The great Ethanol debate...

[4dsc]

Here it is ladies and germs, the debate about ethanol I would hope answers all your questions.. Come join the fun and find out just where the truth lies and where the propaganda ends.. I don't expect too Johnwyx though..

http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/05/rapier-response-to-miglietta.html

If you are already an ethanol believer, you aren’t going to be convinced by FAQs from the American Petroleum Institute. Likewise, if you are already an ethanol skeptic, you aren’t going to be convinced by FAQs from the American Coalition for Ethanol. But, head to head exchanges offer a chance to critique the other side and determine whether the arguments hold up.

I agree with some of what Joseph writes, and on other parts I don’t feel strongly one way or another. I will only address those arguments that I feel need rebutting. But first, I will open with a brief statement explaining my position.

My opposition to ethanol is primarily due to the inefficiency of the process. My opening commentary here is primarily aimed at grain ethanol. I know Joseph acknowledged that this is not the best way, but it is the way we are subsidizing and promoting it here in the U.S. To make ethanol, we use petroleum-fueled tractors to plow the fields. We apply petroleum-based herbicides to kill the weeds. We apply petroleum-based pesticides to kill the bugs. We apply petroleum-based fertilizers to feed the plants. We harvest the corn with petroleum-fueled tractors, and ship the corn to the ethanol plants in petroleum-fueled trucks. The ethanol plants are natural gas hogs, consuming enormous quantities to ferment and purify an ethanol solution that is primarily water. We then ship the ethanol, often halfway across the country, in petroleum-fueled trucks. The customer on the receiving end usually pays less than market price for the ethanol, due to the subsidies, which are paid by taxpayers. Then, they suffer a decrease in gas mileage, meaning they have to fuel up more often.

Some of the proponents think adoption of ethanol is a way to "stick it to Big Oil". What they overlook is that Big Oil benefits greatly at all steps of the ethanol process. They make the fossil fuels that drive the tractors. They supply the petrochemicals that make the fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. And who do you think is the largest natural gas producer in the U.S.? I will give you a hint: One of the members of "Big Oil".

[Hugin]

1. IMHO... Ethanol is a stop-gap and not a silver-bullet.

In fact, I don't think there is or should be a silver-bullet.

It would only eventually land us in exactly the same position
we're currently living.

Mentioned is the "Big-Oil" connection, but, there's also a "Big-Agro"
connection in Ethanol.

You can be sure the "Big-Anybodies" wouldn't be interested unless
they were confident they had it cornered and were assured of exclusivity
and big $$$.

[global1]

2. At Some Point In Time Won't Ethanol Fuel The Tractors & Trucks?...nt.

[Robert Rapier]

9. Not Likely

They would already be doing this if the energy balance was very good. After all, why wouldn’t they? If they can create energy the way they claim, it would be crazy not to.

RR

[Ikari Gendo]

3. Speaking as someone who has driven a tractor...

and who lives in a state whose entire economy lives or dies by agriculture, let me challenge you on a few points.

We apply petroleum-based fertilizers to feed the plants.
Really? We apply nitrogen based fertilizer (anhydrous ammonia) which is produced by electricity, but mot of the electricity out here is hydro-electric.

The ethanol plants are ... consuming enormous quantities to ferment ... an ethanol solution.
Fermentation is not an energy consuming process.

And many of the ethanol plants are owned, not by either big oil or big agro, but by agricultural cooperatives owned by regional farmers. The money stays in the area.

One other aspect of ethanol and bio-diesel is a reduction in greenhouse gasses. Yes, these produce just as much CO2 as petro-fuels, but rather than releasing carbon that was last gaseous when the dinosaurs were considering evolving into existence, this carbon was CO2 last spring.

[4dsc]

5. Really??

Are you trying to state most of the notrogen fertilizers are produced through electricy or are you covering up the facts that most are some kind of petrochemical ie petroleum, natural gas and coal. As someone else puts it

So in a broader sense fertilizers ARE made from oil, where oil means petro-fuels.

The bottom line is fertilizers are energy intensive. It doesn't matter where the energy actually comes from. With energy you can make fertilizer. And you can convert one form of energy to another. The problem is when there is an oil crisis, it is an energy crisis and it also mean a natural gas crisis, electricity crisis, and a coal crisis. The price of coal has gone up double, which is more than even gasoline.

And if I'm not mistaken, most ethanol plants are not of the fermenting kinkd but rather energy intensive ones ie natural gas or coal fired..

And with these natural gas and coal fired ethanol plants you get more CO2(up to 42% more) pollutants than a regular oil based refinary..

SO I don't know where your ethanol is produced and how much but here in Iowa, its a beg waste of taxpayers monies and a big polluter.

[NickB79]

6. You convert electricity to ammonia directly?

No feedstock materials inbetween? As I recall, having grown up on a farm as well, fertilizer is produced from natural gas, a hydrocarbon directly linked to oil production. That would explain why fertilizer prices skyrocketted this winter as natural gas prices were also very high.

[NNadir]

7. Electricity is not currently used to make ammonia, but it could be.

Very easily in fact.

The purpose of all carbon compounds used in ammonia synthesis is as a reducing agent. The thing that is reduced is the hydrogen ion which is used to make hydrogen gas.

The first nitrogen fixation scheme, for which Fritz Haber, and industrial chemist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (it was basically war work) did not use either natural gas or electricity. It used coal.

The use of natural gas to fix nitrogen is a relatively recent development, less than 50 years old. The technology for nitrogen fixation on the other hand, is almost 100 years old.

The Nobel Prize was not awarded for making hydrogen. That was already well understood. The Prize was awarded essentially for catalysis. Nitrogen gas is usually inert, and it takes considerable energy to break the nitrogen-nitrogen triple bond. The activation energy for this endothermic reaction is considerable. What Haber did was to lower that activation energy. The discovery of this technology has been a mixed bag for humanity. It has definitely shifted the nitrogen cycle on a planetary scale, and many ecosystems, including the some in the Gulf of Mexico, have been destroyed or vastly altered.

One can get the energy for nitrogen fixation anywhere however, from electricity, from natural gas, from oil, from nuclear or from coal.

I'm neutral on the question of ethanol. I think (I guess) ethanol is a useful technology in regions where it doesn't need much transport, where water is available without much cost and energy contribution, and where large reactors can be installed cheaply and run cheaply. But the case is not proved in my mind. A very simple experiment, which no one seems to want to do, would be simply to attempt to operate an ethanol farm (or several in different areas) as a closed system. This would involve placing a fermentation system, a biomass (or wind) driven nitrogen fixation reactor, a still, and ethanol fueled farm machinery on a suitable plot of land and seeing whether it is necessary to provide energy inflows to get the farm to work. This would settle the matter once and for all. It seems to me that if politicians and the public were serious about this matter, they could easily do this experiment by diverting a few billion of the ethanol subsidy to do the research. But they won't. Instead we'll have more of the same, screaming and self serving disinformation from both sides.

My hypothesis is that ethanol will work in some cases, and not others, but to give a wholesale rejection of the technology is not wise. On the other hand, it is probably fantasy to believe that ethanol will significantly displace the need for fossil fuels to maintain even a lifestyle that is a fraction of what we now enjoy.

But Americans seem to thrive on energy dogma and mysticism. No one knows how to collect simple data, no one knows how to interpret it, and correct interpretations are voided by appeal to fantasy and chanting.

We deserve what we are about to get. It doesn't have to be this way, but because we are so indecisive, because we're a bunch of diddling dilettantes, it will be this way.

[Robert Rapier]

12. Good Post

I think you hit the nail on the head with your comments.

RR

[NNadir]

13. Thanks. Your posts are quite good too. Welcome here.

I'm sure many of us will learn quite a bit from you.

[Robert Rapier]

10. It Takes More Than Driving a Tractor....

Speaking as someone who has driven a tractor and who lives in a state whose entire economy lives or dies by agriculture, let me challenge you on a few points.

Speaking as someone who grew up on a farm, whose family still farms, and who has spent lots of time on tractors, let me answer.

We apply petroleum-based fertilizers to feed the plants.
Really? We apply nitrogen based fertilizer (anhydrous ammonia) which is produced by electricity, but mot of the electricity out here is hydro-electric.

Do you know how ammonia is produced? It doesn’t grow on trees, you know. As others have noted, it is produced via a very energy intensive process from natural gas. And the largest natural gas producer in the U.S. is Big Oil.

Here is the testimony of a corn farmer in Missouri complaining about how high natural gas prices are killing him: http://wwwc.house.gov/smbiz/hearings/databaseDrivenHearingsSystem/displayTestimony.asp?hearingIdDateFormat=050317&testimonyId=275

An excerpt: "Growers rely on affordable natural gas as feedstock for fertilizer, but also energy for irrigation, powering farm equipment, drying grain and producing ethanol."

I guess he didn’t see the irony of lobbying for more fossil fuel production so they could make ethanol out of it. If you are creating energy, why not just use a portion of the energy you created to drive the processes? The answer should be obvious.

The ethanol plants are ... consuming enormous quantities to ferment ... an ethanol solution.
Fermentation is not an energy consuming process.

Taking quotes out of context is not an honest style of debate. It hurts your credibility. I wrote "ferment and distill". The distillation process is the most energy intensive, but the fermentation process also takes energy. The mash has to be heated up. See the following process diagram to get an idea of how the process steam breaks down:

http://dnr.louisiana.gov/sec/execdiv/techasmt/alternative_fuels/ethanol/fuel_alcohol_1987/015.htm

And many of the ethanol plants are owned, not by either big oil or big agro, but by agricultural cooperatives owned by regional farmers. The money stays in the area.

Of course that’s a selling point, isn’t it? But it’s wrong. Because the fossil fuel inputs are so large, a lot of the money is flowing to Big Oil.

One other aspect of ethanol and bio-diesel is a reduction in greenhouse gasses.

All of the scientific analyses of the inputs and outputs have concluded that there isn’t much reduction in greenhouse gases from using ethanol. And that’s without considering the fact that the by-products, when fed to cattle, result in a lot of methane being produced. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

RR

[The Deacon]

4. Remarkable

I haven't seen such a collection of Straw Men set up since the last time my brother sent me a Republican Talking Points (he contributed $5 years ago just to get on the mailing list.) The author COMPLETELY misses the point of alternative fuels, apparently is COMPLETELY ignorant of the history of energy, even to the point of missing excellent examples which would bolster his arguments. I'm surprised he didn't start in with some of those lame arguments for hydrogen.

Fact is, my friends, any reasonable alternative to a pure fossil fuel economy will have to be technology-independent, i.e., the alternative requiring the LEAST change in our current technology. The history of energy (also known as human history) has shown this over and over again. Alcohol and other biofuels (i.e. bio diesel) meet this standard: small modifications to existing engines, the ability to change between fuels (an E85 vehicle can use gasoline when E85 isn't available, a modern diesel doesn't care whether the diesel fuel is made from petroleum or used cooking oil), no real modification of existing delivery systems (you can put biofuels in the same tanks used for petro-fuels, every gas station in the U.S. would need to change its delivery method for a natural gas or hydrogen fuel system - and, of course, we would then have the environmental disaster of having to dispose of all those toxic gas tanks buried in every neighborhood in the U.S.), no need to develop vast & expensive safety system for consumers (you spill a little gasoline or ethanol or biodiesel - oh, well. Spill a little hydrogen or natural gas - you die.)

We cannot afford to depend on pie-in-the-sky future technologies, the crisis is here now, it is real and we need to shit or get off the pot. Any gasoline replacement, in order to be viable, needs to be able to go into production in three years or less. It is time for us to pull our heads OUT.

[Robert Rapier]

11. Why, Thank You

I haven't seen such a collection of Straw Men set up since the last time my brother sent me a Republican Talking Points...

It would seem then that you do not know what a Straw Man is. Can you show me an example?

The author COMPLETELY misses the point of alternative fuels,...

No, I understand quite well the point of alternative fuels. But if they are primarily based on fossil fuels, as is ethanol, they aren’t really all that alternative.

apparently is COMPLETELY ignorant of the history of energy...

Actually I know a fair bit about the history of energy. Did you have a specific question?

I'm surprised he didn't start in with some of those lame arguments for hydrogen.

I am into debunking arguments, not supporting pie in the sky fantasies. After all, "ethanol is the new hydrogen". You can see my thoughts on hydrogen contained within an article I wrote on Peak Oil: http://www.omninerd.com/2006/05/17/articles/52

Scroll down to the section on alternatives.

Fact is, my friends, any reasonable alternative to a pure fossil fuel economy will have to be technology-independent, i.e., the alternative requiring the LEAST change in our current technology.

You are presuming that such a solution is actually possible without major disruptions in our lifestyle. The end of the fossil fuel economy will bring changes the likes of which we have never seen. You are already seeing unprecedented price increases. The fact is that there is simply no alternative, or even any combination of alternatives, that can replace our current level of fossil fuel usage. If you want to go through the calculations, I can show you just how little net fossil fuel displacement will occur from producing vastly more ethanol than we produce now. It is less than 5% of our liquid fuel demand. Those who believe that ethanol is going to make a dent in our energy woes is sadly misinformed. Biodiesel, on the other hand, holds more promise. I have blogged on it here:
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/03/biodiesel-king-of-alternative-fuels.html

Would you be willing to debate me on ethanol? I will give you your own free-standing essays in which to make your points. But, your claims must be specific and supported by either math and/or the scientific literature. You can even use pro-ethanol literature. Just be sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew. ;) Or, if you know an ethanol advocate who you think has some good arguments, send them my way.

My debate challenge was set forth here: http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/05/ethanol-debate-challenge.html

RR

[lindisfarne]

8. We're not going to have enough wind and solar quick enough so

ethanol will have to fill the gap (assuming the net energy is positive - I've seen arguments on both sides although it seems to be going in favor of "positive"). Generating the necessary equipment for wind and solar requires initial input of petroleum (or petroleum-based/petroleum-manufactured products). I'd be more in favor of "organically produced ethanol". :p