Re: [Amc-list] The Pickens Plan (not)

[adh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Sandwich Maker)]

" From: Frank Swygert <farna@xxxxxxx>
" 
" I'm thinking short term and economically viable right now.
" Biomass production still needs a lot of technology innovation and
" an easy source of bio material.  Ethanol production from corn
" hasn't made food prices go up directly because "sweet corn" is
" what humans eat, "field corn" is used for ethanol and livestock
" feed.  My brother is a chicken farmer, and the feed plant had a
" hard time even getting corn this past year at times.  Prices for
" foodstuff will go up indirectly as livestock feed costs go up due
" to the big demand for corn for ethanol.  There's only so much
" arable land that's economically feasible to raise crops on.  Sure,
" ethanol production doesn't use all the corn -- the "residue" can
" be used for making feed.  But the feed is lower quality and has to
" have more (and more expensive) supplements added to it, so it
" still costs more for the user.

ethanol from starch is -very- short term, for all the negative reasons
you cite, plus it's a very inefficient use of the plant.  the only
thing it has going for it is 'off-the-shelf' technology.  cellulosic
ethanol is more efficient and could use many plants on sub-prime
arable land, but it still isn't a good fuel strategy.

gm boasts they've made some 2.5 million e85 cars - over how many
years?  i don't know how many the other makers [ford with their
flex-fuel tauruses] can add, but gm's mark isn't even 2% of the us
vehicle fleet.  how long is it going to take before e85 can make a
serious impact?

now add to that - ethanol is water soluble in all proportions; we all
know that.  but oil pipelines use water 'slugs' to separate different
products as they're delivered around the country.  this obviously
won't work with ethanol, so it has to be shipped by truck or rail
outside the petroleum system.

i read quotes somewhere from two oil-corp presidents saying their
companies wouldn't ever touch e85 unless required by law.

brazil tried to go 100% ethanol.  okay, they're a small economy.
okay, they stuck with conventional fermentation.  but their plan was
pretty close to a total failure.

butanol isn't infinitely soluble in water; 7% saturates, so it can be
pumped around the country via the pipeline system.  butanol can be
poured straight into the tank of virtually all efi vehicles on the
road -right-now-, if butanol.com's experience with a '94 buick is any
guide.  and i think developing large scale 'cellulosic butanol' would
be little more effort than is now being put to similar ethanol research.

i'm not convinced that butanol is -the- answer, but i am convinced
it's a -much-better- answer than ethanol.

btw and just fyi, starch and cellulose are both chains of glucose -
blood sugar - but hooked together in different places.  we, and yeast,
have enzymes for the starch hook but not the cellulose hook.
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx                       and think what none thought
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