Ethanol will have to depend on campaign promises to survive

Gonz said:
Cheaper?

Save ten cents per gallon but double your food bill isn't cheaper, is thievery. Slim is out to join the green movement...green spells cash.
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food?
From air, and natural gas?
I'm not talking ethanol, neither is pickens ...much.
 
Sad thing about hydrogen is that using current technology the most efficient way to isolate it (and it's still not very efficient) is from hydrocarbons. Kinda defeats the purpose. If memory serves, isolating it from water requires on the order of triple the energy you get back. Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and nuclear aren't portable at useful energy levels and battery technology, while it's improving, has a long way to go. Using food sources, as Gonz points out, is just plain stupid. The simple fact is that fossil fuels far outstrip everything we've come up with so far in energy density and cost effectiveness. Until someone makes alternative energy cost effective it's never going to take hold. I don't know what the answer is but I wonder if it won't be something totally unexpected.
 
Gonz said:
Cows & chickens, and hogs to a much lesser degree, eat corn. Corn supplies all kinds of additives to other foodstuffs. Nobody around here grows sweet corn. I recall a few years ago it was about three bucks a bushel. This past summer, it topped seven. It has an absolute affect on our food prices. Even pop has gone up because of ethanol.

Any alternative fuel that includes oil is not an alternative. It's an excuse.
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ok .. hold on to your hats here ... here it comes ... I totally agree with Gonz on this one .. nope, I'm not kidding LOL.

I recall a while back posting something about this in a thread about rising fuel costs and how ethanol was driving up the price of basically everything because corn, and corn by-products are rampant in so many different kinds of foods (hell, ask Rob .. dude can't eat 80% of what's out there because of that allergy to corn). Gas got higher .. the cost of production of corn products got higher because all the corn was going to the high-priced gas ... the cost of transporting all products were getting higher because of the cost of fuel .. it was awful and something I thought the government should have seen coming since a lot of regular Joes could see it coming.

As I understand it, and no - I don't have a link of any kind of proof, just first-hand accounts from fishermen friends of mine - that the ethanol-based fuels are eating away at the gas tanks of certain boats. They're not made like cars and the ethanol started to erode their tanks, causing them even more financial heartache with having to replace their tanks. I know of at least three friends who had to spend upwards of $3k to have this done.
 
nalani said:
As I understand it, and no - I don't have a link of any kind of proof, just first-hand accounts from fishermen friends of mine - that the ethanol-based fuels are eating away at the gas tanks of certain boats. They're not made like cars and the ethanol started to erode their tanks, causing them even more financial heartache with having to replace their tanks. I know of at least three friends who had to spend upwards of $3k to have this done.
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I had heard of this on a popular Conservative talk show.

Alcohol is hygroscopic which means it absorbs water from the atmosphere around it. This causes one type of problem with boat fuel tanks as they operate in high humidity environs; but the real culprit is the alcohol itself.

It seems that the alcohol is attacking the fiberglas tanks which caused flaking and peeling of the material which then clogs filters and fuel passages.

This from the L. A. Times:

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/15/business/fi-boat15

Effects of ethanol-laced gasoline rock boaters
He says oil companies should have warned people that the additive could cause damage. The oil companies say ethanol’s effect on fiberglass has been known for a long time.

By Elizabeth Douglass
April 15, 2008

Something was wrong with Sally Ann. For months, she sputtered and choked, and Barry Treahy’s remedies weren’t working. He kept changing her fuel filters. Then he rebuilt her carburetor. Finally, he cut into her gas tank, cleaned out the mysterious caramel-colored gunk and patched her up – twice. Disaster struck on a summer day in San Diego, when Treahy’s beloved 20-foot fishing boat was parked street side with the outer hull plug open to drain any residual water. The boat’s 55-gallon gas tank failed and gasoline streamed into the bilge and down the street. “I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out at first,” Treahy said of Sally Ann’s chronic troubles. Finally, he found the answer in a boating magazine. Ethanol-laced gasoline was dissolving his boat’s fiberglass fuel tank, sending bits of resin to clog filters and ultimately eating a hole all the way through the tank. Years of adding ethanol to gasoline to reduce air pollution and foreign oil dependence has had a nasty side effect: The stuff appears to damage boat fuel tanks made of fiberglass. And California is a floating testing ground for the ethanol effect.

At the beginning of 2004, all gasoline sold in the state was required to carry 5.6% ethanol as a replacement for the banned fuel additive methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, which was fouling groundwater supplies. Some boaters were unaware of the ramifications of the switch.

Lawrence Turner, stuck with more than $35,000 in ethanol-related damages to his boat, decided to fight back. Last week, the Studio City resident sued Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and eight other gasoline producers and distributors in U.S. District Court, arguing that the companies sold gasoline at marinas without warning boaters of ethanol’s harmful consequences.

[more]
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nalani said:
I thought the government should have seen coming since a lot of regular Joes could see it coming.
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Government reacts. It never acts. If the problem is Y, they "fix" Y without looking at the potential liabilities (unintended consequences). Almsot everything they do creates more problems than it solves.
 
thanks for that link, jim ... I knew someone would ask, "link, please" .. well, since I blocked the one person who constantly asks that I guess it wouldn't have mattered LOL
 
nalani said:
thanks for that link, jim ... I knew someone would ask, "link, please" .. well, since I blocked the one person who constantly asks that I guess it wouldn't have mattered LOL
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Also note that I made sure I posted a link to a "legitimate" media source as that same person, whom I also have blocked, turns his nose up every time I post something from anything but the most Liberal of sources.
 
H2O boy said:
did you just suggest that a government backed mandate would ultimately result in something being cheaper than before they messed with it?
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no, i didn't.

simply talking about basic supply and demand in a general sense.

if another fuel - whatever it would be - takes the place of some gasoline, them the demand for gasoline would be... less. that means the price would be... less.

now apparently this particular situation is kinda complicated in that the "alt" fuel is at least in part oil-based.

but thanks for teaching me a lesson.
 
jimpeel said:
turns his nose up every time I post something from anything but the most Liberal of sources.
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No Jim, you constantly post opinion pieces and blogs as if they were real news. Has nothing to do with liberal or conservative.

I think you knew that and are just playing stupid. *yawn*
 
Until they figure out a way to create Ethanol from 'trash' sources, like grass cuttings, whole-stalk, etc... Ethanol will never work. It's just not cost or life efficient.
 
spike said:
No Jim, you constantly post opinion pieces and blogs as if they were real news.
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As of a couple of years ago, the difference between the NYTimes (et al) article & a blog or opinion piece is what exactly? There is little to no viable unbiased media left.
 
ok, since some of you are more educated about the topic than i am, id like to ask a question

i have heard intermittant, infrequent comments from a few folks about algae and what not that grows on ponds. that if it could be efficiently harvested the potential for energy in that stuff dwarfs anything currently on the horizon. i always seem to walk up on the conversation just as it is ending or shifting to another tangent. is that what mr bishop is referring to? or is this even a valid statement?
 
Gonz said:
As of a couple of years ago, the difference between the NYTimes (et al) article & a blog or opinion piece is what exactly? There is little to no viable unbiased media left.
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The difference is news aren't based on opinion where opiniion pieces are. Someone here said once "opinion journalism isn't". ;)
 
opinion journalism isn't
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Brilliant.

It's getting harder & harder to find journalism pieces, news stories, that don't include an exceptional amount of opinion. Who what where when. It's the why that can take a story from fact to National Enquirer.
 
H2O boy said:
ok, since some of you are more educated about the topic than i am, id like to ask a question

i have heard intermittant, infrequent comments from a few folks about algae and what not that grows on ponds. that if it could be efficiently harvested the potential for energy in that stuff dwarfs anything currently on the horizon. i always seem to walk up on the conversation just as it is ending or shifting to another tangent. is that what mr bishop is referring to? or is this even a valid statement?
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It's partially what I'm referring to. Blue-gree algae is being bandied abouts as an alternative. It's one of many alternative sources... the problem being how to extract the ethanol efficiently. Bacterial decomposition is one way. Find/make/modify something that would 'eat' the biological material (algae, corn, grass, weeds, whatnot) and release ethanol.

They've been working on it for a while. If they can come up with the bacterial agent to eat grass cuttings for instance, or chaff from wheet, or other 'non-food' items...it would open up ethanol again as a viable alternative for petrol-only fuels.
 
IMO the best hope for ethanol is in the 'small engine' field.
Natural gas for heavy equipment.

For cars...IMO the roads will have to change some..
IMO there will need be a special lane for alt vehicles, slowly inversing until
the now regular vehicle are the special ones.

There will need be more roadside assistant stations or something.
 
they'd need a special lane because they's retarded and slow? not sure i understand what you're getting at.
 
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