Ethanol

[Relbeek Einre]

Was listening to the radio this morning. A guest named David Morris was talking about ethanol vs. gasoline, and the reason for ethanol being noncompetitively priced has to do with a couple things: tax breaks to the oil industry and the cost of protecting oil production also being subsidized.

He noted that if the cost of military protection of oil wells and pipelines, according to the DOD, would add 25 to 50 cents per gallon of gas if the cost were absorbed at the pump instead of in the general defense budget. Which would make ethanol competitive all by itself - and then there's the tax breaks the petroleum industry gets.

So what do y'all think about that? Does he have a point?

[Partha]

Ethanol works, and there's a hell of a lot more corn than oil in America, too.

[Fetten]

Hmmm dunno
Any chance at a transcript of the show?

initial thought though is...Not really.
US DOD does not protect all the pipelines and if we did I'd think it would be more then 25-50 cents a gallon. I haven't seen anything n the horizon for DOD protection of pipelines either but I haven't looked either

would be worth a read though if you have a reference or transcirpt or something.


Fet

[Ddrak]

US DOD does not protect all the pipelines and if we did I'd think it would be more then 25-50 cents a gallon

How in the hell do you spend more than a quarter billion dollars a day? I know that military spending is crazy inefficient but that statement is just bizarre.

(US Oil Consumption is around 1 billion gallons per day).

Dd

[ZanypherCocoapuffs]

Don't know enough about ethanol, really. Of course, I want my ion-drive powered hover car, damnit.

We were supposed to have those in the future.

Anyway, are you really all that surprised that oil isn't going anywhere, Keebler?

[Fetten]

Dd

I don't think the line of what Relbeek posted of only being 25-50 cents a gallon is accurate if DOD is protecting the pipelines. I think it would be more then that. Like I said though I hadn't looked into how DOD is protecting pipelines or the cost. That figure just seemed low to me.

I too think ethanol should be a viable option. I'd just like to see more if Relbeek had a source to comment fully on it.

[Aabe]

Im pro-ethanol, but energy per unit of volume is less. You will get less MPG from ethanol than from gasoline. If you are running an ethanol mix gasoline it probably doesnt quite get the same MPG as pure gasoline. Like the way pure desel gets more MPG than pure gasoline. I think to run pure ethanol will require different engines. Lastly they make odor that isnt too pleasant. But those things aside I would love to see a switch to ethanol. Does anyone know if we have to corn growing capacity to fully support ourselves to be oil free for transportation?

[Rsak]

Is this the same reformulated gas that is even more damaging to the environment then oil?

[Rsak]

And just to be clear I am referring to MtBE.

[Partha]

They are different.

http://www.epa.gov/otaq/consumer/fuels/ ... y-type.pdf

MTBE is used primarily because it's cheaper. Ethanol, however, is safer.

[Relbeek Einre]

Ddrak - you're looking at total oil consumption, not gasoline consumption, which is, actually about 375 million gallons a day - or, at 25 cents a gallon, less than 100 million dollars a day - or a total oil defense budget of about 36 billion dollars, if my estimates (I didn't break out the calculator) are accurate. Sound particularly unreasonable to you? Or twice that - 72 billion?

[Ddrak]

$36 billion a year sounds quite unreasonable, yes. That's on the scale of what the Iraq operation is costing.

Dd

[Fobbon Lazyfoot]

Enthalpy of the Combustion of Ethanol

C2H5OH + 3O2 = 2CO2 + 3H2O
DHF C2H5OH = -235.1 kj/mol
DHF CO2 = -393.5 kj/mol
DHF H2O= -241.82 kj/mol
(2(-393.5)+3(-241.82)) - (3(0) + 1(-235.1))
(-787 + -725.46) - ( -235.1)
-1277.36 kj/mol for C2H5OH
MW = 12(2) + 5(1) + 16 + 1 = 46
-1277.36 kj/mol x (1/46 moles) = -27.8 kj/g

So, you get 27.8 kilojoules of energy for every gram of ethanol burned. Compared to propane:

DHF C3H8 = -103.85
DHF CO2 = -393.5
DHF H20 = -241.82
C3H8 + 5O2 = 3CO2 + 4H2O
4(-241.82 + 3(-393.5) - - 103.85
-967.28 + -1180.5 + 103.85
DHCombustion C3H8 = -2043.93 kj/mol
MW C3H8 = 12(3) + 8 = 44
-2043.93 kj/mol x (1/44 moles) = 46.5 kj/g

You get 46.5 kilojoules for every gram of propane burned. My thermochemistry tables don't have the energy of formation for octane or I would compare it to gasoline. Anyone want to find that? Mebe the density too so you can calculate raw energy per barrel? Someone check my math, too

Course, theres more factors to it then that - but that's the barebones of it.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Beek.. did the article take into consideration the farm subsidies used to produce the corn to make trhe ethanol?

[Relbeek Einre]

Radio interview, Embar. And he talked a lot about those subsidies, too.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Fobben... as a rule, all saturated aliphatic hydrocarbons produce more energy per carbon than do non-saturated hydrocarbons. This is because a combustion reaction of hydrocarbons is essentialy a re-dox reaction, favoring oxidation of the C-H bond. Since alcohols are already partially oxidized (C-OH), the combsutuion of alcohols produce less energy per carbon than the combustion of saturated carbon chains.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Radio interview, Embar. And he talked a lot about those subsidies, too.

Did he use them in the overall equation?

[Relbeek Einre]

The thought crossed my mind too, Embar, but I was driving so couldn't listen to it too closely.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Kind of important when calculating the overall "cost", don't you think?

[Narith]

One thing you need to remember though about Ethanol is land useage needed for crop production to create the fuel. We have limited land and without a new breed of corn that can be fast producing to off set the loss of American winters it is gonna take even more land to produce enough for American consumption.

Now we do need to get off our dependence on oil, it is a non-renewable source and the majority of it is in other countries, the oil industry will not let us without a fight however... The question is what other source of fuels are there and are they a viable option? Ethanol seems the most viable but then again you still need to figure in the land needed and production rates.

One alternative that may help was back in the early 90s there was a bacteria manufactured that turned organic waste into ethanol (oarnge rinds, banana peels, ect). I have not heard of it since the early 90s so they may have discovered a flaw with it or for those of you with the tin foil hats the oil industry may have suppressed it *snicker* anyways it has been out of public eye for over a decade so I don't know.

Just for an FYI, all of south America uses ethanol for thier vehicles, gasoline down there is like leaded is up here... it is next to impossible to find. They do it because it is cheaper and they have the land to produce the sugar cane which also can be used to create the ethanol and it is enough to supply thier countries, however America consumes much much more than South America does.