While I think that E85 has real potential, I'm not sure the U.S. is going about it right. That said, allow me to ramble for a bit & let me know what you think.
There's sugar ethanol and cellulose ethanol, right? At least, that's how I understand it. Corn seems to be a popular source for sugar ethanol (at least, here in the Midwest) but it seems to me that a really, REALLY small amount of the biomass of any given corn plant is actually used for the production of sugar ethanol ("SE" from here out....because I'm lazy). So what happens to the REST of the plant? Couldn't that be used in the production of cellulose ethanol ("CE" from here out)? Is that already being done? If so, are the CE and SE production facilities in close proximity to each other? I'm thinking, strip the kernels from the corn and put the rest on a conveyer belt that goes right next door to be made into CE.... Too idealistic I suppose.
Now, sugar cane has a much larger portion of it's biomass available for the production of SE....but it doesn't grow well in most of the U.S. Bamboo can grow almost anywhere in the U.S.....but it doesn't contain enough sugar to be any good for SE production. What if we engineer a bamboo-sugar cane hybrid? Maybe get something with nearly the sugar content of sugar cane, but with the hardiness of bamboo. (I'm thinking if scientists can make mice glow in the dark with jellyfish genes, then "sweeter bamboo" should be no big stretch.) I mean, bamboo grows stupid-fast, isn't too picky about soil quality, and can handle China's high-mountain cold. Not so for sugar cane, right? And then there's switchgrass. Also not picky about soil quality and grows readily throughout the U.S.. I'm not sure if it's used for CE or SE production though.
Then there's the issue of what powers the production facilities. It's my understanding that most are coal or oil fueled. Doesn't really get the "fossil fuel" monkey off our backs now does it? Unless a facility can produce more energy than the fossil fuel that powers said facility, the net gain is really zero, is it not? I'm looking at it this way: If it takes 100 BTUs of fossil fuel to produce 100 BTUs of bio-fuel, then we haven't really gotten "off" of fossil fuels have we? We're just burning it in a different PLACE. That question gets uglier as we move further away from the actual facility: what powers the harvesting equipment and the trucks that deliver the harvested plants TO the facility? Unless all THAT stuff is burning some form of bio-fuel as well, then we are still really dependent on fossil fuels. The dependency has just been shifted from the end consumer to the production process.
Taking all that into account, I believe I read somewhere that something like 90% of the energy in a gallon of gasoline has already been used by the time we get it out of the pump at our local gas station. I mean, you've got the exploration for oil deposits, the drilling operation, the piping, the shipping, the refining, transportation (via train), which transfers into a truck, which takes the fuel to the gas station, which uses electricity (produced by what?) to run the pump to get the stuff into our vehicles. Every step takes energy and that energy is probably produced (directly or otherwise) by the very product we're delivering. As supply lines get longer, the whole process becomes less efficient. No escaping that. In order for ethanol to do a better job, I believe we need to have a MUCH greater number of smaller production facilities scattered throughout the country. This will keep the supply and the demand much closer together and reduce vulnerability to both natural and man-made disasters. Much the same philosophy as the Swedish Air Force: they have relatively few "airfields". Instead, they keep their planes scattered about the country and use the roads and highways as airfields when/where needed. By contrast, if a U.S. airfield's runways are destroyed we instantly have a large number of planes we can't use.
Seems to me that we should be looking a bit harder at solar, geothermal, wind, bio-fuel (both diesel and ethanol), and nuclear power for BOTH ends of the process. Until we do THAT, we won't have made any real progress.
Hampering some of that progress are overly-restrictive emissions laws. For instance: It's a relatively simple proposition to convert any given gasoline-fueled vehicle to run on E85. Now, it's a bit more costly to OPTIMIZE that vehicle to run on E85. Unless you optimize for the new fuel, your mileage will drop by almost HALF. If you HAD a 40mpg car and NOW you have a 21mpg car after switching to E85, your real-world fuel costs will almost DOUBLE. That's not motivation to switch now is it? And even if you DID do the conversion, you'd be violating Federal Emissions laws and the EPA could fine the snot out of you and possibly have you imprisoned....for trying to help the environment. What to do? Well, OLD cars are exempt from emissions laws (at least where I live). SOoooo....I could reasonably convert my old '73 Toronado to run on E85 and the parts are readily available to OPTIMIZE it for the new fuel. If I did all that, I could have a car that gets the same (or slightly better) fuel economy than it does now AND superior power. Not a bad deal, eh? You say you wanna do the same to your '97 Honda? NOPE. CAN'T DO IT. EPA won't LET you. Got an idea for an easy, cheap method of doing it to any gasoline-powered car on the road? Can't SELL the product until you spend tens of thousands of dollars for EPA testing, approval, and certification. The odds are stacked against the "common man". Who was responsible for THAT, do you suppose? Doesn't matter. The fact is that some of our laws are stopping progress and innovation at the grass-roots level. The government is already subsidizing E85 but is doing nothing whatsoever to help EXISTING vehicles switch over to the new fuel. What's that mean to you and me? Well, it means that if we really want to use E85 instead of gasoline, we have to what? BUY NEW CARS! Now who benefits from THAT? Certainly not you and me.....all ya gotta do is "follow the money". (OMG I sound like one of those nutty "conspiracy theorists" don't I?!)
Anyway, I've gone on WAY too long already. If any of you actually READ all of this, I thank you for your time and apologize for my long-winded-ness (is that even a word?). These are just some things regarding alternative fuels that I have not seen addressed elsewhere. Final note: FWIW, I'm a huge fan of E85 and an even bigger fan of bio-diesel.
Thanks again for letting me take a chunk out of your day.
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Comments: 4
You address most of the issues with E85. But here are some you didn't.
However hardy the crop, you still have to harvest it. That means it has to grow on flat ground, not mountainsides or in a forest. The more densely it grows, the higher the efficiency in harvesting. Scattered plants, like here in the desert southwest couldn't grow enough stuff per acre to make it useful.
Whatever the crop, even your modified bamboo, if you remove all the stuff that grows when you harvest, you remove whatever nutrient that plant needs. Sooner or later, you have to replace it – fertilize. Where do you get the fertilizer? Too bad the bullshit coming from E85 promoters couldn't be used.
The issue of fertilization is an inescapable fact if one intends to continue harvesting on the same plot of ground. No argument from me on that. I guess I was trying to say that, if a plant is less "demanding" then fertilization needs might be reduced somewhat. Regarding the need for flat ground: no shortage of THAT here in the U.S. I used the mountains example in order to illustrate bamboo's ability to deal with harsh weather conditions like high winds, erratic rainfall, and unpredictable cold spells. No such thing as a nice, friendly growing season like one might find in, say, Hawaii.
In Europe, there's a good deal of research going into "Sun Diesel". That's cellulose-based diesel fuel. The neat part about that is that a lot of the stuff we currently throw away as waste could be used to produce Sun Diesel. Saw dust from wood mills, dismantled wooden buildings, old Christmas trees, corn stalks, etc., etc.... Imagine making diesel fuel from just plain old TREES. They're doing it in Europe (I think I read about it in Diesel Power magazine) and it won't be long before we'll be doing it here. Fast-growing trees (the Paulownia comes to mind), canola (great for bio-diesel....superior even to soy...just ask Austria), bamboo-cane hybrids, switchgrass, sugar beets, crop rotation and responsible land management. Combine all that with using alternative energies for the production facilities themselves and we can do anything. I still believe the U.S.A. is the greatest country on Earth.....but we sure ain't actin' like it.
(a) plain economics (which is why the tax incentives are needed just to break even),
(b) fertilizer use (as mentioned above) and the huge burden placed on our fresh water supply: ethanol production takes a lot of water in the final steps in addition to the step where the plants are grown, and water gets polluted by fertilizer and other runoff. Repercussions are seen all the way into the Gulf of Mexico, and vital water tables are being used up,
(c) there is plenty of evidence that ethanol is as bad or worse than gasoline for air pollution,
(d) the bizarre fact is that jungles and southeast Asian peat bogs are being cleared/drained to grow plants for biofuels, but this deforestation and drying of peat bogs has a huge negative impact on CO2 balance (peat bogs give off CO2 to the atmosphere when dried out- see The New Scientist at:
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn13034-peatland-destruction-is-releasing-vast-amounts-of-cosub2sub.html ),
(e) there are a lot of reasons why food crops should not be used as energy sources that have to do with damaging the food economy and the rising food prices that are occurring at the same time that absolutely no effect is being made on oil prices by ethanol,
(f) As also alluded to, converting biomass or cellulose + everything else from plants (or animals) is vastly more energy-efficient than the fermentation process used to make ethanol from corn, sugar cane, etc.
I have references to popular press and scientific articles on my blog- greenchemistry.wordpress.com
Best wishes, Jim