How does ethanol help the environment?

Question

to grow the corn trees have to chopped down.

plants to make the stuff have to be built.

Answer 1

***********copied (from E85fuel.com website)******

E85 has the highest oxygen content of any transportation fuel available today, making it burn cleaner than gasoline. Fewer exhaust emissions result in reduced production of smog and a decline in respiratory illness associated with poor air quality. E85 also reduces greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide, the main contributor to global warming, as much as 39 to 46 percent compared to gasoline.

Since E85's main ingredient is ethanol, which is non-toxic, water soluble and biodegradable, E85 is simply a better fuel for the world around us

***********end Copy******************

CO2 released in emmissions from plant based fuel is also used & needed for plants to grow, hence the CO2 is recycled.

VS

CO2 released in emmissions from petroleum based fuel has been been burried below the earth (fossil fuel) & becomes ADDITIONAL CO2 released into atmosphere.

Just as much fossil fuel & energy is used to produce fuel from oil as to produce fuel from plantlife. ( oil refinery vs ethanol distiller)

By-product of ethanol production (distillers grains) can also be sold back to farmers/ranchers as high protein feed for livestock- hence recycling waste from production.

Ethanol fuel comes from renewable sources. Fossil fuel does not.

(And besides all that.....we don't have to send military troops to Illinois & Iowa to protect our interests in farmers fields...LOL )

Answer 2

Corn is produced mostly in the midwestern states (Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, Etc.). I live in Illinois and there is way more farmland than trees. As a matter of fact, a lot of farmers end up selling their property to developers to build houses because the farmer cannot make enough money to sustain his/her farm. So buying ethanol helps the farmer by keeping their farm going, helps the enviorment by not producing as much pollution as regular gasoline and keeps the money in the US helping our economy .

Answer 3

There is no waste, what is not sold for fuel can be drunk. Its quite good if it has some flavour added though. Also live corn breaths the exhaust from cars to make more ethanol. It really is good stuff.

Answer 4

corn is a plant to, don't forget.

so is soybean.

rather than drilling more hydrocrabons up from the ground and putting the CO2 into the atmoshere as they are burned , biofuels allow us to recycle what is already there.

Answer 5

I does not emit as much carbon emissions as regular gasoline does!

Answer 6

Right now the ethanol production is a very expensive process, but industry experts predict that it will be more cost-effective and environmentally friendly in the next 15 years, as more ethanol plants open and more farmers plant field corn that will go to the ethanol plants.

Look on www.ethanol.org for more information on ethanol's positive impact on the enviroment

Answer 7

not sure what a corn tree is but corn is a renewable resource that can be grown year after year.  Fossil fuels take millions of years to form (coal or oil).  Also, corn is not the most efficient source, switch grass  which is something that can be grown just about anywhere and is not expensive to harvest.  The key is that it is renewable each year, not a million years.  It burns cleaner, has a slighlty higher octane but it is just a bridge to the future.  Ethanol and hybrids are for now but hydrogen fuel cell cars (in production in limited supplies right now) will be what we are all driving in 25 years.  No pollution, no end to the source so long as there is water.  The key to delivering hydrogen for consumers will be that Wal mart (with a store in every area of th country) has agreed to be a hydrogen station.  Ethanol is better, cheaper, more plentiful and renewable and its for now.  Hydrogen is what the future is.  Oil and the combustion engine have had a good run but its coming to an end.

Answer 8

Ethanol is a start, but it's far from the solution.  It actually takes more fossil fuels to create ethanol than is saved by its use in automobiles.  It's considered progress simply because cars are able to run on 15% ethonal but the progress doesn't address the whole issue of growing corn, creating ethanol, transporting it to consumers, making cares that run on higher percentages of ethanol, etc.

Answer 9

it does not help the environment at all. ethanol is a farse created by the bush administration to make americans feel like they are helping the environment instead of buying foreign oil. ethanol production takes up millions of acres of farmland and the production and refining methods create the same amount of pollution as gasoline refining. plus ethanol gets lower fuel efficiency than gasoline, although ethanol burns cleaner it is not a solution to our energy needs and energy independance it is harmful for the environment and ecosystems and is not sustainable for the amount of cars there are in america. we will see hybrid hydrogen play a huge role in cars going forward with many car companies already having prototypes to be ready by 2010. gm also produces hydrogen and hybrid buses for commercial fleets and municipalities which leads me to believe technological breakthroughs with hydrogen technology are not far away.

Answer 10

Ethanol is a horrible idea.

1. It takes more than 1 gallon of gasoline to just make 1 gallon of ethanol.

2. It cost $1.38 for each gallon of ethanol in government subsides. the tax payer is paying for this.

3. Your vehicle gets between 24%-34% less fuel economy than gas.

4. According to ABC 20/20 #1 myth in america

5. Visit these web sites- www.cato.org (cato institute), ABC 20/20 website, Read the Patzek report.

6. It has much lower BTU rating than gas.

7. All 112 Ethanol plants use coal to burn their plant when they can use ethanol- To Expensive

8. Came out 3 weeks ago. It is worse on the enviroment than gas, this was 18 year study.

9. Requires 65 cm water to grow a bussel of corn-

10. Food prices have skyrocketed- Beef, Chicken,Dairy anything with corn, because corn has doubled in price in 2 years.

11. Soil errods 18x faster than it can replunish itself.

12. Putting fertilizer and pesticide in our groung water.

13. ADM plant in Clinton Iowa puts out 20,000 tons of polluntants when the industry standard is 100 tons.

14. For every $1 ADM makes in profit, it cost the tax payers $30.00 (www.cato.org) ADM makes 70% of the usa ethanol.

15. If we used all of land to grow corn, it would only reduce 1/2 of 1 percent of the foreign oil indepence.

15. We have over 400 years of oil in Colorado in the Green river basin, infact more oil hear than than the entire world combined. www.oil-price.net/index- This can be found anywhere. It was in the 2005 federal energy budget. Can pulled and refined for $12.00 a gallon.

16. It is so corrisive it can NOT go down our pipelines. It must be shipped by train or truck. More fuel used!!!

This is just a start of info I have.

Must watch the ABC 20/20 and cato institute info.

Hillary Clinton has voted 17 times against ethanol and now she is for it. Wonder why- I know. If are against ethanol in the midwest- you will never get more than 5% of the vote.

I could go on forever.

Want to read about Oil Shale in Colorado

http://www.ostseis.anl.gov/guide/oilshal...

Answer 11

Honestly, ethanol is kind of a farce.

The problem is distillation.

It takes nearly as much energy to ferment and distill ethanol as you get *from* the ethanol!   You have to burn a gallon of fuel to get 1.3 gas-equivalent gallons of ethanol* ... it's almost a waste of time.

Here's what the State of Minnesota says about that:

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

Biodiesel doesn't require distillation, so you get 3.2 gallons of biodiesel for your 1 gallon of fuel... and that's only because of inefficient fuel-heavy farming techniques.  And farm implements are diesel, so the farmer can use his own biodiesel, as Dr. Diesel intended when he designed the engine.

The problem with ethanol is that it's a desperate attempt to adapt crop fuels for a type of engine designed for gasoline.   It would be better to design a type of engine to run crop fuel.  That's what Dr. Diesel did 100 years ago.

Answer 12

Ethanol is a joke,a study was done and they concluded that 200 more people a year will die from pollution if every car used ethanol.Ethanol will also destroy your engine,its much more potent than gasoline.Not only that,if you took every bit of land in this country,you still could not grow enough corn to fuel the whole country.Our best bet is either hydrogen or electric cars.They can make cars like that,the only problem is that they are not in high demand.So don't expect anything to get fixed any time soon.

Answer 13

Corn? That's probably the worst way to produc ethanol possible. Switchgrass is what this nation was covered with before the white man came along. And Switchgrass produces about 5X as much energy as it takes to produce. You don't need to chop trees down. In 1900, 1/3 of all cropland was devoted to animal feed, ie, transportation. We can do that again. As to the 'stuff that has to be built', that'd be a family owned STILL. You can get really nice ones online these days.

Answer 14

Well it's best for the environment if sugarcane is used like in Brazil.  The key point is CO2 is removed when the plant is grown, so the carbon cycle is relatively closed.  (except for the energy required to ferment the ethanol)

Also even if it's not efficient yet with corn, we need to be practicing and experimenting because we WILL run out of oil sooner than later and need something to replace it.

And from the looks of things, hydrogen is not going to be the easy alternative we all thought it was going to be.

So I agree with you, it's easy to say that it's even harmful to the environment, but these plants will soon be built just like we build coal fired power plants for electricity, and based especially on the nations energy security, this needs to be done, despite what people who would like to debate this issue say.

Answer 15

ethanol only fuel will never happen..

cause we will need more farmers growing more corn...

the price will go up, and people will have to start paying more for food then..

if you think that gas prices are high, wait till food prices go way up..

Answer 16

Its renewable, thats whats good about it. you can keep making the stuff.