Question:

To improve the efficiency of ethanol?

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It is often said that it takes about as much fuel to plant, harvest, truck, and convert corn to ethanol as it produces. So, how can we make production more efficient? Farmers have often added value to their crops by processing it on farm, an example might be feeding corn to hogs. By feeding it adds value to the primary crop corn. Could farmers distill ethanol on the farm and improve the fuel efficiency of producing ethanol? Trucking 5000 gals of ethanol has to be more fuel efficient then trucking all that corn? Anyone ever done the math, or does the economy of scale at a larger distiller offset the savings?

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  1. In theory (as you have stated it) yes, it could be a good idea to do it that way.

    BUT

    Consider that it requires a little more processing than to simply run a still on Old McDonalds farm.

    Now add this to your equation:

    OSHA, EPA, API, capital expenditures, maintenance, etc.  

    I think the economy of scale now favors trucking in the corn to a regional distillery!


  2. FYI - most of the corn that is used to create ethanol is shipped by rail, which is a lot more efficient that trucks are.

    Producing ethanol with corn (which is a big part of our food supply) probably isn't the best idea in the world.  Here's a good article about some of the up and coming technologies on how to make it work.  Hope you enjoy!

    http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/20...

  3. Farmers have been doing this for years. Just on a very small scale. To make efficient ethanol out of corn you have to have millions of dollars worth of equipment. Not use granddad's old wood fired equipment. Many of the ethanol plants are started my farmer co-ops to cut down on their hauling.

  4. It's almost, but not quite a wash to convert corn to ethanol energy wise.  What we have here is not a problem with energy, it's a political problem.  Converting corn to fuel is not very efficient, it's politically expedient.  The extra fertilizer run off is VERY bad for the fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico.  The fish, crab, and all other bottom dwellers are dying from lack of oxygen caused by the algae blooms from the excess nitrogen run off from fields.  If you want a more efficient way of producing ethanol, you have to switch crops.  But the major corn growers, and the politicans from corn growing states have allowed tons of federal money to be poured into a poor solution.  Just another case of government s******g things up.  The fundamental problem with all forms of energy and for that matter production of all products, is that it costs NOTHING to pollute.  It's free to discharge CO2 or pollutants into the environment.  I say let the market place deside.  The government can say, for every X number of tons of CO2 discharged, it's going to cost you X number of dollars.  Companies don't care, they will still make money because it's a level playing field.  Everyone pays the same for polluting.

  5. We can make bio-fuel more economically by growing trees until they are about 20 cm diametre at 30 cm up from the ground, and then mechanically harvesting, processing them into wood gas plus charcoal via pyrolysis. Wood gas can be refined to be useable as motor fuel or as natural gas. The charcoal goes back into the soil to improve its function as a rooting medium.

    Why this is more efficient is that one need never plant after the first time if the species self propagates and harvesting is done only every 10 to 15 years. The charcoal returns all but the nitrogen fertilizer, which can be sustained biologically.

    We can alternately harvest plant matter from those ocean dead zones, places that grow wo much plant matter as to kill animal life as the plant matter decomposes.

    Unfortunately we have got a view that we can cure those dead zones by preventing runoff from farms. Not true.

    In the oceans there is always enough phosphate to grow just any amount of plant matter. THe phosphates do not disappear from the oceans the way they would from an inland lake. As plant matter dies and decomposes the phosphates, nitrates, potash and all micronutrients are released to grow further crops.

    So we have no prospect of curing our ocean dead zones by preventing runoff, helpful as that would be to agriculture. We can extract the plant matter before it decomposes. We can us it to substitute for coal or bio-fuel substrate.

    Squeezing out the water from ocean plant life will of course leave the nutrients to grow more plant life. This would be environmentally bad news were we not going to again harvest that growth.

    By switching to cellulose instead of sugar based ethanol it is hoped that ethanol with a significant improvement over corn in economic terms could be on the market. Canada is developing that and appears ready to go in a couple years. But what this does is allow use of wood that can grow for years between harvests rather than high maintenance corn.

    Sugar cane / sorgum of course offers economies compared to corn, and if the cellulose from those were also part of the solution, we would be able to fuel all our cars and starve.

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