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Author Topic: Ethanol  (Read 10949 times)

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AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #30 on: January 30, 2016, 10:50:38 pm »
I am sure that the ERoEI of bio-mass to ethanol is a different thing from the ERoEI of ethanol to miles motored, and a different thing again from the ERoEI of oil to miles motored. We want to know the ERoEI of bio-mass to miles motored.  Since we can't do that without first doing the other two, wouldn't it be sensible to do bio-mass to ethanol first?  If my figures say 1.2 and yours say 10, we have to stop and line the factors up and see where the huge difference arises.  If it turns to all come from your ERoEI for fossil fuels being different from mine, then we will have got somewhere.

I'm not playing dumb, but I do seem to be having a lot of difficulty in getting you to be focussed on solving something.  And you do know you are being insulting all the time, don't you?  That doesn't help.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #31 on: January 30, 2016, 10:51:56 pm »
Quote
It's a start, but NO, it is not acceptable because it is woefully incomplete. "Crop yield", for example, is one of those loaded terms that woefully FAILS in measuring adequate nutrition and is slanted to WEIGHT. I have posted, years ago now, about the FACT that, with chemical fertilizers, the "yields" went UP while the NUTRITIONAL VALUE of the crop WENT DOWN.

And AT NO TIME was the environmental COST of synthesizing the fertilizers and pesticides from hydrocarbon feed stock SUBTRACTED from those "yield" figures, to the JOY of the fossil fuel industry that claimed we OWED them for their (FAKE) "green revolution" of heavier, but less nutritious, crops.

Not taking sides in this argument, it is over my head, but just have to comment on Agelbert's utterly amazing postings and the facts he makes us aware of.

This is just one of the amazing rabbits he pulls out of his brainy cap.  A true font of knowledge and critical out of the box thinking on these matters.

His point of we being constantly brainwashed and bombarded by Bull **** from the Fossil Fuel crowd is one of validity however in my opinion, this is but one excellent example of their "Forked Tongues"

AG, You missed your calling in life, you would have been a Top Shelf professor.

                                           

Thank you, GO. I was a great flight instructor, aviation meteorology instructor and air traffic control teacher in the FAA. At least all my students said so.  ;D

I always did enjoy teaching. I feel the fossil fuels versus renewable energy is not really an energy or industrial civilization issue, like Palloy does. I feel it is an ethical issue. Perhaps that why both Palloy and I accuse each other of dancing around the nitty gritty and, as Palloy alleges, my "lack of focus".

I'm quite focused.      I am, at least at the moment, willing to forego the ethical stuff with Palloy. But he wants to reduce everything to a fixed quantity of energy density or ERoEI. He gave me a data dump of energy units per mass for different materials. He wants me to accept that, for example, steel or copper or neodymium rare earth, etc. in a long list of industrially mined, refined and marketed metals have a fixed amount of REQUIRED (and IMPOSSIBLE TO SUBSTITUTE WITH RENEWABLE ENERGY) fossil fuel input component AND a FIXED energy input.

His hypothesis is that the present is unsustainable so it must collapse. I agree the status quo is unsustainable but I do not agree it must collapse from lack of energy. I believe it WILL collapse from climate change if we do not transition to 100% clean energy.

Palloy believes that the main issue is lack of cheap fossil fuel energy, not climate change, and pulls out his stats and energy math to defend his position.

The figures of required energy inputs for metals are something I cannot agree with because a huge percentage of those metals that we need to maintain our civilization are no longer mined, but recycled from scrap. His figure will take the "full energy life cycle" that includes raw materials mining. That's slanted data, yet he claims I am not "focusing". 

Also, Amory Lovins, a scientist who certainly knows a thing or two about ERoEI and all things energy, has plainly stated that we CAN maintain our PRESENT level of industrial civilization with only 20% of the energy INPUTS we now wastefully apply. And all this simply by improving the efficiency with KNOWN scientific technology about turbulent flow in pipes, computer load balancing with renewable energy and, of course biofuels.  Palloy will scoff. but I think Amory is right.


Palloy,
to show you what I mean about I what I perceive you (incorrectly) feel about biofuels, I am posting a hit piece that ridicules, disdains derides and otherwise insults the intelligence of readers in general and Amory Lovins in particular.  :(     

Tell me if you can spot the disingenuous use of energy terms in this article. I suspect that you will agree with MR. Bryce's clever back door defense of fossil fuels. I will provide a rebuttal  to MR. Bryce's hit piece later. 

Biofuels Are a Bad Idea       ;)
8, 2014 8:03 AM EDT
By  Robert Bryce

SNIPPET of defamatory sniping and grossly exaggerated claims about ethanol (see: using CORN ethanol as the be-all-end-all feed stock) required energy and acreage.     

Quote

Supporters of biofuels claim that someday they will provide a significant share of energy in the U.S. Amory Lovins, the co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, and his co-authors of "Reinventing Fire," for instance, argue that by 2050, the U.S. will get 23 percent of its total energy from "non-cropland biofuels."

This is ludicrous. To grow enough biomass to produce that much energy, the U.S. would need to set aside about 219 million acres of land, an area the size of Texas, New York and Ohio combined.

Biofuels, we have been repeatedly told, are the magic bullet, the energy-independence-punish-the-Arabs-anti-terror-better-than-standard-diesel-fuel miracle elixir. It isn't true. It's never been true.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-05-08/biofuels-are-a-bad-idea
« Last Edit: January 31, 2016, 03:46:50 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #32 on: January 31, 2016, 03:24:02 pm »
I regard Lovins as a tool of the powers that be.  One of the crowd who imagines we can find technical solutions to our resource depletion issues.  In other words a technarcissist. 

In his defense perhaps he is trying to kiss political ass but big brains who think we can innovate to a cornucopian future do the rest of us a huge disservice.  There is no way our nation can endure without citizens making huge lifestyle and attitude changes and since that is not going to happen without a poke and a prod purveyors of hopium like Lovins must lead us to a very bad end.  Technology is part of the answer but it is a thin slice of the solution pie and that fact should be screamed from the rooftops by those who pray to the Technology God for deliverance.  Especially by those who have influence.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #33 on: January 31, 2016, 03:28:11 pm »
I used to be a fan of Lovins, back when I thought solar panels were a good idea.  But when I realised what the ERoEI of solar panels is, and that the EI is all up front while the ER is a trickle over its lifetime, I stopped promoting solar, and started seeing Lovins as a Techno-Utopian.  He remains popular because Techno-Utopianism is a much more comforting meme to hold on to than Doomerism. 

I guess this is the difference between myself and AG too.  He believes the FF industry will do ANYTHING to preserve their wealth and influence, and I agree, but he also believes that Lovins (et al) would never do the same, while I think that is exactly what they will do.

Anyway, there are many things that mathematical tools can't solve, but ERoEI is one where it can, and it can be life-changing because you discover that there is no solution to the energy problem.

This so-called data dump that AG keeps focussing on wasn't a data dump at all.  It was just a list of factors that have to be quantified before you can work out the ERoEI of bio-mass to ethanol.  It didn't contain any data - that is to be supplied by the scenario writer.  When you cut the crop and take it away, you are taking away nutrients, hence impoverishing the soil.  For sustainability, you must at least replace those nutrients, and it would probably be beneficial to be improving the soil over time. So: how much fertiliser (tonnes/hectare);  how much energy to make fertiliser (MJ/tonne);  how much crop (tonnes/hectare); are all necessary numbers in the calculation.  In fact in the reports Farrel analyses, the N, P, K, Lime, herbicides and pesticides represent about 18.5% of Energy Returned of the ethanol.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #34 on: January 31, 2016, 03:31:35 pm »
How much land and human slave labor does it take to raise enough substrate (using organic farming) and process enough biofuel to power one private automobile?

Is there a spread sheet for that?

Reminds me of that old cartoon of a Roman Galley. You probably remember it:

 "The good news is that everyone gets an extra ration of grog. The bad news is that after lunch the Captain wants to water ski."

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #35 on: January 31, 2016, 03:36:14 pm »
K-Dog is into assuming renewable energy is the same scam as fossil fuels  - SEE: FALSE EQUIVALENCE. K-Dog's technofix concerns are valid, but ONLY if he wishes to discuss ETHICAL considerations  (i.e. the CRIMES of the fossil fuel industry in comparison with any perceived Renewable energy technofix limitations), something he most certainly DOES NOT wish to discuss objectively, along with the champion of the Capitalist profit motive, Eddie   . Granted, Lovins is a Capitalist and he plays their game. BUT, he is trying to make a POSITIVE difference, not perpetuate profit over planet stupidity. To label that as "hopium" is sour grapes, not objectivity.

People here making false comparisons between clean energy technologies and dirty energy technologies in general, and defamatory remarks about a serious scientist like Amory Lovins in particular, who actually FORCED mechanical engineering textbooks to be rewritten with a new turbulent flow thermodynamics characteristics formula he discovered, with instruments he designed in the 1980's, is sour grapes and worthy of pity.

It is CLEAR that both Eddie and Palloy are SOLIDLY in agreement with the Bryce hit piece on biofuels. 


That is not a new revelation to me, of course. But it is refreshing to see them make their "there is no replacement for the 'high energy density' fossil fuels so civilization MUST collapse" positions clearer and clearer.  ;)

This interesting comment by Palloy is of note in the pretzelian logic of the status quo defenders:
Quote
I used to be a fan of Lovins, back when I thought solar panels were a good idea.  But when I realised what the ERoEI of solar panels is, and that the EI is all up front while the ER is a trickle over its lifetime, I stopped promoting solar, and started seeing Lovins as a Techno-Utopian.  He remains popular because Techno-Utopianism is a much more comforting meme to hold on to than Doomerism. 

Palloy is attempting to make a case that Lovins, more a champion of pipe airflow characteristics, building efficiency, pump redesign, grid efficiency, building insulation, Computer load balancing from PV, wind or any other source that is renewable (and so on) than all things photovoltaic (though he certainly DOES applaud their extensive use IN COOMBINATION with other renewable energy technologies.), somehow did not do the proper math on PV.

I will not again address the spurious, defamatory and baseless charge of "Techno-Utopian". That's all part of the MO the fossi lfuel industry has been using for at least 40 years with their "sounds wunerful but it ain't ready for prime time" PRoPi (profitable Return on Propaganda Invested     ). Name calling is lots of fun but, other than align Palloy with the fossil fuel tool Bryce in the biofuels hit piece above, doesn't prove a thing.

The really curious thing about Palloy's allegation that "Doomerism is a more realistic approach to responding to our present plight", is that HIS response to our plight it is to discount the value of proposed solutions by claiming they are "pie in the sky" even though many of these technologies, like wind and PV, already have an excellent record of causing demand destruction for fossil fuels poisoning our atmosphere. Any discussion of their effects when they are truly scaled up is simply not acceptable to Palloy because, uh, something about the PAY BACK TIME. 

Let's study WHY Palloy makes that claim. Palloy claims to be taiking about ERoEI. He says, "  I realised what the ERoEI of solar panels is, and that the EI is all up front while the ER is a trickle over its lifetime, I stopped promoting solar."

Well, the about statement is, when analyzed correctly, about MONEY returned on MONEY invested, not ENERGY returned on ENERGY invested. Palloy KNOWS that the MONEY you get BACK from the life cycle of fossil fuels (excluding externalizations like coerced subsidies from we-the-people, tax loop holes, flaring toxic gases, poisoned wildlife and sick poor kids living downwind of refineries, etc.     ) is FASTER with fossil fuels.

So, he pulls out his pay back time for an investment formula and plugs in PV panels.

Sounds like fossil fuels win, right?

Nope. WHY? Because the ORIGINAL premise is that this is about ERoEI, not MONEY return on MONEY invested. Of course fossil fuels looks fine and dandy due to the FACT that the laws are GAMED to make it so. The PITTANCE that PV gets in subsidies is something Palloy will claim to argue that since BOTH technologies get subsidies, it don't matter. The gargantuan difference in subsidies in not in Palloy's math, for some reason.

And here is the most salient error in Palloy's "logic" that led him to stop promoting solar. UNLIKE fossil fuels, the ENERGY harvested from the sun by a solar panel EXCEEDS ALL THE ENERGY used to mine the materials and manufacture that solar panel BY SEVERAL MULTIPLES. RE went nuts when I first pointed the Columbia University study that PROVED that.

And that was BEFORE the more efficient panels over the last two years!  :o   

Fossil fuels, as of this writing, ACTUALLY have ERoEI's BELOW 1:1. The only reason they are "profitable" is because of the corruption of the laws that regulate their extraction, refining and marketing.     

Let me be clear, so Palloy does not misinterpret me here. Discounting pollution costs, 50 years or more ago and earlier, gasoline DID have an EroEi above 1:1.

But TODAY, from the energy required to
explore for crude oil and
extract it somewhere
to transport to the refinery
to the pre-refining oxygen stripping
to drying
to the cracking towers refining
to the storage TEMPERATURE control
to the synthesis of and addition of 40% non hydrocarbon solvents
to the transportation to the gasoline station
to get one gallon of gasoline exploding in your combustion chamber, the KINETIC ENERGY your vehicle gets from that combustion is LESS than was INVESTED in all the above steps required to make it and get it to the combustion chamber, PERIOD.

You NEED MORE ENERGY to get that gasoline to your combustion chamber than you get in the movement of your CAR!


And THAT does not even include the pollution costs!

I agree with Palloy that the upfront MONEY costs of PV are a barrier to scaling it up because the pay back (MONEYWISE- NOT ENERGYWISE) is slower than with fossil fuels powered plant and equipment. WHO'S FAULT IS THAT!!!? Corrupted Governments! Energy "density" or ERoEI has absolutely nothing to do with it.

The FACT that the ENERGY pay back of PV includes an ERoEI ALWAYS greater than 1:1, even if it does take 5 or six years for a panel that functions reliably for 25 PLUS years, is NOT an excuse to "stop supporting PV".  PV HAS an ERoEI HIGHER than 1:1, PERIOD!

The shorter time needed to extract the energy from gasoline (a product with an ERoEI BELOW 1:1) from the well to the combustion chamber does not justify continuing to use it.

Solar panels represent just ONE part of the DOABLE transition to 100% Renewable energy. After this post, I'll present a rebuttal to the "Biofuels are bad idea" hit piece attacking ethanol.

I'm still waiting for Palloy to tell me how much volume of flared gas is burned per barrel of crude or equivalent mass of fracked "natural" gas. I guess I'll have to dig up that embarrassing (for fossil fuelers)  info myself.   8)



Now for some DOOM news, along with the SOLUTION that the K-Dogs and Palloys of this world call "techno-Utopian".

Is Humanity On the Eve of Extinction? 
Jan. 21, 2016 1:23 pm By Thom Hartmann

According to NASA and NOAA scientists, 2015 was the warmest year ever for global land and ocean surfaces, dating all the way to 1880.

And it's not just American scientists who are reporting that last year was the warmest on record, British scientists reported that it was the warmest year since 1850, and Japanese scientists reported that it was the warmest year since 1891.

Keep in mind, 2014 had set the previous record for global surface temperatures, and 2015 just beat that record by a longshot.
 

Part of what's going has to do with an unusually warm Pacific Ocean due to an El Nino that's going on right now, but that doesn't explain it all.

As Dr. Michael Mann explained to the New York Times,  if the global climate weren't warming, the odds of setting two back-to-back record years would be about one chance in every 1,500 pairs of years.

He added though, that because the planet is warming, the odds of setting back-to-back record years is really closer to one in ten now.

The really scary part though, is that there's good evidence that this is nothing compared to what's to come.
Just as William F. Ruddiman argued in a paper from 2003, even though humans hadn't industrialized, we had already started having a major impact on the Earth's atmosphere and its natural cycles as far back as 8000 years ago.

And that makes sense, because 8000 years ago is about the time that early agriculture appeared in Eurasia and humans started clearing, and burning, forests to make more space for agriculture and human settlements.

In his research,  Ruddiman points out that based on the natural Earth's natural cycles for methane and carbon over the last 400,000 years, we should see a decrease in both gases starting roughly 11,000 years ago and continuing for another several thousand years.

Instead, we see that carbon dioxide and methane levels started to rise in the atmosphere starting about 8000 years ago, marking a sharp movement away from what had occurred for over 400,000 years of Earth history.

Recent research from the Anthropocene Working Group at the University of Leicester shows that humans have almost always had a noticeable impact on the planet's natural cycles, but our impact has been exceptional since the start of the industrial revolution.

In fact, the 24 co-authors argue that we've entered a new and distinct geological era, just within the last 50 years.

They call it the "Anthropocene era" from the greek word "Anthropos" meaning "man".

The authors argue that even though we've been having an impact on our planet for thousands of years, it's only been during the last 50 years that human activity became the main factor driving almost every single natural process on Earth.

And that brings us back to the relationship between global surface temperatures, methane, and carbon dioxide.

Because as these    charts     show, if atmospheric temperatures continue to follow the same sky-rocketing trend that methane and carbon dioxide have during the last century, we could very well be approaching the eve of extinction.

And none of this is taking into account the greenhouse gases that are trapped in the Antarctic Ice Sheet, which could be up to 21 quadrillion grams of organic carbon, and up to 400 billion tons of methane gases.

If we continue on this course, if we continue to spew methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the pursuit of cheap and short sighted economic growth, we can guarantee that our planet will continue to warm.

And, as the planet warms, the Antarctic Ice Sheet (Nature International Weekly Journal of Science:  Potential methane reservoirs beneath Antarctica )  will begin to rapidly melt, which means that up to 21 quadrillion grams of carbon, and up to 400 billion tonnes of methane would be released into the atmosphere.

At that point, if humans are even still around, there will be literally nothing that we can do to stop a planetary mass extinction and to save humanity.

More and more scientists agree that natural processes don't drive the climate anymore, human activity does.

And it's only human activity that can stop our march towards planetary extinction.

Which means we need to put a price on carbon.

And we need to aggressively convert our energy system to one that's 100% renewable, and we need to find carbon and methane-neutral ways of transporting our goods, building our infrastructure, and constructing our cities.

The technology to achieve all of those goals already exists, and we now face a choice as a global society.

We'll go extinct if we keep doing what's easy, and what's comfortable. 

But we can save the planet, if we make bold decisions and take immediate action to minimize human impact, and thus restore the planet's own natural processes and the balance that existed for hundreds of thousands of years before the first human settlements.   

http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2016/01/humanity-eve-extinction#sthash.FoBR5OHQ.dpuf
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AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #36 on: February 01, 2016, 03:02:04 pm »
You have really wasted your time trying to argue:
Quote
The really curious thing about Palloy's allegation that "Doomerism is a more realistic approach to responding to our present plight", is that HIS response to our plight it is to discount the value of proposed solutions by claiming they are "pie in the sky" even though many of these technologies, like wind and PV, already have an excellent record of causing demand destruction for fossil fuels poisoning our atmosphere. Any discussion of their effects when they are truly scaled up is simply not acceptable to Palloy because, uh, something about the PAY BACK TIME. 

- because that isn't my point at all.  Once more, for the record:

To calculate ERoEI, (which is a single number, and hence not very expressive) you first have to identify the full life-cycle energy budget - the components of EI and the components of ER.  But to investigate the scale-up of a technology OVER TIME, you also have to include when the components of EI and ER occur in time.

Let's do it first with algebra, and then we can plug in some real numbers.
Let the Lifetime of the panel be L, and the ERoEI be E.
And let's assume that ALL the EI is up front, from T=-1 to T= 0,
and the ER is from T=0 to T=L.
So the Energy Payback Time is L/E,
and the Energy Payback Per Year is Y% = (100 * E/L).

So any growth in the panel industry that is faster than Y% is going to need an energy subsidy - from the existing energy mix, which is mostly FFs.
So if you want to cut back on the use of FFs, you have to grow the PV industry at less than Y%, and you have to divert ALL the ER to the next year's EI.  (Actually that's impractical, but I will allow you declare electricity is fungible with FFs, so panels on roofs will do.)

OK, so when does the PV industry as a whole start to make an energy profit, bearing in mind you will be requiring increasing amounts of EI as time goes on? 
There isn't a simple formula for it, but if you lay it out in a spreadsheet, year by year with Y% growth per year, it is easy to total the EIs and the ERs, and the answer is 2 * L/E.

Plugging in some real numbers:
L = 25 years
E = 3
Y = 12%
Time to a positive total PV energy profit = 16.7 years

And THAT is why you can't have a scalable PV industry.
Yes, you can make a start on the transition, but you can NEVER finish it.
Note: not a single $ sign anywhere - this is nothing to do with money.

In the real world, which runs on money, of course money does have a lot to do with it, but that's not MY argument.  It doesn't matter how much in subsidies the FF industry gets, and it doesn't matter how much in subsidies PV gets in MY argument.  I'm not in league with the FF conspiracy, and I'm not in league with the PV conspiracy.

The fact is none of them are a solution, and the same goes for nuclear and bio-mass.  We're doomed.




You are totally wrong in your claim that "PV cannot be scaled up". Not only can PV be scaled up quite well,  but as we speak, PV is being scaled up THANKS TO INCREASING INVESTMENTS YOU WISH TO IGNORE THAT ARE NOW BEING MADE TO  ACHIEVE THAT.

Of course, PV will NEVER be scaled up in a centralized energy "business model" the predatory bastards on this planet prefer; it will MOSTLY be DECENTRALIZED, making it  DIFFICULT for the leaches that want to control the energy spigot. But, as far as the PERCENTAGE of gobal energy harvested for industrial civilizaton, within ten years it WILL be at over 25% (I'm being conservative - over 50% is probably more realistic.  ;D ). I do believe 25% of the whole energy enchillada is considered SCALED UP, even by you.      That means that even your money argument is losing its validity too! 

As to your PV energy figures, LOL!

WHY? Because fossil fuels NEVER produce MORE energy than it takes to get them! WHAT PART OF THAT DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND? And you have the BALLS to claim a long pay back time energy wise is a valid excuse to "NOT SUPPORT" PV!!!? WTF!!!?

Ah, yes, the "real world", most loved by the MKing's of this world as a defense of their empathy deficit disordered "business model", that doesn't have ANYTHING to do with THERMODYNAMIC efficiency or ACTUAL ENERGY RETURN on ENERGY INVESTED, is brought up BY PALLOY as a fig leaf for a failed ERoEI argument.

Which confirms, despite  Palloy's DENIAL that MONEY is his only argument, that money IS his argument, NOT energy. And he NEEDED to AVOID mentioning or actually doing the math on SUBSIDIES to make his money argument (when you want an positive number in an equation result, Palloy learned at an early age that variables that subtract from the resultant number are to be avoided whenever possible...). Consequently he makes the fascinatingly inaccurate claim that " It doesn't matter how much in subsidies the FF industry gets, and it doesn't matter how much in subsidies PV gets in MY argument."     

Palloy's allusion to me being a "conspiracy theorist" doing a "wild eyed branding" of him as part of a conspiracy against PV  (I.E. "Palloy the prudent mathematician suffering spurious accusations by the unwashed and ignorant Agelbert"  ;)     ) was a nice touch. I'm sure some brainwashed fossil fuelers fell for it. ;D

And the obligatory "balanced" statements that admit the truth about distributed PV on rooftops is another clever touch placed there to convince me and all of you readers that Palloy is being "objective" about PV.


Palloy, you are study in clever sniping, hyperbole and irrelevancy. You are somewhat entertaining but consistently inaccurate. But thank you for helping to jack up the views here.         :

NOW for the rebuttal of the defamatory remarks and deliberately inaccurate ethanol acreage requirements and energy efficiency figures in the "Biofuels are a bad idea     " hit piece by the TOOL of the fossil fuel industry (Bryce - which makes arguments which are almost identical to the ones Palloy makes to claim Renewable Energy based ethanol cannot replace gasoline for transportation):

  BUSTING THE ETHANOL MYTHS

Myth #1: It Takes More Energy to ­Produce Ethanol than You Get from It!


Most ethanol research over the past 25 years has been on the topic of energy returned on energy invested (EROEI). Public discussion has been dominated by the American Petroleum Institute’s aggressive distribution of the work of Cornell professor David Pimentel and his numerous, deeply flawed studies. Pimentel stands virtually alone in portraying alcohol as having a negative EROEI—producing less energy than is used in its production.

In fact, it’s oil that has a negative EROEI.. Because oil is both the raw material and the energy source for production of gasoline, it comes out to about 20% negative. That’s just common sense; some of the oil is itself used up in the process of refining and delivering it (from the Persian Gulf, a distance of 11,000 miles in tanker travel).

The most exhaustive study on ethanol’s EROEI, by Isaias de Carvalho Macedo, shows an alcohol energy return of more than eight units of output for every unit of input—and this study accounts for everything right down to smelting the ore to make the steel for tractors.
But perhaps more important than EROEI is the energy return on fossil fuel input. Using this criterion, the energy returned from alcohol fuel per fossil energy input is much higher. In a system that supplies almost all of its energy from biomass, the ratio of return could be positive by hundreds to one.



Myth #2: There Isn’t Enough Land to Grow Crops for Both Food and Fuel!

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. has 434,164,946 acres of “cropland”—land that is able to be worked in an industrial fashion (monoculture). This is the prime, level, and generally deep agricultural soil. In addition to cropland, the U.S. has 939,279,056 acres of “farmland.” This land is also good for agriculture, but it’s not as level and the soil not as deep. Additionally, there is a vast amount of acreage—swamps, arid or sloped land, even rivers, oceans, and ponds—that the USDA doesn’t count as cropland or farmland, but which is still suitable for growing specialized energy crops.

Of its nearly half a billion acres of prime cropland, the U.S. uses only 72.1 million acres for corn in an average year. The land used for corn takes up only 16.6% of our prime cropland, and only 7.45% of our total agricultural land.

Even if, for alcohol production, we used only what the USDA considers prime flat cropland, we would still have to produce only 368.5 gallons of alcohol per acre to meet 100% of the demand for transportation fuel at today’s levels. Corn could easily produce this level—and a wide variety of standard crops yield up to triple this. Plus, of course, the potential alcohol production from cellulose could dwarf all other crops.



Myth #3: Ethanol’s an Ecological ­Nightmare!

You’d be hard-pressed to find another route that so elegantly ties the solutions to the problems as does growing our own energy. Far from destroying the land and ecology, a permaculture ethanol solution will vastly improve soil fertility each year.

The real ecological nightmare is industrial agriculture. Switching to organic-style crop rotation will cut energy use on farms by a third or more: no more petroleum-based herbicides, pesticides, or chemical fertilizers. Fertilizer needs can be served either by applying the byproducts left over from the alcohol manufacturing process directly to the soil, or by first running the byproducts through animals as feed.



Myth #4: It’s Food Versus Fuel—We Should Be Growing Crops for Starving Masses, Not Cars!

Humankind has barely begun to work on designing farming as a method of harvesting solar energy for multiple uses. Given the massive potential for polyculture yields, monoculture-study dismissals of ethanol production seem silly when viewed from economic, energetic, or ecological perspectives.

Because the U.S. grows a lot of it, corn has become the primary crop used in making ­ethanol here. This is supposedly ­controversial, since corn is identified as a staple food in poverty-stricken parts of the world. But 87% of the U.S. corn crop is fed to animals. In most years, the U.S. sends close to 20% of its corn to other countries. While it is assumed that these exports could feed most of the hungry in the world, the corn is actually sold to wealthy nations to fatten their livestock. Plus, virtually no impoverished nation will accept our corn, even when it is offered as charity, due to its being genetically modified and therefore unfit for human consumption.

Also, fermenting the corn to alcohol results in more meat than if you fed the corn directly to the cattle. We can actually increase the meat supply by first processing corn into alcohol, which only takes 28% of the starch, leaving all the protein and fat, creating a higher-quality animal feed than the original corn.

Agelbert NOTE: Did you read that last paragraph closely? It is a very important paragraph because it is proof that you can STILL FEED THE CORN TO ANIMALS after you have taken 28% of the starch out to make ethanol! You can never do that with hydrocarbons. This gives proper corn or other biofeedstock processing for ethanol AND animal feed a huge jump in EROEI (energy return on energy invested).



Myth #5: Big Corporations Get All Those Ethanol Subsidies, and Taxpayers Get Nothing in Return!

Between 1968 and 2000, oil companies received subsidies of $149.6 billion, compared to ethanol’s paltry $116.6 million. The subsidies alcohol did receive have worked extremely well in bringing maturity to the industry. Farmer-owned cooperatives now produce the majority of alcohol fuel in the U.S. Farmer-owners pay themselves premium prices for their corn and then pay themselves a dividend on the alcohol profit.

The increased economic activity derived from alcohol fuel production has turned out to be crucial to the survival of noncorporate farmers, and the amounts of money they spend in their communities on goods and services and taxes for schools have been much higher in areas with an ethanol plant. Plus, between $3 and $6 in tax receipts are generated for every dollar of ethanol subsidy. The rate of return can be much higher in rural communities, where re-spending within the community produces a multiplier factor of up to 22 times for each alcohol fuel subsidy dollar.



Myth #6: Ethanol Doesn’t ­Improve Global Warming! In Fact, It ­Pollutes the Air!


Alcohol fuel has been added to gasoline to reduce virtually every class of air pollution. Adding as little as 5–10% alcohol can reduce carbon monoxide from gasoline exhaust dramatically. When using pure alcohol, the reductions in all three of the major pollutants—carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and ­hydrocarbons—are so great that, in many cases, the remaining emissions are unmeasurably small. Reductions of more than 90% over gasoline emissions in all categories have been routinely documented for straight alcohol fuel.

It is true that when certain chemicals are included in gasoline, addition of alcohol at 2–20% of the blend can cause a reaction that makes these chemicals more volatile and evaporative. But it’s not the ethanol that’s the problem; it’s the gasoline.

Alcohol carries none of the heavy metals and sulfuric acid that gasoline and diesel exhausts do. And straight ethanol’s evaporative emissions are dramatically lower than gasoline’s, no more toxic than what you’d find in the air of your local bar.

As for global warming, the production and use of alcohol neither reduces nor increases the atmosphere’s CO2. In a properly designed system, the amount of CO2 and water emitted during fermentation and from exhaust is precisely the amount of both chemicals that the next year’s crop of fuel plants needs to make the same amount of fuel once again.

Alcohol fuel production actually lets us reduce carbon dioxide emissions, since the growing of plants ties up many times more carbon dioxide than is created in the production and use of the alcohol. Converting from a hydrocarbon to a ­carbohydrate economy could quickly reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide.

http://www.permaculture.com/node/490



While we are discussing what ethanol is, how it is made and what the effects on the environment are, never forget that ethanol produced from plants is COMPETITION for the fossil fuel industry so they are not happy with the growth of ethanol as a biofuel replacement for fossil fuels in our civilization from cars to power plants. At present, the fossil fuel industry actually produces about 5% of the world's ethanol from petroleum products. So they stand to lose that product as well as all the other energy products from bio-fuel ethanol products.

From Wikipeda:

Ethanol is a renewable energy source because the energy is generated by using a resource, sunlight, which cannot be depleted. Creation of ethanol starts with photosynthesis causing a feedstock, such as sugar cane or a grain such as maize (corn), to grow. These feedstocks are processed into ethanol.

About 5% of the ethanol produced in the world in 2003 was actually a petroleum product.[18] Two million tons of petroleum-derived ethanol are produced annually. The principal suppliers are plants in the United States, Europe, and South Africa.[19]Petroleum derived ethanol (synthetic ethanol) is chemically identical to bio-ethanol and can be differentiated only by radiocarbon dating.[20]

Bio-ethanol is usually obtained from the conversion of carbon based feedstock. Agricultural feedstocks are considered renewable because they get energy from the sun using photosynthesis, provided that all minerals required for growth (such as nitrogen and phosphorus) are returned to the land. Ethanol can be produced from a variety of feedstocks such as sugar cane, bagasse, miscanthus, sugar beet, sorghum, grain, switchgrass, barley, hemp, kenaf, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, sunflower, fruit, molasses, corn, stover, grain, wheat, straw, cotton, other biomass, as well as many types of cellulose waste and harvestings, whichever has the best well-to-wheel assessment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel

We have, for all practical purposes, an unlimited energy source in the form of solar photons absorbed at various different levels of efficiency to produce nutrients for plant life.
What's more, these solar photon processing units of life called plants grow over most of our planet, particularly where humans are most concentrated.

This is a radical departure from fossil fuels which cost enormous amounts of money to safeguard in certain world areas where they are concentrated. This concentration of energy, when it is controlled centrally, as it is done by the global powers, has led to inequality, corrupt police state type governments, wars, and a controlling oligarchy of conscience free predator humans lording it over the great mass of the human population. This in turn has resulted in rampant pollution, global warming and a great deal of human misery.

Plainly, the status quo is unsustainable so we must move to a sustainable civilization or perish.

This was a decade ago. The piggery at the top is much worse now.
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AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #37 on: March 07, 2016, 02:41:35 pm »

ALL major industrial high thermal heat, beat and treat processes ALREADY use electrical furnaces because those are the most efficient for processing and manufacturing metals and their alloys. So ALL of heavy industry, except for back up generators than can run on ethanol, can be powered by ELECTRICITY.
I think that is a real "killer app" for kickstarting demand, making ethanol-powered ICE electrical generators.  It's something that can be done today by someone with good engineering skills (or enough money they can hire someone with such skills).  Alas, I have neither the skills nor the money.  But one thing that makes ethanol ideal for back-up generators is that the fuel can be stored indefinitely without special processing; even with additives gasoline can only last a couple years in storage.  (Propane itself does not degrade with storage, but the seals do, so you can find your tanks empty even though you never used them.)

I suspect that Brazil my have some generator models that run exclusively on ethanol. They already require their filling stations to have at  last one E100 (100% ethanol - illegal in the USA - LOL!) pump. So if they have a large percentage of cars running on it, it's not a big step to rig up a car engine to run on ethanol.


I'll check around when I get some time. To me, the ultimate poison pill  ;D or the fossil fuel industry in the USA would be a legal internal combustion engine made with alloys that cannot handle high temperatures (i.e. VERY cheap to manufacture due to less tempering required and also because it requires 30% LESS metal -  weighing at least 30% less). Any gasoline use would warp the block and/or the heads. So, they would have to be placarded with the "ETHANOL (E!00) ONLY" warning stating that any use of gasoline voids the warrantee.

The same thing applies to natural gas or LPG. LPG and Methane burn cleaner than gasoline but the waste heat problem, while not being as bad, still requires high heat handling alloys and over engineering we have in ALL our fossil fuel powered internal combustion engines today.

Of course the USA will be the last to allow such an ethanol only engine  across the border. The feds will arrest you for carrying "non-fuel grade" fuel (i.e. if you can drink your fuel, Lord Lucifer and the Fossil Fuel Government will frown on you with extreme prejudice :evil4:).

The fossil fuelers will never admit that the waste heat of fossil fuels, so necessary for them to claim they have a "higher energy density" than ethanol, is useless for obtaining mechanical WORK from an engine AND SUBTRACTS from engine power BECAUSE some of the engine energy must be used to COOL the engine.

Hess's Law of enthalpy of formation, the one Charles Hall adores and the one used for just about ALL of the assumptions on laws of thermodynamics in science today, classifies ALL heat, whether waste heat or not, as ENERGY. This is true. But if you can't use some of that energy to do work, and if that energy you can't use actually INTERFERES with you doing work (i.e. SUCKS ENERGY from the energy that is useful in order to keep the engine from over heating), then basing ERoEI on Hess's Law is thoroughly misleading.

Finally, Hess's Law is not used as it should be to subtract the energy required to bio-remediate the damage that pollution products from fossil fuels cause. Externalizing those costs as if they did not require an energy input to assure a viable biosphere is an insult to the laws of thermodynamics. It's fossil fuel industry cherry picking, not science.   

« Last Edit: March 10, 2016, 03:35:56 pm by AGelbert »
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AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #38 on: November 28, 2016, 02:36:37 pm »
Commodities | Mon Nov 28, 2016 | 8:09am EST

Trump faces dilemma as U.S. oil reels  ;D  from record biofuels targets

By Chris Prentice | NEW YORK

The Obama administration signed its final plan for renewable fuel use in the United States last week, leaving an oil industry reeling from the most aggressive biofuel targets yet as President-elect Donald Trump takes over.

The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program, signed into law by President George W. Bush, is one of the country's most controversial energy policies. It requires energy firms to blend ethanol and biodiesel into gasoline and diesel.

The policy was designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, reduce U.S. reliance on oil imports and boost rural economies that provide the crops for biofuels.

It has pitted two of Trump's support bases against each other: Big Oil and Big Corn. The farming sector has lobbied hard for the maximum biofuel volumes laid out in the law to be blended into gasoline motor fuels, while the oil industry argues that the program creates additional costs.

Balancing oil and farm interests is likely to prove a challenge for Trump, who has promised to curtail regulations on the oil industry but is already being reminded by biofuels advocates of the importance of the program to the American Midwest, where he received strong support from voters on Nov. 8.

Oil groups are renewing their calls to change or repeal the program following Wednesday's announcement, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set record mandates for renewable fuels - for the first time hitting levels targeted by Congress nearly a decade ago..

The EPA plan is "completely detached from market realities and confirms once again that Congress must take immediate action to remedy this broken program," said Chet Thompson, President of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, in a statement.
 
It is unclear what Trump's plans for the program will be and his transition team did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

Both camps are expecting an administration receptive to their demands, though both have expressed concern and uncertainty over Trump's plans for the program, according to experts, industry and political sources.

The installation of climate change skeptic Myron Ebell as head of the transition at the EPA bolstered oil industry confidence Trump will swing their way. In September, Trump appeared to briefly echo the views of his supporter, billionaire Carl Icahn, who expressed concern about the program.

Icahn, who owns a stake in an oil refiner, renewed those criticisms last week, saying the ethanol credit market generated by the program is susceptible to manipulation and harming independent refiners.
 
PRO-ETHANOL CAMPAIGNING

The president-elect campaigned on a pro-ethanol platform when he visited America's farm states and biofuels advocates expect he will keep the RFS strong, maintaining annual targets at the minimum set forth by Congress.

"Mr. Trump will not turn his back on the American heartland, we believe in him," said Annette Sweeney, a former state representative from Iowa who was a member of the Trump's agricultural advisory committee during his candidacy.
 
"To a certain extent, we are on higher ground. You always want to be on higher ground," said Bob Dinneen, head of the Renewable Fuels Association, referring to the increase.

"We’ll be able to demonstrate the marketplace can absorb 15 billion gallons of ethanol. We can put this all behind us. As we look to 2018... there's no reason to go back," he said.

The renewables industries have already started to emphasize their place among American-made fuels, something experts expect will appeal to Trump.

"There are a lot of good things to be said about second-generation fuels, even from the new administration’s perspective," said Harvard University professor and former Obama administration advisor James Stock.

"All the new administration needs to do is embrace the original ... vision of the RFS," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-biofuels-idUSKBN13N0CR
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AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #39 on: January 28, 2017, 05:51:00 pm »
Ethanol would be nice I suppose, but I doubt it would keep BAU floating along much.  Plus, it's ground you are not using for food production.  However, I'm sure something could be grown that does not require much fertility that could then be transformed into ethanol.  Maybe a restoration agriculture type scheme where you heal the land by growing plants for ethanol?
I read an article (offline) that demonstrated that Pennsylvania could grow all the energy it currently uses, with switchgrass being the primary energy crop.  The one conclusion that was implied in the data but that they failed to point out, however, was that the cost of doing so would be that would mean that the state would grow NONE of its own food.  Not exactly the trade-off I would want to make.

Lucid and JD,
The truth about the ethanol program that Trump wants to permanently interrupt is that it competes quite successfully, even with growing corn, against gasoline. So the producers of gasoline want to kill ethanol production, period. This is not hard. This is not a conspiracy "theory". The fossil fuel industry is rather open about their hatred of competitors. So, they publish a lot of half-truths about crops for food versus fuel. The bold faced lies mixed in there are enough to make any scientist gag. But that's the history since right before Prohibition.

Eddie claims ethanol is a "bad" idea AS IT IS NOW OBTAINED FROM CORN. Well, as opposed to obtaining it from low lignin crops, of course. But NOT as a replacement for gasoline! Ethanol is a GREAT IDEA as a replacement for gasoline. That's a rather salient difference.

But Eddie is right IF he believes that ethanol production can be viable and sustainable.

Lucid, you do not need ANY of the land now used for absolutely everything that crop land and grazing land is used for to completely replace gasoline and diesel fuels with ethanol. Yes, you need land that, though considered "barren' (i.e. thousands and thousands of acres of desert in North Africa, the USA, Mexico, South America, Asia and Australia), has a desert biome which must be preserved.

But the amount of ponded land you need to produce ethanol from duckweed (wide temperature tolerance, virtually no root systems, over 40% low lignin starch, no plowing, recycled water, tilapia poop fertilized, low energy required for harvest, crop doubles in size EVERY 48 HOURS - over twenty times the growth rate of grass, never mind slower growing crops like corn) can do the job sustainably WITHOUT impacting the desert biome negatively (ALL the growth medium is in covered ponds).

YES, it would cost billions of dollars to ramp up to a worldwide production from deserts of 23,000 barrels of ethanol per day (approximate present world gasoline consumption). SO WHAT!!!?

Do you have any idea what those ocean going oil rigs cost to build AND maintain in rough oceans!!!? Well, you SHOULD! AND all those tankers? AND all those severely polluting refineries? AND the polluted spent wells and ruined land? They ARE NOT cost effective! They are "subsidized" out the Wazoo, and YOU AND I ARE FOOTING THAT BILL!

A massive  worldwide desert ethanol production operation would have nearly unlimited solar energy (PV AND CSP) available to process the product in specially built duckweed refineries (The Chinese estimated they were competitive at $72 dollars a barrel of oil a few years ago - BUT that totally excludes the oil pollution costs AND the duckweed NET ZERO CO2 pollution).

I've got a very lengthy thread on ethanol and why and how we-the-people have been suckered out of replacing gasoline with it. It includes a lengthy back and forth with a closet fossil fueler here that shall, for the moment, remain nameless. The published ERoEI numbers for ethanol (yes, even CORN ethanol) are SEVERELY low balled. The gasoline ERoEi numbers are a HAPPY TALK JOKE!

Read more here:

http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/renewables/ethanol/
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AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #40 on: January 28, 2017, 06:09:02 pm »
January 28, 2017 Trump campaigned on a pro-ethanol platform when he visited America - HE LIED

Commodities | Mon Nov 28, 2016 | 8:09am EST

Trump faces dilemma as U.S. oil reels  ;D  from record biofuels targets

By Chris Prentice | NEW YORK

The Obama administration signed its final plan for renewable fuel use in the United States last week, leaving an oil industry reeling from the most aggressive biofuel targets yet as President-elect Donald Trump takes over.

The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program, signed into law by President George W. Bush, is one of the country's most controversial energy policies. It requires energy firms to blend ethanol and biodiesel into gasoline and diesel.

The policy was designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, reduce U.S. reliance on oil imports and boost rural economies that provide the crops for biofuels.

It has pitted two of Trump's support bases against each other: Big Oil and Big Corn. The farming sector has lobbied hard for the maximum biofuel volumes laid out in the law to be blended into gasoline motor fuels, while the oil industry argues that the program creates additional costs.

Balancing oil and farm interests is likely to prove a challenge for Trump, who has promised to curtail regulations on the oil industry but is already being reminded by biofuels advocates of the importance of the program to the American Midwest, where he received strong support from voters on Nov. 8.

Oil groups are renewing their calls to change or repeal the program following Wednesday's announcement, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set record mandates for renewable fuels - for the first time hitting levels targeted by Congress nearly a decade ago..

The EPA plan is "completely detached from market realities and confirms once again that Congress must take immediate action to remedy this broken program," said Chet Thompson, President of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, in a statement.
 
It is unclear what Trump's plans for the program will be and his transition team did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

Both camps are expecting an administration receptive to their demands, though both have expressed concern and uncertainty over Trump's plans for the program, according to experts, industry and political sources.

The installation of climate change skeptic Myron Ebell as head of the transition at the EPA bolstered oil industry confidence Trump will swing their way. In September, Trump appeared to briefly echo the views of his supporter, billionaire Carl Icahn, who expressed concern about the program.

Icahn, who owns a stake in an oil refiner, renewed those criticisms last week, saying the ethanol credit market generated by the program is susceptible to manipulation and harming independent refiners.
 
PRO-ETHANOL CAMPAIGNING

The president-elect campaigned on a pro-ethanol platform when he visited America's farm states and biofuels advocates expect he will keep the RFS strong, maintaining annual targets at the minimum set forth by Congress.

"Mr. Trump will not turn his back on the American heartland, we believe in him," said Annette Sweeney, a former state representative from Iowa who was a member of the Trump's agricultural advisory committee during his candidacy.
 
"To a certain extent, we are on higher ground. You always want to be on higher ground," said Bob Dinneen, head of the Renewable Fuels Association, referring to the increase.

"We’ll be able to demonstrate the marketplace can absorb 15 billion gallons of ethanol. We can put this all behind us. As we look to 2018... there's no reason to go back," he said.

The renewables industries have already started to emphasize their place among American-made fuels, something experts expect will appeal to Trump.

"There are a lot of good things to be said about second-generation fuels, even from the new administration’s perspective," said Harvard University professor and former Obama administration advisor James Stock.

"All the new administration needs to do is embrace the original ... vision of the RFS," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-biofuels-idUSKBN13N0CR

Agelbert NOTE: Trump is, and always was, a TOOL of the Fascist Fossil Fuel Industry. His latest action AGAINST ethanol, despite his campaign LIES and the poor suckers who believed him, is clear evidence that big oil pollution will RUN WILD all over the USA and ethanol production will be crushed.


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AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #41 on: January 28, 2017, 07:33:39 pm »
Eddie asked,

Quote

My flawed world view?

I was talking about the current agricultural boondoggle that results in government money being thrown into growing many thousands of acres of GMO corn on land that is already worn out, just to make ethanol at an EROEI that's barely over 1:1 by the most generous estimates.

It's just a Big Ag scam that puts money into Monsanto's bank account, and that of a number of congressmen, no doubt.

I have no allegiance to the fossil fuel industry, beyond driving a car, which I expect you also do from time to time. What pisses me off is you calling me names. My informed opinion is that it's a bad idea to keep making ethanol from GMO corn.

My view is not based of on fossil fuel propaganda. It's based on understanding EROEI, and on understanding how using all that ammonium nitrate and glyphosate poisons the land and the water.

https://www.buildinggreen.com/news-article/producing-ethanol-corn-bad-idea

A world view includes many other assumptions that are corollaries to your belief that, for example, published ERoEI numbers, as in the "low positive" EroEI allegations in your referenced article,  are valid. So, I will limit this discussion to Energy Return on Energy Invested.

First of all, the term "ERoEI" is a deliberate misnomer. It actually refers to MONEY returned for MONEY invested. It is doubletalk to claim the energy units required for the production of ethanol from whatever are X:1.

WHY? Because along absolutely every step of the way to get that ethanol, assumptions are made that PETROLEUM PRODUCTS are required to obtain the processed ethanol. THAT IS A LIE. But, if we proceed from that flawed assumption, you can get some very low ERoEI numbers from a plant that requires chemical fertilization, plowing, has slow growth, is not temperature tolerant, cannot be grown all year round, ETC.

But all the above is not even my biggest complaint about the lack of scientific objectivity involved in making ERoEI assumptions (i.e. ENERGY UNITS, not SUBSIDIZED, or otherwise, dollars).

You as a scientist, will not dispute the FACT that every cubic inch of soil has over 50 million microscopic critters in it. Do you REALLY think that our science can accurately compute the energy in versus the energy out of that bioactivity? You KNOW we CANNOT.

When a plant is growing, the soil it is in is bioactive, or the plant dies. I am not just talking about nitrogen fixing bacteria, available water, potassium and phosphorous. That is the super simplistic world view that has gotten us into this mess.

The flawed thinking which assumes that is all a crop needs to grow is the simplistic science that leads to quantifying the "energy" inputs. That is inaccurate, to put it mildly. THAT is the flawed thinking that leads to quantifying crop "yield" by weight, instead of by nutrients.

SCIENCE is NOT supposed to DO THAT! Science is supposed to add and subtract EVERYTHING that is going on in the bioactivity in order to properly determine how much ENERGY is going in to grow that crop and how much is available in the crop product SUSTAINABLY.

In the case of ethanol ERoEI, the calculations flat REFUSE to do soil comparison yield due to microbial activity or the lack of it. They don't want to go there (chemical fertilizers inhibit microbial activity BUT increase crop WEIGHT while decreasing crop nutrients) so they DON'T. Yes, the BT GMO corn grown for ethanol is practically inedible so the nutrient content should theoretically not be a factor. The factor should be starch, which is what the ethanol is produced from.

But it HAS been conclusively proven that rich bioactive soils produce a higher percentage starch content in corn than straight chemical fertilized crops. So, even if the WEIGHT of the corn might be greater with all the fossil fuel CRAP used, increased starch percentage is certainly NOT a guaranteed benefit of increased weight.

The depletion of soils by mono cropping ethanol constitutes world class crocodile tears from Big Ag when they never gave a DAMN about that for food crops (although they certainly should have!). There certainly IS a way to grow corn without depleting the soil, but the fossil fuel industry and Big Ag ARE NOT INTERESTED IN SUSTAINABILITY.  That is why any talk of soil depletion caused by growing ethanol is a red herring.

The ERoEI concept, as I have discussed in the past, does not even have a STANDARD in the scientific community, other than what the Charles Hall gang (i.e. fossil fuel industry funded happy talkers for oil and doom and gloomers for Renewable Energy in general and ethanol in particular) publish.

DON'T tell me there is some kind of tidy ERoEI Joules in and joules out formula out there because there AIN'T!

DON'T tell me the fossil fuel industry hasn't been gaming ERoEI numbers against ethanol because they ARE!

This brings us to your assumption that the article you just quoted has scientifically accurate energy numbers. THAT is just one part of your world view, that I contend, is flawed.

You believe a plethora of falsehoods about thermodynamics because Capitalism wants you to view products with a very precise bit of cherry picking for costs and profits. It all goes back to money, not energy. Published ERoEI numbers are baloney. Fossil fuels, ALL OF THEM, require more energy to go from source to processed product than the energy in the product. That is blasphemy to your world view. You laugh when you read that. And the reason you laugh is because you firmly believe the fossil fuel industry has "profited" (along with civilization) from them. They have stolen from the biosphere. They have used the air water and land as an open sewer.

But you read one article about "low positive" ethanol EroEI and depleted soils and immediately pass judgement on a program that just last year reached its biofuel goals (set nearly ten years before) for the first time.

That is because you have a flawed world view. You were, as we all have been, propagandized by inaccurate science passed off as "reputable" energy mathematics.

I don't ask you to agree with me. I just ask you to be more aware of the depth with which you assume published data is "reputable" without a second thought.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2017, 10:22:54 pm by AGelbert »
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AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #42 on: May 09, 2017, 02:09:09 pm »



More to biofuels than CO2 reduction   

 Thursday, May 4, 2017

Failure to account for non-fuel related benefits from biofuel production leads to an underestimation of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction potential for biofuels when replacing fossil fuels due to the many valuable by-products and/or co-produced utilities with high fossil replacement potential. With the current Swedish biofuel production portfolio, consideration of non-fuel related benefits could lead to 50 percent greater GHG emission savings, a recently concluded project finds.

In 2014, the Swedish Energy Agency reported a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction of 1.95 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) due to the replacement of fossil fuels with biofuels. However, a narrow focus on CO2 fails to capture the additional benefits biofuel production may have according to a recently concluded Swedish research project.

Over 16 percent of all fuel used on Swedish roads during the first half of 2016 were renewable.  


GHG reduction benefits of biofuel production underestimated according to a new study.

Studies often indicate that agricultural and biomass production systems have the potential to provide considerable socio-economic benefits, but that the level of detail and clarity regarding benefits provided by expanded biomass production and biofuel process industries are insufficient.

Furthermore, the significant focus directed toward investigating the life cycle impacts and negative socio-economic effects of biofuel production tend to exclude, miss, or ignore additional benefits from the biofuel industry accrued in both environmental and socio-economic spheres.

This was the starting point for a recently completed project within the Swedish Knowledge Centre for Renewable Transportation Fuels (f3) and Swedish Energy Agency collaborative research programme Renewable transportation fuels and systems (Förnybara drivmedel och system).

Factoring non-fuel GHG emission benefits

Project leader Michael Martin from IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute has worked together with participants from f3 partners Bio4Energy/Luleå University of Technology and Lund University to study the additional socio-economic benefits that also come from replacing fossil fuels with biofuels.

The project Environmental and socio-economic benefits from Swedish biofuel production, has quantified and analyzed environmental benefits, and reviewed and documented socio-economic benefits of biofuel production in Sweden.

The results from the environmental analysis provide evidence that failure to account for non-fuel related benefits from biofuel production leads to an underestimation of the potential for biofuels to contribute to GHG emission reductions when replacing fossil fuels due to the many valuable by-products and/or co-produced utilities with high fossil replacement potential.

Prime examples of such being by-products from grain-based ethanol production, digestate from biogas production, and utility integration of lignocellulosic fuel production such as fuels derived from biomass gasification.

Göteborg Energi’s Gothenburg Biomass Gasification Project (GoBiGas) is the world’s largest woody biomass gasification demonstration project.

With the current Swedish biofuel production portfolio, consideration of non-fuel related benefits could lead to 50 percent greater GHG emission savings, compared to when only considering the replaced fossil fuels. In the considered future fuel production mix scenarios the corresponding number could almost reach 90 percent, due to significantly increasing shares of biogas and lignocellulosic biofuels.

The results from the project have been submitted in two scientific articles that are to be published. An additional supporting report that elaborates on the socio-economic benefits through a screening and review of job creation and assessment methods for other benefits is also under way. In the meanwhile, an extended summary report is available.

Reference: https://bioenergyinternational.com/

https://advancedbiofuelsconference.org/

http://buyersguide.renewableenergyworld.com/international-advanced-biofuels-conference/pressrelease/more-to-biofuels-than-co2-reduction.html
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #43 on: October 22, 2017, 03:30:23 pm »
What You Need to Know about an Ethanol Powered Generator

An ethanol generator is similar in most ways to other generators, except for the fact that they use ethanol fuel instead of other fuel types. This one small fact, however, makes a world of difference due to the environment-friendly nature of ethanol fuel.

Advantages of An Ethanol Fueled Generator

Compared to gasoline, ethanol fuel is a renewable resource, so you will not contribute to the oil shortage that some countries are now at the brink of.

Other than that, ethanol fuel burns cleaner than gasoline and helps reduce the amount of carbon contaminants in the air. This way, you can rest assured that as it generates electricity, it won’t release toxic materials into the air, which can then harm your surroundings.

Using an ethanol generator running on an E85 ethanol fuel blend may also qualify you for some benefits and tax incentives offered by the government. And if you produce your own ethanol fuel, your generator will not run out under load and will thus last longer.

Drawbacks (Agelbert NOTE: Thanks to the Fossil Fuel Industry  ) of An Ethanol Powered Generator

Like all types of generators, an ethanol fueled generator has its disadvantages.  ;)

First of all, one of the most significant problems that people using ethanol fuels face is the lack of fueling stations that offer ethanol.

Car owners who use ethanol to run their cars have to go greater distances before they can find a gas station that offers ethanol fuel.

Despite the fact that ethanol can be locally produced, the country does not have enough resource to produce as much ethanol fuel as necessary to make ethanol fuel a major fuel source. 

The Working Principle of Ethanol Generators

Instead of burning gasoline to convert it into energy, ethanol generators burn ethanol fuel. Ethanol fuel is made by mixing ethanol and gasoline to produce a blend that can contain either more ethanol or more gasoline.

E85, the higher blend of ethanol fuel, contains more ethanol at 85% than gasoline at 15%. The lower blend, however, also known as E10, is made up of only 10% of ethanol. The higher the ethanol content, the cleaner the fuel is.

However, there are some special requirements for engines before they can safely use higher blends of ethanol fuel.  ::)

Majority of generators these days can run only on E10.

There are also some types of generators that benefit more with the use of ethanol fuel. For example, portable generators, emergency generators, and standby generators, which are not continuously used and do not require a large amount of fuel, will use ethanol better than commercial, industrial, or marine types of generators.

Some Quality Brands to Consider

Ethanol generators are still not very easy to find these days, especially in the United States.

However, there is a greater market in store as major generator brands in the US, like Coleman, Honda, and Generac, start looking into cleaner generators powered by alternative fuel sources.


Some brands, such as Black Max, also manufacture generators that can be tuned to run on ethanol fuel.

For many other brands, their generators can often use E10 and can run on E85 as long as the engine can handle it.

Many generators these days are powered by Briggs and Stratton engines, which have been known to use ethanol fuels without any problem.

If your engine is not built to tackle ethanol fuel, there are many rebuilding kits on the market so you can raise your engine’s compression and enable it to use ethanol fuels.

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He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #44 on: July 07, 2018, 01:48:20 pm »

The planet Earth is our home and we need to do everything we can to save it.

Challenge the deniers to argue the points made here. Demand proof rather than some huffy dismissal about not understanding the laws of thermodynamics, capitalism or free enterprise. Ask them how many Mega Joules per Liter will we expend in dealing with THEIR “GIFT” TO US of 415 (AND RISING!) parts per million of CO2, increased cancer rates, excess heat from internal combustion engines that are only about 20% efficient, erosion of democracy through monopoly oil corporation price control and purchase of of our representatives and laws and useless wars that get our children killed for their GOD DAMNED profits (no, I am not swearing; I am certain the creator is not amused by humans trashing his garden or those who, like some poor deluded souls, claim that this is the way the world works and we just have to live with it).

And tell them to stuff it when they say we-the-people are responsible because we consumed their products. If they return all the profits and swag from subsidies made by big oil, then we’ll consider that possibility but otherwise it was THEY who corralled us into consuming their crap so they could centralize riches and power and turn the USA into a plutocracy ruled by ruthless oligarchs.

Call them cowards for drinking the koolaid. Force them to face responsibility for ruining the future for their offspring with ther blindness and greed. When the Biased Bums, like the pseudo-erudite mathematician Palloy claim you don’t know what you are talking about when you claim that ethanol (otherwise known as ethyl alcohol) is a superior fuel to gasoline because it gets better mileage in high compression engines and burns cleaner ,translating to a GREATER effective EROI than gasoline, push this into their face and ask them why they never got the memo:

Quote
Ethyl alcohol in the early 20th century

The following excerpt is from a Paper to the American Society for Environmental History, Annual Conference March 26-30, 2003 By William Kovarik, Ph.D. “Studies of alcohol as an internal combustion engine fuel began in the U.S. with the Edison Electric Testing Laboratory and Columbia University in 1906. Elihu Thomson reported that despite a smaller heat or B.T.U. value, “a gallon of alcohol will develop substantially the same power in an internal combustion engine as a gallon of gasoline. This is owing to the superior efficiency of operation…” (New York Times Aug. 5, 1906) Other researchers confirmed the same phenomena around the same time. “USDA tests in 1906 also demonstrated the efficiency of alcohol in engines and described how gasoline engines could be modified for higher power with pure alcohol fuel or for equivalent fuel consumption, depending on the need. The U.S. Geological Service (USGS) and the U.S. Navy performed 2000 tests on alcohol and gasoline engines in 1907 and 1908 in Norfolk, Va. and St. Louis, Mo. They found that much higher engine compression ratios could be achieved with alcohol than with gasoline. When the compression ratios were adjusted for each fuel, fuel economy was virtually equal despite the greater B.T.U. value of gasoline. “In regard to general cleanliness, such as absence of smoke and disagreeable odors, alcohol has many advantages over gasoline or kerosene as a fuel,” the report said. “The exhaust from an alcohol engine is never clouded with a black or grayish smoke.” USGS continued the comparative tests and later noted that alcohol was “a more ideal fuel than gasoline” with better efficiency despite the high cost.”

http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/alcoholengines.aspx

Quote
Ethanol Engine efficiency exceeds gasoline engines, giving greater miles per gallon (MPG) with ethanol fuel: High Efficiency and Low Emissions from a Port-Injected Engine with Alcohol Fuels— By Matthew Brusstar, Mark Stuhldreher, David Swain and William Pidgeon, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency  size: 70 Kb – 7 pages

http://www.epa.gov/otaq/presentations/sae-2002-01-2743-v2.pdf

When they fall back on the EROI formula Procrustean Bed with the claim that EROI only deals with energy density in fuels and not efficiency coefficients in different engine types, calmly remind them (hopefully, two by fours will be unnecessary to knock some sense into their heads but you never know ;D) that gasoline is not customarily used for furnaces, room lighting, barbeque grills or to boil water; it’s used almost exclusively in the ICE (internal combustion engine).

For these fossil fuel lakeys, water carriers and quislings to refuse to measure gasoline’s EFFECTIVE USABLE ENERGY when it is actually used in an ICE to do work is the height of duplicity.

But this subterfuge by Rockefeller’s admirers is not new. As I have mentioned before, way back at the end of the 19th century, Rockefeller was flushing his gasoline waste product in the rivers by his refineries at night. He could not avoid producing gasoline in his refinery cracking towers (about 19 gallons of gasoline for every 42 gallon barrel of crude refined)*.

When the automobile came out in the early twentieth century, the early car fuel called benzene had to be eliminated because that hydrocarbon is a carcinogenic. As you read above in the 1906 Edison lab study, ethanol was considered competitive energywise with gasoline.

What did Rockefeller do? He lowered the price of gasoline (remember his cost was near zero because it had been a waste product of the refining process) so much that ethanol was priced out of the market**. It was a win-win for Rockefeller.

It was only a matter of time before his nasty habit of flushing gasoline into rivers at night was going to get him and his refinery employees facing the wrong end of a shotgun from some irate farmer who noticed his horses and cows getting sick or dying when drinking the river water downstream of an oil refinery.

So, Rockefeller managed to change the flush operation from the rivers to the atmosphere and make a bundle out of it too.

But this predatory capitalist wasn’t done killing ethanol yet. He gave millions to a temperance group that ultimately succeeded in Prohibition legislation banning the production and use of ethanol (ethyl alcohol), not just for drinking, but for ICE fuel as well (and you thought Prohibition was just the fundies not wanting you to get high on booze. Rockefeller USED the fundies to block ethanol competition).

The reality was that the “cheap” gasoline was far, far more expensive than ethanol due to the atmospheric poisons introduced. It got even worse when tetra-ethyl lead entered the mix in the 1920s. It wasn’t until about 1973 that the severe damage from leaded gasoline was recognized and even so, to this day, unleaded gasoline is not mandatory in off road vehicles.

Now that ethanol is out there and available once again as a competitor to gasoline, the fossil fuel enablers return with the familiar FALSE claims that ethanol is not competitive with gasoline and the poppycock that gasoline gets better mileage than ethanol.

Call out these overeducated, Procrustean Bed, creative thermodynamics “geniuses” carrying water for the fossil fuel industry on their lies and distortions. Accuse them of being well aware of the above and deliberately distorting the fuel facts when they are actually applied to their use in engines. Tell them their Procrustean Bed EROI Bullshit isn’t going to fly anymore.

Quote
*On average, about 19.5 US gallons (16.2 imp gal; 74 L) of gasoline are available from a 42-US-gallon (35 imp gal; 160 L) barrel of crude oil (about 46% by volume), varying due to quality of crude and grade of gasoline. The remaining residue comes off as products ranging from tar to naptha.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline

Quote
**The gasoline engine became the preferred engine for the automobile because gasoline was cheaper than alcohol, not because it was a better fuel. And, because alcohol was not available at any price from 1920 to 1933, a period during which the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol was banned nationally as mandated in the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The amendment was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment on December 5, 1933. In time to produce alcohol fuels during World War II. By the time World War II ended, the gasoline engine had become “entrenched” because gasoline remained cheaper than Alcohol, and widely distributed – gas stations were everywhere.

http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/alcoholengines.aspx

Tell anybody with fried logic circuits that claims this is “the way the world works” that the REAL WORLD, not the predatory capitalist hell hole they so love, is the BIOSPHERE.

That world has a set of rules and, for most of our human existence on this planet, we followed them. For over a century and a half, a level of insanity not seen in human history has produced a greed fest so blind, so stupid and so incorrigible that it can only be labelled what it is: EVIL. Fossil and nuclear fuel advocates and their pseudo scientific Procrustean Bed EROI happy number formulations NEVER WORKED. The backers of these poisoned energy sources lied about absolutely everything related to their extraction and use from day one and they are lying through their teeth now to sabotage the truth about renewable energy sources.

Renewable energy sources are practical, sustainable and healthy for the planet and humans.
Hydrocarbon fuels have brought us pollution, wars and corrupted democracy.

« Last Edit: October 09, 2018, 05:34:52 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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