yay for ethanol, im going to convert my t/a to e85 so definately looking forward to better availability

 

E85 turns me on !




.

 

Several thoughts.

thought 1
Govt subsidizing all this research and production of Etanol...great. Just let govt pay for it. Oh...wait...that means we all have to pay for it. Let's see... this means we are paying the govt to cover the extra costs of Ethanol so we can pay a lower price. Does anyone here think ANYTHING the government does is done efficiently? It would be cheaper if the govt just kept their damn noses out of it and let us pay the higher pump price...which would be cheaper in the long run. Anyone following me here? We're paying the govt, say, $10 per gallon in taxes so they can subsidize Ethanol research & production. After all the bureacratic muck takes its toll we wind up with Ethanol $2 per gallon cheaper at the pump.

thought 2
The advances in Ethanol will come when there is a need for it. Right now there is only a desire for it.
We are choosing to depend on terrorists and tinpot dictators for our oil.
We have limited ourselves when it comes to oil. We won't drill for oil any closer to our shorelines than 60 miles. Cuba announced plans to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico just outside US waters....50 miles from our shores. There are still wells capped off from the 80s when oil prices were so low it was not profitable to extract the oil. Now EPA regs forbid reopening those wells.
EPA and the NIMBY syndrome (Not In My Back Yard) have prevented the building of refineries in this country.
We flat out refuse to drill for oil we know is in the Alaska "Wildlife Refuge". Has anyone actually seen pictures of the area where we would be drilling? It is tundra. Nothing lives there. Not caribou, not trees, nothing. It is a vast frozen wasteland...perfect for drilling oil. If there happened to be an accident the effects would be minimal compared to anywhere else in the US.

Necessity will efficiently and effectively make Ethanol economically viable...not government intervention. As I see it right now we have the govt trying to force a solution with the left hand to a problem it created with the right hand.

 

Going by your logic, there would never be another solution until we ran out of oil. IMHO it makes more sense to try and offer some solution to the problem, than giving my same tax dollars away for some bullshit well fare program.

 

I think there won't be a solution as efficient as it could be until we are closer to running out of oil. Necessity being the mother of invention, it will take a massive amount of demand for ethanol to get the creative juices flowing at full speed. An efficient production, refinement, and distribution of Ethanol will only be developed via capitalism...when the demand is high enough to compel it. Until then we are going to have a government subsidized system that is bloated, inefficient, and costing us more than necessary.

 

Takes more than 1 gallon gasoline to make 1 gallon ETHANOL. SURPRISE...****.

 

We know people who are selling their crops to make it...you WILL NOT read this anywhere....it fuc*in gov. BS.

 

I`ve often thought about this for my Firehawk, but from my understanding, the ethanol is not friendly with aluminum and rubber. I haven`t seen any posts on ls1tech where anyone is seriously considering the move. Is anyone trying this yet? I am not sure what we would do with our aluminum heads and rubber seals.

 

Nopers. Researchers have already proved it can be done with 550% efficiency!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...oryId=17910749

From the article:

 

I keep hearing this "running out of oil" theory everywhere. I just can`t see this happening. This earth has to contain much more oil than we could ever use up.

 

The problem I have for waiting until oil runs out is that more than just gasoline and motor oil are made from petroleum.

What happens to the plastics industry? Stuff like that...

 

you must not have much of a grasp on how much oil we as a world actually use.

 

Ditto, my family farms about 600 acres in NW Ohio also and the corn prices have been a real boost to the local economy. I don't see it lasting though. I just read something recently that ethanol is way overrated. When blended in at 15% with gas, it reduces mpg by 1-2 mpg...

 

Actually, I do. According to the EIA, the world uses approximately 80 million barrels of oil per day. Sounds like a huge number, but if you do the math:

80 million barrels per day x 42 gallons in a barrel = 3.360 billion gallons
3.360 million gallons per day x 365 days per year = 1.226400 trillion gallons per year

So the world as a whole uses 1.2 trillion gallons per year. That`s a huge number right? About the size of an ocean, right?
Well, lets take a relatively small area, say 1 cubic mile, and figure out our volume in gallons:

5280ft x 5280ft x 5280ft (remember, we are talking volume) = 147,197,952,000 or just over 147 billion feet
147,197,952,000 x 7.48051945 gallons in a cubic foot = 1101117142936.1664 gallons, or about 1.1 trillion gallons

So, a very, very, very small volume of 1 cubic mile, just a spec on a map of the world, will supply the entire world with oil for an entire year!! I absolutely guarantee you that we have many, many, many cubic miles of oil below the earth`s surface.

 

Don't want to totally ignore the article but I have a hard time swallowing anything npr puts out.

550% efficiency? Does that mean they get started making it and it's a chain reaction that cannot be shut down? It's not defying the laws of physics, the guy is saying that he gets 5 1/2 units of ethanol for every unit of energy it takes to grow switchgrass. I'm not quite sure what to make of that.

Is he including the energy taken to plant, cultivate, fertilize, harvest, and transport it? Is he counting all the energy it takes to grow the switchgrass but ignoring the energy it takes to turn it into ethanol?

 

So, a very, very, very small volume of 1 cubic mile, just a spec on a map of the world, will supply the entire world with oil for an entire year!! I absolutely guarantee you that we have many, many, many cubic miles of oil below the earth`s surface.[/QUOTE]

But how much of that can be extracted?

 

Check out Coskata it is a biology-based renewable energy company, ethanol from cellulose: http://www.coskata.com/ There was an article in Autoweek, very interesting.