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Author Topic: Ethanol  (Read 10956 times)

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AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« on: October 10, 2013, 08:53:49 pm »
Surly,
For two stroke engines, placing a small round piece of metal in the cylinder head raises the compression ratio so they can run efficiently. You do NOT have to do this. It is simply done to get more engine efficiency per amount of ethanol gallon. Alcohol does not damage two stroke engines at all. The only problem is that, when it is cold, they are a bit harder to start. That's just an engineering issue that can be gotten around. More on ethanol and the ICE below.

Surly said, "WHAT do YOU make of it? I would trust your judgement as the most informed mind I know on these matters.".

I hope the last comment I made cleared some of the doubts from your mind about ethanol. I feel duckweed ethanol is far more cost effective than corn but nevertheless, even corn has always been a better deal than gasoline when the environmental costs are added. Sugar cane ethanol is 8 times more cost efficient than corn. That's why Brazil is doing so well with it.

As you know from my writings, ethanol is the historical enemy number one of Big Oil. Rockefeller managed to put the kibosh on it with Prohibition but ethanol is back with a vengeance now.

Another irony of all this disinformation from the fossil fuelers is that everything they say about increased engine and fuel tank corrosion, inefficiency and wear actually applies to GASOLINE! It's absolutely Orwellian in its mind boggling duplicity. Gasoline isn't called by one chemical name because it is a witches brew of VOCs (volatile organic compounds some of which are carcinogenic) and asphaltenes (heavier hydrocarbons with sulphur and heavy metal contaminants). Gasoline is a refinery WASTE product. It's a catch all at the tail end of the process. There is NO WAY all these hydrocarbons with different kindling temperatures and energies of activation for combustion are going to burn evenly in an engine. Aircraft ICE manufacturers have always been aware of this fact. That is why aircraft ICEs have TWO spark plugs in each cylinder (to make sure the burn is thorough and as even as possible to avoid loss of power, engine failure or temporary outage). When all these hydrocarbons combust, a tremendous amount of waste heat goes to making carbon bucky balls called soot (this is lost energy and you get no mechanical energy from it - it increases  cylinder wear through abrasion and makes your engine hot as hell so they have to design adequate cooling systems - even so, the high thermal stresses increase engine wear).

With ethanol, you can touch the engine manifold with your hand or the muffler on a your car or motorcycle without getting burned (Consider what that means to an engineer designing the cooling system for an ethanol burning engine!). Ethanol burns evenly because it is just ONE chemical compound, not a host of them. It also produces no soot. Consequently, there is very little heat waste. The engine runs more efficiently and, every bit as important, cooler. From an engineering standpoint, the alloys used in an ICE are over engineered if you burn ethanol instead of gasoline because the engine will never suffer the same thermal stress. This means less wear and more longevity for all moving parts.

If an engine is designed for ethanol, it can be lighter and cheaper to make because the alloys do not have to deal with such high temperatures.

If you haven't read my two part behemoth on duckweed and ethanol, I recommend you wade through it at your leisure. We have been conned big time.  >:(

 http://thehalloffame.wikidot.com/agelbert

The bullshit about crops being used for ethanol taking away from food crops is disinformation. Less than 3% of the corn grown in the US is for human food. True, a lot of it is for animal feed so you might say that is indirectly for human use and making ethanol takes some food off the table but it would be a LIE. Why? Because the amount of corn grown for ethanol is still peanuts compared with corn for animal feed and high fructose corn syrup. And no, that corn syrup is NOT going to make ethanol; it's going to **** up the diet of Americans. So ignore the disinformation crocodile tears of the fossil fuel industry about biofuels being a danger to the world food supply.

Quote
In 2005, the U.S. produced 42 percent of the world’s corn. Over 50 percent of the U.S. crop is produced in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska or Illinois. Other states in which corn is grown include Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Missouri.  In 2005, over 58 percent of the U.S. corn crop was used for feed. The remaining U.S. crop was split between exports (25 percent) and food, seed or industrial uses such as ethanol production (17 percent).

 Other major corn producing countries include China, Brazil, Mexico and the 25 countries that make up the European Union.
http://www.soyatech.com/corn_facts.htm

Over 50% of our corn is grown in ONE (correction  :-[) about THREE STATES and fossil fuelers are wailing and moaning about taking food out of the human population's mouths??? Can you say DISINGENUOUS?

In the videos in the duckweed article, permaculturist David Blume, in the ethanol business since the 1980s, tells the real story of how big oil has manipulated the message.

In his web site he busts several negative myths about ethanol. Here's 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.
http://www.permaculture.com/node/490

« Last Edit: October 10, 2013, 11:32:08 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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