Ethanol and Politics

That is one of its problems. Another is that it is very difficult to transport. It eats rubber which means it is very hard to send through a pipeline which is problematic for getting it around the country. It means that it has to travel by more expensive means like trains and trucks.

The (theoretically) simpler solution would be, then to replace the natural rubber parts with synthetic ones.

How easy or economical that would be to implement on existing pipelines, however...well, you'd know that better than I, as that's more within your expertise. What I can say, however, is that diesel engines ran into the same problem when running on biodiesel, but replacing the gaskets and natural rubber parts with synthetic ones takes care of the problem.

And yes, I realize that most of the "synthetic" parts are derived from petroleum. However, I don't consider that a restriction of biofuels so much as a symptom of our dependence on fossil fuels in general.

But I am interested in hearing what you think these better bio-fuel stocks that are commercially available to the United States might be. Are they economical?

Algae.

It's still in research, but it has to potential to produce 15 times the amount of oil corn and switchgrass produce (since it's still in research, I've seen a few different numbers, Wiki says 30 times, and I've seen as high as a few hundred, I think it might depend in large part on the strain, as I think some of the higher numbers come from genetically modified algae strains).

Wikipedia has a good little chart that compares some of the feedstock yields.

Algae also has advantages other than yield. It can be grown just about anywhere as long as there is water. You'll notice that Palm Oil actually outperforms even algae, but the problem with it is that it only grows in a handful of tropical countries. Algae has been known to grow on damn near anything (including ice and snow!). One of the ideas for growing it is to grow it in wastewater treatment plants, where it can perform two roles -- cleaning the water, and then be harvested for fuel production. It can also be grown elsewhere to cut down on pollution, and the act of growing it will help counteract CO2 levels in the atmosphere, because algae use CO2 and create oxygen (as opposed to most other bacterial species, which often have by-products such as sulfur). Finally, it's not a staple food item like corn (although right now, economically speaking, using corn is a good thing, because farms are producing too much to be used for food, so they're getting subsidies to not grow more corn, we could actually lift those subsidies by using the surplus corn for other purposes, or for repurposing the land for other, higher-yield plants).

Aside from algae, there's soy, sunflowers, switchgrass, rapeseed, animal fats, waste vegetable oil, peanuts, hemp, coconut, and many, many others. Basically, if it's a plant or contains a lot of oils, it can be used, to varying degrees of efficiency. Waste vegetable oils works especially well for making fuel at home (which is actually a process about like making homemade beer, in regards to difficulty level), since the plants have already been processed into oil, it's just a matter of turning that oil into fuel (and, then, you can make your own soaps with the glycerin by-product!). I wish I still had the chart that I found when I did a paper on biodiesel, it has a pretty long list of various feedstock sources and comparisons of their yields.

I also find it short-sighted to use only one feedstock source. Doing so puts us in the same position we're in now -- completely and utterly dependent on one source and if that source collapses, so do we. Using a variety of feedstock sources would help to remedy that. So, for example, we could use algae and corn and soy and tallow and waste vegetable oil, and by doing so, we're not putting too much pressure on any one feedstock, and if something happens to one (say disease kills off most/all the soy one year), then the industry isn't crippled because it wasn't prepared to handle the catastrophe.

It's also short-sighted to go into the biofuel industry looking to make only fuel. The by-products of fuel production can be sold to other industries to make things such as soap (from the glycerin), animal food (from the nutrient-rich dry stock that comes from some processes), and so on.

But if you store ethanol, it attracts water and gets steadily diluted.

My research has focused mostly on biodiesel, but I'd venture to guess that Ethanol has similar statistics, as the process to create them both is somewhat similar (and if I remember right, you actually end up with something close to Ethanol while producing biodiesel), and I assume that Ethanol fuel is regulated in the same way gasoline and the diesel fuels are (biodiesel is actively being held to the same standard as petro diesel), but please bear in mind that my numbers are from my research on biodiesel and therefore the numbers for Ethanol might be a little different.

Biodiesel (and petro diesel, for that matter) has a recommended shelf life of six months. This is roughly the length of time that it takes to fall below diesel standards. In mainstream use, fuel is used long before that six month shelf life comes along, so this actually hasn't been an issue thus far. It's possible it might still be an issue for Ethanol, but I think that would be mostly due to market saturation of vehicles that can actually run on E85. Diesel engines can run on biodiesel straight out of the factory, without any modifications (except to replace natural rubber parts in older engines, but my understanding is that newer engines no longer use natural rubber parts, so that's a non-issue).

That sounds like damnation by faint praise. "Actually"? That does not sound very positive. I bet there is even a little bit left to run all the tractors too!

Considering the number of times I've used "actually" in my responses (to you and others), I'm kind of surprised this is the first time you've scoffed at it.

No, it's not damnation by praise, it's stating a fact that's contrary to your assumptions.

As I said many companies are running self-sustaining, in part because unlike petroleum fuels, biofuels have a positive energy balance. (And, according to Wiki, the energy balance may even be higher, depending on the feedstock, which would make sense, given higher yields.)

For the most part, I have read repeatedly that ethanol essentially has a negative energy balance. It takes more fuel to produce it then you produce.

I would be curious to see your sources on this, as everything I've found states that it's petroleum fuel, not biofuel, that has a negative energy balance.

Saving 10% and then getting 25% less mileage does not really seem like a bargain. And that lower price is after the MASSIVE subsidies.

Here is where I admit that after doing the research I've done, both here and in the past, I've found that this is one area where biodiesel seems to have a bit of an advantage. Biodiesel is more comparable to petroleum diesel than Ethanol is to octane gasoline, in terms of energy density. While Ethanol gets 25% less mileage than gasoline, Biodiesel gets 10% less mileage than Diesel, currently. One thing that should be noted, too, is that energy density varies slightly by feedstock. So, it's possible that some feedstocks might prove to yield fuel with better energy density.

Also, as I've stated before, diesel engines can, pretty much by default, run either petroleum or biodiesel, but a standard gasoline engine cannot run on Ethanol. This lends to a more direct comparison than can be made between Ethanol and gasoline. I think, as non-petroleum fuels become more common, we might start to see pure Ethanol engines appear, which would likely be more efficient at using Ethanol for fuel than current "flex-fuel" vehicles are, because they don't have to also be able to run on gasoline (kind a "jack of all trades, master of none" type of situation going on, currently).

And that lower price is after the MASSIVE subsidies. If you are a taxpayer, those subsidies are coming out of your pocket.

I'm TOTALLY in favor of any fuel that can stand on it own feet economically. If people can figure out how to make ethanol an economically viable part of our energy mix without having to swipe money out of taxpayers pockets then I am all for it.

Then you should be frowning upon fossil fuels, too, as they are also assisted by massive government subsidies.

Here's an article you'll probably like. It talks about ending energy subsidies altogether. I agree, too, that subsidies are a bad idea, no matter where they're directed. Perhaps at one time they were necessary (perhaps to keep prices reasonable? I've seen a few things that show that gas prices really haven't changed much in the past 80 years, when looking at it in an adjusted rate manner), but now, with alternative fuels--in general, not just in vehicles, but things like solar, wind, and nuclear power for things like heat and electricity in homes--becoming more viable in the marketplace, I think competition would be enough to keep prices reasonable.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that biofuels are the be-all, end-all of fuels. Like everything else, the "green energies" have their drawbacks and downfalls, which compound when we become utterly dependent on one of them.

The last article I linked mentioned the water consumption that large solar farms require. This is, obviously, a problem, especially in the sunniest areas, which are typically also the driest. However, it seems, from the quick researching I've done, that home solar installations don't have this problem. It would seem to me, then, that the best way to go is for people to chose where they want to get their electricity--either from buying it from the electric company or from using solar panels or other alternative energy sources installed on their property. By doing it this way, we become less dependent on all sources (and also, using less fossil fuels, which will not only cut down on emissions, but also make the supplies last longer), and spread the load of electricity generation, since those that generate more electricity than they use with their alternative sources can sell the electricity to the electric companies, who can then sell it to others.

The bottom line is that we shouldn't be looking at the different sources as "winners" or "losers," as if they're like the format wars, where VHS wins out over Betamax, or Blu-ray wins out over HD-DVD, and the "loser" goes all but extinct. We should look at them as (roughly) equally viable alternatives to one another, and alternatives that are favored based on individual needs and available supplies in a given area.