Did you know it takes 323,680 pounds of water to fuel up using 28 gallons of e-85 ethanol?

Question

Math

28 x 85%= 23.80 (amount that is ethanol)

1,700 x 23.8 = 40,460 gallons of water.

40,460 x 8 = 323,680 pounds of water

40,460 / 7450 = 5.43 Number of Semi loads of water

It takes 1,700 gallons of water to make 1 gallon of ethanol

It takes 323,680 pounds of water to fill a 28 gallon flex fuel vehicle using 85% ethanol.

It takes 43.45 semi loads of water to fill 1 take of e85 in a flex fuel vehicle. 40,460 / 7450(gallons you get in a semi load)

It takes 5.43 semi loads of water to fill a 28 gallon flex fuel vehicle using e-85 ethanol.

http://climate.weather.com/articles/nebraska081007.html

Answer 1

Bingo

and read on

The production adds more to Global Warming than all of the motor industry in the world combined

As well as destroying more natural resources than any things else ever before

contaminates air ,soil and ground water ,because of the use of chemicals (herbicides,pesticides ,fertilizers).

And wipes out all the animals that previously lived in the destroyed Forrest's

all in the name of conservation and saving the Planet

Insanity abounds uncontrolled we must be ruled by Transient Aliens ,with little love for this Planet ,who have an alternative home to return to

QUOTE

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.

Answer 2

Your numbers are wrong.  From your article:

"A longtime analyst of ethanol production disagreed with Martin and questioned his figures, saying it takes an average of about 15 gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol — much higher than the roughly three gallons of water per gallon of ethanol Martin cited."

Nowhere near 1700 gallons of water for 1 gallon of ethanol.  You're off by at least 2 orders of magnitude.

Answer 3

I bet you hate the idea of wind energy too because you claim birds will run into them and die!  This is just another case of evironmental extremism over something you don't know about.  

I know let's calculate how much water it took to create a gallon of the oil thats in the shale...  lets see 60 million years x an average of 900 billion gallons of annual rainfall = 5.4x10^19 gallons of water.  And then whatever it takes to get it out?  That's a lot of F'ing water.  And you just wanna waste it by digging up that shale.

Shame on YOU!

Answer 4

That's exactly why we need to drill for more oil in the US as well as build more refineries.

It's the environmental activists that won't let us do this, but they seem to be fine with terrorist nations owning all the oil.

At least we know whose side they're on.

Answer 5

I don't care how much water it uses.  The planet is 80% water!  And water is renewable.  Oil is not.  Ethanol is made in America.  Oil is made in Saudi Arabia.  We are not in danger of a water shortage. And the water used to make it is reused, over and over, and over and over.  I'll use ethanol anyday over foreign oil.  Fuel from the midwest, not the mideast!!!!

Answer 6

did you know that oil comes from the land of terrorists and muslim fascists.

I would pay 5 dollars a gallon for ethanol if it meant saudi arabia and Iran could finally return to its shriveled, desolate wasteland in the desert that it deserves and had been for millenia.

Answer 7

I'm a Russian, hope my English isn't too bad.

Though I don't know ethanol production technology, amount of water (if any) needed to be chemically converted to produce ethanol is comparable to resulting ethanol amount. Such huge numbers are may be due to water used as a medium for chemical reactions. That water can be used repeatedly, or purified and returned to the environment. Chemically converted water (for example during ethylene hydration, or water used by plants for carbohydrates production) again becomes water after ethanol burning. So, all water used for ethanol production is borrowed for a short time, not destroyed forever.

But byderule is right about deforestation and huge amounts of land needed for bio-fuel production. That's the true problem.

I think many other initiatives, environmentalists are rashly trying to force people to accept may have similar disastrous consequences.

It is good not to depend on Mideast or Venezuelan oil, but may be a more realistic choice is to develop nuclear energy, and electricity accumulation. And don't forget well-known, approved Fischer-Tropsch process, in its form called "coal liquefaction".

Answer 8

Just looking at your link what jumps out at me was also my first thought while reading your post

"But roughly 900 billion gallons of rain water falls annually in Lincoln County", Martin said, addressing the public perception that ethanol production takes an inordinate amount of water.

"These plants are not consuming a huge amount of water," he said.