As I pointed out earlier, it is actually considerably more cost-effective for the US to use ethanol. Oh and it cuts down on that blasted global warming far more then FFs.
If it wasn’t essentially a poor distillation of fossil fuels, that would be true, and the world would have changed.
Can’t get something for nothing is our curse, but never ending dream. We can like all life have as much as the ecosystem will render in surplus, forever, as life has always been. But we wanted far more, and thought we had found the magic fountain in petrochemicals. But the truth is that it was very finite, and like fools we burnt the entire forest to feel warm a short while. The dream was beautiful, but unrepeatable, at least as we had it. We could go nuclear, and solar, (including biomass), and learn to live on finite means, or go for broke, as we seem to be doing.
Are you talking about oil to gasoline and distillate fuel like diesel, or are you talking about ethanol? Ethanol production doesn’t use simple distillation, you can’t get to over 90% pure with simple distillation like you can with oil. They use plate distillation. And even moonshiners will use wood, electric, coal, or propane to distill ethanol. You just need a source of heat to distill. It isn’t rocket science to come up with a source of heat. Some ethanol plants are also designed to use corn stover.
I was referring to the obvious energy loss of heavily investing fossil fuel in a process to derive ethanol fuel.
The entire proposition is farcical, and a clear waste of resources. Better to pay the farmers not to farm if that is the best idea of what to do with a food crop. And as for energy to fire boilers, etc, seeking unattainable breakeven, just use the natural gas to run vehicles directly. That use of energy will be near 3 times more efficient than circulating it through a fuel consumptive pork barrel system.
It is an energy gain. period. No one except you disagrees.
You don’t gain much if anything for efficiency and adding the necessary infrastructure and tank additions to vehicles makes it less then cost effective, and even less if you convert it to hydrogen. It is actually more efficient to let combined cycle ng plants convert it to electric and use electric to power your vehicle.
Respectfully, it seems ethanol for fuel is agreed by the countries of the world as uneconomic. The only notable exception being Brazil using sugar cane. As previously I had suggested, sugar beets might be in that league.
The other viable alternatives are vegetable oils, sunflowers might be viable. But the energy returns of these systems aren’t going to be greatly beyond break even. I think you could actually farm using sunflower oil, but after accounting for chemical fertilizer etc it won’t be an oil well in a field either.
If all the subsidies and tax breaks were taken away from ethanol production, there would be no US production. The industry runs on public tax payers, not an energy gain.
The Europeans went to diesel and smaller vehicles for greater efficiency, they are badly short of natural gas, so won’t go there. If gas is available, its a big efficiency gain, exactly why many fleets are converted. Throw the ethanol concessions behind that, and America could gain true fuel independence for a while.
I wonder how many people grow corn on their back forty and make alcohol to fuel their engines? And if they use the alcohol to produce the corn and etc.?
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Jeff, they might say they are making fuel for their engines, but maybe they are drinking it instead, in the form of Whiskey, White Lightening, Home Made Tonic. We have a lot of Mico Brewers around here. One of my friends Makes Mead. It will not run a engine but it will put hair on your chest.
Bob
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I appreciate this exchange, because I think these topics need to be discussed, and I am glad to see it can be done with civility.
That said, I think stepping back and looking at it objectively, it doesnt seem to add up that ethanol would be producing more energy than is going in. I did not read those studies, and I am sure that if looked at from a certain starting point to a certain end point, energy is coming back out. But I think Jeff’s comment is spot on. How many people are producing their own fuels to run big ag operations? If you were burning thousands of gallons of diesel every year, and there was some way to produce that yourself for free, and still have crops left over to sell, I think everyone would be doing it.
Just as a quick thought experiment I looked at our farm - we grow about 4 acres of grapes. I am not sure how grapes stack up with corn in terms of calories/acre/year, but Its probably not orders of magnitude different. Also, corn wont ripen in time here, so its a moot point for us. On 4 acres, I figure we could produce about 800 gallons of wine, or about 80 gallons of ethanol. I think we put about 50 hours on our little 30hp tractor each year - which maybe burns a gallon an hour? And grapes are not really a very tractor-intensive crop. So, maybe i could run the still on the cane prunings, but i would be driving that tractor a lot more to haul it all in to the distillery… So at the end of the seaon, say i burned 65 gallons of diesel, at 130k btus/gallon and i got 80 gallons of ethanol at 76k btus/gallon. I burned 8.5 million btus, and i get 6 million back. I know i could be a lot more efficient, mow less, carry more by hand, but the margins are just very thin. I suspect corn is going to be the same deal. Mechanical farming just takes too much energy to give enough back out to make it worthwhile.
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Hi Jeff, I would have to say not many, I fooled with it a little back in the 70’s learned quickly wasn’t for me. By the time you grow corn, pick it shell it, grind it,sprout some for enzymes, modify your engine, wood gas seemed a better route. Today almost all farm equipt. is diesel powered, that won’t run on it.
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Hi Al, the car manufacturers are making sure the new cars and trucks will not run on wood gas. When all the old ones have been scapped and gone to China… Start buy up the old good ones before they’re all gone.
Bob
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It might seem that way to you, but scientists, and even anti-ethanol folks haven’t arguedt about it for 20 years.
you have been able to use straight run soybean oil as a diesel replacement for about 30 years. with a modification to the fuel injectors. It is about 10% of your crop, and the proteins left can be used as animal feed. Not many if any folks do it.
It is orders of magnitude different. The average corn yield in the US is 175 bu/acre. You get roughly 3.5gallons of ethanol per bushel without enzymes, which is 612 gallons/acre. For your 4 acres, it is 2450 for corn vs 60 for grapes.
It is partly true. I think corn ethanol stands on it’s own now. However, some of the other technologies like biomass to ethanol, or biodiesel don’t quite stand on their own yet. But you are still ignoring the fact we aren’t paying to for price support, nor are we paying qatar for MTBE made from NG. It is a win-win-win for us in the US. It costs us significantly less to use ethanol.
It is different for canada, you grow a lot of wheat, and rapeseed.
The best idea thing I saw back then was a guy I met that was heating his home with alcohol. He said that 1 acre of sorghum heated his house for the winter. He mowed it ran it through a wringer washer, fermented it with an electric water heater. He said it sure cleaned the soot out of the furnace, and the chimney the first time.
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Hi Bob, after running the ranger on wood, I think any IC engine can run on wood, but all cars soon will be electric. So we will charge them with wood gas generators. 
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Interesting exchanges guys. Foster-girl care for the last three days.
Let me simplify this a bit . . . . m-a-y-b-e.
In just shy of 200-300 years we will have used up what took million of years of stored sunlight to accumulate and concentrate. We ARE running out of time to use the remains of this one-time bonanza discovery to spring forward here on planet earth to going back to rational use of only the annual sunlight energy budget.
Any form of fuel making with annual crops is still just using a single annuals worth of sun energy. Same as PV solar. Same as wind/water power. With all of these for Macro supping needing dipping greatly into the use-once-only black-magic energy jar.
I am burning nightly into each day now my own property grown tree wood for home heating. This is 50 years of stored-up/concentrated sun energy. It’s ok because my property has proven I can no-till grow at least 12,000 pounds of green-wet wood per year, per acre. Half that for dry wood energy. I round own to 5,000 BTU’s used per pound of fuel wood. On 14.69 acres of wood lot I am infinatly sustainable for heat, and reasonable engine fuels, building materials and chemical/foods. Actually enough for three households id they are reasonable.
Sigh so not as I topic intended micro but to go-with-the-flow of the conversations. Micro-expectations living.
No-till. Did mention no-till, no artificial, brought in fertilize or minerals? Some work and sweating, yeah, for sure. That is what keeps it honest.
A-n-y-o-n-e USofA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia could choose to do this same Micro-expectations living choice too. And in many other places in our world as J.O. and Kristijan, and Patrick Johnson have shown us.
“And smarty (smart-assed) Steve Unruh, just how many in our current world could live your’s and OrCarl’s, BobMac’s rural chosen live styles??”
Oh, I recon at least 5% to 20% of the current human planet loading.
“What!? You have no solution for all of the others!”
Nope. Our current planet human loading was a glut allowed first by deforestation levels of wood charcoal energy glutting. Then fossil coal mines slaving a way. Now since the 1870’s heavily using up petroleum finds.
And ANY Macro-energy proposal promoter is blowing you smoke and mirrors conning themselves, and you that they can change the big-batch-millions-of-years accumulated stored to just living on annual energy falling equation.
But, but, but Steve unruh what about fission, near-earth orbit solar harvesters? And other gobble-gook acronym’ed “untapped”, “limitless” engry sources? Huh? Hum?
Hey dudes. Cheap and near free energy IS THE PROBLEM. Not the solution.
Personal sweating a bit for your annual use energies put a use-governor on your energy usage.
Using tree-woods does this.
Now one of my favorite makes-sense modern songs was from Mad Max; Beyond Thunderdome.
“We do not need another Hero”
“We just need to know the way Home”
Wood-for-Energy is the way Home to maximum personal Freedom; Independence to live and think your own thoughts; practice your own beliefs systems, in peace.
tree-farmer Steve unruh
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That will solve the long range traveling problems for Electric cars now. I like it. But what I was referring to was the OBD 2 and soon OBD 3 computers will have to be reprogrammed. My Son knows how and does it. Of course for off road using only. Right? On the cars he builds with high horsepower.
Bob
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Well said Steve, infinite likes …
Bob
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Not everyone in the US can be on 15 acres of decent forest property.
Second, the efficiency for a plant to convert sunlight into fuel is roughly 1-2%. Modern commercial solar panels are in excess of 20%. It is actually a more efficient use of the sun’s energy and for most people their time with solar panels.
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Amen.
People have always wanted something for nothing, our forever dream. It is the problem, and we are so far in it, I can only see bad ways out multiple times worse with denial, and scheming to make a fossil fuels look alike world without the basically free liquid energy source.
Good point about how much land to live on - I lifted potatoes from a 7 yard, 6 row test plot. It yielded roughly enough potatoes to feed me for the year. Field beans aren’t as efficient, (but they do fix nitrogen, and that’s valuable too), you might need a plot of 15 x 30 yards to provide that ration for a year. A plot half that size of hulless barley. Add some corn (but figure out how to keep the coons out) - haven’t figured that one out yet… 
carrots and tomatoes etc to round it out. Enough wood for shaft power, and home heating (debatable figures on the heating, a straw bale home could be extremely efficient, nearly wiping out heat demands apart from solar gain. Wood for cooking and water heating.
Some sources I have read figured a family of 4 and some small livestock could be maintained on around an acre. That won’t include fuel.
We could do something like that, and still have our satellite tv and good communities. Maybe actually better than everyone google eyed driving in morning traffic to pay for all the manufactured goods and McMansions.
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Yeah. My forth grade school teacher said that I could not chew gum unless I had enough for the rest of the class, too.
Next day I brought in four packs of five sticks. So for ONCE, we all could. Then by her statement, I could too.
Of course she threw a tizzy fit.
Not what she meant at all! It was about HER controlling. So said the trip to the Principals office for a butt-swatt. A life-lesson there.
madflower69 I do not have a solution-for-all out of out current modern cultures many, many over-stretchs.
Neither does anyone else.
Saudi Arabia you are all on your own. Iran, you are all on your own. They know this. Why their intense need for stretching-it-out nuclear power. Possessing/Investments into owning real estate and industries in others for their future oil-dry years support.
A honey-bee colony only carries trough the no-new-pollen/no-nectre winter season just enough population to have the body-mass heat to survive. “Bee-ball”.
The human choice NOW is will you be the one-season worker bee, busy, busy, a worked/soldier burn-out, “simple-minded consumer” or a going forward, carry-on?
Macro’s are all current culture Suppliers. Current cultures cheerleaders. Just as bought-in, addicted as the most simple-minded consumer. No, if, and’s and but’s about this.
S.U.
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