Not enough corn to make ethanol a true alternative to oil?

Question

my ultra conservative professor told me that there is not enough corn in the world to supply the USA with ethanol alternative fuel. i researched it online, but there seems to be quite a bit conflicting opinions. does anyone know?

Answer 1

the tree hugger will never believe you.

they are for quick fixes with out researching what they say.

IplayadoconTV this is for you

you will find if you research how many solar panel it would take to make hydrogen for the US

that for just the cars in LA county Calif about 1,000,000

it would take 21 sq miles of solar panels

and you want to put them in the desert southwest.

THINK AGAIN.

those of us that live in the desert southwest are tired of being the dumping place for the rest of the country's problems.

we are even tired of being the dump for LA calif problems.

first LA Calif took our water

then they wanted to dump there sewage and garbage out here.

plus the rest of the US wants to dump there nuke waste here

now every one want to build there solar plants here.

NO WAY KEEP YOUR JUNK IN YOUR OWN BACK YARD

try to build your solar plants in the desert and we will destroy them.

build your hydrogen solar plants in your own backyard.

Answer 2

No there is not enough corn. Ethanol caused the price of livestock feed and corn human consumption to go up. Guess what else goes up.The question should be is there an alternative to corn that is cheaper and more abundant. Yes and yes. First, the cost of producing ethanol is more than it is selling for. If it was not for the government subsidies, local tax breaks and local investors nobody would be building ethanol plants. The people building these ethanol plants are laughing all the way to the bank. They are working on everybodies money taking a cut for their pockets in the name of Gobal Warming. In the mean time the politicians close the domestic sources of oil (gulf of mexico, calif. and alaska) and force us to by OPEC Oil. I wonder what stock they own?

Research with sugar beets, sugar cane, and various grasses are in the works. Let's use a source we can increase. Corn seed this year is at a shortage because of ethanol. Farmers are forced to plant corn not suitable to their climates because that is all they can get.

Answer 3

That will take much more research than is possible to do on the internet.  There are stats that you just cannot get to from the web.

Also, you may not be taking into account that corn is actually FOOD not fuel.

If we put all of our food into our cars, then we won't eat.

It's your choice.

Whatcha wanna do?

Answer 4

What about adding sugar cane into that mix?

Answer 5

your professor is correct! if all the cars & light trucks now in the U.S.were limited to 50 gals of ethanol fuel per month & that ethanol was made from corn it would require 2 BILLION acres to grow the corn(with all the environmental destruction that would entail) the U.S only has about 800 MILLION acres of potential farm land.

the only reason corn alcohol is pushed as a solution(with a .51 cent per gallon subsidy) is because the first dem. primarys are held in Iowa where they like to grow corn, & the candidates dont hesitate to sacrifice whats good for the  country for their own short term personal gain.

for example 1 acre of corn can yield 370 gals of alcohol under ideal conditions.  that same acre planted in sorgum(which will grow anywhere corn will & use's less petro chemicals) can yield 900 gals. but they are used to growing corn in Iowa so the politicians pander to them.

nothing counts to politicians but politics!

Answer 6

Growing corn is environmentally destructive.  You must clear fields or woods (wildlife be damned), plow it, fertilize it, spray it with herbacides and insecticides, divert water to irrigate it and then process the harvest.  

Next time you drive out in the country, picture it plowed with a John Deere kicking up a cloud of dust.

Answer 7

Ethanol from corn is a political solution to a problem

that requires a scientific solution.  Growing corn is very

energy intensive.  This is not to say growing a different crop, say switchgrass couldn't help reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  Are you looking to reduce greenhouse gases, or just reduce pumping oil

from the middle east for our cars?  Substituting ethanol

for gasoline is basically a wash emissions wise.  The solution will probably be using hydrogen to power our

cars and homes.  Solar energy, especially in the desert Southwest, can be used cheaply to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.  Hydrogen is a very energy dense fuel.  They don't launch the space shuttle with diesel!  The only problem with the new hydrogen economy is trying to

store the hydrogen.  It takes a large amount of energy to compress the hydrogen gas into a liquid, and a huge amount of heavy equipment to store and transport it.  Now, if some bright engineering or physic student can figure out

how to store a large quantity of hydrogen gas cheaply our

problems will be solved.

Answer 8

He is correct.  We need to make a quantum leap in crop yields for biofuels.  Corn won't cut it.  

Corn ethanol isn't being done for environmental reasons anyway, it's for farm subsidies, support Big Agriculture (ADM, Monsanto) and so the 3 pounds of fossil fuels needed to make 4 pounds of ethanol are American coal instead of foreign oil.    Mostly this is due to the enormous energy costs of distilling, which cannot be avoided with ethanol.  

They can be avoided with veggie oil and biodiesel.  Veggie oil works on bunker-oil fueled things (ships, oil well pumps).  Biodiesel works on diesels.  The larger the diesel, the easier it is to convert to run on veggie oil.    Just need to find efficient veggie-oil crops, and Boeing is working on that for obvious reasons.

Answer 9

Well because he is totally blind and does not realize that if you cut the gas consumption by half of US cars (which only brings them to existing international levels) then with the same ethanol you can power twice the mileage initially planned.

You Prof is not only conservative, he is "technology conservative" (backwards in clear words).

Also bio ethanol is not the most efficient. The same surface cultivated for biodiesel and diesel cars again would yield a higher result.

Answer 10

He may simply be doing his small part to try to quell the national urge to voluntarily burn the cornerstone of our food supply.

What college are you attending?  I'll put it on my sons' short list.

Answer 11

Your professor is correct. Not only that but the fuel that is produced is not of the same quality as regular gasoline and you end up getting about half as many miles per gallon of regular gas. Considering the price of ethanol is not much lower its almost pointless.