Alternative Energies, - and Recycling

[Angus]

I promised this.
I am reading up on alternative sources of energies than fossil fuels. So, the thought is to try to stall the increased CO2 with some alternatives.

E85 might be a part.
Hydrogen from various sourced power plants might also.
And since it's all the cow's fault anyway, here's what you do:
(Got to stick to my name in  a positive way )
http://www.mbl.is/mm/frettir/erlent/frett.html?nid=1284323

So remain civil, and on topic, will you...

[FBBone]

I dont think ethanol is the way to go.......

Ethanol Fuel from Corn Faulted as ‘Unsustainable Subsidized Food Burning’

David Pimental, a leading Cornell University agricultural expert, has calculated that powering the average U.S. automobile for one year on ethanol (blended with gasoline) derived from corn would require 11 acres of farmland, the same space needed to grow a year's supply of food for seven people. Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion into ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make one gallon of ethanol. One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTUS. Thus, 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in it. Every time you make one gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTUs.

Mr. Pimentel concluded that "abusing our precious croplands to grow corn for an energy-inefficient process that yields low-grade automobile fuels amounts to unsustainable subsidized food burning".
 

link

[Chairboy]

A reminder, Hydrogen is an energy STORAGE device, not an energy PRODUCING device.  So's petroleum, of course, but the energy stored in oil was put there millions of years ago instead of right now for Hydrogen.  So you still need a power source that can crack water and compress the hydrogen, and that's a net negative energy operation.

Nuclear power is currently the answer.  Pebble bed reactors make safe & cheap generators possible, and even the founder of Greenpeace has made peace w/ how clean nuclear is compared to what we're using now.

On the last mile part of the problem, I think ethanol is going to be a stop-gap measure, but the longer term liquid fuel needs is going to be stuff that runs in diesel engines.  A diesel is much more fuel agnostic than any gas engine.  A diesel-hybrid could run on just about anything potentially, and easier than a normal diesel because you wouldn't have the 'cold fuel' issues that diesels running vegetable oil have right now (presumably, if you have big honkin batteries for your hybrid, you can spare a couple amps in the beginning to warm up the fuel until the engine is at operating temperature).

[crockett]

Corn ethanol is one of the worst.  They like to lump it in with the other ethanols like sugar ethanol with is much cheaper to produce and better burning. However corn ethanol is nothing more than a sham being pushed by the powers that be.

As far a bio diesel's..yea I agree they will likely have to switch big trucks and so on over to that in the future.  One of my uncles has a bunch of property here in Florida. I'm talking several thousand acres.

He has a bunch of fish farms and does a lot of work with the university of Florida. I haven't talked to him in a long time, but I heard he's in some testing program that is using algae to produce a type of biodiesel. (Algae Oil)

You can research the technology here http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Biodiesel_from_Algae_Oil

I'm not on the up and up on it, but it seems to be one of the best solutions I've seen to date, for the amount of product that can be produced per acre of ground.

You will notice also corn is the worst of all the natural grown fuel sources, according to the charts on that page.. yet it's what our govt is trying to push. (gotta love big money lobbyists) Yet I've never seen any of them mention Algae Oil and it seem to be the best of the bunch from what I've read.

[john9001]

there are much better crops than corn to make ethanol from, but i'm too lazy to look them up.

[lazs2]

The reason corn is mentioned so much is because... it grows here... unlike sugar beets and sugar cane...  do we want to be dependent on brazil and cuba instead of arabs?

I do think it is quite amusing tho that the greenies who have stopped all the building of nuke plants are now being hoisted on their own petard.

lazs

[Sabre]

If we as a nation decided to be energy independent in 10 years, made it a national goal in the same vein as Kennedy's reach for the Moon, it could be done.

First would be a goal to make 80% of our commercial and residential power come from nuclear power.  The pebble-bed high temperature gas reactor (HTGR) is the logical vehicle, as it is inherantly safe (the laws of physics make it literally impossible for the reactor to melt down), scalable, and offers the unique feature that the spent nuclear fuel is impossible to weaponize (making it an excellent means to dispose of old nuclear weapons as well).  A concerted and apolitical effort would be required to streamline the nuclear regulatory process to get this leg of the plan on-tap, but it is emminantly do-able.  The technology is relatively mature.

Second, quit pushing corn ethonal, instead pushing for hydrogen powered cars, as well as more efficient sources of diesel substitutes, such as algea-oil.  This would require government leadership and incentives to encourage states to build the infrastructure, and for the automotive industry to accelerate their efforts to produce H-powered cars.

Third, revamp environmental laws to allow the US to more easily access the vast reserves of clean coal, oil, and natural gas we're currently ignoring, such as ANWAR, the Gulf of Mexico, and off the east and west coasts of the US.  These would be time-limited access agreements, lest the oil companies get too comfortable with the arrangements.

[Angus]

Originally posted by FBBone
I dont think ethanol is the way to go.......

 

link

Ahhhh, the Pimental report.

Here, from Wiki:
"Skeptics caution, however, that these potential benefits are balanced, and possibly offset, by a significant cost in the form of farmland. It has been estimated that the land area required to operate a motor vehicle for one year on pure ethanol, 11 acres, could feed 7 people over the same timeframe.[2] The logical consequences of these competing land uses are that widespread use of ethanol would lower food production from existing agricultural land, potentially inflating food prices due to less supply. Alternatively, the agricultural industry could maintain existing levels of food production and create more farmland — through deforestation — upon which to grow crops for energy production. Ironically, this could lead to the acceleration of the greenhouse effect as well as the loss of biodiversity.

It should be pointed out though, that many of these concerns are derived from studies by a single author (Pimentel) which have been rebutted by several reports.[3][4] Pimentel's argument, for example, is based on long-outdated technology, understates the energy costs of refining and transporting petroleum fuels, and neglects to account for the energy value of the byproducts of the ethanol production process, including that of the high protein cattle feed."

Pimentel's stuff is in short....rubbish.
BTW, I know a farm who's main output is liquor. They however feed dozens of cattle from the rests, since it's high quality protein feed. If you leave such major things out of the equations, youre not worth your salt.
Have fun with the article reading, and especially the part of E85 being used in race engines



linkie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E85

[lazs2]

so angus.. if the one study done on corn to ethenol is flawed... show us some info that it golden.

I think that a lot of mexicans right now might argue that ethanol production is indeed harmful to food production.

In brazil... the whole country has had to turn to nothing but sugar production for ethanol.

Nope.. we need nukes and we need more supplemntal solar panels on homes to take the load off the grid.

With the increase of solar for home use and the nuke plants there is no reason that we couldn't have electric for almost nothing.

Once you have abundant and almost free power... whole worlds open up that we can only imagine.

If I could charge one for free... I might build an electric two seater that did o-60 in 4 sec with a range of only 60 or so miles.. fun to run errands with.  

hydrogen would become practical (or more so) with free power generation.

oil demand would drop.

The key is cheap electricity.    The key to that right now is nukes... and domestic solar.   Solar for each house to take the load off the grid.

right now..  a solar system for a home costs about $30,000 and cuts dependency on outside agencies to about 10% or less of what it would normally cost.   This price will continue to go down.

That doesn't take a computer model to see.. not in 100 years either.. in 20 or less it will be half as much money.   No global climate model puts this in.

You will be able to buy systems that make you free of power companies at your local home depot for a few thousand dollars soon enough.. a decade... maybe two...

plugging in an electric vehicle will become an attractive proposition.

lazs

[Angus]

Some error here:

"In brazil... the whole country has had to turn to nothing but sugar production for ethanol."

Brazil=Coffee.
"https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/br.html#Econ"

And from Wiki:

"The country produces a total of 18 billion liters annually, of which 3.5 billion are exported"
More:
"Coffee, soybeans, wheat, rice, corn, sugarcane, cocoa, citrus, beef"
Main agricultural products. And they ain't starving....

As for nukes...it's mostly Uranium.
It's not endless...says Wiki:
"The ultimate supply of uranium is believed to be very large and sufficient for at least the next 85 years[32] although some studies indicate underinvestment in the late twentieth century may produce supply problems in the 21st century.[39] It is estimated that for a ten times increase in price, the supply of uranium that can be economically mined is increased 300 times"
And the sun? Producing Ethanol is one way of harnessing the suns energy, - through photosynthesis. But as you say:
"With the increase of solar for home use and the nuke plants there is no reason that we couldn't have electric for almost nothing.

Once you have abundant and almost free power... whole worlds open up that we can only imagine."
Well, basically your roof on a private home would support the energy needs for your home. Anyway, here I agree with you on a good purpose.
And a whole world opens up. Personally I think it's not that simple many things need to contribute. Panels. Windpower. Bio-fuels. Deep drilling. etc etc.
So let's roll up the sleeves and do some calculations and try to dig up some numbers, the thread was aimed at that and not for debating.
Solar panel output pr. sq?
Wind power? I have incredibly misleading numbers there, and always wanted to use an alternator (from tractor) as a testbed. Thoughts? Numbers?

[DieAz]

http://www.electricvehiclesusa.com/   some of the Warp series motors .

We have heard of uses of this motor, developing over 2,000 hp

read somewhere some guys drag race electrics.

http://store.solar-electric.com/  

http://store.solar-electric.com/wind.html   hmm where'd did I see the other one.     oh yeah

http://www.windstreampower.com/Wind_Whisper_500.php  nice amount of watts output.

[lazs2]

Like I said.. stop reading wiki...  brazil had converted most of its agriculture to growing sugar to make ethanol...  they live in a place that this is practical.  It is not so for places that can't grow sugar crops as easily as say... corn.

I don't have the numbers for power per square foot for solar but the systems that anyone here can buy right now... can bring your power bill down to $0  yep... zero zip nada.

They cost about $30,000 and have ten year warranties.   There are 10's of thousands of them up and running.

The price will go down every year.

This is a practical application... for the domestic grid..  for laterals not mains.  point of source use.   It gets much murkier when you try to build solar generating plants for entire cities.

But who cares?    the real problem is electricity for homes on the grid.   factories and such can be supplied from close by nuke plants.  The grid is the problem and the solution is looking us in the face.. it is inevitable.

It will happen.. just as you couldn't prevent everyone from having a home computer and the internet or cell phones... everyone will have cheap power from solar panels on every building...  we will simply take it for granted in a few decades.

lazs

[Curval]

lazs is right about the sugar in Brazil actually.

Heck...my clients who grow cane for sugar production are now taking a serious look at ethanol also.

[Trell]

Yes but beets are grown all over this country. We are also one of the largest producers of sugar in the world.

[Maverick]

Anyone who has been to the South, read that Louisiana and surrounding areas, knows that both sugar beets and sugar cane grow "here".

The use of corn for ethanol has, in it's infancy already had a negative impact on the economy of this country and Mexico. The price for corn has gone up causing a shortage in Mexico for human food purposes and is directly responsible for the price increases in all food products related to corn in the US. Have you priced the cost of a gallon of milk in the last few months vs last winter? The same for the price of corn oil, corn meal and even beef since corn is used as feed and the very corn used for feed is the same as used for ethanol.

IIRC it wasn't the govt that started pushing ethanol, it was the "greens" as a viable energy alternative. It is short sighted and at best a stop gap alternative for petro fuel in transportation alone and will never be able to carry the transportation load that petroleum does now.

That also applies to bio diesel. Where do you thing that the bio mass comes from? One large source is corn oil in the form of cooking oil. Now we have 2 competing oil alternatives all vying for the same agricultural product, corn. There isn't enough farm land in the US to produce Independence from petroleum using agricultural products and that includes farm residue. Several industrial applications already use non food farm / agricultural residue to power machinery as part of their recycling. Once competition starts in the use of the same material it will cause a corresponding increase in the price of goods and production of them. It also takes energy to produce fuel from the biomass.

Anyone who thinks that it's possible to produce food at the current prices and also produce biomass in adequate amounts to replace petro fuel in addition to the infrastructure needed to provide it has never taken an economics class. It's the old beans vs bullets example from econ 101 with the limitations on the economy and methods of production of both.

We need a viable alternative that will produce usable fuel without crippling other parts of the economy or reducing the supply of food. That is assuming we are going to remain using the same kind of transportation engines we have today. A new means of powering transportation would reduce the need for petroleum dramatically in a matter of 10 to 15 years. It will take time as the current means of transportation will not be replaced overnight. The infrastructure for a transition does not exist and the choices currently in use will need to be used until it does. It will also require the use of current technology until wear out to avoid a crippling stop of credit / money in the economy. Imagine being told you must turn in your current car / truck / motorcycle for a govt. stipend of pennies on the dollar (if that much) and buy a replacement "green" vehicle at full cost.