Let's hear it for Lincoln, NE! Re: alternative fuels

[TheFarseer]

Lincoln is the first city to have all their buses run on ethanol. This is 100% ethanol biodiesel mind you, not the 10% blend people put in their cars. Ethanol now consumes 25% of Nebraska's corn crop. See, we're making progress, slowly but surely. Just heard this on Paul Harvey.

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Is it ethanol or biodiesel, they are 2 different fuels? nt

[wideopen]

5. please, someone correct me if I'm wrong

I think ethenol is produced from corn by extracting the sugars and fermenting them into alcohol, whereas biodiesel in made from bulk vegitation, how it's turned into fuel I have no idea.

[TheFarseer]

9. someone *would* have to ask me that

Of course ethanol is derived from corn(usually) and biodiesel is derived from soybeans. I think Paul was just combining the two under the broad heading "ethanol" When I lived in Lincoln about two years ago, they were advertizing "this bus runs on 100% soy-biodiesel". You can no more run a bus on ethanol than you could on regular unleaded I wouldn't think.

[liberal N proud]

2. The source is all around them

May the project go well.

[Payback Time]

3. My husband is an Energy Consultant

as well as an Energy Rater, an Indoor Environmental Specialist, and a general Building Scientist. As an environmentalist, he has been doing what he loves professionally for a while now, basically advising clients how to use less energy and keep their homes healthy in the process. He has told me that it basically costs just about as much "oil" to run the equipment to make ethanol! Even if it uses less oil, it's still using oil. Yes, this is a step in the right direction, but people should be aware that ethanol may not be the answer. If anyone has other info on this, please share.

[BlueEyedSon]

4. Yes, it takes about a gallon of oil to make a gallon of ethanol

indirectly via farming, harvesting, fermentation, distillation, etc.

[wideopen]

6. any idea

how much oil it takes to make a gallon of gasoline?

[BlueEyedSon]

7. You mean how much crude is used as the raw material - or how much

energy, in oil equivalent, is used by drilling, pumping, shipping, refining, trucking.....?

[wideopen]

11. oil equivalent

In other words, all thing considered, does it require more petroleum product to produce 1 gallon of gasoline or 1 gallon of ethanol?

[BlueEyedSon]

12. Probably the Ethanol.

[wideopen]

15. If that's the case

I can't see how ethanol is helping the cause of reducing fossil fuel usage. The only advantage I see is to corn farmers, having another outlet for their product. Hmmm.. is ethanol a farm subsidy?

[BlueEyedSon]

16. Could be.

[TheFarseer]

10. party-pooper

I don't doubt it takes considerable energy to produce ethanol. Couldn't they run the equiptment on coal power, nuclear power or even solar power just as easily?

[BlueEyedSon]

13. Can't make fertilizer and pesticides from uranium.

[TheFarseer]

14. No

Unless you want to take the chance that florescent glowing corn will up-root and attack you during the night! I was just wondering if it was actual oil or oil equivalents of other energies. Keep in mind you have to refine and ship oil into gasoline also. If it takes a gallon of oil to produce a gallon of ethanol or gasoline AND an additional gallon of oil that actually makes up the gasoline, you are still ahead a gallon of oil from making the ethanol. Maybe that's ridiculously simplistic. I don't know.

[skids]

17. Well...

To be fair, a gallon of gas and a gallon of ethanol contain different amounts of energy. So the question should really be, how much oil per BTU?

Ethanol is not a very attractive alternative fuel -- works well as an additive to reduce gasoline emmissions, but corn is the wrong crop to be producing fuel from, and ethanol the wrong liquid fuel to be producing.

Biodiesel is nice, but probably not scalable.

Methanol is very good both as a source of fuel for fuel cells and directly as a fuel in a modified engine (it melts rubber, so the tubes and seals have to be made special.) However, it requires an initial investment in a pyrolitic reactor to "crack" plant matter into methanol and some extra chemicals (for which there is a market as well.) The difference is that ethanol comes from sugar, and biodeisel comes from oils, whereas methanol comes from cellulose and other plant "bulk". As such you get more output from more soil-friendly crops.

It remains to be seen whether any of the "pipelined" technologies (gas/liquid/metal fuel cells, hi-compressed gas, flywheels, etc.) will reach mass market viability before we need another solution. That is, will it go "gas->hybrid gas->fuel cell" or will we have to shove an alternative internal combustion technology "gas->hybrid gas->hybrid other->fuel cell".

[Rainbowreflect]

8. I heard this on the radio this morning.

I ride a Lincoln bus most work days.