How can you deny the benefits of Ethanol, When you dont know what your talking about?

Question

I read these people in here, talking about the energy required to produce Ethanol compared to gasoline, and they have no idea what there talking about. Same goes for using up all the food sources. Polution rates at Ethanol plants. Cost...and so on. I really wish these people would get there facts together then make a argument rather than repeating someones fabrications.

Answer 1

You're right that nobody's starving because of ethanol production. But the energy yield of ethanol really is wasteful

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

Contrast to biodiesel.  Those farmers should be growing oil crops

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel#Y...

Ethanol also happens to be a lousy fuel - corrosive, low energy content, incompatible with gasoline, and can't be put in pipelines.   Biodiesel is a great fuel, compatible with diesel, cleans the engine and lubricates better than mineral diesel.  Also no sulfur, required for 2007+ engines.

Biofuels - right idea, wrong one though.

Answer 2

For your information, it takes a tremendous amount of irrigation.  In Nebraska, up to 18" of water is applied to many (most) of the corn fields to achieve maximum production each year.  Some states may not have the irrigation developed because they typically have enough rain instead (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa).  If the field is irrigated, 1 section of ground (1 sq. mi.=640 acres) 312 million gallons per year.  You could supply water to a community of nearly 8,000 people for a year including the watered lawns and golf course.  I would like to see how much energy is used to produce 1 gallon of gasoline, I've never seen it, yet a tremendous amount of energy must be consumed to pump it from the earth, transport it to the refinery, then transport it to my local gas station.

Regarding Bio diesel, it is not the perfect fuel either, the engines must be designed in a completely different fashion to handle the pressures of the combustion process.  This causes the diesel engine to cost $5,000 more on most vehicles.  Bio-diesel is not a good option in northern regions, it tends to gel up in cold weather.

In the end, there is no perfect answer, we all must make a decision as two where our priorities lie and what works best with those.

Answer 3

Yeah, it's a shame that ethanol turned out to be such a bust when everyone thought it would be a good solution.

Not only does it cause more pollution to produce, but when added to gasoline it actually lowers fuel economy, believe it or not.

Added to the fact that it causes pollution to water supplies and raises the costs of all food products to more than double their previous price and you have a total boondoggle.

The lobbyists are the only ones who won.  Well them and the farmers, I guess.

If you need to verify any of this, just Google "ethanol production."  Here are some links to get you started.  You'd be surprised what you could learn if you applied yourself.  (ok, so the last one is Wikipedia and that's been proven to be full of false info, but I'm sure you can find some other sources if you look for them.)

Enjoy.

Answer 4

There is absolutely no disputing the fact that using corn to produce ethanol has caused the price of corn to rise significantly. Corn is a major ingredient in many food products and those prices have risen. Using food to produce fuel is just plain stupid when there are vast supplies of untapped oil and gas that the greenies won't let us touch.

Answer 5

Pretty easily I guess....

Read the articles on renewableenergyaccess.com for some ideas from people who know a little more about what they are talking about.   Still, there is no clear cut answer even with them.

Answer 6

Strange coincidence, I stumbled on your pompous "question" right after attending a meeting of my environmental advisory board where we chatted about the problem. A couple of problems with ethanol: 1) Burning ethanol produces more carbon dioxide than burning gasoline does (this from our Ph. D. chemist) and 2) Using maize as a feed source may make the farmers happy but it raises the costs of all grains and the products made from them. Anything that raises the cost of beer can't be good.

Answer 7

Whether it is efficient or not, to produce ethanol you must clear land (wildlife be damned), fertilize it, spray it with herbacides and insecticides, and divert water to irrigate it.  

Don't you think clearing woods and grassland to grow ethanol is destructive?

Well, then Eastern Kansas isn't in the corn belt.  The fact is is that fields that had gone fallow since farming bust of the sixties (a good thing, btw) are now being tilled.  A full move to ethanol would put the entire great plains under the plow.  Arable land is the world's most precious natural resource.  It is more valuable than the ethanol it would produce.