small starter culture from the last batch. To make bread, you add flour, water, sometimes a little salt, let it rise, pinch off a bit for next time, and bake most of it. In many cases, nothing else has been added for well over 100 years, tens of thousands of generations.

The bacteria outnumber the yeast by numbers cited as between about 20 and 100:1.

John

=BF=BD

Not true. Not even remotely true.

I suggest you review:

Particularly, the audio segment starting about about 12 minutes into the discussion. You will also be suprised to learn that pasta, even though it is made from white flour, it NOT rapidly absorbed unless it is overcooked, (in which case, the molecular bonds are mechanically broken down due to excessive heating PRIOR to ingestion).

The length or complexity of the mono-, di-, or polysaccharide chains has absolutely nothing to do with the rapidity of carbohydrate conversion.

-mpm

But they would quickly on the horns of a dilemma. Cane is cheap enough for fuel vs. cane sugar for food is so expensive that we must justify exorbitant price supports.

I make such stuff regularly and eat it up. But 100,000 and up Scoville is really HOT. Tobasco is too vinegary and not over 5000 Scoville.

The price support is to allow the local producers to compete with imported sugar, with an additional profitable market for their cane, they have an added means of staying in business. It won't matter their share of the market as long as they can be assured of a demand for their product.

The sugar industry needs a smaller part of the world cane production, they can afford to not buy from any but the lowest priced suppliers, it's a buyer's market. The subsidies are so that the local suppliers with higher costs won't always be the costliest source, and not be able to sell their crop.

The additional market and more demand for their product can be nothing but good news.

Luck; Ken

Cane sugar for food is only so expensive because of protectionist import tariffs added to make the domestic sugar cane and beet farmers happy. Farmers votes are important.

In the EU the cost of beet produced sugar is 2-3x that of cane sugar.

I don't know what the figures are for the USA. I can see that there are major import protection quotas and tariffs in place, but the information on USDA and other sites is so opaque that it is very hard to see the wood for the trees. I think that is the intention.

I noticed in the process of looking for this info that the price of true sugar syrup and HFCS have swapped over so that soft drinks companies using the previously cheaper HFCS are losing money on it now.

Anyone give figures for US sugar import tariffs? I could find the quotas but not the extra taxes added to support domestic production.

Regards, Martin Brown

I have never understood why my tax money is used to support the sugar industry. Sugar is not a necessary foodstuff, it is more of a human vice like tobacco. If it became extinct tomorrow, we would all be better off & our taste buds would ultimately adjust to its absence. Of course, the diabetes industry would take a heluva hit.

Start reading ingredients and you will quickly see that sugar is added to 80 to 90% of the stuff we eat, but our bodies don't need any of it. For example: If you want to eat peas without added sugar, you must buy fresh peas, frozen peas, or perhaps some high-priced "health" brand of canned peas since almost all canned peas have sugar added. Why? Why not just leave it out?

Vaughn

I like truck stops; they tend to have good food. Of course, they always serve the truckers first.

John

They've also got a feature that long distance, tired out, lonely and sweaty truckers appreciate.

Now get your mind out of the gutter.

I'm talking about showers.

Thanks Martin, I nearly missed your post in this giant thread.

~~~ "Energy outputs from ethanol produced using corn, switchgrass, and wood biomass were each less than the respective fossil energy inputs. The same was true for producing biodiesel using soybeans and sunflower, however, the energy cost for producing soybean biodiesel was only slightly negative compared with ethanol production.

Findings in terms of energy outputs compared with the energy inputs were: o Ethanol production using corn grain required 29% more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced. o Ethanol production using switchgrass required 50% more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced. o Ethanol production using wood biomass required 57% more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced. o Biodiesel production using soybean required 27% more fossil energy than the biodiesel fuel produced

(Note, the energy yield from soy oil per hectare is far lower than the ethanol yield from corn). o Biodiesel production using sunflower required 118% more fossil energy than the biodiesel fuel produced" ~~~~

That seems stunningly pessimistic--I'm not sure I completely believe it, since farmers are pretty hip to economics and wouldn't be growing biodiesel for their own use unless they'd added up the numbers and thought it made sense.

I was interested in this because of the 2001 date you mention, but I didn't see anything from Uncle Al or 2001. That's the same link as you gave above--perhaps a slip?

I poked at some Sierra Club archives and found little on the topic, and certainly none of their usual protests against corn ethanol in or near 2000, for whatever that's worth. Later, around 2006, they began voicing doubts and recommending specifically against corn sources.

I'm pretty satisfied that, whatever the position of "environmentalists," it was Mr. Gore's advocacy and Mr. Clinton's support that got ethanol going in the US, starting around 2000.

Regards, James Arthur

My fault - the paste buffer contained the wrong link.

Still there is a net benefit searching again with different keywords gave an even earlier post in 2000 (excuse a few opaque chemistry jokes in the text). I remember one of the threads...

And he was wrong about the longer term economics in Brazil... The 2001 post was more directly ethanol vs gasoline

I should add that I ocassionally cross swords with Uncle Al when he is in environmental vandal mode. His politics are whacky but his chemistry is mostly rock solid. There may be others in the same vein even earlier.

Several other posters in these threads will give you some idea of the issues from a chemists perspective at that time.

Quite possibly. Although it is worth looking carefully to see which lobbyists were buying votes for this particular enviroscam.

Regards, Martin Brown

Okay, discredited, if you prefer.

So, you're saying Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore were in ADM's pocket?

Ah yes: "Ethanol As an industry leader with decades of experience, ADM can deliver consistently high-quality ethanol. As the largest producer of fuel ethanol in the United States [...] nationwide network of railcars, trucks, barges, and storage facilities[...]. As the phase-out of MTBE in gasoline continues, we can help you meet your needs for oxygen in reformulated gasoline by offering high-quality, environmentally friendly fuel grade ethanol."

FWIW, from that same page: "Biodiesel In addition to ethanol, ADM is a world leader in another renewable fuel: biodiesel. This renewable, emissions-reducing fuel is already becoming the ?green fuel? of choice in Europe and Asia."

Cheers, James Arthur

It's a historical, political thing, according to a PBS show I saw years ago on the subject. (I looked, but couldn't find it.)

Basically, a 'gimme' to sugar cane farmers, and a prime reason for clearing the Florida Everglades.

More recent stuff here, if you're interested:

taste

all

You're singin' to the choir brother.

Cheers, James Arthur

FWIW, the paper you linked earlier (Pimentel & Patzek, NRRethanol.2005.pdf) says cane sugar ethanol was a money- loser, sold at subsidized prices, and that Brazil had to abandon those.

Quite illuminating. It makes one wonder why we chose this path, and why we continue to pursue it.

I think for most Americans the answer is this effort *was* previously relatively insignificant, of no consequence, and a way of supporting alternative fuels possibilities.

That's no reason for going whole-hog now though.

I've reviewed Pimentel & Patzek, & reluctantly opine they've done their homework well. Biodiesel and bioethanol as fuels don't look attractive at all--they destroy energy.

Viewed differently, plants convert sunlight to energy with an average 0.1% efficiency (0.25% for corn) (P&P). Subsequent conversion to ethanol requires highly energy-intensive multiple distillations, resulting in a net energy loss.

OTOH, burned directly for fuel, several crops have very positive energy balances, esp. pelletized switch grass for heating.

Cheers, James Arthur

Given a sufficient supply of money, _any_ politicain can be in somebody's pocket. ADM is a study of this feature in the extreme: they get governernment subisidies, put part of the money in politicians campaign funds, then ask them for more subsidies.

Later, rinse, repeat.