Study Says Ethanol Not Worth the Energy

Yahoo News Article

A crushing blow to biodiesel. If this study is correct, it would seem like biodiesel is utterly doomed.

(Blatantly stolen from Slashdot)

...a SPECIFIC kind of biodiesel, made with a SPECIFIC kind of base oil, using a SPECIFIC kind of technology...

What if it turns out that Ethanol is a net energy loss?

What if it turns out Ethanol is just a feel good fuel, designed to provide subsidies to American farmers, and make environmentalists happy?

I have to agree here with skankzor. Ethanol is not the best alternative fuel out there. Same goes for recycling anything other than aluminium. It hurts the environment more than it helps, at this stage. Sure, getting the mindset there is a big step, but don't have false sense.

i'm sorta a fan of ethanol for fuel. that way i have an excuse to have open liquor bottles in the car - "what officer, this? this is my emergency fuel supply!"

What I'm saying is that ethanol is not the only kind of biodiesel, so saying that biodiesel is "doomed", because ethanol specificially is inefficient, is kind of silly.

we've been talking about this in the futurism group, and louys found this article. though new discoveries like this are very promising, we still have to conserve. there are other things we need petroleum for.

I thought that most commercially produced biodiesel was made from soy?

I don't know much physics but

seems odd to me. What do they expect, that you'll burn less energy than you produce?

What they really need to do is give a comparison between ethanol and regular, from birth to grave, to see if there's advantages.

I find it hard to understand how a field is less efficient than oil rigs.

EDIT: Don't forget that it's a new industry without thatmuch funding at the moment, so obviously stuff is going to get more efficient.

[Edited on Jul 18, 2005 by dem_z]

I would assume that the amout of energy (heat, electricity, ect) to produce the fuel is greater than the potential energy of the fuel they get out.

From the article:

And I know that fuels that we use to store energy will be a net energy loss, but the problem is that the energy losses talked about in the study are fossil fuel losses. If these were losses from Hydro, Solar, Nuclear energy, it wouldn't be a real issue

Ethanol is not biodiesel. At least get your information straight before using phrases like "crushing blow". Ethanol is an alcohol, biodiesel is various natural oils. Ethanol is added to gasoline to increase the oxygen level and therefore improve combustion. The additive being used previously, MTBE, is a known carcinogen and was beginning to show up in water.

Right now ethanol is cheaper than gasoline due to a slight oversupply. The market will likely correct itself.

And if you checked the artical you would of seen that biodesel has the same problem as ethanol. They use more fossil fuel to make than gets produced.

You have to compare the amount of energy it takes to harvest and process the fuel to the amount of energy the end product will contain. If the end product contains less energy than it took to produce, and isn't in a significantly more accessible form, then you would have been better off not even doing it.
Gasoline has a huge energy density, ethanol doesn't. That means that ethanol needs to be much less energy intensive to produce in order to give the same cost/benefit ratio.

More accurately, you would have seen that *one study claims* that this problem exists. there are dozens of other studies that claim the opposite.

Right now there is one posted study showing it is not efficent and you, with no support, saying it is. Hmmmm which way should I lean?

No, right now there is one article, which mentions a number of studies, one of which says one thing, a few of others say another thing. I haven't said anything one way or another, I was simply pointing out that this is just one study out of literally dozens that have been done, so declaring it as fact is extremely premature. I can't help that you don't seem to have much grasp of either the subject at large or the article in question.

Right now there is one article referencing a study that says biodiesel is inefficient. There was no other comment about biodiesel in that article. Biodiesel has many advantages as far as emissions are concerned, however it does cost more to produce and uses more energy than you get out. This may change with alternative sources of oil (mustard seed, algae, recycled cooking oil) are figured in. You would also have to figure in the environmental costs of cultivating the size crop you would need to provide reasonable quantities of Biodiesel. The massive farming, pesticides, fertilizers, ect. Insulting me or trying to weaken my arguments by questioning my knowledge or intelligence without even trying to address the issues shows that you have no desire for any real debate.

Maybe he, unlike you, does not really want to debate it for the sake of debate.
If you spent 30 seconds on google you could find 100000 other articles about biodiesel production, but you just want to argue in the context of this thread.
Have fun.

[Edited on Jul 18, 2005 by GramNegative]

Read this article for an overview of ethanol production efficiency covering various sources being used in the world today.

Corn is inefficient compared to sugar beets, or best of all, sugarcane (as used in Brazil, the current leader in ethanol production, where ethanol has replaced 40% of imported fuel for domestic use).

Since sugarcane energy yield is the best @ 800%, we would do well to figure out how to grow it in the US...

I have ,tho I like yahoo, and not just for this thead. I am more than open to discusing this topic. It is hard when people don't say anything. Like you. How would I respond to someone who doesn't state anything but "there are other studies". Yes there are AND .

from my post in environment group:
link

Ethanol, like hydrogen, makes a much cleaner energy storage medium (fuel).

As I understand it, a major issue with ethanol is drying it (getting the water out), and there are some cheap ways being looked at - ceramics and cornmeal (!) are two I read about a few months ago. The tradition distilling/refluxing is energy intensive.

I agree that sugar cane is a great source of ethanol. I do think however that it would be at best a stopgap measure until cleaner fuel or new tech comes along. There is no doubt that is can help both our fuel supplies and some enviormental concerns.

energy content /pound

.

Using ethanol means you have to carry twice the fuel - assuming the engine uses it just as effeciently