sur3fir3
RCTalk Addict
Why ethanol is not viable as a fuel source:
To start you need to understand some things about corn.
To me one of the most important things to understand when it comes to growing corn is that it requires more fertilizer, fungicides, pesticides, etc etc than 99% of other crops grown. So the amount of fuel that goes intro producing it should be taken into consideration BEFORE working on the numbers for ethanol. There are papers out there that have this type of data, I will leave it to you if you are interested enough.
Secondly corn erodes the soil many times faster than and can replenish itself. The number I have seen estimated at was 18x faster.
The one issue about ethanol that I have seen many conflicting reports on is exactly how many BTUs it takes to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. I've seen numbers range from 116,000 Btu all the way down to 36,000 Btu (this is due to a dry processing system that uses less energy than the older wet system). It is pretty widely accepted that 1 gallon of ethanol produces 77,000 Btu. So you say wait a minute if its on the lower end of that scale you will produce more energy right? Wrong, in some cases.
The one thing this does not take into account is the first law of thermodynamics. (this part is out of my comfort zone of knowledge so I am using a source) From what I understand it depends on the efficiency of the engine, if its 25% efficient only 25% will goto power the other 75% is released as heat.
There are many other things I could go into that also show ethanol as being an unsustainable fuel source, but I don't want to bore you guys too much.
Now you may be wondering well if we don't use ethanol, electric, or anything based off of fossil fuels what can we use? I am not sure myself, but I do know that spent cooking oil works great in diesel engines when filtered properly. We could subsidize a restaurant's taxes if they donate their spent oil to be used as fuel or just pay them for it. Of course there are always solar charging stations.
The obvious fact is eventually we are going to have to find something besides fossil based fuels for our vehicles. it may be 50-100 years down the road, but it will happen. I am curious as to what you guys think about all this?
here are some reference links
http://www.phoenixprojectfoundation.us/uploads/The_Many_Problems_of_Ethanol.pdf
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_17166.cfm
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/06/five-ethanol-myths-busted-2/
To start you need to understand some things about corn.
To me one of the most important things to understand when it comes to growing corn is that it requires more fertilizer, fungicides, pesticides, etc etc than 99% of other crops grown. So the amount of fuel that goes intro producing it should be taken into consideration BEFORE working on the numbers for ethanol. There are papers out there that have this type of data, I will leave it to you if you are interested enough.
Secondly corn erodes the soil many times faster than and can replenish itself. The number I have seen estimated at was 18x faster.
The one issue about ethanol that I have seen many conflicting reports on is exactly how many BTUs it takes to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. I've seen numbers range from 116,000 Btu all the way down to 36,000 Btu (this is due to a dry processing system that uses less energy than the older wet system). It is pretty widely accepted that 1 gallon of ethanol produces 77,000 Btu. So you say wait a minute if its on the lower end of that scale you will produce more energy right? Wrong, in some cases.
The one thing this does not take into account is the first law of thermodynamics. (this part is out of my comfort zone of knowledge so I am using a source) From what I understand it depends on the efficiency of the engine, if its 25% efficient only 25% will goto power the other 75% is released as heat.
There are many other things I could go into that also show ethanol as being an unsustainable fuel source, but I don't want to bore you guys too much.
Now you may be wondering well if we don't use ethanol, electric, or anything based off of fossil fuels what can we use? I am not sure myself, but I do know that spent cooking oil works great in diesel engines when filtered properly. We could subsidize a restaurant's taxes if they donate their spent oil to be used as fuel or just pay them for it. Of course there are always solar charging stations.
The obvious fact is eventually we are going to have to find something besides fossil based fuels for our vehicles. it may be 50-100 years down the road, but it will happen. I am curious as to what you guys think about all this?
here are some reference links
http://www.phoenixprojectfoundation.us/uploads/The_Many_Problems_of_Ethanol.pdf
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_17166.cfm
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/06/five-ethanol-myths-busted-2/