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Author Topic: Ethanol  (Read 10962 times)

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AGelbert

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Ethanol
« on: October 10, 2013, 07:00:49 pm »
Renewable Fuels Standard Saves You $0.50 – 1.50 per Gallon  :o

According to a new analysis by renowned energy economist Philip K. Verleger – who has served as an energy advisor to both Republican and Democratic Presidents – American consumers are saving between $0.50 and $1.50 per gallon on gasoline as a direct result of increased ethanol production under the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS).

“The implication for world consumers is clear,” says Verleger. “The (Renewable Fuels Standard) has cut annual consumer expenditures in 2013 between $700 billion and $2.6 trillion. This translates to consumers paying between $0.50 and $1.50 per gallon less for gasoline.”

The reasons for the savings involve the lower cost of domestic ethanol compared to gasoline, as well as the effect of increased ethanol use driving down overall demand for petroleum-based fuels. The Renewable Fuels Association (who, admittedly, are probably less objective than Mr. Verleger) claim, on their website, that “crude oil prices would be between $15 – 40 per barrel higher today without the substantial volumes of ethanol that have been added to petroleum inventories since enactment of the RFS.”

Verleger’s report is just one of the many pieces of evidence that, despite big oil’s unethical anti-ethanol business practices and price-gouging, the Renewable Fuels Standard is working to improve America’s overall health, add new jobs in a tough economy, reduce food costs, and all with AAA support. At least, that’s what court after court has found in their in-depth analysis of the issues involved.

What about you, dear readers? Are you fed up with big oil’s nonsense, yet, or are you still frothing at the mouth with anti-ethanol hysteria? I’m sure you’ll let us know, either way.

http://gas2.org/2013/10/05/renewable-fuels-standard-saves-0-50-1-50-per-gallon/

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 #1 on: October 10, 2013, 07:04:37 pm »
Bipartisan Committee to Investigate Big Oil for Anti-ethanol Practices

SNIPPET:

In addition to lobbying against ethanol blends and blatant, GOP-sponsored lies about ethanol production raising global food costs, the NCGA says that gas station owners’ franchise agreements have been changed in order to force gas stations to remove E85 and E15.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez, Klobuchar and Grassley wrote “We have heard allegations that the oil industry is mandating retailers to carry and sell premium (grades of) gasoline, thereby blocking the use of the current retail infrastructure to sell renewable fuels. Station owners who wish to sell renewable fuel would bear the cost and logistical burden of having to install additional infrastructure to do so.”

Every once in a while, these politicians get something right!

http://gas2.org/2013/08/27/bipartisan-committee-to-investigate-big-oil-for-anti-ethanol-practices/
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 #2 on: October 10, 2013, 07:12:48 pm »
Not So Fast, Big Oil: the AAA is NOT Against Ethanol or E15

SNIPPET:

In an official statement released this past week, the AAA spoke out against the American Petroleum Institute (API) ads, stating that “this commercial is the latest in a series of communications on social media and elsewhere which portray AAA as being ‘anti-ethanol’. This is not the case … AAA remains a strong supporter of the development and use of alternative fuels such as ethanol. The auto club believes ethanol fuels provide motorists with a choice at the pump that promotes U.S. energy independence, supports American and South Dakotan jobs, and can save the consumer money.”

The AAA is specifically mentioning ads and rhetoric
 that are part of the API’s latest campaign to reduce the role of ethanol as an available alternative fuel
, and is calling for API to have ads and articles mentioning the AAA in an anti-ethanol context taken down immediately.


http://gas2.org/2013/07/23/not-so-fast-big-oil-the-aaa-is-not-against-ethanol-or-e15/
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

Surly1

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #3 on: October 10, 2013, 07:40:45 pm »
Reading this with interest.

My first, uninformed take was that making ethanol from corn was inefficient (compared to sugar crops) and was a payoff to ADM and other agribusinesses. As a consumer, it screws up two stroke engines and decreases octane, or so I've been told.

Now I don't know what to believe. It takes no leap of faith to believe that the oil companies would want to quash ANY competition.

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

AGelbert

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #4 on: October 10, 2013, 07:46:19 pm »
Op-Ed: Big Oil Tells More Lies About Ethanol, Only Idiots Believe Them

SNIPPET:

In a move that should surprise no-one, the whining cry-baby rich-boys at Big Oil are butt-hurt over the latest federal court ruling that upholds the EPA’s E15 mandate. In a legal brief filed with the US Supreme Court, the American Petroleum Institute – a powerful, well-funded lobbyist group that represents more than 500 oil and natural gas companies – insisted that transportation fuels containing 15 percent ethanol (E15) could damage cars and trucks. 

Should we believe them?

Obviously, the answer is a resounding “Haha! F**k no we should not!”

Let’s get one thing clear: the oil industry does not give one fat rat’s ass about the health, safety, future, or security of you, me, or anyone else.

The horrible people involved in the oil industry have proven, again and again – from Washington DC to Canada to Saudi Arabia to the Mississippi Gulf – that lining their own pockets with cash is more important to them than the your continued health or your children’s clean drinking water. Still, that hasn’t stopped them from faking a concern for your safety.

http://gas2.org/2013/06/11/op-ed-big-oil-tells-more-lies-about-ethanol-only-idiots-believe-them/

Here's a small anecdote from my days as an air taxi pilot to help you understand how water contamination and consequent damage to your engine is far more likely with gasoline than ethanol.

I flew light twin aircraft for a number of years. Unfortunately, to this day the gasoline on ICE powered aircraft is the really bad stuff with tetra-ethyl lead (and you thought it was banned from use, didn't you?). Of course they could run these aircraft engines on ethanol but apparently big oil is exerting influence there too. Remember that if you are on an approach path to a busy general aviation airport, you are getting showered with lead poisons. It's legal.

http://www.onearth.org/articles/2013/08/aiplanes-flying-on-leaded-gasoline-are-still-poisoning-us?iref=obinsite

But getting back to my flying experience and water contamination causing corrosion or faulty engine performance, let me explain what big oil doesn't want to explain to you.

As a pilot you are concerned with water in your fuel. All pilots are trained to fill the tanks on their aircraft when they finish flying that day. Why? Because any air in those tanks contains a certain amount of water vapor. When the aircraft tank cools at night, water vapor inside a half filled tank will condense into the gasoline.

Gasoline and water do not mix. Water is heavier and always sinks to the lowest part of the tank which just happens to be where the fuel line to the engine is located. As an air taxi pilot, you don't own the aircraft and cannot tell if the tanks were topped off the day before until you check. If you are making the first flight on an aircraft on a given day and you find partially filled fuel tanks, that's a danger sign.



I would carry a fuel contamination tester (see above) for each preflight. The aircraft fuel tanks have sump drains that are just a hair lower than the fuel line location. You open the sump and take a sample. If you don't see water in the bottom, you are good to go. If you do find water, you keep draining the sump until there is no evidence of water.

As a flight instructor, I would put some spit in the gasoline to show my students how easy it is to tell if you have water contamination. The spit will turn into a shiny bead and sink to the bottom of the sample. In other words, if you run gasoline in your tank and don't fill it up each night (nobody that owns an ICE car does, do they?), you have water in your fuel guaranteed!

The irony of this fossil fuel founded disinformation about ethanol is that ethanol, unlike gasoline, DOES mix quite well with water! It does NOT separate out. How many times have you seen water in your whisky bottle? You aren't drinking anhydrous 200 proof are you? Of course not! Humans can't handle those levels. You probably have between 80 and 130 proof hard liquor ethanol and the rest is WATER (80 proof = 40% ethanol and 60% water).

So boys and girls, if you have ethanol in your fuel tank, you have LESS chance of water corrosion than with gasoline in an inverse proportion to the ethanol percentage. The greater percentage of ethanol in your fuel, the less chance of corrosion in your tank.

Because your tank was designed for gasoline, you are ALREADY home free for ethanol. IOW, a tank for ethanol does NOT require the same level of corrosion resistance as a tank designed for gasoline.

Why? Because water condensation from cooled air inside your fuel tank will mix freely with the alcohol molecules in a state of equilibrium and will NOT sink to the bottom.

However, if gasoline is what is in your tank, condensed water will sink right to the bottom of your tank and be positioned for hours to DAYS on that bottom ready to aid corrosion when it encounters a bit of oxygen from the air swishing around your tank. You can put that in the next fossil fueler's pipe and make them smoke it the next time you hear some lies about ethanol caused water corrosion.
« Last Edit: June 18, 2014, 12:13:12 am 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 #5 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

Surly1

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Re: Ethanol
« Reply #6 on: October 10, 2013, 09:25:41 pm »
Jesus. That was prretty damned comprehensive.

And FWIW, I did read your duckweed epic poem, or most of it. Very convincing...

I hope you will continue to post this stuff up inside DD. It spreads some light and needed optimism in dark corners. As someone who writes a weekly diatribe titled "This Week in Doom," looking at the wreckage we are making of our world is pretty depressing. We continue to need some light--

AGelbert

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75M-Liter Cellulosic Ethanol Plant Opens in Italy

10/09/2013 

 Clean Edge News

Beta Renewables, a global leader in cellulosic biofuels and part of the Mossi Ghisolfi Group, and Novozymes, the world’s largest producer of industrial enzymes, today marked the official opening in Northern Italy of the world’s largest advanced biofuels facility. Situated in fields outside the city of Crescentino, it is the first plant in the world to be designed and built to produce bioethanol from agricultural residues and energy crops at commercial scale using enzymatic conversion.

 “The advanced biofuels market presents transformational economic, environmental and social opportunities, and with the opening, we pave the way for a green revolution in the chemical sector,” says Beta Renewables’ Chairman and CEO, Guido Ghisolfi. “We will continue to commercially expand Beta Renewables’ core technology throughout the world, and we are very confident at this stage given the demand we see around the globe.”

 “The opening today presents a leap forward and is truly the beginning of a new era for advanced biofuels,” says Peder Holk Nielsen, CEO of Novozymes. “Here, at this plant, enabled by Novozymes’ enzymatic technology, we will turn agricultural waste into millions of liters of low-emission green fuel, proving that cellulosic ethanol is no longer a distant dream. It is here, it is happening, and it is ready for large-scale commercialization.”

The two companies formed a strategic partnership in October 2012, making Novozymes the preferred enzyme supplier for Beta Renewables’ current and future cellulosic biofuel projects.

The plant uses wheat straw, rice straw and arundo donax, a high-yielding energy crop grown on marginal land. Lignin, a polymer extracted from biomass during the ethanol production process, is used at an attached power plant, which generates enough power to meet the facility’s energy needs, with any excess green electricity sold to the local grid.
 

At the inauguration, Guido Ghisolfi and Peder Holk Nielsen were joined on the ground for the celebrations by Italy’s Minister for Economic Development, Flavio Zanonato, and representatives from the European Commission, as well as more than 500 global stakeholders.

 

Stable policy conditions required

With the technology ready at commercial scale, it will be vital to create stable and conducive policy conditions worldwide, to harvest better the vast opportunities in cellulosic ethanol and advanced biofuels.

 

“Policy makers now need to send clear signals to encourage the necessary investments in advanced biofuels,” says Peder Holk Nielsen. “Stable and predictable blending mandates, incentives for the collection of agricultural residues, and investment support for the first large-scale plants will help move the world substantially in terms of reducing greenhouse gasses, stimulating economies, and providing energy security. Continued reliance on fossil fuels is not viable.”

 

A recent study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance concludes that transforming agricultural residues into advanced biofuels could create millions of jobs worldwide, economic growth, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and energy security by 2030. Government support is, however, vital to accelerate the deployment of next-generation biorefineries.

 

Cost-competitive technology ready

Beta Renewables’ PROESA™ engineering and production technology alongside Novozymes’ Cellic® enzymes represent the most cost-competitive advanced biofuels platform in existence today. More than $200 million has been invested in research and development of the technology used to produce cellulosic ethanol at the Crescentino facility, since 2011.

 

Investors interested in cellulosic ethanol often ask when the technology will be ready at commercial scale,” says Guido Ghisolfi. “PROESA enables customers to produce advanced biofuel at a cost-competitive price relative to conventional biofuels – at large-scale and today. Our complete offering makes cellulosic biofuel projects bankable and replicable. With the world’s first commercial plant up and running here in northern Italy, I very much look forward to an exciting journey of establishing an entirely new, and very promising, industry.” 

http://www.cleanedge.com/Resources/news/75M-Liter-Cellulosic-Ethanol-Plant-Opens-in-Italy

Cellulosic ethanol, rather than plant starch/sugar food crop ethanol has an energy potential MULTIPLE times the fossil fuels in use today WITHOUT TOUCHING A SINGLE ACRE OF FOOD CROP LAND! This is a GIANT NAIL in the fossil fuel coffin.   

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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Ethanol Fuel Mixes. Brazil's use of hydrous ethanol (much cheaper to make) proves the only reason we don't have it is because of big oil scaremongering about ethanol water content.

The REAL risk is NOT water in ethanol (which mixes freely with water) but with water in GASOLINE (which doesn't mix AT ALL with water - water in a tank filled with gasoline goes straight to the bottom of the tank). This does NOT happen with ethanol.


Two part article on ethanol as the best fuel for internal combustion engines, how to make it and the promise of duckweed to make enough to totally replace gasoline WITHOUT touching good crop land.

http://thehalloffame.wikidot.com/agelbert
« Last Edit: July 10, 2016, 08:16:55 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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Abengoa Tests Its Mettle in US Market
« Reply #9 on: October 29, 2013, 08:15:20 pm »



Ethanol Plants in the USA (too bad it's mostly from corn and not duckweed   :()


Abengoa Tests Its Mettle in US Market

“The U.S. market has become the most important market for the company.”

Breaking Energy, Conway Irwin
October 25, 2013
 

Spanish technology firm Abengoa, which operates renewables projects worldwide, has listed its shares on the Nasdaq stock exchange (ABGB) as part of an effort to raise its profile in the U.S.

Abengoa has singled out the U.S. as a priority market, both for fundraising and for the ongoing growth of its business. “The U.S. market has become the most important market for the company,” according to chief executive Manuel Sanchez Ortega. “Today it represents the top geography in terms of revenues. One-third of our business is in the U.S.”

The company is seeking to capitalize on the reputation it has built in the country through major projects such as its 280-megawatt Solana solar thermal facility and a 25-million-gallon-per-year bioethanol facility in Hugoton, Kansas. “After more than fifteen years working in the U.S. on various projects, we have built a strong reputation and credibility through the work that we have done for our customers,” Ortega said.

“For a technology company, it is really key to perform in the most competitive market. If I’m good in Europe, I know I’m good. If I’m good in Latin America, I know I’m good. If I can be good in the U.S., it means that the company is really good. It enhances the credibility of the company,” said Ortega.

The U.S. presents a welcoming market for a number of reasons, including the size and scope of its financial sector. Part of Abengoa’s strategy in listing in the U.S. is to use the proceeds to reduce leverage and enhance its credit rating. That, along with the company’s track record, should help it to attract capital from a broader range of investors at lower cost. “Financing is a challenging activity everywhere these days,” said Ortega. “We haven’t dropped a single project because of not finding financing, but financing takes longer now than it used to.”

“People lending money today for projects are more cautious about analyzing everything in the project, and to a point, that’s good for us. Having our technology at commercial scale, having a track record of successful execution of almost $20 billion in projects over the last five years is something that financial institutions take into consideration when they consider new projects,” Ortega said.

The U.S. also has a system of incentives that supports the growth of two of Abengoa’s major U.S. products: solar thermal energy and cellulosic biofuels.

The state of California recently passed an energy storage mandate that Solana can meet without modification of the facility. “It’s great news, because the main difference of thermal solar energy is the capacity that you have to store that energy,” Ortega said. Solar thermal facilities allow for the storage of energy as heat, “so you can deliver the heat whenever you want to turn water to steam to produce electricity.”


And its Hugoton bioethanol plant, due onstream late this year or in early 2014, will be selling cellulosic biofuels into a market whose growth is all but guaranteed by rising volume requirements under the Renewable Fuel Standard, though volumes were recently amended to reflect the actual rate of development of the cellulosic biofuel industry. “The RFS is setting a clear framework that is allowing people to scale investment,” Ortega said.


Construction site in Hugoton, Kansas of New Ethanol Biorefinery

•The biorefinery, with a capacity of about 95 million liters (25 million gallons) year, will be online and is expected to reach full production by the end of 2013 or early 2014.

•The refinery (which will be run by 100% biomass) will have an output of about 95 million liters of ethanol per year, derived from nearly 350,000 tons of biomass.

•The plant will use approximately 1,100 dry tons of biomass per day in the ethanol production process.

•The combustion of waste from this process will be carried out together with 300 tons per day of dry biomass material and untreated (raw) material to produce 18 megawatts of electricity. This power will allow all the facilities the benefit of low additional power demand and will also be environmentally friendly.


“A clear and stable framework, in which people are incentivized to invest in technology and innovation, over five to ten years, is what investment requires. Because they know that there is going to be a market where they can get a return,” Ortega said.


http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/abengoa-tests-its-mettle-in-us-market

Now you know why the Koch brothers and ALEC work OVERTIME to ELIMINATE ALL LONG TERM incentives for Renewable Energy Investment in every state. They are trying to prevent Renewable Energy from getting the same LONG TERM subsidy and tax break boost that fossil fuels have had for OVER A CENTURY! Don't let them get away with it! 
« Last Edit: October 30, 2013, 08:58:20 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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Duckweed, the Miracle Biofuel Plant Part 1
« Reply #10 on: October 30, 2013, 09:09:01 pm »
Duckweed, the plant that may save mankind by enabling our species to live symbiotically, instead of parasitically, with the biosphere.

1. Some Notes On Duckweed Identification

Since flowering and fruiting are rarely observed in most species of Lemnaceae, the following keys and descriptions are based primarily on vegetative characteristics. Minor traits which might seem insignificant in morphologically complex plants assume greater importance in the Lemnaceae.

Ideally, it is best to observe living plants under a 30X dissecting microscope, preferably with substage lighting to view veins and the shape of budding pouches (dried herbarium specimens can be hydrated in water to obtain a resemblance of their former shape).

**20x 40x 80x dissecting microscope**

For difficult species it is often necessary to grow them in containers to observe the development of diagnostic features such as shape, size, number of plants cohering, nervation, anthocyanin pigmentation and turions.

Some species may exhibit considerable morphological variation, particularly when growing under less than optimal environmental conditions, making their precise vegetative identification very difficult.

The traditional duckweed family (lemnaceae) contains 5 genera and at least 38 species. DNA studies indicate that duckweeds are best included within the Araceae.

Duckweeds have a worldwide distribution, especially temperate and tropical regions.
They are the smallest and structurally simplest of all angiosperms, with greatly reduced vascular tissue (tracheids) limited to the veins of plant body, filaments of stamens, and roots of some species.

Duckweeds and associated microfauna are an important food source for certain waterfowl.

They are potentially valuable for waste-water reclamation and one species, (Wolffia globosa (Roxb.) Hartog & Plas) known locally as "khai-nam," is eaten by people in S.E. Asia.

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/1wayindx.htm#Disclaimer

Agelbert note: There's a LOT MORE to duckweed than waste-water reclamation. With proper nutrition (pig feces do quite nicely), they can double their mass in 48 hours. There is simply no other angiosperm on earth that can increase its biomass that fast. It is true that algae, in theory, can grow even faster but harvesting algae and extracting biofuels from it is quite a bit more expensive than harvesting and extracting biofuels from duckweed. For algae to be used to replace fossil fuel crude oil, the price per barrel needs to be above $120 or more.

However, if fossil fuel crude oil is at or above $72 a barrel, all hydrocarbon products can be made cheaper from duckweed than from fossil fuels.
 
At the time of this writing, fossil fuel crude oil was $111 a barrel. Need I say more? Well, yes I do.

Duckweed needs no chemical fertilizers and uses no fossil fuels for harvesting. There is no plowing for planting and the water can be continuously reused because the plants actually filter impurities out of it.

In fact, duckweed makes an excellent bioindicator for heavy metals contaminants because it readily takes up these toxins in polluted water. Lemna minor appears to be the best duckweed for use as a bioindicator of heavy metals contamination as evidenced in experiments with various types of duckweed: Lemna minor is very sensitive to the pollution/contamination of soil and water; reacts to the salt TM with the concentration: Cu (0,000ymg/ml), Zn (0,025 mg/ml), Ba (0.001 mg/ml), Co (0,0001 mg/ml), Mn (0,025 mg/ml).

http://www.mobot.org/jwcross/duckweed/Russe/heavymetal-e.htm

Reactions range from discoloration to frond separation and roots turning white and dropping off.

The metals are distributed as follows according to the degree of toxicity for the test object: Co > > Cu > Ba > Mn > Zn > Pb.

This data on the sensitivity of duckweeds to contaminators make it possible to make the following conclusions:

Copper (Cu), in comparison with Zn, Co, Ba, Mn, Fe possesses the strongest toxic action and its reaction is manifested in 3 - 5 hours with the concentrations: 0,1; 0,25;0,025; 0.001; 0,0001 mg/ml.

Cu, Co, Ba, Mn - cause the complete disconnection of duckweed fronds; with concentrations 0,1 - 0,25 - 0,025 mg/ml.Mn - death of roots and their detachment from fronds.

The investigated metals possess toxic actions which can stop the growth of duckweeds and affect their viability.

Lesser duckweed, swollen duckweed and greater duckweed - are more sensitive subjects to the action of heavy metals than are ivy-leaf duckweed and Wolffia arrhiza, which is apparently explained by the intensive metabolic processes in the plants themselves.

Lemna species as phytotesters possess high sensitivity to the action of toxicants, since are capable of reacting to the metals at concentrations in the range from 0,1 to 0,0001 mg/mL and thy can be of successfully being used for testing pollution/contamination by the pollutants of the components of the ecosystem.

http://www.mobot.org/jwcross/duckweed/Russe/heavymetal-e.htm

This side use for bioindication can provide low cost test kits for people who are concerned with pollution in their ponds or stagnant water (duckweed will not grow in moving water although it can be spread by it). Duckweed grows in lentic systems only. Lentic just means still water.

Returning to duckweed as a petroleum substitute providing sustainable energy and products at a reasonable price, the great advantage of duckweed over other plant based biofuel sources is it's greatly reduced vascular tissue and root system.

This means less lignin to remove for processing into ethanol or plastics than with corn or sugar cane, for example. High lignin content of other plants that have a lot of vascular and root system "woodiness" is a huge cost hurdle for processing plant sugars into ethanol. The lower the lignin content, the higher the EROEI (energy return on energy invested) provided the plant, like duckweed, has a high starch content.

This easier duckweed processing potential, in addition to enabling cheaper ethanol production, as long as it isn't contaminated with heavy metals, also fits the bill as a carbon sink because of fast growth as well as being excellent feed for fish, foul and even hogs.

It is a common protein and starch source for humans far more cost effective than corn or soy beans. In other words, it's a miracle food and energy source combining the qualities of fossil fuels (minus the pollution) with the qualities of an easy to grow, nutritious crop.

But let's take the process of growth and processing of duckweed one step at a time to see how the costs to produce everything from heat to jet fuel to plastics and pharmaceuticals from duckweed at a scale as large, or larger, than current world use of fossil fuels (crude oil, coal and natural gas put together) compare.

Is it possible? Can it be scaled up? Will it use land needed for food? Will it produce any pollution in the form of toxic waste or green house gases? Is it really much cheaper than fossil fuel? Will it, if it creates a new food and fuel green revolution (a real one this time), backfire and cause a further increase in human population that will consequently damage the biosphere instead of lead us into a symbiotic relationship with it?

I hope to answer all these questions and perhaps a few more.

The answers may surprise you. They may even anger or frustrate you because humanity has been so slow to deal symbiotically with the biosphere but has instead opted ruinously for the predatory, selfish, parasitic insanity so preferred by our elites.

Whatever the case, I assure you these answers will provide hope for a viable biosphere. Whether Homo SAP does the right thing or not is another matter.

So without further ado, welcome to the wonderful world of the tiniest flowering plant (angiosperm) known to mankind.

Duckweeds in Maracaibo lake


 

 



Giant Duckweed Spirodela polyrhiza



Ivy-leaf duckweed Lemna trisulca

Lemna minor, Wolffia columbiana (watermeal) and Spirodela polyrhiza

Fronds of Wolffia contain about 40% protein, almost as much as soybeans.  Furthermore, Wolffia contains a quantity of the essential amino acid, methionine. Wolffia arrhiza has no roots.
 

Duckweed as a bioindicator of heavy metals - discoloration, frond separation and root disconnection

Lemna minor

Lemna turionifera

A. Lemna minor (probably). The midline row of dorsal papules is not clearly discernible as in L. turionifera. Unlike L. turionifera, reddish anthocyanin is not present on either the dorsal or ventral side.

B. This plant has a midline row of dorsal papules characteristic of L. turionifera. The majority of plants in this collection (#11024) seem to fit L. minor rather than L. turionifera; however, without evidence of turions produced in the fall I cannot be 100% certain.


Agelbert NOTE: A turion is a a tiny tumor like projection that duckweed grows when the water temperature gets near freezing that makes it sink to the bottom and go dormant until the water temperature is adequate in the spring.
 


 
This is what Rutgers University ( School of Engineering and Technology ) has to say about duckweed:

SNIPPET 1:

 Governor’s School of Engineering and Technology 2012
I. Abstract

The pressing need for alternative energy is made manifest by the dwindling natural oil reserves and the detrimental effects of high carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Current research has been focusing on using starch from corn to produce ethanol as a biofuel. However, the problems with competition with its use as a food source and efficiency have shifted attention to duckweed, a promising source for ethanol production.

Additionally, duckweed has potential to be used in wastewater remediation, thus tackling the potable water crisis. Three experiments conducted illustrated duckweed’s ability to grow prolifically under unfavorable conditions, produce high levels of dextrose, a form of glucose per grams of biomass, 9.68% on average, and remove up to 50% of the ammonia contained in water media in just two weeks.

These experiments, in total, evince duckweed’s efficiency in remediating wastewater while also producing relatively high dextrose levels for yeast fermentation into ethanol at a low cost.

SNIPPET 2:

While maize is the most current source of ethanol and energy production in the United States, expensive corn prices meshed with economic and weather difficulties have now discouraged the production of biofuels.

Additionally, excess amounts of energy are necessary to generate corn-based ethanol and will result in a larger carbon footprint, as well as wasting maize stalks and husks.

Therefore, researchers have shifted their focus more heavily on the possibilities of using duckweed to extract dextrose and produce ethanol.

As exemplified by this research project, duckweed illustrated its ability to rapidly grow and remediate wastewater abundant in toxic nutrients, making it ideal to deploy on a global scale.

However, with exponentially rising demands for energy and clean water, duckweed offers a presently optimal solution in efficiently ameliorating both these issues.

Future research in this field includes finding the best location for duckweed growth in terms of surface area and climate. Larger scale experiments should be conducted to prove the feasibility of ethanol mass production as well as to test duckweed’s ability to absorb phosphates and other toxic chemicals affecting water sources.

While the current economic pressures have put constraints on funding new scientific research endeavors, a new market should expand for duckweed-produced ethanol based upon its efficiency in process and abundance in water sources.

Through this research, cellulose is now being substantiated as a possible source for ethanol production, and is increasingly more adept at handling the energy and clean water crises.

http://soe.rutgers.edu/files/2012Duckweed.pdf

How superior is duckweed to corn for ethanol production?

SNIPPET 1

Biosystems Engineering
Volume 110, Issue 2, October 2011, Pages 67–72

Growing high-starch duckweed for its conversion to bioethanol was investigated as a novel technology to supplement maize-based ethanol production. Under the fall (autumn) climate conditions of North Carolina, the biomass accumulation rate of Spirodela polyrrhiza grown in a pilot-scale culture pond using diluted pig effluent was 12.4 g dry weight m−2 day−1.

Through simple transfer of duckweed plants into well water for 10 days, the duckweed starch content increased by 64.9%, resulting in a high annual starch yield of 9.42 × 103 kg ha−1.

After enzymatic hydrolysis and yeast fermentation of high-starch duckweed biomass in a 14-l fermentor, 94.7% of the theoretical starch conversion was achieved.

The ethanol yield of duckweed reached 6.42 × 103 l ha−1, **about 50% higher than that of maize-based ethanol production, which makes duckweed a competitive starch source for fuel ethanol production.**

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1537511011001000

What you just read translates to a lot more than "50% higher than maize-based ethanol production".

Why? Because Spirodela polyrhiza (giant duckweed) had no soil plowed to plant it and pig feces, not chemical fertilizers, were used to nourish and grow it.

At present, pig feces is an environmental problem that causes eutrophication in lakes and streams (too much nourishment for water plants and microbiota that, when the nutrient is used up, die unleashing microbial activity during decomposition that sucks out the oxygen and kills the fish) so this is an energy multiple.

Eutrophication is an environmental problem because of B.O.D. (biological oxygen demand).

Most natural waters contain small quantities of organic compounds. Aquatic microorganisms have evolved to use some of these compounds as food. Microorganisms living in oxygenated waters use dissolved oxygen to oxidatively degrade the organic compounds, releasing energy which is used for growth and reproduction.

Populations of these microorganisms tend to increase in proportion to the amount of food available. This microbial metabolism creates an oxygen demand proportional to the amount of organic compounds useful as food.

Under some circumstances, microbial metabolism can consume dissolved oxygen faster than atmospheric oxygen can dissolve into the water or the autotrophic community (algae, cyanobacteria and macrophytes) can produce. Fish and aquatic insects may die when oxygen is depleted by microbial metabolism.[2]

Biochemical oxygen demand is the amount of oxygen required for microbial metabolism of organic compounds in water. This demand occurs over some variable period of time depending on temperature, nutrient concentrations, and the enzymes available to indigenous microbial populations.

The amount of oxygen required to completely oxidize the organic compounds to carbon dioxide and water through generations of microbial growth, death, decay, and cannibalism is total biochemical oxygen demand (total BOD). Total BOD is of more significance to food webs than to water quality.

Dissolved oxygen depletion is most likely to become evident during the initial aquatic microbial population explosion in response to a large amount of organic material. If the microbial population deoxygenates the water, however, that lack of oxygen imposes a limit on population growth of aerobic aquatic microbial organisms resulting in a longer term food surplus and oxygen deficit.[3]

**Typical BOD values**

Most pristine rivers will have a 5-day carbonaceous BOD below 1 mg/L. Moderately polluted rivers may have a BOD value in the range of 2 to 8 mg/L. Municipal sewage that is efficiently treated by a three-stage process would have a value of about 20 mg/L or less. Untreated sewage varies, but averages around 600 mg/L in Europe and as low as 200 mg/L in the U.S., or where there is severe groundwater or surface water Infiltration/Inflow. (The generally lower values in the U.S. derive from the much greater water use per capita than in other parts of the world.)[1]

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

Pig feces contribute to high BOD through eutrophication which can extract too much oxygen from the water and kill the fish. But, when the pig feces are used to fertilize duckweed in shallow ponds that do not reach the area streams and runoff, no such high BOD occurs.

The pig feces are helping, rather than hurting, the environment and eliminating the need for chemical fertilizers which require using massive amounts of fossil fuels to make which subsequently contribute to  polluting our land, rivers and lakes and kill microbiota in the soil.

No more DuPont or Monsanto or whatever for fertilizers! The pigs will do the job just fine, thank you.

In addition, almost the ENTIRE plant is used to make starch, not a small portion like in corn where a lot of plant energy is devoted to vascular structures and roots. It is incredibly wasteful to make ethanol from corn and incredibly cheap to make it from duckweed.

Continued in:
« Last Edit: April 20, 2019, 04:50:01 pm by AGelbert »
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Duckweed, the Miracle Biofuel Plant Part 2
« Reply #11 on: October 30, 2013, 09:30:13 pm »
Duckweed is, for all practical purposes, a floating solar cell. It makes maximum use of the sun to convert photons to plant tissue with a lot of starch instead of vascular structures to hold the plant up and keep it from blowing away in the wind.

That's why it grows so fast. Think of it as a super efficient converter of light energy to starch (stored energy). It's a tiny solar cell and a storage battery all rolled into one.

And there is one more thing you should know. Duckweed NEVER stops growing. That's right, for every bushel of corn that you harvest in one year, you can harvest 10 to twenty times more duckweed that is 50% easier to turn into ethanol. The math is mind boggling.

Yes, in places where the winter is cold, the duckweed will stop growing if it is not housed so some geothermal heating might be needed for a year round operation north of the southern states.

But so what? It would still be a bargain compared to corn. Because duckweed grows so fast, you would need about a tenth of the land area that corn now uses to get equivalent or larger ethanol feedstock.

Would we be putting ponds in our corn fields? NOPE! Duckweed ponds should be placed over non-arable land. There is more non-arable land than there is arable land and it's, pardon the pun, dirt cheap.

What happens to all those corn fields?

I don't know but we don't need to be plowing up that ground with fossil fuel intensive machinery or fertilizing it with chemical fertilizers killing the soil either.  I would want them turned into organic farms to introduce more crop diversity instead of this insane monocropping.

The U.S. Government pays farmers NOT to plant right now. Why not pay them to plant, over the corn field area, diverse flora (not necessarily food crops) to help improve our biosphere?

I don't know what the corn farmers would do but what they are doing now is just plain destructive. But that issue must be addressed once it is clear we do not need to plant all that corn for biofuel. We will cross that bridge when we come to it.

I am not concerned, however, because our farmers need only a small nudge from we-the-people to stop unsustainable farming practices. When they do that, they will be better off, despite their fear of going broke because they might not be able to market some other crop (hemp, anyone?) or make ends met with "fallow" land (which isn't fallow at all but improving biosphere).

By the way, I think that word "fallow" needs to be modified, don't you?



Duckweed Ethanol

Christodoulos A. Floudas, Xin Xiao and colleagues explain that duckweed, an aquatic plant that floats on or near the surface of still or slow-moving freshwater, is ideal as a raw material for biofuel production. It grows fast, thrives in wastewater that has no other use, does not impact the food supply and can be harvested more easily than algae and other aquatic plants. However, few studies have been done on the use of duckweed as a raw material for biofuel production.

They describe four scenarios for duckweed refineries that use proven existing technology to produce gasoline, diesel and kerosene. Those technologies include conversion of biomass to a gas; conversion of the gas to methanol, or wood alcohol; and conversion of methanol to gasoline and other fuels. The results show that small-scale duckweed refineries could produce cost-competitive fuel when the price of oil reaches $100 per barrel. Oil would have to cost only about $72 per barrel for larger duckweed refiners to be cost-competitive.


The article is titled "Thermochemical Conversion of Duckweed Biomass to Gasoline, Diesel, and Jet Fuel: Process Synthesis and Global Optimization."

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-03-duckweed-cost-competitive-raw-material-biofuel.html#jCp

Would you like to get in on the duckweed action? Would you like to grow your own renewable energy?

Well, it's easy to grow duckweed. But if you want to grow it all year, you need to house it. Why? Because duckweed sinks to the bottom of a pond or still water lake when the temperature approaches freezing. this prevents it from being trapped in the ice but, since it can no longer receive adequate sunlight, it goes into a dormant stage until the water temperature rises sufficiently in the spring and the duckweed rises to the surface again to resume rapid growth.

Pacific Domes has a dome designed for that purpose.

Greenhouse Domes
Standard galvanized steel tube frame with anchors
Greenhouse Dome Cover- 13 oz FR vinyl, 82% light transmission, UV resistant
Base screens for maximum ventilation
Pre hung door or optional hoop door opening
Removable roof
Shade screen interchangeable with removable roof - optional
Solar Exhaust Fan included
Stove vent flashing and pipe-cap - optional
Dome Care Manual including floor plans and assembly instructions

Full information on all kinds of domes including a dome size simulator here:

http://www.pacificdomes.com/greenhouse-dome/biodomes

You will be happy to know that growing duckweed has many other benefits as quoted below from an Installer of BioEnergy Domes.

But energy production is only part of the overall equation.

Sean Roberts, who farms five leased acres off East Butler Creek Road outside of Ashland, is in the process of installing one of the BioEnergy Domes at his Fiddle Faddle Farm. But he's going to do more than generate electricity.

In addition to growing duckweed for electricity, he's planning to grow fish and other vegetables in the dome. Just as duckweed is stimulated by the water vapor and carbon dioxide, so are other plants.

"It's an extremely sustainable process," said Roberts, who hopes to have his system up and running in a few weeks. "You lose less than 2 percent of water you would use if you were soil farming; the only water it loses is through evaporation."

Full article here:

http://www.kval.com/news/local/117947779.html

The internet has a wealth of information how to obtain and grow any of the 38 varieties of duckweed cheaply. Advances in genome sequencing of duckweed strains are aiding scientists in zeroing in on the fastest growing varieties or those that provide the most nutrition, depending on the requirements in a given duckweed growing operation.
To keep up with the latest, just Google "Science news articles about 'duckweed' " or "How to Plant Duckweed".

You have, like most responsible people, asked yourself what you can do to make this biosphere more livable in the face of all the pollution and Homo SAP greed that is despoiling it.

There are many things you can do like writing about renewable energy. But, in addition, if you have access to land which is not considered prime farm land and would like to grow a great renewable energy crop so you can save, or even make, some money while saving the planet, I recommend you give growing duckweed by setting up your own shallow ponds some serious thought.

"...the easy way to plant duckweed is by removal of plants from a pond where they grow. Fronds or leaves, 1/16 to 1/8 inch long, grow hairlike roots from the underneath side of the leaf. These roots obtain nutrition for the plant from the water in which it grows. Duckweed is often found growing in companion with water lilies, pond lilies and other still water aquatic plants."

http://homeguides.sfgate.com/plant-duckweed-21859.html

Stay tuned for Part 3 where I will go into detail about how to make ethanol from plant sugar(s) in general and duckweed in particular. You will even learn how to make moonshine/hooch/white lightnin' or whatever you want to call the drinkable ethanol.

No, I don't recommend you make your own hooch because drinking ethanol is a sure way for you to get diabetes or cirrhosis unless you exercise moderation. The drinkable ethanol is tricky to make and, if you aren't careful, can poison you to death.

That is not a concern for fuel you will burn in your car. However, to get to the fuel grade ethanol you go through some ethanol with a high water content (what booze has in comparison with E100 ethanol engine fuel as used in Brazil). Booze, even the undrinkable kind with wood alcohol and acetone poisons in it, needs further refining to get to 200 proof (100% alcohol fuel).

Continued in:Duckweed, the Miracle Biofuel Plant Part 3
« Last Edit: October 30, 2013, 10:23:46 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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Duckweed, the Miracle Biofuel Plant Part 3
« Reply #12 on: October 30, 2013, 10:11:50 pm »
Duckweed is the plant that may save mankind by enabling our species to live symbiotically, instead of parasitically, with the biosphere.



In Part 2 of this article I covered the great potential that duckweed has as the raw material for making everything that the fossil fuel, chemical and pharmaceutical industries uses fossil fuels (hydrocarbons) for now.

But you and I, because we don't have chemical or pharmaceutical laboratories handy, need to concentrate on obtaining ethanol for heating our houses, water, food, running an emergency generator, any internal combustion engine lawn tools (although I recommend you go full electric when they wear out and transition to geothermal heat pumps for heating and cooling, electric hand and lawn tools as well as getting solar panels to power your house and cooking appliances) and, most of all, E100 fuel for your car.

Going from gasoline, propane or natural gas to ethyl alcohol is not a simple energy trade; it's an improvement.

Propane and natural gas burn cleaner than gasoline but, as long as they are fossil fuel derived, harm the environment so we should do all we can to stop using them.

Why does burning gasoline result in all that smoke and burning ethanol is so clean?

Without getting into chemistry formulas, what happens with ethanol is that the oxygen is evenly distributed throughout the molecule. Consequently, when it burns in air (which provides the rest of the oxygen needed), all of the ethanol converts to water and carbon dioxide.

Gasoline, however, because it is a hydrocarbon, has just carbon and hydrgen atoms (no oxygen). When it burns (combines with the oxygen in the air) it does not fully react to produce water and carbon dioxide. There are a couple of reasons for this. First of all, gasoline is a catch all term for a witches brew of hydrocarbons that are distilled from a barrel of crude oil in cracking towers in a refinery that produces the greases, heavy oil, lighter oil lubricants, heating oils, kerosene and whatever is left in the form of VOCs (volatile organic compounds).

A note here of clarification: The term "organic" here has nothing to do with food not grown with chemical fertilizers or pesticides. In chemistry, the field of "organic" chemistry generally deals with certain types of carbon compounds so don't let that word "organic" throw you here.

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) – “Hydrocarbon compounds that have low boiling points, usually less than 100ºC, and therefore evaporate readily. Some are gases at room temperature. Propane, benzene, and other components of gasoline are all volatile organic compounds.” - Art, 1993
http://toxics.usgs.gov/definitions/vocs.html
 
The VOCs are nasty, carcinogenic waste products like benzene (causes bone cancer - that is why early automobiles stopped using it as fuel) and several others (the frackers are pumping them into the ground in the USA as we speak which will result in poisoned aquifers in many areas).

Back in the late 19th century, Rockefeller's refineries in Pennsylvania flush these waste products down the rivers at night. Rockefeller convinced Henry Ford to use that waste product (gasoline) in his cars instead of ethanol as had been recommended by Thomas Edison Laboratories working with the U.S. Navy in 1906.

Ethanol was such strong competition for gasoline (U.S. farmers made their own to run their farm machines and cars) that it wasn't until Prohibition that Rockefeller cornered the automobile fuel market. Rockefeller had given over 4 million dollars (an enormous amount of money back then) to a Ladies Temperance Movement to get the anti-hooch craze going in U.S. Congress. If you think it was because he didn't want people drinking, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is history.

John D. Rockefeller was that fine fellow that said, "Competition is a sin". He also said THIS:"Try to turn every disaster into an opportunity. "

Attributed in The Rockefellers (1976) by Peter Collier and David Horowitz

"Measured in today's dollars, Rockefeller is the richest person in the history of mankind."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller

Considering the mindset of this fine fellow and his descendants in the fossil fuel industry, it is not far fetched to believe than when an opportunity wasn't 'presenting itself' due some competitive nuisance (like ethanol), they would contrive a "disaster" for said competition that they could then turn into an "OPPORTUNITY" (I.E. PROFIT).

It seems that we can see where the modern, conscience free expression, "Never waste a crisis" originated. I don't think Karl Rove and the Bush family invented the idea of deliberately creating a crisis in order to obtain a profit or stifle competition, do you?  >:(

But all that misery and pollution is environmental damage that has been done. We can't change the past but we can stop being ignorant on how it shapes the future for better or, in case of gasoline, for worse.

So returning to the comparison of burning gasoline versus ethanol, we see a bunch soot generated when gasoline burns. In the video the burning is done in open bowls but don't let anybody try to convince you that inside an engine combustion chamber, this soot which creates extra friction and reduces your engine's life is not happening. It is.  :o

Gasoline, because it is a fossil fuel and not a uniform substance of basically identical molecules like we see in ethanol, has sulfur contamination and may even have heavy metals in it too, depending on the quality of the crude oil.

As the quality of the crude gets worse (see tar sands and high sulfur Venezuelan heavy crude oil) the content of the VOCs at the end of distillation that produce the gasoline are more polluting. So this problem with gasoline will get even worse as crude oil gets more scarce or we start getting gasoline from a horrendously polluting process now being used by Exxon in a recently built refinery that gasifies coal and turns it into gasoline (along with a lot of mercury contamination in the coal). ??? >:(

When the various different hydrocarbon compounds with sulfur and other contaminants that make gasoline are burned, since the oxygen is not distributed evenly, you get a lot of carbon monoxide (incomplete combustion), some carbon dioxide and water (from complete combustion) and some nitrogen and sulfur (and other contaminants) compounds. The soot you see is carbon molecules curling up into partial bucky ball type shapes that resist further chemical reaction and act as abrasives in your car, massively increase engine waste heat and are irritants in your lungs.

Radiative properties of soot particles
http://www.thermopedia.com/content/148/

The U.S. Government tested ethanol (up to E85 only not the excellent E100 fuel used in Brazil) and found less pollution and no engine problems. They did claim the pollution "balanced out" between the two because ethanol had more nitrates but remember that an internal combustion engine is lubricated with oil from fossil fuels. Part of this is always in the combustion chamber so you will never get a truly clean burn as long as the oil is hydrocarbon based.

Also, had they tested E100, they would have found much less pollution as well as less engine wear. They didn't want to go there like Brazil has done over a decade ago. In fact the air quality in cities in Brazil has made giant strides in pollution reduction. But, of course, you haven't read that in our pro-fossil fuel media.

As to the propaganda myths that have been perpetrated by the fossil fuel industry about ethanol, Let's clear the air. They are simply a pack of lies. The fuel that really harmful for your car and for the environment is gasoline, not ethanol. Ethanol is a a 100% source of sustainable, renewable energy. Don't be fooled by the Orwellian anti-ethanol fossil fuel propaganda.


Duckweed, the Miracle Biofuel Plant Part 4


« Last Edit: September 27, 2019, 12:00:36 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 #13 on: June 02, 2015, 11:00:17 pm »
Award-Winning Documentary Offers a ‘Surprising Solution to America’s Oil Addiction’

Cole Mellino | June 2, 2015 11:58 am

Quote
The film dives into an array of solutions for a clean energy future including advanced biofuels like cellulosic ethanol and plug-in hybrids. The film contains interviews with a wide range of notable figures including former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former NATO Commander Wesley Clark, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, singer/songwriter Jason Mraz, internationally-acclaimed author Deepak Chopra and actors Michelle Rodriguez, Amy Smart and Ed Begley, Jr.

Article with pictures and an excellent comment by yours truly ;D at link:

http://ecowatch.com/2015/06/02/freedom-documentary/
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 #14 on: June 04, 2015, 02:46:51 pm »
Corn Ethanol Is Worse for the Climate Than the Keystone XL Pipeline, According to EPA’s Own Estimates 

http://ecowatch.com/2015/06/02/corn-ethanol-climate-change/

Don't miss the comments.   
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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