Bio-diesel versus ethanol - What makes more sense?

Question

I am just wondering if bio-diesel just makes more sense as a long term alternative energy solution than ethanal. Does it make more sense to turn corn into biodiesel than ethanal? We all know the critisisms of corn-based ethanal.

Answer 1

Forget the environmental aspects, since that isn't what sells in America.  Bio-diesel provides better performance and mileage than mineral diesel, ETOH is less, biodiesel can be made from the waste oils which are now going from KFC, McD's, ect to the landfills.  I have a friend who runs his G.I. Blazer on the old oil from behind the fast food restaurants, and all he does is filter it to get rid of the particulates.

Answer 2

you tel me

They are  intending to replace most of the indigenous Forrest's in the world ,with mono cultures for the production of Ethanol,

Non sustainable, chemically grown ,heavily irrigated (with water needed for communities)one specie Forrest's,that have only plagues of insects as fauna which are controlled with pesticides.

Killing all bio diversity,in both flora and fauna ,adding to the destruction and extinction of species ,like nothing we have ever seen before.

All in the quest for alternative energy and to save the Environment ,

The irony here is that the growing eagerness to slow climate change by using biofuels and planting millions of trees for carbon credits has resulted in new major causes of deforestation, say activists. And that is making climate change worse because deforestation puts far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire world's fleet of cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships combined.

"Biofuels are rapidly becoming the main cause of deforestation in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil," said Simone Lovera, managing coordinator of the Global Forest Coalition, an environmental NGO based in Asunción, Paraguay. "We call it 'deforestation diesel'," Lovera told IPS.

Oil from African palm trees is considered to be one of the best and cheapest sources of biodiesel and energy companies are investing billions into acquiring or developing oil-palm plantations in developing countries. Vast tracts of forest in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and many other countries have been cleared to grow oil palms. Oil palm has become the world's number one fruit crop, well ahead of bananas.

Biodiesel offers many environmental benefits over diesel from petroleum, including reductions in air pollutants, but the enormous global thirst means millions more hectares could be converted into monocultures of oil palm. Getting accurate numbers on how much forest is being lost is very difficult.

The FAO's State of the World's Forests 2007 released last week reports that globally, net forest loss is 20,000 hectares per day -- equivalent to an area twice the size of Paris. However, that number includes plantation forests, which masks the actual extent of tropical deforestation, about 40,000 hectares (ha) per day, says Matti Palo, a forest economics expert who is affiliated with the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica.

"The half a million ha per year deforestation of Mexico is covered by the increase of forests in the U.S., for example," Palo told IPS.

National governments provide all the statistics, and countries like Canada do not produce anything reliable, he said. Canada has claimed no net change in its forests for 15 years despite being the largest producer of pulp and paper. "Canada has a moral responsibility to tell the rest of the world what kind of changes have taken place there," he said.

Plantation forests are nothing like natural or native forests. More akin to a field of maize, plantation forests are hostile environments to nearly every animal, bird and even insects. Such forests have been shown to have a negative impact on the water cycle because non-native, fast-growing trees use high volumes of water. Pesticides are also commonly used to suppress competing growth from other plants and to prevent disease outbreaks, also impacting water quality.

Plantation forests also offer very few employment opportunities, resulting in a net loss of jobs. "Plantation forests are a tremendous disaster for biodiversity and local people," Lovera said. Even if farmland or savanna are only used for oil palm or other plantations, it often forces the local people off the land and into nearby forests, including national parks, which they clear to grow crops, pasture animals and collect firewood. That has been the pattern with pulp and timber plantation forests in much of the world, says Lovera.

Ethanol is other major biofuel, which is made from maize, sugar cane or other crops. As prices for biofuels climb, more land is cleared to grow the crops. U.S. farmers are switching from soy to maize to meet the ethanol demand. That is having a knock on effect of pushing up soy prices, which is driving the conversion of the Amazon rainforest into soy, she says. Meanwhile rich countries are starting to plant trees to offset their emissions of carbon dioxide, called carbon sequestration. Most of this planting is taking place in the South in the form of plantations, which are just the latest threat to existing forests. "Europe's carbon credit market could be disastrous," Lovera said.

The multi-billion-euro European carbon market does not permit the use of reforestation projects for carbon credits. But there has been a tremendous surge in private companies offering such credits for tree planting projects. Very little of this money goes to small land holders, she says. Plantation forests also contain much less carbon, notes Palo, citing a recent study that showed carbon content of plantation forests in some Asian tropical countries was only 45 percent of that in the respective natural forests. Nor has the world community been able to properly account for the value of the enormous volumes of carbon stored in existing forests.

One recent estimate found that the northern Boreal forest provided 250 billion dollars a year in ecosystem services such as absorbing carbon emissions from the atmosphere and cleaning water. The good news is that deforestation, even in remote areas, is easily stopped. All it takes is access to some low-cost satellite imagery and governments that actually want to slow or halt deforestation. Costa Rica has nearly eliminated deforestation by making it illegal to convert forest into farmland, says Lovera.

Paraguay enacted similar laws in 2004, and then regularly checked satellite images of its forests, sending forestry officials and police to enforce the law where it was being violated. "Deforestation has been reduced by 85 percent in less than two years in the eastern part of the country," Lovera noted. The other part of the solution is to give control over forests to the local people. This community or model forest concept has proved to be sustainable in many parts of the world. India recently passed a bill returning the bulk of its forests back to local communities for management, she said.

However, economic interests pushing deforestation in countries like Brazil and Indonesia are so powerful, there may eventually be little natural forest left. "Governments are beginning to realize that their natural forests have enormous value left standing," Lovera said. "A moratorium or ban on deforestation is the only way to stop this."

This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ - International Federation of Environmental Journalists.

© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service

Source: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/...

Answer 3

Biodiesel.  It doesn't impact feedstocks for other industries the way corn does.

In my opinion, ethanol is a dead end.  I work for a major oil company and I can see we're only going with the flow on ethanol right now, while we investigate other, more sustainable options.  We're actually being forced to convert to ethanol in some areas by the states, just to appease the various lobbyists.

F'ing politics.  Let economics rule the day and we'll all win.

Answer 4

Bio-diesel is made from oil crops; ethanol is made from sugar or starch  crops. Coincidentally, corn fits into both categories, but it isn't the best choice for either.

It is important to note that over 75% of corn crops and over 90% of soybeans go to animal feed.

Biodiesel is best made from true oil seeds like rapeseed (aka, canola), peanuts, sunflower, and (to a lesser yeild) soybeans. If a press is used to extract the oil, the remaining product (called "seed cake") can be used as animal feed. However, chemicals are most commonly used, which leaves a useless by-product.

Ethanol is best created from a sugar crop like sugar beets or sugar cane (where they can grow). This removes the need to convert the starch to sugar, like corn requires.

If we use higher yield crops, we can produce more biofuels with fewer acres.

Answer 5

Biodiesel makes more sense, because it can go straight into a diesel engine and run it without any modification whatsoever.  

But, if you want to follow the crowd, Ethanol 85 standardized is becoming cheaper to produce thanks to a revolutionary production technique involving microbes and the parts of corn that are unused (stalk, husk, roots, etc).  This production technique was developed by a professor at The University of Florida at Gainesville.  

However, back to biodiesel.  The costly thing about that is creating it.  You take vegetable oil that you would buy in bulk and run it through a biodiesel converter/purifier which might cost your leg (about $6,000 I believe). That you can run in your house off of AC electricity for, I believe,  70 cents a gallon?

If you want to learn more about biodiesel, the website to see is www.lokeytrucks.com.

I believe the most info is under the accessories tab.  

Ethanol might be a better choice, simply because the government is pushing for it and will aid in the building of "ethanol stations" or amendments to existing gas stations that would carry ethanol, making it more convenient.  

But, after all, Hydrogen could be used, but corporations, mostly oil, are paying big money to keep that under wraps.  

I would too if I had that much revenue to forfeit otherwise.

Answer 6

Biodiesel makes a lot more sense.  Plant oils can be burned directly in diesels, but plant starches must be fermented and then DISTILLED, which is an extremely high energy cost because of the latent heat of vaporization.

Just compare

http://www.mda.state.mn.us/renewable/ren...

The diesel engine was designed to run plant oils (without biodiesel conversion.)  The only reason to make biodiesel is to make the fuel thinner, which spares modifying the engine slightly.  On large, industrial or fixed engines, like oil well pumps or locomotives, you would just modify the engine to run plant oil directly.

Answer 7

I run a small corn-marketing business, where I sell corn for heating purposes.  I have a farm background, and I'm a chemistry and physics teacher so I know the technical background behind this problem.

Neither one is a reasonable solution.  Even though I make money from it, the money involved in building a biofuel industry is essentially from government subsidies.  There is a whopping amount of government grants that go into building biodiesel and ethanol plants.  When the corporations are investing "free" money, it really looks like they are profitable, when it's all a huge scam that the taxpayers are helping to push because they've been told that it's a solution to declining petroleum reserves.  A few people, including the politicians that own stock options in these companies, make truckloads of money.  But that doesn't mean that it will be a long-term solution.

It takes an enormous amount of energy to grow a crop.  Fertilizer takes an enormous amount of energy to produce.  The Haber process, which converts atmospheric nitrogen into a usable form for fertilizer, is one of our largest industrial process consumers of energy.  The energy inputs to produce fertilizer are always ignored when calculating the energy inputs to grow a crop in order to make the energy balance sheet show a positive.

If ethanol was a solution, farmers would be using it to drive their tractors, trucks, and combines and to fuel their grain bin dryers.  They don't, because it's not feasible.  If biodiesel was a reasonable solution, farmers would be using it to run tractors, trucks, and combines and to dry their grain.  Again, they don't, because it's not feasible.

We don't have a fuel crisis.  We have an energy crisis.  One of the things we need to do is learn to use less energy.  We already have inexpensive cars out there that get around 40mpg.  But.....American consumers won't buy them.  They don't like driving a lighter, smaller car.

Probably our biggest untapped resource in farm country is wind.  We can farm wind with windmills now almost as cheaply as we can with conventional power plants.  If we did it in mass production, we could do it more cheaply.  The government needs to divert the funds it is spending on biodiesel and ethanol plants as a political statement into wind energy, which is actually a common sense approach.  That will help to solve some of the energy problem, if we are willing to convert more of our energy consumption over to electricity.

Eventually, the lifestyle of suburbia will have to end.  We can get back to a sustainable energy-poor future if we return to the old model of rural, small town, and urban like we had a century ago.  We can farm wind as we also farm on small farms.  The big farms run by huge machines and few workers will have to go as petroleum depletes.  We're already seeing the return of very small family farms, this time in the form of organic farms.  We can farm that wind as well and send its electricity into the cities, where the city dwellers can rely on public transportation as they did a century ago.  You can argue that wind energy is unreliable.  I agree, the wind doesn't always blow.  But, unfortunately, we no longer live in a world where energy is cheap and available.  We're going to have to scrape by on what we can manage with, and that means making do.  Wind is one piece of that puzzle.

Scientists are not going to "find" more energy sources.  They can't "create" it.  It's impossible.  People that think "scientists will solve this problem" are burying their heads in the sand and failing to look at reality.  We can only redivert energy that already exists.  Take it out of a coal mine and burn it, for example.  One of the fundamental things students learn in science class is "energy cannot be created or destroyed", yet we, and our leaders, somehow think that science will get around that fundamental law of science.  Won't happen.  We have to find ways to live on less, and to tap into the sustainable sources that are around us.  Neither biodiesel nor ethanol is sustainable, primarily because their high production is dependent upon fertilizer and fertilizer is dependent upon petroleum energy and lots of it.

Answer 8

Ethonal is a Bio-Diesel

Answer 9

I think Byderule has called this one right.  Neither one makes sense because of the diversion of flora from their normal job of merely cleaning the atmosphere to the task of dirtying it up again.

As far as clean fuel is concerned, hydrogen makes more sense because it can be manufactured from any water source (such as treated municipal wastewater) using any clean source of electricity thats convenient, which is hopefully solar, wind or nuclear.

Answer 10

I can't read a single thread on bio-diesel/ethanol without someone mentioning that hydrogen can be "produced from water."  We get our hydrogen for fuel cells from either crude oil or natural gas.  To make it from water requires more energy than it will create, thereby making the energy SOURCE something else.  Although make it nuclear energy and you've got me sold.

Answer 11

Neither.  Both generate as much greenshouse gases as does oil.  And, both will increase the cost of food.  The only practical solution is nuclear.  This will reduce the use of fossil fuels (coal and oil).  And, we can use the electricity to power electric cars in cities.

Answer 12

hey dude i got one better bio-eth dude its all natrual think of this u got exrta grass and don't want compost on ur property right? well sell it to make bio-eth! bio eth is a ethanol that can be made for almost anything plus if u didn't hear there is a short in good farm land + the goverment is trying to reduce the amount of water we use for the crops and the taxes! ohh the taxes! they are higher than gas at 10.5 cents per gallon! well in neberaska anyway. and i can even hook u up with info on eth-hybrids! (totaly sweet, i know). haller back!

Answer 13

Please do not wounder .Use facts No 1 any food for human, used for either Bio-diesel or Ethanol will create food shortage or price rise,one can increase production of raw material to stabilise the supply and demand.For ethanol I am of the opinion  Molasses (end product of Sugar making) is the best Raw material ..According to me 1.Palm Oil. 2.Jatopa Seed Oil.3. Algae   surplus edible cooking oil,Used cooking Oil,Non edible Oil such as Caster seed Oil etc, are the best raw material for the production of Bio diesel.The raw material I am suggesting   are wounder raw materiel which want affect human food supply chain .Best thing   which can happen is, for years we are trying to subsidies Agriculture sector instead, that sector will start creating revenue , small villages will start to grow because of income increase  to farmers.When farmers income go up by 10 to 12 fold tale me what happens to Family,Country and world economy/?Raw Material for both Bio Diesel and ethanol which I am suggesting  makes seance after my own experience in Aggro industrial sector  in Africa, India, Europe and USA..I will go for Bio-diesel.

Answer 14

ethanol, the untied states is already one of the leading corn producers in the world. We have so much of this stuff that can be turned into ethanol that it would not be a huge strain on the economy.

Answer 15

Neither.

You have to burn both Bio-diesel and Ethanol creating co2 a green house gas.

We should skip the transitional step and go straight to the green fuel. Electric.

Solar, wind, Geo-thermal, tidal are a few methods of making green electricity.