OT Hydrogen economy, not?

Do you have a source for that view?

Economically? How?

Cheers, James Arthur

The furthest back I can find an article with online free access is at New Scientist 2007, but many people in the industry have pointed out that at present bio-ethanol really only works for equatorial countries.

Until we have the ability to ustilise cellulose waste that is. The huge subsidies that the US gives its grain farmers for this are an insane market distortion. There are other non food grade source materials:

And some of them could be economically and energetically viable. Corn ethanol would not fly without all the government grants.

At the moment there is no realistic economic process, but that may change. The Brazilian system uses the cellulose as fuel to power the distillation. It also produces a lot of smoke...

Regards, Martin Brown

** Posted from **

Thanks Martin.

Since o Gore said he was proud to have *saved* ethanol in 1998 (in the speech I linked on the Clinton Administration website archive), o that he cast the tie-breaking vote to do this, o then went on to praise the stuff as helpful to the environment, o and since the ethanol of the day was corn-based,

I wondered where Balanced View got his/her idea environmentalists had always opposed ethanol from corn. Al supported it.

Looking back, it's worse than I thought, really. It looks like Mr. Gore knew full well that ethanol was marginal:

"Let me just say, you know this whole business about ethanol and farm-based fuel products, right now the reason we don't have more of it is it takes about seven gallons of gasoline to produce about eight gallons of ethanol. But we are funding research, which is very close to making a breakthrough that is the equivalent of what happened when crude oil was broken down so that it could be refined into gasoline. And when that happens -- when that happens, you'll be able to make eight gallons of ethanol for about one gallon of gasoline, and the whole world will change. That is what Al Gore has been doing the last eight years. (Applause.)" --President Bill Clinton, Sept. 21, 2000

The ethanol was corn-based, with hopes for cellulosic:

"And the big thing that's coming up in this area is, before you know it, I believe we will crack the chemical barriers to truly efficient production of biomass fuels. One of the reasons you see this whole debate -- in the presidential campaign, if you're following it, you know the big argument is, is it a waste of money to push ethanol or not, if it takes seven gallons of gasoline to make eight gallons of ethanol. But they're on the verge of a chemical breakthrough that is analogous to what was done when crude oil could be transferred efficiently into gasoline. And when that happens, you'll be able to make eight gallons of biomass -- not just from corn, but from weeds, from rice hulls, from anything -- for about one gallon of fuel. That will be the equivalent therefore, in environmental terms, of cars that get hundreds of miles a gallon. And the world, the environmental world, will be changed forever. And that's -- one-third of our greenhouse gas emissions are in transportation." --President Bill Clinton, Jan. 21, 2000

Such lofty promises, such fabulous technology "just around the corner, solutions to all our problems, almost ready," ...and still not. Fuel cells, electric cars, hydrogen, free clean power...what we all want, promised by leaders who can't deliver. Politics.

I'm not trying to rain on Al, just dispel the wacky, wrong, farm-lobby conspiracy thing. It's just one of the green myths, another being that "fabulous technology is out there, but 'the bad people' won't let you have it."

Too many greenies are meanies: blaming, angry, accusing others, and wrongly. That doesn't help.

Ethanol is a disaster wrought by environmentalists. Passion's great. Let's make the world better, but let's make sure the numbers work first. Much harm can be done if they don't. Like starving off the world's poor, and mowing the rainforest to grow biofuels.

No more 'ethanols.'

Best regards, James Arthur

In James Arthur writes: [ snip ]

- Thanks for finding those quotes (which mesh with my fading memory cells...).

Well, while things have improved incrementally in the production efficiency, we've yet to see any dort of "breakthrough".

- So a small number of plants, and lots more research... would make sense. But sure as hell not what we've been doing.

--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
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[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

I was actually horrified at Martin's first link-- the US, currently making about 9e6 gallons of ethanol for fuel--triple that of a few years back-- presently intends to quadruple that yet again, to 35e6 gallons a year.

With corn the only contender, that's going to come from corn.

That's an amazing way to burn gasoline, topsoil and food plus increase emissions all in one fell swoop.

Yikes.

Regards, James Arthur

"James Arthur" wrote

Yes, the US is not exactly specializing in doing things intelligently right now. It's all warm fuzzy emotionalism. It's like our country is being run by a 13yo girl.....

** Posted from **

Obama hasn't been elected. Well, not yet. Then you will see what a warmm and fuzzy little girl can do to a country.

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If you have broadband, your ISP may have a NNTP news server included in
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Sporadic E is the Earth\'s aluminum foil beanie for the \'global warming\'
sheep.

Excellent research and citations.

One thing that needs to be challenged is the whole idea that technology can somehow increase the energy available from that ethanol.

IMHO, when he compared the possible technological improvements in production of ethanol with those of gasoline from crude, that was a grave distortion. Taking a barrel of crude and removing the gasoline and then converting some of the remaining hydrocarbons to gasoline ('catalytic-cracking' for example) is one thing. Technology improvements have meant you can get a larger fraction of a barrel of gasoline from a barrel of crude (you still don't get

42 gallons of gasoline from a barrel of crude however).

But take all the ethanol out of a 'barrel of ethanol' and you don't have anything left to 'convert'. No technology can put more than a barrel worth of ethanol in a 'barrel of ethanol'.

The only 'improvement' technology could make would be to be able to grow more corn with each gallon of oil (most farm machinery doesn't use 'gasoline' but rather diesel fuel). But such improvements in farm tech would be a general boon to farmers, not just ethanol. Improvements in distillation efficiency seem unlikely.

daestrom

But Melis' system doesn't require cows, pastures, etc. All it requires is sunlight and water. See the difference??

daestrom

And land. Those bioreactors consume space. And I thought the manure reactors were large...

Michael

So why aren't the farmers burning ethanol in their tractors?

John

Because their tractors require diesel?

Some diesels can take dimethyl ether (DME) as a substitute fuel, but I wonder about the safety of that, since ethers form explosive peroxides over time (especially diETHYL ether). Not sure if DME is exempt from this phenomenon - that's a question for the folks at sci.chem...

Michael

Hey, I got a B- in thermodynamics.

John

Or because they wouldn't have enough ethanol left to sell.

John

Martin Brown wrote in news:d7f74$4881fa74$ snipped-for-privacy@news.teranews.com:

"While corn kernels are mostly starch, corn stover and switchgrass are primarily cellulose."

Switchgrass is a prarie grass, i.e. native to North America, that does not require watering or fertilizers (except perhaps in *extreme* droughts). I have several stands of Switchgrass cultivars in my yard as decorative grasses, and in the Houston-area climate, the 'Dallas BLues' cultivar, with average lawn care, went from a few stems in a 6" pot the first March or April it was planted, to what is currently (i.e. mid-July of its second year) an impenetrably dense 2-ft-diameter mass of 7' tall deep blue-green foliage and developing seed heads. It literally "grows like a weed". It also grows on marginal land. Corn OTOH, even in the same area (my neighbor grows corn in his back yard) requires insecticides, soil amandments, weed-killers, fertilizers, and a lot of irrigation.

*Plus*: corn is an annual - the whole plant gets ripped up, which leaves bare soil behind that is subject to erosion. Prarie grasses OTOH are famous for the very dense, deep perennial root systems that prevented erosion. The foliage of switchgrass dies back, but comes back year after year. Harvesting would be similar to harvesting hay - it'd be mown and baled. In this sort of wet warm climate, it could probably be harvested twice a year, maybe three times.

So it's one thing to talk abotu biofuels, but a differnt thing to talk about using food crops as biofuel sources. But that's a "complexity" that people don't want to wrack their brains over.

Which could prob. be greatly reduced, since, IIRC, our pollution standards are different from those of Brazil.

James Arthur wrote in news:V5pgk.60$GI.6@trnddc05:

Since when is Al Gore "environemntalists"?? He is *one person*. And he has nothing whatsoever to do with *my* views about the environment, conservation, and concerns that things like heavy metals, PCBs, and other pollutants are getting into children's lungs, and into their stomachs (and from there, setting up permanent residence in their organs).

I was driving in the 70's so I well remember sitting in gas lines - and I also well remmeber the arguments, fist fights, and even shootings that occurred because some people thought they had more right to the gas than others, and some people cut into line and set others off, and all the rest of the actions that ripped off the veneer of civilization.

*MY* concern over the combination of ddecreasing petroleum reserves and increasing demand has nothing whatsoever to do with Gore and his mansion and his fancyass private jet and his kingly lifestyle, and for that matter, has nothing with whether some people like to drive a two-ton gas guzzler two or three blocks to go pick up a half-gallon of milk. My concern is having seen what I saw while sitting in those gas lines in the 70's, seeing how *quickly* people tore off their thin veils of civilization and turned into snarling hyenas ready to fight and even ready to kill. [snip]

Too many *PEOPLE* are meanies. Too many just stick their fingers in their ears and shout/scream invectives at "the other side". People are so busy calling each other bullshit like "goddamn leftist loonie" or "friggin' neocon nazi" that they have forgotten we are all AMERICANS. If poeple whould set all the the BS partisan pettiness aside for five minutes and at least *try* to actually *listen* to one another, and actually *discuss* their concerns, we'd find that, as AMERICANS, most of us share a set of principles and a concern for the future.

Yes, we *will* disagree abouthow to best provide for teh futrue and how to best be true to those principles, but one central AMERICAN value has always been meeting the otehr guy halfway, so that *both* will benefit.

As I look around and increasingly see poeple descending into the sort of childish "Me First!" egocentric self-aggrandizement that leads to an absolute certainty of one's own monopoly on Truth, I know one thing: if we fail as a nation, it will not be because our AMERICAN (not "Liberal" and not "Conservative", not "Republican" or "Democrat", but AMERICAN) Constitution wasn't up to the task, but rather, because *we* will have

*made outselves* unworthy of its ideals and its principles.

Ethanol was ONE proposal offered in an attempt, albeit a vain one, to try to implement a gradual adjustment to new world conditions.

It should never have become an excuse for refusing to change bad habits.

More like, no more of making excuses for not changing bad habits, and no more finding half-assed ways to avoid implementing real changes.

Jonathan Kirwan wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

*Cool*! ;)

THat's why I like you r posts, you have a lot fo good information and express it inan informative, level-headed way.

I saved this one BTW - I didn't know all of that.

I do know tht it's possible for sweage treatment plants to be self- powering as well (my "first life" was as a bacteriologist, and I had an interest in "water bugs" ;) ).

The thing I enjoyed was the "McGuyver" quality of it, becuase, if I understood the story correctly, he figured it out himself an dset it all up himself. I like that sort of independent problem-solving spirit ;)

- Kris

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in news:lO2dnZjh2-gkjxzVnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

IIRC, this sort of thing is being implemented (along with garbage-tapping) in many poor areas of the world which can't afford petroleum, need energy, and have plenty of, er, "fermentables".

Sometimes I think that the US's high density, so to speka, of advanced technology actually stifles a lot of people's creative thinking...I wonder whether too many peole are too accustomed to saying, "Why on earth do [an activity] like that? There are machines to do it, all you do is plug in the machine".

Which plugging-in, of course, misses the point ;)

ntly

ng

=2E.. and a frightened one at that.

Fortunately it looks like the publics has had enough fairy tails for now. Even McCain doesn't refer to the money fairies very often in his speeches any more.