Comments on: The Redundant Subsidy By Robert Rapier

By: Bill Simpson in Slidell

Bill Simpson in Slidell — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 02:30:10 +0000

If we had the climate of Brazil and could grow sugar cane all over North America, year-round, ethanol might work to replace a significant fraction of our hydrocarbons. But from corn, forget it. The part of the plant that you can use is too small to yield enough energy to make it worth all the energy inputs. Consider all the energy you need to use to grow the corn, and then process the little kernels.
First, you need to transport and plant the seeds. You will need diesel fuel for that. Sometime during the process, you will need to buy and spread fertilizer made from natural gas. You have used a lot more fossil fuel. If you need to spray for weeds or bugs, yep, more energy to make and spray whatever you end up using.
After photosynthesis works its’ magic, you need to harvest the corn. You’ll need to buy more diesel for the big machine that does that. I think you need to get the corn off the cob and transport it to the ethanol plant, using more diesel fuel. Next, the plant has to make ethanol from the corn, which uses a lot of energy, since the process to finally get to almost pure ethanol is very energy intensive. It is for moonshine. And you can drink a lot more water with your alcohol than those delicate little fuel injectors on your engine can handle.
Finally, the ethanol has to be transported to mix with the gasoline. You will end up using a truck or train fuelled by more diesel. Did you really save energy. I doubt it. But it kept the Iowa primary voters happy.
And if you knocked down any trees, or filled any wetlands to plant that corn, the animals will be very mad at you. Most don’t live in corn fields. To me, that is the greatest potential negative of biofuels - extinction of quite a few animal species from habitat destruction. It has already started.

By: Fred

Fred — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:39:08 +0000

Last April I bought a car with a Diesel engine. I am ethanol free.

By: Robert Spoley

Robert Spoley — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:43:17 +0000

Excellent article! It covers a good portion of the direct costs of using ethanol as a fuel. One of the indirect costs of using ethanol is in the environmental area. When a leak (or spill) of gasoline or diesel happens, relative permeability in soils prevents the release from going very far because of the in - soluability of the hydrocarbon fuel in water. Net result? Cleaning up these kind of releases is not to bad cost wise. Additionally, they rarely harm anybody or wildlife because they don’t go far and are “floaters”. Add ethanol and see what happens to the same release! Now the hydrocarbon is soluable in water so it no longer “floats” but mixes with the entire water column. Additionally, relative permeability no longer limits the spread of the release! WOW! Now the previous release that was a “monster” of 400 feet in length, 200 in width and 15 feet deep is now 4000 feet long, 1500 feet wide and 400 feet deep and moving very, very fast to water wells, gaining streams, lakes reservoirs yada yada yada. Figure in those costs. PLEASE!!!