Why haven't we gone to Ethanol?

[VtecMini]

I was going to say that, but may I also add that in Europe bio-diesel (also a renewable energy source) is getting more and more attention. There is a French racing series with Peugeot coupes that run on biodiesel. Interestingly they are also sponsored by Total, as the pic shows

Henk! Don't use the D-word, it scares the americans!

[henk4]

Henk! Don't use the D-word, it scares the americans!

one more reason to keep on using it

[culver]

Where did you hear that ethenol takes more energy to produce than oil? grains grow on their own with solar energy, so thats pretty much free. Then to harvest, that takes a good ammount of energy in the form of tractors and the like. However, I don't think it takes close to as much energy as drilling for oil. After harvesting, the mash is fermented in water with yeast, this takes negligable amounts of energy. Then it is heated in order to distill the water from the alcohol. This takes energy, but it does not need to be heated nearly as long or as hot as crude oil, so you save on energy costs there. Transportation costs are pretty much close to or the same as petrolium based fuels, so the comparison there is pretty much even. Also, with alcohol, the mash can then be sold off to farmers as high-quality animal feed. This serves to recoup some of the costs associated with destilling alcohol.

I heard it in my graduate level combustion engineering class. When you look at BTU's required to grow/dig up and process the fuel, ethanol isn't nearly as good as gasoline. Growing the corn/soy etc isn't the issue, it's farming it. You have to figure in the fuel consumed by the tractors and combines. Transportation costs are not that easy either. IIRC ethanol can't be piped all over the country like oil can. I think the issue is it absorbs water but I don't remember. In the US the midwestern states are happy about ethanol since it would increase the demand for farm products. States like California find it very troublesome because they have to figure out how to get large quantities of ethanol. As far as I know the US west cost gets it's oil from Pacific Ocean tankers. They don't bring it over land.
If I remember, I will try to find my old notes comparing the cost of "drilling and refining" various fuels. Ethanol wasn't very good compared to Methanol (produced from oil) and gasoline.

[taz_rocks_miami]

Henk! Don't use the D-word, it scares the americans!

D-word?? Democrats!!!!??? HHHAAAA!!!!! Wait a minute...I'm a Democrat

[LotusLocost]

Didn`t the Top Gear guys run a Volvo V70 (850?) TDI on peanutoil or some kind of soyaoil?? Think it was on Top Gear... some years ago..
It smelled like a fast food kitchen where ever you drove I can remember

[superart]

Culver, if you find those notes, would you mind scanning some in. I'd be very interested in takeing a look at it.

<edit>
btw, where do/did you go to school?

[culver]

I went back and looked at my old class notes (hand written). Happily this professor was very organized and his syllabus makes for a great index to the notes. Unfortunately my notes stop on 4/17 and the day we discussed future fuels was 4/22.

Looking back through the notes I realized just how much of this stuff I have forgotten (it was 10 years ago). This wasn’t an into type class. We spent a lot of time looking at mathematical equations discussing mostly turbine and diesel engine combustion and emissions. The class was worthwhile in two regards. First, it got me a summer job doing combustion analysis with Rolls Royce – Alison. Second, it convinced me that I did not want to be a combustion engineer for the rest of my life.

I did my undergrad at Vanderbilt and later did a masters at Stanford.

[superart]

hehe, too bad. Did something happen a few days after the 17th to make you forget about takeing notes on the 22nd ?

[culver]

Sure, it wasn't going to be on the final