Quote:
Originally Posted by Dimman
One of the issues with Ethanol is that it is government subsidized, I believe, and there are conflicts with food crops if we could produce enough domestically to replace gasoline.
As a fuel though, it would be my first choice as a biofuel.
Natural Gas and Propane have been used for ages in conversions in Canada. They work, but as a performance fuel, they suck. Plus they will eventually be facing the same issues as petro diesel and gasoline, in terms of supply.
Bio-diesel from algae (which theoretically can massively out-produce canola and other oil crops on a per-acre basis) may be the big break for separation from foreign oil. It also gets closer to carbon-neutrality over its life cycle. However it is facing some practical extraction and growth issues. It can also be used to produce ethanol from the waste carbohydrates of the algae.
What I would like to see is Bio-diesel for the majority of the transportation needs, with Ethanol filling the performance fuel role.
|
All Domestic fuel/power sources receive some sort of government subsidy. People pick on Corn Ethanol or Oil for getting billions of subsidies and ignore that they also pay billions in tax revenue too. Which also ignores the economic benefits they also bring. The options are often subsidize local business or they'll go somewhere else!
Subsidizing does encourage a market even though I also believe it is one of the more inefficient methods of growth because it is based on tax revenue. If we just let big money do the work we'd have a repeat of the Rockefeller's Standard Oil. It is a choice of lesser of two evils. Or the better of two evils if you prefer. You have to base your decision on the facts and likely possibilities not just the politics and not just the science either.
The Cellulosic Ethanols are stuck in the test tubes until Ethanol hits critical mass. Right now they can produce more Ethanol from Corn than the Market wants. Also expensive Gasoline tends to help encourage funding for alternative fuel research, a good by-product from a (generally) bad thing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Random_Art
I agree to an extent. Currently, how we get hydrogen isn't exactly the cleanest and storage is an issue. However there is a lot of big advances being made in these areas. Hydrogen isn't that hard to get from pure water; Iceland has proven that with hydrogen fueling stations powered by geothermal energy. And, new catalytic alloys will soon allow us to get the gas from dirty water. There's also development for storage using metallic alloy powders to act as a sponge to store it more efficiently within the tank.
Here's a link to the science daily archives for the Hydrogen keyword, feel free to browse the articles.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/search/?...ort=relevance#
and here's a link to a Scientific American vid on the subject:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/23322/scie...hydrogen-hopes |
This isn't news to me, they still haven't gotten around the, "more energy invested than returned" dilemma. Even if it does happen there are still far more concerns than the source. And Hydrogen fuel has no legitimacy in a debate on alternatives that are sustainable IMHO. It's really cool that it can generate power with no emissions except water vapour but it isn't a practical alternative nor can it be practical without $$$$$$$$$.
Quote:
Originally Posted by serialk11r
The government subsidies are there to compensate for the poor suitability of corn for ethanol production. Brazil runs a lot of ethanol in their fuel, but they use sugarcane which is cost effective. It's not clear to me that using corn for fuel affects the food supply though; In the US we have plenty of food, and in fact we give a lot of food away as aid. I think that in itself is a problem because it reduces incentive to produce food in nations receiving the aid.
Ethanol however is pretty great: High latent heat of vaporization + high octane = very good efficiency with higher compression. I hope they can improve the process to the point where we can all be running ethanol the way Brazil is.
|
The government subsidies are there to encourage more and faster growth than the market would normally allow or support. Ethanol was successful in the early 20th century, the Model T was designed to be flexfuel, but that competition was eliminated with Prohibition.
And Brazil uses cheap migrant workers vs expensive machinery. They're even worse off than us though because if world Sugar prices rise farmers will sell sugar cane on the world market instead of selling it for Ethanol. And don't forget it took a Military Dictatorship 20 years of mandates and subsidies before Sugarcane Ethanol was self-sustaining as an industry. The later Civilian government backed off on the subsides when Sugar prices really shot up in the 90's which was also when world Oil was cheap. They also have 25% Ethanol/75% Gasoline for their regular fuel too. Definitely something to seriously think about before you go thinking Sugarcane Ethanol is a silver bullet
.