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From: Arild Jensen (no email)
Date: Sat Apr 07 2007 - 15:15:46 EDT
> -----Original Message-----
> From:
> Hello All,
> Ok. I am wondering why we are using corn to
> produce ethanol?
REPLY
Like Lew says - lobbyists and special interest groups.
All the energy experts have already denounced the trend to use food crops as
a replacement for fossil oil fuel.
Its only the paid mouth pieces kept on a corporate leash that stil espouse
this approach.
The experts have demonstrated that we do not have sufficient farm land
capacity to grow enough plants to replace present levels of oil consumption.
And then where would we grow our food supply. Meanwhile we are ignoring
many known sources of alternative energy such as methane production. WHY?
Again the answer lies in politics and lobbying. Methane production and
handling is not conducive to widespread vehicular use for a number of
technical reasons. However methane production, storage and use in fixed
location applications is very feaible.
A number of large urban center land fill sites do have local power
generation from methane gas, collected on-site.
The cost saving by not having to buy utility power has demonstrated a
payback period of some years that make economic sense while using current
cost accounting practices.. This is not some speculative theory.
Considering how much of our utility power is generated by oil,, the
reduction in oil consumption is enough to make a large dent in the amount of
oil that has to be imported.
In the mid-west there are a number of pilot projects where methan is used
for heat, light, and limited farm vehicle fuel use.
When a fleet of vehicle do not travel far from base and have ready acess to
refueling at frequent intervals, methane is perfectly acceptable. Locally,
one bus company has a fleet of busses running on methane as a test project.
The gas bags are stored on the roof. So far none of them have needed a tow
because they ran out of fuel in between normal fuel stops.
Methane digesters can use a variety raw material, including vegetation
normally put into composters, and in most cases the solid residue product
from the digesters stil makes good odorless fertilizer.
Methane digesters can use what would otherwise be wasted, instead of
diverting usable food stock into oil replacement programs. The problem is
lack of political will, not lack of know how.
Inappropriate funding support, lack of universal funding for ALL pilot
programs and the necessity to convince non technical politicians of the need
to create a truly level playing field for ALL energy alternatives has
resulted in many good ideas falling by the wayside.
This is one reason I find the current BIO-Diesel or Hyrogen powered boat
projects a waste of time.
It's more a case of a glib tongue convincing someone to support a pet hobby
project than it being truly a viable alternative for the masses. Even a
total conversion of every single boat to one of these alternatives will not
make any significant difference in total national oil consumption.
cheers
Arild
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