The Monday Jewel 05.21.07

[thomasw78]

"Iowa, making bitches out of politicians."

LOL, Great line.

[greyflcn]

Awesome.

Ethanol is such a joke.

But the politicians are helpless to say anything about it since they need the crucial swing votes ;D

greyfalcon. net/ ethanol.png

greyfalcon. net/ ethanol2

greyfalcon. net/ ethanol3

[smokeskull]

Ethanol is a great fuel. There are just a lot of oil company sponsered lies flying around about it. Ethanol emissions vs gasoline emissions vary on a per car basis. Carbon emissions are always down. The other emissions depend on what car you test.

It is hard not to get sucked into the anti-ethanol lies. There is a comprehensive disinformation campaign going on.

[greyflcn]

Uhm no carbon emissions aren't "always down"

greyfalcon. net/ lcarough7.png

And according to Paul Crutzen, the guy who founded the ozone hole theory, virtually all biofuels in production now are much worse than petroleum.

greyfalcon. net/ n2ostudy.png

Especially when you compare it to corn ethanol, which is almost entirely produced via natural gas, and diesel. And increasingly coal.

greyfalcon. net/ etoh2.png

[greyflcn]

Perhaps you would prefer some education on the topic?

greyfalcon. net/ ethanolfaq

greyfalcon. net/ biofuels

And incase you're in for some of the heavy stuff:

ifg. org/ pdf/biofuels.pdf

____

What do you think oil companies and car companies prefer? BioFuels, or Electricity?

A) Same old Liquid Fuels Distribution system and Same old Gas Guzlers.

B) Getting off liquid fuels entirely, and completely different cars.

Think about it.

[smokeskull]

Your links provide no factual information. People who have conducted actual scientific testing on actual existing cars have proven that ethanol emits less CO2 in all cases. Other emmissions vary by car. No amount of theoretical bias will change those results.

[greyflcn]

==People who have conducted actual scientific testing on actual existing cars have proven that ethanol emits less CO2 in all cases.==

And who are these "people" you speak of?

Cite your source.

And please don't tell me it's from the USDA or DOE.

They openly admit to biasing their reports with lowball estimates.

For instance they assume nitrogen fixation doesn't exist.

greyfalcon. net/ n2o.png

[smokeskull]

I posted several links. But youtube won't allow them to come through. You can google them yourself. They were results from people actually hooking up cars to emissions testing systems. They all said exactly what I stated earlier.

[smokeskull]

You are mixing energy balance and emissions issues when you talk of nitrogen. And yes, all fertilizer creation energy was included in the gov reports showing ethanol produces 6x more energy than fossil fuels used to create it. If you know these reports exist, why do you deny them?

[greyflcn]

==showing ethanol produces 6x more energy than fossil fuels used to create it.==

Uhm no.

"Energy Return on Energy Investment"

EROEI of producing ethanol - 1.3/1

EROEI of producing gasoline - 5/1

Efficiency of producing ethanol - 23%

Efficiency of producing gasoline - 80%

What the USDA does is they compare 130% EROEI for ethanol versus 80% system efficiency for gasoline.

But they aren't comparing consistant units, so it's just "misinformation".

[greyflcn]

Then you get in to the secondary emissions, which really kill it.

greyfalcon. net/ ran

greyfalcon. net/ palmoil

greyfalcon. net/ soy2

___

As for posting links, you have to add some extra spaces inbetween the first period and slash.

For instance:

i-r-squared. blogspot. com/ 2007/08/ethanolalternative-fue­l-faq.html#q5

[greyflcn]

As for the nitrogen aspect, thats because N2O is 296x more potent than CO2. And the primary source for N2O globally is agriculture.

To omit nitrogen emissions from an argicultural emissions study is practically fraud.

Nobel Prize winner Paul Cruzten, points out that the actually value for N2O formation is twice as high as previously thought.

So even with the "optimistic" scenarios from the USDA, that eliminates ANY potential benefit

greyfalcon. net/ n2ostudy

greyfalcon. net/ n2ostudy.png

[smokeskull]

This is a study showing that emissions vary between vehicles, not including CO2 which is always lower.

w w w 4 . n c s u . e d u / ~ f r e y / Zhai_et_al_2007a . p d f

[greyflcn]

So your NCSU study actually agrees with the one I posted.

Lower CO emissions,

but higher aldehyde, nitrogen oxide smog emissions, and "Total HydroCarbon" emissions (Aka VOCs)

As expected.

[smokeskull]

No it doesn't. It says it depends on the car you test and the test you run. Read the entire conclusion section.

[smokeskull]

Here is another:

w w w . consumerreports . o r g / cro / cars / new-cars / ethanol-10-06 / tests-of-ethanol-vs.-gasoline/­1006_ethanol_test_1 . h t m

[smokeskull]

If you actually read Cruzten's study it is about farming in total, not just ethanol. He makes no attempt to balance out his figures against existing farm products or ethanol co-products.....

[greyflcn]

Also, considering you want to focus on that conclusion. Did you read the last sentence?

"This study did not include speciated hydrocarbons"

What do those do? They increase ozone formation.

ingentaconnect. com/ content/pep/ije/2004/00000005/­00000001/art00004

[smokeskull]

As long as you know it is a given that blending ethanol reduces VOCs overall, feel free to pursue that argument. Older ethanol plants released VOCs, but they are now required to install hardware which removes them. Burning ethanol releases fewer VOCs than burning gasoline.

[smokeskull]

...CONT...Only 60% of the farming emissions for corn can be put against ethanol when you take into account that the corn used in ethanol is still put to work as the originally purposed cattle feed. It would have been grown anyway.

[greyflcn]

You make the assumption that cattle can consume corn byproduct in large quantities, and that the market for it hasn't reached saturation.

When in fact there's now a huge glut of DDGS, and it can't be fed to cattle in more than 1/5th their diet, or else it causes them to get sick, because it's too acidic.

[smokeskull]

That is not a distillers grain issue. That is grain issue period. If you feed any cattle grain only they get sick. It has nothing to do with the grain based feed that comes from ethanol production. Don't even try to take it there.

[greyflcn]

Also, the coproduct aspect itself is a huge level for misrepresentation of raw physics.

Somehow the USDA finds their energy requirements were much larger than previously thought, and then turns around and says their yields are even higher than ever.

How can that be?

i-r-squared. blogspot. com/ 2006/03/how-reliable-are-those­-usda-ethanol.html

[smokeskull]

The amount of distillers grains and other co-products produced are easily verified contacting an ethanol company or reading their financial reports. Your attempt to paint co-product production as a conspiracy is flaccid and limp.

[greyflcn]

Yes but the GHG "credit" given to the DDGS can't be easily verified.

Or verified at all because the USDA keeps all their new accounting methods secret.

The exact opposite of what peer review does.

[GoUnoGo]

So true!. Great job again guys!