Ethanol: The future is now.

[CaptaiN_JacK]

[QUOTE=cphilip]Well it does matter. Environmental trade offs do matter. [QUOTE]

Is it really a trade off though? The rainforests would be cut down no matter what, at least they are putting the desolate land to good use. I don't think it's right to make it into farmland instead of planting new forests, but at least they're putting the land to good use.

[Hasty8]

hmmm So where are we going to grow all this corn?? I just do not think that we can easly grow corn as fast as we would need to make ethnol a viable fuel sorce over 10%-20% as a blend.

Do you have any idea how many farmers are paid NOT to grow? Trust me, even without adding more farms we could seriously grow tons of the stuff.

[TMAXXKING1]

i work at a station that does pump alot of fuel

we are open 16 hours a day we pump on an average any where from 20k to 26k dollors a day ... we get a drop of regular every day about 8k gallons .. we shut the place down while fueling .. and dont pump for 30mins until the fuel has a chance to settel.. ethinal.. atracts
water .. and dirt from the bottom of the tank .. are tanks are 2 years old ... i now this for a fact before we had ethinal in the fuel .. we would need a filter change every 2 weeks .. now we need to change filters once a week ...and they have also made the filters 20 partical..

the original filters were 30 partical.. letting more flow threw them.. now the new filter is a pain in my ... well you know .. do to the fact we are a full serve station .. man it kills me when those filters need a change .. the average pump .. pump 8 gpm...

you know the slow pump you are getting pissed off at while you got to stand there waiting ..
try doing 4 pumps at a time and deal with 4 slow pumps .. it's great when you are about to hit the lights call it a night and have a yuppie .. pull up with a yukon or expodition.. and have freeze your butt of waiting on a slow pump for a 75 dollor fill up ..

[Hasty8]

Hey, I make ethanol as well! I just don't put it in my car.

It's true that the use of ethanol will not be a cure-all to the industrialized world's addiction to fossil fuels, but it's a good place to start on the fix which we'll HAVE to find in the next 50 years.

This is what amazes me. So many are looking for tomorrows answers to today's problems when the answer is already here.

Hydrogen.

Hydrogen fuel-cell cars are already being certified by the government for everyday use.

http://www.hondacorporate.com/fcx/

A lot of the people I discuss this with are also highly misinformed when it comes to hydrogen production. A great many think that we will still have to burn fossil fuels to generate the electricity to split a water molecule into it's repsective oxygen and hydrogen parts.

Not true.

Using a simple home-rated photovoltaic panel Humboldt University has had a machine running, unassisted, for several years producing tons of hydrogen. Here's how it works (in my own idiot terms)

The solar panel produces enough of an electrical charge to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen is released into the air and the hydrogen is stored for later use in a fuel cell. This is where the really cool stuff happens. The stored hydrogen is RECOMBINED with the previously released oxygen and makes, that's right WATER!

This is literally as close to a perpetual machine as it gets folks and what's best is that the technology is here today!

The problem is that people want to be able to do their burnouts and have rip-snorting cars that belch out mountains of noxious fumes.

So in all honesty, it's not that the technology is not here, it's just the humans are not smart enought to realize this.

[Southpaw]

Do you have any idea how many farmers are paid NOT to grow? Trust me, even without adding more farms we could seriously grow tons of the stuff.

How many gallons of gas do we use a year? How much corn does it take to make one gallon of 95% ethanol? Do the Math! Add to that the added energy to make the ethanol over gas and the pollutants that the ethanol plant produces. I think you at the very best have a wash as far a pollutants and REAL $ saved. I have said that a blend helps but to say "just switch to ethanol" is silly. I lived about 5 miles from an ethanol plant if you care to read the link I posted you will see some of the problems with ethanol in a "real world" situation that plant could not make money even with HUGE tax incentives. To answer your question every farmer is paid not to grow produce on their land and I think they pick the worst land to allocate as the land not to grow. But that is just my opinion

[hitech]

I must have missed something. How are you going to safely store hydrogen in a car?

[cphilip]

[QUOTE=CaptaiN_JacK][QUOTE=cphilip]Well it does matter. Environmental trade offs do matter.

Is it really a trade off though? The rainforests would be cut down no matter what, at least they are putting the desolate land to good use. I don't think it's right to make it into farmland instead of planting new forests, but at least they're putting the land to good use.

I think its a big loss. Losing potential medicines from the rare plants and species of animals that we have yet to even discover a use for... and causing total eventual destruction of entire fragile ecosystems... which are the only reason those lands have any top soil at present time... well... eventualy its a total loss. The global effects are staggering. And all negative. We have way too much crop land already that lays fallow in the mid west. So no... I don't think its wise for them to clear cut those Rain Forests for a short term gain. And it will be very short term. Eventually all that land will erode and be worthless. It will not even grow rain forest tree's again. Its devastating to the entire area and even changes weather patterns. Its in the worlds interest to not encourage them to do i. And to protect that fragile environmental buffer.

[cphilip]

I must have missed something. How are you going to safely store hydrogen in a car?

Surely they mean Nitrogen? The most abundant gas on Earth?

[Hasty8]

Clearing up Hydrogen misconceptions.

No cphil, I meant Hydrogen. Nitrogen is not the most abundant gas.[edit]check that Cphil was right. Nitrogen is the most abundant but it does not work as well as a power source. If you want to freeze your severed head for later implanting on a model's body then Nitrogen is your choice but for a good renewable energy source you want hydrogen.[/edit]

As for Hydrogen it is infinately safer than most comdustible fossil fules as it evaporates very quickly.

Hydrogen is a fuel and as with any fuel, there can be dangers associated with its use. However, in many ways hydrogen is safer than the fuels we are accustomed to using, such as natural gas, propane, and gasoline. The reason for this is hydrogen's buoyancy and diffusivity. Any hydrogen leak dissipates extremely rapidly and does not linger to form explosive mixtures. Numerous industrial hydrogen systems have been in use for many years and have excellent safety records.

SERC Hydrogen FAQ's

There is one down side currently and that is simply price. Read more on the link above about the price.

Hydrogen is truly the definitive last word, IMHO, regarding a replacement for fossil fuels.

[hitech]

The problem with hydrogen has always been a concern for safety. The link you posted has nothing more to offer for safety (the safety link said "coming soon"). The safety problem with hydrogen is that it is MUCH more volatile that any other fuel. That makes it MUCH more likely to explode. If the same amount of potential energy is carried in a vehicle (a reasonable assumption I believe) hydrogen would be more of a safety risk because it is more volatile.

It's a great fuel otherwise. Very efficient and burns with ZERO pollution. However, minimizing the risk takes away from its benefits. However, that is not to saw that it can't be done. But the last place it's going to make its way to is a car. It's going to have to prove itself elsewhere first.

Safety is still the major concern.

[TheTramp]

Hydrogen is truly the definitive last word, IMHO, regarding a replacement for fossil fuels.

I agree that H2 is going to be an important part of the fix. I don't however think that it's the "definitive last word." At this point we do not have a source of H2 that both fullfills the potential demand and doesn't use fossil fuels (or nuclear energy) in the manufacturing prosess.

It will be, IMHO, an important player but not the only one.

[cphilip]

Hydrogen is truly the definitive last word, IMHO, regarding a replacement for fossil fuels.

The problem with that logic is two fold. Availabilty and your insistence of not thinking outside the box on it. Who says combustion is the only way to derive engery? It's not....

http://www.pipeline.com/~bkyaffe/altfuel/section/n2.html

Many more ideas like this out there... with a relatively cheap safe abundant source of raw material. It does not always have to be combustion to solve the problem. It can be many innovative technologies. Neat thing here is you end up with at most Water as the by product. If nothing else you just return Nitrogen to the atmosphere to be reused again and again.

[PyRo]

Someone tell the vettes to make way for the 15hp nitrogen powered truck

[cphilip]

hehe... well if you think about it... a fairly large tractor only puts out 30. Its all in the gearing...

thing is you take a large Nitrogen airmotor and drive say a electrical charger.... for batteries... and you got lots of potential.... for hybrids and such.

[BlackVCG]

So are we all suppose to not drive or drive less during the winter time when the majority of the days are cloudy and the output of solar panels go way down? Solar panels currently have about 13% efficiency, meaning they produce about 130 watts per square meter of solar panel. 1000 watts of energy per square meter are sent from the sun to the earth's surface.

Solar energy is for all practical purposes cost free and non-polluting, but I'd love to see even one of the eurpoean countries build a system of solar panels to produce enough hydrogen for the automotive industry's fuel needs. Hydrogen power is only as clean as the method used to produce it, so if you want Hydrogen to be the definitive solution to cheap/non-polluting energy, forget using anything other than wind and solar power.

Also, as already stated, the infastructure needed to produce and transport all of this hydrogen would be rediculously expensive and too drastic of a reformation to be the answer to our "problems."

This is what amazes me. So many are looking for tomorrows answers to today's problems when the answer is already here.

Hydrogen.

Hydrogen fuel-cell cars are already being certified by the government for everyday use.

http://www.hondacorporate.com/fcx/

A lot of the people I discuss this with are also highly misinformed when it comes to hydrogen production. A great many think that we will still have to burn fossil fuels to generate the electricity to split a water molecule into it's repsective oxygen and hydrogen parts.

Not true.

Using a simple home-rated photovoltaic panel Humboldt University has had a machine running, unassisted, for several years producing tons of hydrogen. Here's how it works (in my own idiot terms)

The solar panel produces enough of an electrical charge to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen is released into the air and the hydrogen is stored for later use in a fuel cell. This is where the really cool stuff happens. The stored hydrogen is RECOMBINED with the previously released oxygen and makes, that's right WATER!

This is literally as close to a perpetual machine as it gets folks and what's best is that the technology is here today!

The problem is that people want to be able to do their burnouts and have rip-snorting cars that belch out mountains of noxious fumes.

So in all honesty, it's not that the technology is not here, it's just the humans are not smart enought to realize this.