Ethanol vs. Biofuels

The_Toecutter · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jun 18, 2005 Posts: 1736

pstarr, your numbers are a bit off.

In the U.S., approxamately 3 billion gallons of waste vegetable oil is produced each year[1], while the U.S. consumes 40 billion gallons of diesel fuel each year for transportation purposes[2] and 140 billion gallons of gasoline each year[3].

WVO is more than a drop in the bucket. While it certainly won't be solving this crisis, it is a worthwhile consideration.

Now, if you increase the fuel efficiency of a diesel car 4 times over(the Loremo AG gets 157 mpg[4], Opel Eco Speedster 94 mpg(113 mpg imperial)[5], ect.) a significant percentage of fuel use could be accounted with WVO.

Sources:

[1] http://www.epa.gov/region09/waste/biodiesel/questions.html

[2] http://genomicsgtl.energy.gov/biofuels/transportation.shtml

[3] Ibid.

[4] http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/02/157_mpg_lightwe.html

[5] http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/the-opel-eco-speedster.php
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pstarr · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:17 am Post subject: Re: Ethanol vs. Biofuels

The_Toecutter I just pulled some numbers out of my hat Smile

I question how much of the stuff is currently 'waste.' Doesn't a lot, most, go to the soap and animal feed industries? Wouldn't the biolfuels business just be competing for feedstock?
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smileyhouston · Tar Sands Joined: Feb 26, 2008 Posts: 46 Location: Houston

thats just it, it can be made from anything. hemp, yard clippings etc. While its not fixing the problem, and it is a drop in the bucket. I feat that if we don't seriously pay attention... for example, Europe is 54% diesel. while us is 4%, isn't that a problem?

smileyhouston · Tar Sands Joined: Feb 26, 2008 Posts: 46 Location: Houston

Tanada · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:51 am Post subject: Re: Ethanol vs. Biofuels

The dirty little secret of American biodiesel that so many people manage to forget never ceases to amaze me. In the USA the vast majority of Biodiesel is made of 80% oil and 20% Ethanol.

That way the Corn Ethanol lobby gets to sell Ethanol no matter which fuel the USA adopts.

In Michigan you really have two choices for vehicle fuels, E-10 (Gasahol) is mandated and sold dang near everywhere. In rare locations you can also find E-85. For oil furnaces and diesel engines you can get ultra low sulfur diesel or various bio-diesel blends. Almost all of the Biodiesel is Ethanol based so it contains 20% Ethanol and 80% oil.

That in my opinion is just plain stupid. You could take all of that oil and mix it with regular diesel fuel in a B-5/P-95 ratio with no ethanol or methanol involved. If you do that it runs fine in every tested Diesel engine, it does not have cloud point problems which are common in Bio-diesel, and it is more carbon offsetting than any chemically altered bio-diesel.
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The_Toecutter · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jun 18, 2005 Posts: 1736

yesplease · Fission Joined: Oct 03, 2006 Posts: 2316

smileyhouston · Tar Sands Joined: Feb 26, 2008 Posts: 46 Location: Houston

by Samuel Wright Bodman
U.S. Secretary of Energy wrote this in one of our issues.....

http://www.worldenergysource.com/articles%2Fpdf%2Fbodman%5FWE%5Fv10n1%2Epdf

steam_cannon · Expert Joined: Dec 28, 2006 Posts: 2467 Location: MA

deMolay · Intermediate Crude Joined: Sep 04, 2005 Posts: 703

Well Im a small beef farmer. Let's use my case. First off, I switched beef breeds to Highland, they don't require grain to finish a calf to beef. In fact it is detrimental. Hence I no longer have to grow grain to feed animals. All the waste oil from the farming operation can now be recycled and used for my truck or tractor. Granted I have to scrounge some vegetable oil. Or start recycling waste oil from my big farmer friends which is a whole lot more than the french fry Big Mac gang, at least around here. If I wanted too, I could almost have a complete loop. Waste oil, hay, beef etc. I think that is very good news. I think that is significant.

deMolay · Intermediate Crude Joined: Sep 04, 2005 Posts: 703

Soaring Food Prices Putting U.S. Emergency Aid in Peril
Supplies and Recipients Likely to Be Reduced

By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 1, 2008; Page A01

The U.S. government's humanitarian relief agency will significantly scale back emergency food aid to some of the world's poorest countries this year because of soaring global food prices, and the U.S. Agency for International Development is drafting plans to reduce the number of recipient nations, the amount of food provided to them, or both, officials at the agency said.

USAID officials said that a 41 percent surge in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months has generated a $120 million budget shortfall that will force the agency to reduce emergency operations. That deficit is projected to rise to $200 million by year's end. Prices have skyrocketed as more grains go to biofuel production or are consumed by such fast-emerging markets as China and India.

Officials said they were reviewing all of the agency's emergency programs -- which target almost 40 countries and zones including Ethiopia, Iraq, Somalia, Honduras and Sudan's Darfur region -- to decide how and where the cuts will be made.

"We're in the process now of going country by country and analyzing the commodity price increase on each country," said Jeff Borns, director of USAID's Food for Peace, the organization's food aid arm. "Then we're going to have to prioritize."

The reductions, international relief agencies say, will seriously complicate already strained efforts to combat global hunger, particularly in Africa, Central Asia and Latin America. Poor countries in those regions are struggling to cope with record food price surges, which have made it difficult for aid groups to sustain their operations in some countries.

The cuts will likely have a direct impact on major USAID partners, including aid groups and the United Nations World Food Program, the largest international provider, which counts on U.S food aid for 40 percent of its distribution.

The U.N. program is confronting similar price pressures. It announced this month that it was facing a $505 million shortfall due to soaring food and fuel costs, and would cut distribution if it did not receive new funds. Meanwhile, need is increasing. Afghanistan, for instance, recently put in an emergency request for $77 million to cope with skyrocketing prices that have put key staples out of reach for more and more Afghans.

"Look at what's happened to wheat prices alone -- they shot up 25 percent in one day last week," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program. "This is really the first emergency we've faced without a drought, war, natural disaster. We will have to cut the amount of people being served or the amount of food being served if we do not get more funds."

Groups that work with USAID, several of which have been informed of the shortfall over the past two weeks, are alarmed. Emergency aid is earmarked only for countries in desperate need as a result of natural disasters, civil strife or other humanitarian crises. Although the United States has proportionally provided less of the world's food aid in recent years, it still provides about half the global total in efforts to relieve hunger among more than 800 million people. In 2007, USAID gave about 2.5 million tons of food, accounting for more than 50 percent of the emergency aid in a number of nations, including Ethiopia.

USAID officials would not speculate on which countries might be picked for cuts, though aid workers said it was unlikely that those with the greatest need -- such as Sudan -- would be hit hard. Most at risk appeared to be long-term emergency programs in such countries as Nepal, where unrest has quieted, as well as a number of African countries, such as Tanzania, that had relatively good harvests last year.

The Bush administration's 2008 USAID budget request calls for $1.2 billion in food aid with a supplemental $350 million to cover assistance in Darfur and critical situations in southern Africa, Kenya and other hot spots.

USAID officials said the administration, facing a tight budget year, was not planning to request funds to cover the projected $200 million shortfall from the price increases. USAID purchases grains in the same domestic commodities market as the U.S. companies that serve up Wonder bread or Big Macs, meaning they pay the same high market rates. As a result, officials said, the program cuts are necessary. "At this point, this is the administration's request," Borns said yesterday.

Aid groups said they would press USAID and the Bush administration to pursue more funds from Congress to cover the shortfall. Several are concerned that the cuts come at a time when the Senate is considering a farm bill that would make it much harder for USAID to tap into non-emergency food in the event of a catastrophic event such as the 2004 Asian tsunami.

Frank Orzechowski, an adviser for Catholic Relief Services, said his organization has calculated that U.S. food aid would drop from 2.6 million tons last year to about 2.2 million this year. "That is going to be a pretty big hit for the people who can afford it the least," he said.

"The biggest concern is that there are going to be more people being pushed into food insecurity in poor countries because they don't have the purchasing power to cover higher costs, and we will be less rather than more prepared to cope with that. Higher commodity prices is not a situation that the U.S. is to blame for, but we are going to need to see it step up now and decide to make a greater contribution anyway."

Although it may take several months before the cuts are felt, higher food prices already have begun to erode the non-emergency aid and development programs sponsored by USAID in partnership with CARE, Catholic Relief Services, World Vision and others. In the case of one Asian nation, CARE said USAID had provided 10 percent less non-emergency food aid than expected, citing higher prices.

In Liberia, Catholic Relief Services funds its developmental programs -- including health worker training and technical assistance to farmers -- by selling wheat or rice provided by USAID at market prices. But, Catholic Relief was unable to find buyers for those grains in January because market prices have jumped so high that local buyers have switched to cheaper foods. The aid group is scrambling to find alternate sources before its funding runs out in April.

deMolay · Intermediate Crude Joined: Sep 04, 2005 Posts: 703

Rising prices threaten millions with starvation, despite bumper crops

ABy Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Sunday, 2 March 2008

There has never been anything remotely like the food crisis that is now increasingly gripping the world, threatening millions with starvation. For it is happening at a time of bumper crops.

All the familiar signs of impending disaster are here, and in spades. Across the developing world already hungry people are now having to eat even less. Food stocks have plunged to record lows. Food prices have scaled new heights. Food riots are spreading around the globe. Yet the world is still harvesting record amounts of grain.

Three times over the past 60 years prices have soared in the same way. But each was the result of poor harvests, and each was reversed when good crops returned. This crisis is being caused not by shrinking supplies but by skyrocketing demand.

"This is the new face of hunger," said Josette Sheeran, the executive director of the UN's World Food Programme. "There is food on the shelves, but people are priced out of the market." Indeed, so great are the price rises that both her organisation and the US government's Agency for International Development, which buy their supplies on the open market, are having to draw up plans to cut back their aid.

Wheat prices have doubled in a year – and in just one day last week they shot up by 25 per cent. Stocks are lower than at any time since records began.

The chief reason for the escalating demand is the mushrooming middle class in developing countries, especially China and India, now growing by 50 million people a year. As people get better off they demand more meat, which mops up grain supplies, since it takes some 8lbs (3.5kg) of cereals to produce 1lb (450g) of beef.

Now cars, as well as cows, are out-competing hungry people, through the increasing use of corn for biofuels. By next year, predicts Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, almost a third of the US corn crop – which has traditionally helped to feed 100 nations – will go for fuel. Mr Brown points out that, in an increasingly fuel-scarce world, the price of corn will henceforth be tied to the mounting price of oil.

Already, 25 million people in India are believed to have cut their meals from two to one a day. The calorie intake from an average meal in El Salvador has fallen by half in less than two years. Riots have broken out from Mexico to Mauritania.

And if this is happening when harvests are good, what can we expect when they next fail? Global warming is making this ever more likely, and climatologists predict big crop reductions in poor countries. A supply crisis on top of a demand one – that is a recipe for catastrophe.

deMolay · Intermediate Crude Joined: Sep 04, 2005 Posts: 703

Ethanol and water

Don't mix
Feb 28th 2008 | MIAMI
From The Economist print edition

New reasons to be suspicious of ethanol

OFFICIALS in Tampa, Florida, got a surprise recently when a local firm building the state's first ethanol-production factory put in a request for 400,000 gallons (1.5m litres) a day of city water. The request by US Envirofuels would make the facility one of the city's top ten water consumers overnight, and the company plans to double its size. Florida is suffering from a prolonged drought. Rivers and lakes are at record lows and residents wonder where the extra water will come from.

They are not alone. A backlash against the federally financed biofuels boom is growing around the country, and “water could be the Achilles heel” of ethanol, said a report by the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

The number of ethanol factories has almost tripled in the past eight years from 50 to about 140. A further 60 or so are under construction. In 2007 President George Bush signed legislation requiring a fivefold increase in biofuels production, to 36 billion gallons by 2022.

This is controversial for several reasons. There are doubts about how green ethanol really is (some say the production process uses almost as much energy as it produces). Some argue that using farmland for ethanol pushes up food prices internationally (world wheat prices rose 25% this week alone, perhaps as a side-effect of America's ethanol programme). But one of the least-known but biggest worries is ethanol's extravagant use of water.

A typical ethanol factory producing 50m gallons of biofuels a year needs about 500 gallons of water a minute. Most of that goes into the boiling and cooling process, which is similar to making beer. Some water is lost through evaporation in the cooling tower and in waste discharge. All this is putting a heavy burden on aquifers in some corn-growing areas.

Residents went to court in Missouri to halt a $165m facility being built by Gulfstream Bioflex Energy LLC which was projected to draw 1.3m gallons of water every day from the Ozark aquifer. Projects are being challenged in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and in central Illinois, where eight ethanol facilities are situated over the Mahomet aquifer. Demand for corn is such that more land is also being ploughed up in drier regions of the Great Plains states to the west of the corn belt, where irrigation in required, increasing water demand further.

The good news is that ethanol plants are becoming more efficient. They now use about half as much water per gallon of ethanol as they did a decade ago. New technology might be able to halve the amount of water again, says Mike Fatigati, vice president of Delta-T Corp, a Virginia company which has designed a system that does not discharge any waste water. But others are sceptical. “There are things you can close loop [ie, recycle efficiently] and things you can't,” says Paul Greene, a senior director for biofuels with Siemens Water Technologies, designers of the water-purification technology used in ethanol factories. Perhaps ethanol just isn't as bio-friendly as it looks.

smileyhouston · Tar Sands Joined: Feb 26, 2008 Posts: 46 Location: Houston

The burgeoning ethanol and biodiesel markethas captured the attention of the globe astransportation fuel costs around the world climb. While the American public adjusted this past year to paying gasoline prices of $3 a gallon and higher, President George W. Bush admitted to the country's "addiction to oil." In the Netherlands and Hong Kong, gasoline prices hit $6.50 a gallon. Norway prices peaked at $6.99 mid-year.

In response to higher costs and other driving factors, ethanol is emerging as the alternative fuel source oradditive of choice for transportation fuel. An obvious driver behind this emergence is the economy. With gas prices nearing $7 a gallon in parts of the globe, the push is on to develop ethanol and related fuels to their fullest to help meet transportation demands. The use of ethanol also addresses various environmental issues, a critical issue in all countries. As technological advancements continue, ethanol presents itself as the viable solution.

Ethanol, which has been produced for decades, is becoming even more of a practical commodity. Ethanol is produced primarily from two processes, fermentation or cellulosic gasification. Fermentation ethanol is what most everyone is familiar with. Take corn kernels, mash them, add yeast and other ingredients for fermentation, then distill the mixture to separate the water and grain alcohol.

However, if Europe, the United States and other parts of the world are going to make a paradigm shift toward ethanol, biodiesel and other alternative fuels, it is going to take much more than using fermentation alone. It will require using the whole plant (in the case of corn, it would include the stalk, known as corn stover) and other biomass carbon cell renewables, such as wood, sugarcane bagasse or switchgrass.

the rest of the article is here: World Energy Article Here