CoolBeans writes "Making ethanol is easy. Making enough ethanol to fill every gas tank in a developed country is tricky. The Department of Energy has promised $125 million to the Joint BioEnergy Institute, a team of six national labs and universities that will be run like a startup company. They intend to create new life forms that are optimized for alcohol production. The genes of crops that produce large amounts of cellulose will be tweaked to improve the yield per acre and to increase drought and pest resistance. Microbes that produce sugar from cellulose and ethanol from sugar will be built for speed and efficiency." The article mentions as an aside that earlier this year, "the energy giant BP gave $500 million to Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley lab, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for similar alternative energy research. That gift will fund the Energy Biosciences Institute, which will operate separately from the JBEI." So UC Berkeley and LBL are both participating in two separate energy-biotech research programs.
Seriously, why? Why bother with all this expensive "synthetic biology" or (worse) growing and using perfectly good corn to make something that's less effective than gasoline when you can just grow an imperial fuckton of algae, render them down for biofuel, and use that? Carbon neutral, and you get something more akin to good ol' diesel fuel than ethanol.
Plus there's some incentive to clean up eutrophicated bodies of water this way because, hey, that's profit floating on the top!
Why Ethanol? Simple 1) we have the infrastructure to use it immediately. 2) It's not corrosive or particularly toxic. 3) unlike algae it's grown by agricultiure so Archer Daniels Midland can get their cut of the pie.
the latter is probably the most defining reason.
But I think ethanol may be the wrong ticket. Obviously corn ethanol is a bad idea. But even cellulosic ethanol may be a bad idea.
two reasons: 1) Now matter how you produce it, evenif a miracle in effciency happened, at the end of the process any ethanol produced is going to be dissolved in water. Drying it out is going to eat the efficiency.
2) Cellulose and Ligno-cellulose is desinged by trees to be indigestible and energetically inaccessible. If it were easy to digest the bacteria and termites would have eaten the whole forest a long time ago. Trees would not be huge cellulose containers. That should be a clue.
Now it is true that man made enzymes can in some instances beat natural ones by an order of magnitude of more. But this is one place where nature has had a lot of different creatures all working on the same problem independently for quite some time.
One the other hand it's almost commerically viable now. So we only need maybe a factor of ten improvement to open up wide spread production. However then other scaling issues will raise their heads. Farmland will be used. in many case it will be existing farm waste, but in others, say poplar trees, it will be for non-edible products. And if we try to open up new farmlands to compensate then were back to having a water budget problem.
Algae making diesel would seem to bypass a lot of these problem. It can be grown off croplands, in many cases using sea water or brackish water. And it's easy to separate the oils from the water. the product has a higher energy value than Ethanol per volume and per weight. And it does not produce as much toxic waste in the production process (ethanol uses acid treatment and produces loads of crap to dispose of).
1) we have the infrastructure to use it immediately.
We've got the infrastructure to distribute diesel fuel directly - and existing diesel engines can run on high quality commercial biodiesel with no modification at all; you can treat such biodiesel exactly like traditional diesel fuel.
2) It's not corrosive or particularly toxic.
I guess diesel fuel is a bit more toxic than ethanol, but it's nothing we haven't been dealing with for a very long time.
3) unlike algae it's grown by agricultiure so Archer Daniels Midland can get their cut of the pie.
This is the main reason, and it's a big mistake to let them turn subsidized food into fuel inefficiently. The algae to biodiesel process takes *no* food land and produces much higher energy density fuel through a much more efficient process.
Diesel engines are more expensive than gasoline engines, which is one reason that they aren't popular with the buying public. Another is that they're slow to start in cold weather. Body rot and other mechanical failures can make a car useless before the engine fails; this reduces the value of a highly durable engine. The manufacturers are happy to build them if people will buy them and the government allows it.
Ya, but why not electric (hybrid + plug-in hybrid). I still haven't heard a good argument why this isn't "THE" way to go for our automobile fuel.
The "well then it runs on Coal" argument doesn't really float, especially if you live in a state like Idaho or California.
They are being mass produced NOW... I don't see why we can't just pursue better battery technologies and call it good... really.
Well the beauty of a plug-in hybrid is that you stay on "plugged-in" electricity for your every day commute. Most of the Prius' that are being modified as plug-in hybrids will last for 50-60 miles on one charge and then switch over to hybrid "mode" after that. So you can stay off petrol for your everyday commute, and switch to a still fuel efficient "hybrid mode" when you want to go skiing or hiking for the weekend.
There was some stat listed on Google's site that said if every car in the world was switched to a plug-in hybrid, the current grid could power 82% of those cars. I'm not sure of the accuracy of that statement, but at the very least we know that the cars won't switch to plug-in hybrid over night. I think the infrastructure of the utility companies could grow to support that need over time. No matter what "solution" we choose it will take time to be adopted by the general public. If the utilities start ramping up now (being more efficient etc..), we might be able to support a world of plug-ins just fine.
Last point. I'm not sure about your "energy efficiency won't work in SUV's" statement. I actually just got done test driving a Ford Escape (SUV) Hybrid edition this weekend. I had no problems with it's power output at all. I even took it up a 4-5% grade and it handled the climb with ease. (Averaged 40MPG for the trip too... not shabby for an SUV)
you didn't even read the damn headline did you, you twat. they are developing new non food varities of plants to produce, corn wasn't even mentioned you idiot.
Seriously, why? Why bother with all this expensive "synthetic biology" or (worse) growing and using perfectly good corn to make something that's less effective than gasoline when you can just grow an imperial fuckton of algae, render them down for biofuel, and use that? Carbon neutral, and you get something more akin to good ol' diesel fuel than ethanol.
We are doing that. Why not do this too? Why carry all your eggs in one basket? Besides, you make it sound like biofuel from algae is easy. I know people who work in this field and the fact is that algae don't contain enough convertable lipids to make harvesting biofuel from them viable at large scales. There are people working to engineer strains of algae with a higher lipid content, but it will probably take at least as much engineering as what this project proposes.
when you can just grow an imperial fuckton of algae, render them down for biofuel, and use that?
Saying we should "just grow [...] algae" for fuel is a lot like saying to hell with building new roads, we should just build flying cars...
There have been numerous and extensive attempts to make use of algae... It has never worked out. There's tremendous potential there if we can figure out how to make it work, but so far, nobody has.
(Note - the folling post curiously lacking in hard facts, unlike most of my posts.) There was a report a few months ago harping on about bubbling the factory exhaust from smokestacks through algae water, which seemed to have an explosive growth effect on the algae. I recall none of the actual facts, other than a) it cleaned the bad stuff out of the smokestack exhaust before pumping it into the air (a good thing), and b) the algae just loved it and grew like wildfire (which is also good.)
There's a company in Ottawa that's working on cellulose ethanol as well. The company is Iogen Corporation [iogen.ca]. They have information on the process [iogen.ca] too. I first heard about them when I was at a Master Brewers Association of the Americas event, and there was a guest speaker from Iogen who talked about the similarities between ethanol production and brewing (i.e. some of the industry knowledge is transferrable).
As much as I'm supportive of any program that might, conceivably, provide a partial alternative to our petroleum addiction, I have seen several pieces lately about ethanol vs. biodiesel, which seem to indicate that biodiesel is a much more realistic alternative to gasoline than ethanol is, but that its major shortcoming is that it doesn't reward corn production.
While I don't have the background to really comment or hold an opinion one way or another, I just think it's a mistake to look too hard for "one solution" that we need to put all our money and hopes in. We need to be looking all over the place, and we need to realize that the final solution might not involve all the cars in the country running on the same fuel. There might be certain fuels that are preferable in certain regions or for certain types of vehicles, and although it might fundamentally alter the transportation network and your ability to drive one vehicle anywhere, that might not be a terrible outcome.
I have seen several pieces lately about ethanol vs. biodiesel, which seem to indicate that biodiesel is a much more realistic alternative to gasoline than ethanol is,
On what planet is an incompatible fuel with a slightly higher yeild "a much more realistic alternative"? You believe we should force everyone across the country to throw away their old cars and trucks, buy new ones with diesel engines, so that we can provide just slightly more fuel?
Neither option is a long term solution... it's just an effort
Have you tried to watch Who Killed the Electric Car?
Fully electric cars are very realistic. For a brief period, they were done commercially. But it's politically improbable to restart that program. Oil companies don't want too many new competitors--or classic publicly-funded competitors--selling fuel, and car companies don't want too many new companies selling cars...
Hydrogen still requires refining and pumps, so it doesn't bother the oil cos. so much. And it still has to be burned, so it doesn't bot
It seems unlikely that biodiesel would all of a sudden start being produced in immense quantities while petrol suddenly disappears. Cheap, available biodiesel might help people buying a new cars consider diesel which is a step in the right direction.
It is not as if ethanol is magically "compatible" with the majority of cars already on the road. My car won't take E10 let alone something with a significant ethanol component.
There are no magic fixes. All solutions will take time to have an impact and no
The US isn't going to grow crops for biodiesel then export them to the rest of the world.
We would if we had the capacity to produce a significant amount of crops/biodiesel to the point that it would be economical to export it. But we are decades away from being able to produce enough to meet our own needs. If we had a scientific break through that allowed us to economically produce huge quantities of biodiesel without starving our population, we'd be more than happy to compete with OPEC.
I just think it's a mistake to look too hard for "one solution" that we need to put all our money and hopes in.
Unless that solution is solar power. You don't have to look too hard to see that all the other (as long as we're confined to Earth) methods are basically indirect use of solar energy.
Actually, the biodiesel route is a far more practical one because most diesel engines only need minor modifications for run biodiesel fuel. With modern particulate traps, new exhaust catalyst designs to reduce NOx output, and urea gas injection to reduce NOx output even further, today's diesel engines with their common-rail pressurized direct fuel injection are quiet, powerful and don't generate the bad exhaust of older diesel engines. Also, diesel fuel is full compatible with the current fuel distribution network for gasoline/diesel fuel, which is not true for delivery of E85 fuel and hydrogen for fuel cells.
For example, the new BMW 123d hatchback/coupé just announced now offers a 200 ps (197 bhp) dual-turbo turbodiesel engine that gives the car true high performance, yet can get around 40 mpg in normal limited-access motorway driving in the 100-120 km/h (62-75 mph) range. With today's new emission controls, that same engine could probably meet even the stringent EPA Tier 2 Bin 5 emission standard for automobile engines; the new Euro 5 emission rules will be similar to this EPA standard.
If BP and other large energy companies fund this type of research because they know it won't ever be practical to grow gasoline. Even the most efficient converters from sunlight to sugar or ethanol aren't even close to what we have for solar cells. Granted, its cheaper to plant grass then build solar farms, but fixed cost will be nominal in the long run.
With Ethonal BP can make money with its current infrastructure, keep positive press about their company, and develop alternatives that will never truly be able to replace fossil fuels.
BP also invests in solar. No doubt that there are a lot of scum at oil companies (particularly Exxon), but BP at least seems to see the writing on the wall. They're doing it to secure their future profits and pr, but thats ok as long as they're steadily lowering their contribution to the problem.
Mod parent up! BP is taking advantage of the political benefits of ethanol as transportation fuel. Politicians are winning over votes of corn growers by inflating the price of their crop and making them feel useful in solving a national problem. BP is positioning itself with this important constituancy with a huge advertizement campaign. I want to rip out my hair every time I see that ignorant farm kid talking about powering crap and growing it back in a year.
If BP and other large energy companies fund this type of research because they know it won't ever be practical
Well, ultimately it's a form of hedging their bets. They get a huge tax writeoff for all the research, which is useful when oil companies are making profits that would make 19th century robber-barons feel guilty, and at the same time grabbing up as many patents and experts as they can in alternative fuels so that -- heaven forbid -- one should be developed that truly replaces their core market, th
"oil companies are making profits that would make 19th century robber-barons feel guilty"
If 19th Century robber barons had made the same return on investment that oil companies are, they would have disappeared without a trace. Yes, the oil companies are making huge amounts of money, but they are investing huge amounts of money as well. I don't know of any industry where the return, dollar of profit for dollar of investment is not higher than the oil industry. Of course, it is next to impossible to lose mon
I agree. It's no wonder oil companies are bashed for their profits, considering so few slashdotters know the difference between "profit" and "profit margin". Most major American companies have much higher profit margins than the oil companies.
solar is a useless energy producer for anything other then remote stations which have no other choice.
you can't just turn the sun on when you need it is the first problem, 2nd is the fact the batteries requried are highly toxic and the 3rd is the cost only just breaks even over the life of the solar cells - hardly a cost effective solution.
It seems to me...you can't feed the world and the gas tank on the same hectare of crops. Its either feed the starving in (fill in where they are starving this cycle) or fill it and no don't check the tires. As to bio-diesel.....has anyone ever tried to start a engine when the gas tank is filled with congealed pig fat on a brisk winter morning in Alaska?
They also have a patent on an organism that makes ethanol and acetic acid from watergas [CO,H2 and CO2] which can more easily be synthesized without using plants to make the biomass required for normal ethanol production. ethanol is normally biosynthesized by converting glucose=>pyruvate=>ethanol which allows for making 2 ethanol molecules for every glucose used. the glucose is the big problem with ethanol production from biomass. plants are efficient at converting light energy into an immediate so
Ok, assuming the federal should be funding this sort of research*, why pay out grants? We should take advantage of the natural benefits of competition; pay $X to the organization that reaches a specific milestone.
*I don't see why it should be. The energy market is so large, there seems like more than enough incentive for innovation.
...why pay out grants? We should take advantage of the natural benefits of competition; pay $X to the organization that reaches a specific milestone.
Grants are already quite competitive but let's try some numbers.
Let's say that it take $1 million to achieve a particular milestone and that there are 10 organizations that each have a roughly equal chance of achieving the milestone first. In order to provide adequate incentive, the payout for the prize will have to be $10 million (plus a risk premium - but we
The energy market is large, but most of the big players are oil companies. Your method might work for things like the article's new methods for ethanol--$X million and flattering press might be enough. But for more radical ideas (think of practical solar-powered cars), you'll likely need grants to get the people most interested in those innovations the money to work toward those innovations.
Ok, assuming the federal should be funding this sort of research*,... *I don't see why it should be. The energy market is so large, there seems like more than enough incentive for innovation.
Well, in practice it can be quite difficult to reward innovation in a meaningful way. The current practice is for the government to impose artificial monopolies (patents, copyrights, etc.) but it's difficult to determine in a natural way how severe the monopoly should be.
When will we see some fringe group shouting and marching against "Frankenfuel"?
(seriously - I love the idea, but you and I both know it's gonna happen...)
As a (partial) tangent, what safety measures are they looking to put in place to prevent some sort of biological 'oopsie' that may have unintended (read: "Bad") consequences?
I guess what is freaking me out on this (probably too much science fiction) is the whole "creating new life" thing. I don't consider myself a deeply religious guy, so it isn't that. It is more along the lines of the fact that we can barely understand what is going on with the life that CURRENTLY exists.
That, and and the potential for this new type of life to make it into the ecosystem with unknown ramifications. Kind of like when a species from another continent hitches a ride on a cargo ship or something and decimates the native species.
I realize that there is nothing we can do to stop the wheels of progress, I just wish there were a common code of ethics that was enforceable but not constraining to research and development.
What a conundrum!
More ethanol can be obtained from it than from corn and it is also a weed, so it can grow ANYWHERE. It produced 5-10x as much pulp as regular trees do so the paper industry could profit from them, and hemp ropes are what make the shipping industry possible, or atleast did back years ago.
Making ethanol is easy. Making enough ethanol to fill every gas tank in a developed country is tricky.
So...Brazil [wikipedia.org] isn't a developed country? 40% of the gas used by *cars* comes from Ethanol [wikipedia.org] (they actually import oil because of diesel and petrochemical needs.) They do it with cane sugar.
The reason we don't have cheap ethanol, and why corn prices are skyrocketing, is because corn is almost *the* worst way to make ethanol. Corn, however, is what the midwest does, and only what the midwest does. The earliest primaries are in...guess where...the midwest (well, not so much any more, thank god.) The government forks over billions to farmers and farm corporations because it buys votes. Corn is what livestock are fed, not grass. High fructose corn syrup, which is quite bad for you (compared to regular sugar) is in damn near everything because it's cheaper than sugar (which, incidentally, is price fixed. Sugar is *dirt* cheap on the world market, but to protect a fairly small contingent of sugar farmers in the US, the feds price-control it.)
By the way, Bush's favorite line is "reducing our foreign dependency on oil." Guess what? We already get our oil from a rather diverse group [doe.gov], and half of our oil comes from domestic sources.
That link that you gave is not for oil, but rather natural gas.
While it is true that many people do not realize that transportation is only one part of the pie with gas consumption, it is far more than 1%. According to this link [wri.org], in 1998 it was 24%. While it is true that items such as power generation use more oil than transportation, a Prius or two still does help.
Will you stop bring meaningful facts into a/. discussion. There are folks here that just know what this topic is all about and they don't need your DOE facts to cloud the issue.
Next you'll be pointing out problems with the global warming lobby and then where will we be.
No, I like my/. full of ill reasoned arguments and plenty of shouting, we have to have more shouting round here.
To double check, we can look in terms of per capita PPP GDP [cia.gov]. Brazil is $8,800, while Australia is $33,300, France is $31,100, Germany is $31,900, Italy is $30,200, and Japan is $33,100.
To cross-check the GDP numbers, let's consider transportation and communications development, data from the 2007 World Almanac and Book of Facts. There are 80 personal vehicles per 1000 people in Braz
One of the problems with generating ethanol from biomasses is that most yeasts don't convert xylose and/or aribinose very well, if at all. And they make up, up to 30% of the fermentable sugar (depending on the plant). It's only in the last 5~10 years that any serious research was done towards creating bacteria that is useful/economical on an industrial scale. I think there is one or two companies that have viable commercial products already on the market.
I imagine the future of those lines of research will d
Could it be that maybe there are plants already here that can do what we want them to? I seem to recall certain algae strains being fifty percent plant oil by volume, with other strains producing comparable amounts of cellulose. Why go to the trouble of engineering synthetic life forms (which could pose a tremendous environmental risk) when we could just try to find ways to grow enough algae to generate large quantities of fuel instead? The last I heard, certain strains of algae could realistically yield up
I thought the whole point of environmentally friendly fuel was to reduce carbon emissions. Ok so ethanol burns cleaner its still carbon based. Correct me if i'm wrong here. Why aren't we trying to invest in feasabel ways to produce hydrogen or some other truly clean burning fuel ?
Because grown ethanol is carbon-neutral. You burn the fuel, CO2 is emitted, plants fix CO2 into carbohydrates via photosynthesis... you make ethanol out of these plants, and burn it, emitting CO2. Rinse and repeat.
Just like nearly every other system on the face of the Earth, it's just another way of using solar power.
They intend to create new life forms that are optimized for alcohol production. "Microbes that produce ethanol from sugar will be built for speed and efficiency."
Damn! And here I am built for consuming ethanol with speed and efficiency! And not even a microbe, either.
Why Ethanol? (Score:5, Interesting)
Plus there's some incentive to clean up eutrophicated bodies of water this way because, hey, that's profit floating on the top!
Answers (Score:5, Insightful)
1) we have the infrastructure to use it immediately.
2) It's not corrosive or particularly toxic.
3) unlike algae it's grown by agricultiure so Archer Daniels Midland can get their cut of the pie.
the latter is probably the most defining reason.
But I think ethanol may be the wrong ticket. Obviously corn ethanol is a bad idea. But even cellulosic ethanol may be a bad idea.
two reasons:
1) Now matter how you produce it, evenif a miracle in effciency happened, at the end of the process any ethanol produced is going to be dissolved in water. Drying it out is going to eat the efficiency.
2) Cellulose and Ligno-cellulose is desinged by trees to be indigestible and energetically inaccessible. If it were easy to digest the bacteria and termites would have eaten the whole forest a long time ago. Trees would not be huge cellulose containers. That should be a clue.
Now it is true that man made enzymes can in some instances beat natural ones by an order of magnitude of more. But this is one place where nature has had a lot of different creatures all working on the same problem independently for quite some time.
One the other hand it's almost commerically viable now. So we only need maybe a factor of ten improvement to open up wide spread production. However then other scaling issues will raise their heads. Farmland will be used. in many case it will be existing farm waste, but in others, say poplar trees, it will be for non-edible products. And if we try to open up new farmlands to compensate then were back to having a water budget problem.
Algae making diesel would seem to bypass a lot of these problem. It can be grown off croplands, in many cases using sea water or brackish water. And it's easy to separate the oils from the water. the product has a higher energy value than Ethanol per volume and per weight. And it does not produce as much toxic waste in the production process (ethanol uses acid treatment and produces loads of crap to dispose of).
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Re:Answers (Score:4, Informative)
We've got the infrastructure to distribute diesel fuel directly - and existing diesel engines can run on high quality commercial biodiesel with no modification at all; you can treat such biodiesel exactly like traditional diesel fuel.
I guess diesel fuel is a bit more toxic than ethanol, but it's nothing we haven't been dealing with for a very long time.
This is the main reason, and it's a big mistake to let them turn subsidized food into fuel inefficiently. The algae to biodiesel process takes *no* food land and produces much higher energy density fuel through a much more efficient process.
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Re:Answers (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of the Prius' that are being modified as plug-in hybrids will last for 50-60 miles on one charge and then switch over to hybrid "mode" after that. So you can stay off petrol for your everyday commute, and switch to a still fuel efficient "hybrid mode" when you want to go skiing or hiking for the weekend.
There was some stat listed on Google's site that said if every car in the world was switched to a plug-in hybrid, the current grid could power 82% of those cars. I'm not sure of the accuracy of that statement, but at the very least we know that the cars won't switch to plug-in hybrid over night. I think the infrastructure of the utility companies could grow to support that need over time. No matter what "solution" we choose it will take time to be adopted by the general public. If the utilities start ramping up now (being more efficient etc..), we might be able to support a world of plug-ins just fine.
Last point. I'm not sure about your "energy efficiency won't work in SUV's" statement. I actually just got done test driving a Ford Escape (SUV) Hybrid edition this weekend. I had no problems with it's power output at all. I even took it up a 4-5% grade and it handled the climb with ease. (Averaged 40MPG for the trip too... not shabby for an SUV)
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you didn't even read the damn headline did you, you twat. they are developing new non food varities of plants to produce, corn wasn't even mentioned you idiot.
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Seriously, why? Why bother with all this expensive "synthetic biology" or (worse) growing and using perfectly good corn to make something that's less effective than gasoline when you can just grow an imperial fuckton of algae, render them down for biofuel, and use that? Carbon neutral, and you get something more akin to good ol' diesel fuel than ethanol.
We are doing that. Why not do this too? Why carry all your eggs in one basket? Besides, you make it sound like biofuel from algae is easy. I know people who work in this field and the fact is that algae don't contain enough convertable lipids to make harvesting biofuel from them viable at large scales. There are people working to engineer strains of algae with a higher lipid content, but it will probably take at least as much engineering as what this project proposes.
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Saying we should "just grow [...] algae" for fuel is a lot like saying to hell with building new roads, we should just build flying cars...
There have been numerous and extensive attempts to make use of algae... It has never worked out. There's tremendous potential there if we can figure out how to make it work, but so far, nobody has.
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There was a report a few months ago harping on about bubbling the factory exhaust from smokestacks through algae water, which seemed to have an explosive growth effect on the algae. I recall none of the actual facts, other than a) it cleaned the bad stuff out of the smokestack exhaust before pumping it into the air (a good thing), and b) the algae just loved it and grew like wildfire (which is also good.)
The substantiation o
Re:Why Ethanol? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
More information (Score:4, Informative)
Any money for biodiesel? (Score:5, Interesting)
While I don't have the background to really comment or hold an opinion one way or another, I just think it's a mistake to look too hard for "one solution" that we need to put all our money and hopes in. We need to be looking all over the place, and we need to realize that the final solution might not involve all the cars in the country running on the same fuel. There might be certain fuels that are preferable in certain regions or for certain types of vehicles, and although it might fundamentally alter the transportation network and your ability to drive one vehicle anywhere, that might not be a terrible outcome.
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On what planet is an incompatible fuel with a slightly higher yeild "a much more realistic alternative"? You believe we should force everyone across the country to throw away their old cars and trucks, buy new ones with diesel engines, so that we can provide just slightly more fuel?
Neither option is a long term solution... it's just an effort
Any money for electricity? (Score:2)
Fully electric cars are very realistic. For a brief period, they were done commercially. But it's politically improbable to restart that program. Oil companies don't want too many new competitors--or classic publicly-funded competitors--selling fuel, and car companies don't want too many new companies selling cars...
Hydrogen still requires refining and pumps, so it doesn't bother the oil cos. so much. And it still has to be burned, so it doesn't bot
Forcing a wholly incompatible fuel on everyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is not as if ethanol is magically "compatible" with the majority of cars already on the road. My car won't take E10 let alone something with a significant ethanol component.
There are no magic fixes. All solutions will take time to have an impact and no
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We would if we had the capacity to produce a significant amount of crops/biodiesel to the point that it would be economical to export it. But we are decades away from being able to produce enough to meet our own needs. If we had a scientific break through that allowed us to economically produce huge quantities of biodiesel without starving our population, we'd be more than happy to compete with OPEC.
I have ethanol in m
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I just think it's a mistake to look too hard for "one solution" that we need to put all our money and hopes in.
Unless that solution is solar power. You don't have to look too hard to see that all the other (as long as we're confined to Earth) methods are basically indirect use of solar energy.
Re:Any money for biodiesel? (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, the new BMW 123d hatchback/coupé just announced now offers a 200 ps (197 bhp) dual-turbo turbodiesel engine that gives the car true high performance, yet can get around 40 mpg in normal limited-access motorway driving in the 100-120 km/h (62-75 mph) range. With today's new emission controls, that same engine could probably meet even the stringent EPA Tier 2 Bin 5 emission standard for automobile engines; the new Euro 5 emission rules will be similar to this EPA standard.
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Sometimes I wonder.... (Score:3, Insightful)
With Ethonal BP can make money with its current infrastructure, keep positive press about their company, and develop alternatives that will never truly be able to replace fossil fuels.
Re:Sometimes I wonder.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
BP is taking advantage of the political benefits of ethanol as transportation fuel. Politicians are winning over votes of corn growers by inflating the price of their crop and making them feel useful in solving a national problem. BP is positioning itself with this important constituancy with a huge advertizement campaign. I want to rip out my hair every time I see that ignorant farm kid talking about powering crap and growing it back in a year.
Learn a little bit about how agriculture works an
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Well, ultimately it's a form of hedging their bets. They get a huge tax writeoff for all the research, which is useful when oil companies are making profits that would make 19th century robber-barons feel guilty, and at the same time grabbing up as many patents and experts as they can in alternative fuels so that -- heaven forbid -- one should be developed that truly replaces their core market, th
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Re:Sometimes I wonder.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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you can't just turn the sun on when you need it is the first problem, 2nd is the fact the batteries requried are highly toxic and the 3rd is the cost only just breaks even over the life of the solar cells - hardly a cost effective solution.
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As to bio-diesel.....has anyone ever tried to start a engine when the gas tank is filled with congealed pig fat on a brisk winter morning in Alaska?
theres more too (Score:2, Informative)
Why a grant?? (Score:2)
*I don't see why it should be. The energy market is so large, there seems like more than enough incentive for innovation.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Grants are already quite competitive but let's try some numbers.
Let's say that it take $1 million to achieve a particular milestone and that there are 10 organizations that each have a roughly equal chance of achieving the milestone first. In order to provide adequate incentive, the payout for the prize will have to be $10 million (plus a risk premium - but we
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well, in practice it can be quite difficult to reward innovation in a meaningful way. The current practice is for the government to impose artificial monopolies (patents, copyrights, etc.) but it's difficult to determine in a natural way how severe the monopoly should be.
Should the monopoly last 10 years or 100 years? S
So, umm... (Score:2)
(seriously - I love the idea, but you and I both know it's gonna happen...)
As a (partial) tangent, what safety measures are they looking to put in place to prevent some sort of biological 'oopsie' that may have unintended (read: "Bad") consequences?
Creating life (Score:5, Insightful)
Hemp is already best suited for this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hemp is already best suited for this (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Brazil, anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Making ethanol is easy. Making enough ethanol to fill every gas tank in a developed country is tricky.
So...Brazil [wikipedia.org] isn't a developed country? 40% of the gas used by *cars* comes from Ethanol [wikipedia.org] (they actually import oil because of diesel and petrochemical needs.) They do it with cane sugar.
The reason we don't have cheap ethanol, and why corn prices are skyrocketing, is because corn is almost *the* worst way to make ethanol. Corn, however, is what the midwest does, and only what the midwest does. The earliest primaries are in...guess where...the midwest (well, not so much any more, thank god.) The government forks over billions to farmers and farm corporations because it buys votes. Corn is what livestock are fed, not grass. High fructose corn syrup, which is quite bad for you (compared to regular sugar) is in damn near everything because it's cheaper than sugar (which, incidentally, is price fixed. Sugar is *dirt* cheap on the world market, but to protect a fairly small contingent of sugar farmers in the US, the feds price-control it.)
By the way, Bush's favorite line is "reducing our foreign dependency on oil." Guess what? We already get our oil from a rather diverse group [doe.gov], and half of our oil comes from domestic sources.
Last fun fact. Think your Prius is helping with that pesky foreign oil "problem", or (laughs) that you're "fighting terrorism"? Think again. Transportation only accounts for less than one percent of US oil consumption. [doe.gov]
Natural Gas != Oil (Score:2, Informative)
That link that you gave is not for oil, but rather natural gas.
While it is true that many people do not realize that transportation is only one part of the pie with gas consumption, it is far more than 1%. According to this link [wri.org], in 1998 it was 24%. While it is true that items such as power generation use more oil than transportation, a Prius or two still does help.
Re: (Score:2)
Next you'll be pointing out problems with the global warming lobby and then where will we be.
No, I like my
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Er, no, it isn't.
See the full list of developed/advanced countries. Do you see Brazil? [wikipedia.org]
To double check, we can look in terms of per capita PPP GDP [cia.gov]. Brazil is $8,800, while Australia is $33,300, France is $31,100, Germany is $31,900, Italy is $30,200, and Japan is $33,100.
To cross-check the GDP numbers, let's consider transportation and communications development, data from the 2007 World Almanac and Book of Facts. There are 80 personal vehicles per 1000 people in Braz
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Max efficiency (Score:2)
It's only in the last 5~10 years that any serious research was done towards creating bacteria that is useful/economical on an industrial scale. I think there is one or two companies that have viable commercial products already on the market.
I imagine the future of those lines of research will d
Call me crazy, but... (Score:2)
Genetic engineering (Score:5, Funny)
My brother in law is optimized for alcohol consumption. Perhaps they could just reverse his genetic code.
not a good long term option. (Score:2)
I thought the whole point of environmentally friendly fuel was to reduce carbon emissions. Ok so ethanol burns cleaner its still carbon based. Correct me if i'm wrong here. Why aren't we trying to invest in feasabel ways to produce hydrogen or some other truly clean burning fuel ?
Re:not a good long term option. (Score:4, Informative)
Just like nearly every other system on the face of the Earth, it's just another way of using solar power.
Parent
Excellent... (Score:3, Funny)
That's perfect, seeing as how I'm optimized for alcohol consumption
Damn! (Score:3, Funny)
Damn! And here I am built for consuming ethanol with speed and efficiency! And not even a microbe, either.
Re: (Score:2)
really? so why does alochol have a much high octane rating and is the fuel of choice for high performance cars?