Ethanol E20 blend passes compatibility, performance tests

[JohnWxy]

http://www.ethanolrfa.org/objects/documents/1558/mn_e20_testing_release.pdf

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Increasing the amount of renewable ethanol blended into gasoline from10 percent to 20
percent does not present problems for current vehicles or fuel dispensing equipment and provides similar power
and performance, according to a new study released Wednesday by the State of Minnesota.

Using 40 pairs of vehicles commonly found on American roads, a yearlong research effort found that
increasing ethanol blends from 10 percent (E10) to 20 percent (E20) in a gallon of gasoline provided an
effective fuel across a range of tests focusing on drivability and materials compatibility.

"Using homegrown renewable fuel is an important part of Americanizing our energy future and unhooking our
country from foreign sources of oil,” Governor Tim Pawlenty said. “This study shows that we can safely
increase the amount of ethanol blended with gasoline for use in today’s vehicles. We’re proud that Minnesota
is helping lead the nation to a cleaner, more secure energy future and we’re hopeful that other states will
continue to join with us in this effort.”

[RC]

1. How wash!

"provides similar power and performance," Gas mileage will be cut even farther.

Most ethanol is made from corn, a food crop. The more ethanol that is made, the more corn needs to be grown, the less other food crops will be grown. Corn is 'energy intensive' to grow. It also need More water than most other crops and more fertilizer.
And ethanol pollutes the air just as bad as gasoline, just differently.

We are being sole a bill of goods here. The fact that the bu$h administration says ethanol is good should make any thinking person stop and think.

[JohnWxy]

2. would a thinking person need to stop to thinnk?

[sabbat hunter]

3. with ethanol

the CO2 footprint is zero, because plants take in CO2 for energy. when burned it will only release as much CO2 as it took in.

That being said, the mileage right now is lower with ethanol from corn but other forms of ethanol take less energy to produce and may keep MPG at a higher level (switchgrass, corn stalks, sugar cane)

[NickB79]

5. Only if you discount the oil and natural gas used by the farm equipment

My dad burns over 1000 gallons of diesel and gasoline each growing season on the farm, and applies tons of fertilizer produced from natural gas. The corn is dried using propane or natural-gas-fired driers, and shipped via diesel-powered trucks and trains. The ethanol plants, for the most part, use natural gas to distill the corn; a few ethanol distilleries actually use coal!

[sabbat hunter]

10. unless you develop

a solar powered car, some processing for fuel will take place. If its fuel cells then the processing for hydrogen. Unless you go to an all nuclear, solar, hydro, geothermal and wind for electricity, then even an electric car will be getting energy from a source that has an output into the air.

The idea is to limit that as much as possible.

[JohnWxy]

24. This 'debate' is long over; legitimate studies show energy gain in producing ethanol which do

consider fertilizer and fossil fuel expenditure on farms. USDA has shown net energy gain of 67% and a study by Dale & Kim, MIchigan State University, showed a similar net energy gain.

[kristopher]

28. I don't think so, at least, that isn't what they refer to 67% as meaning.

Here is a blurb by Dale and Kim summarizing their thinking.

http://www.eri.ucr.edu/ISAFXVCD/ISAFXVAB/NEEWT.pdf

Can you spot the problems?

[JohnWxy]

29. How about their study instead of a blurb:

From Dale and Kim's publlished study:


http://www.ncga.com/ethanol/pdfs/Allocation_Procedures_Fuel_Ethanol-Final.pdf

"The net energy is cumulative energy, defined as energy consumed
in the fuel life cycle including the heat content of fuel
so that the energy quality is implicitly taken into account.
For instance, one MJ of electricity might be different from
one MJ from coal or another fossil fuel in terms of the energy
used because electricity requires more energy to generate
than it delivers at the end use. For example, the net energy
for electricity in the United States is 2.1 MJnet/MJ of
electricity <10>. This value indicates that 2.1 MJ of energy is
required to generate one MJ of electricity. Therefore, the
net energy is cradle-to-use energy, which is typically shown
in life cycle inventories.

Kim and Dale <10> estimated the net energy for producing
corn grain and soybean, which included transportation of
these crops to a 'biorefinery', a crop processing facility.
~~
~~

Solving the linear equations with the base scenario, the net
energy for producing ethanol from corn grain becomes 14.3
MJnet/kg, or 73% of the total net energy for the dry milling
process. The net energy for DDGS is 5.6 MJnet/kg. The net
energy associated with ethanol in the wet milling process is
78% of the total net energy.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

However, ... on reading this now it looks like this 73% is really 1/.73 or 37%.

This is of course using the most conservative method of allocating coproducts - the displacement method. IF you use the energy content of each of the processes involved you get a much higher net energy yield.

In Kim & Dale's words: "The choice of allocation approach influences the final results more significantly than any other parameter investigaed."

[kristopher]

30. Convenient where they stop their "cradle to use" analysis, isn't it?

We are talking about moving to a new energy carrier to replace the fossil fuels used in the transportation sector. Using coal as a basis of comparison is a self serving fallacy in terms of the goal. I especially question their intent because they totally fail to take into account the biggest piece of the puzzle, the 12% efficiency of the internal combustion engine. Spending the amount of money planned on an ancillary fuel source for antiquated, inefficient technology is a boondoggle of the first order. It is the kind of policy that has kept us where we are right now. The subsidies would be much more beneficially spent upgrading our grid infrastructure and priming the pump for investment in battery manufacturing capacity - the only thing the electric car is waiting on is economy of scale to bring the price of the existing technology down.

[Fledermaus]

31. Well, if wind power keeps growing at the current rate, you may get your wish

In my opinion, I think plug in hybrids will come first.

[JohnWxy]

34. Ethanol enabled Direct Injection Engine - 25% to 30% reduced gas using only 5% ethanol.

Ford is teaming up with MIT researchers to get this engine mass produced by 2011. The beauty of this engine is it uses only about 5% pure ethanol and 95% gasoline and still gets 25% to 30% better gas mileage! This engine uses high pressure turbo-charging plus ethanol to get much more horsepower out of an engine, meaning you can reduce the engine size by about 30%. Less cubic inches, means less fuel used.


That would mean if all the cars and light trucks on the road (admittedly it would take years for this to occur if this engine works out) a quantity of ethanol representing only 5% of the total fuel supply would result in 25%-30% reduction in gasoline usage!


http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/05/ethanol_direct_.html

also:

http://lfee.mit.edu/public/LFEE%202006-01%20RP.pdf">CALCULATIONS OF KNOCK SUPPRESSION IN HIGHLY TURBOCHARGED GASOLINE/ETHANOL ENGINES USING DIRECT ETHANOL INJECTION - Massachusetts Institute of Technology

[kristopher]

37. And you are still dissipating what, 70% of your fuel as wasted heat?

The internal combustion engine is an inefficient relic we can no longer afford to cling to.

[JohnWxy]

48. Open to practical suggestions that are economically viable right now.

Got any?

[kristopher]

38. How Reliable are Those USDA Ethanol Studies?

There are a lot of poorly supported and misleading claims circulating regarding ethanol.
This analysis is an excellent look at the some of the science behind these claims.

The pro-ethanol contingent is quick to point to certain studies published by the USDA to support the claim that the energy balance of grain-ethanol is positive. Many anti-ethanol advocates will point to studies by Professors Pimentel and Patzek (1) to support claims that the energy balance is negative. Say what you will about the Pimentel and Patzek studies, but they have one thing going for them that that USDA studies do not: They have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Why does this matter? Peer reviewed papers have been examined by reviewers familiar with the subject matter (but who are not colleagues of the authors) who are looking for deficiencies or gross errors. Peer review is no guarantee that errors won’t slip through, but it is a check on papers that establishes that they have met certain scholarly guidelines. Peer review can be a pretty rough ordeal, but does a pretty good job of weeding out poor arguments.

Now, having said that, I will acknowledge that some of the criticisms of the data that Pimentel used may be legitimate. So, the purpose here is not to defend Pimentel’s work, but instead to take a rigorous look at the USDA studies...

<snip>

What is stated explicitly is that, ignoring co-product credits, they have energy inputs of 72,052 BTUs to produce 76,375 BTUs of ethanol, for an EROI of 1.06. They are allocating credits based on an Aspen model which is not publicly available, so it is impossible to check their assumptions. I can say that based on the way they have allocated some of the conversion energy to the co-products, that they have made invalid assumptions.

But, we can take the co-product value they reported in 2002 and estimate a more valid EROI. In 2002 they estimated co-product value at 14,372 BTU/gallon of ethanol. If we add that to the BTUs of the ethanol they produced, we get (76,375 + 14,372) BTUs out, or 90,747 out. Given their input of 72,052 BTUs, then their EROI with co-products is 90,747/72,052, or 1.26. That is a terrible EROI, and is even worse than what they calculated in 2002. This is not entirely surprising given that they admit that they significantly underestimated certain inputs (and left secondary inputs completely out of the equation). The 1.67 number is a fantasy based on very selective accounting.

Summary

Given the selective accounting employed in the USDA papers (both 2002 and 2004), it is doubtful that it would have passed peer-review without substantial modification. While I have my reservations about the data used by Pimentel, the USDA work is very shoddy in comparison. It has all the ear-marks of an agency attempting to push a political agenda. Certain data were selectively omitted from the energy calculation. The reported EROI of 1.67, parroted by the pro-ethanol contingent, completely breaks down under close examination. It is simply inaccurate and irresponsible to claim this EROI given the factors examined in this essay.

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

[Fledermaus]

39. It's not just the USDA, every study but Pimentel and Patzek gives ethanol a positive energy balance

For what ever reason, Pimentel consistently uses out of date data. Patzek has done the same thing, but doesn't keep repeating his errors like Pimentel.

BTU energy content of distillers grains is certainly a factory in determining the energy balance of ethanol. However, ethanol plants don't burn distillers grains for it's energy content because it has a higher value as food/animal feed.

Your link, Robert Rapier (i-r-squared blogspot), makes the mistake of confusing a true energy balance with EROI. When gasoline/oil is held to the same standard as ethanol production, it has a negative energy balance.

[kristopher]

40. A true energy balance such as that presented in the comparison with coal?

Perhaps you'd support that opinion with a more detailed analysis such as i-r-squared presented. Your assertion regarding holding gasoline and oil to "the same standard" makes absolutely no sense whatsoever on the face of it, so you'll have to indulge me with a somewhat more detailed explanation of the logic you are using - and it is preferred that it be based on a peer reviewed source. I've yet to see a convincing analysis for ethanol that makes me think it has any future outside of a sop to the agricultural lobby.
It is a waste of precious resources.

[Fledermaus]

41. 1st, i-r-squared is a blog, any comments thar are contrary or disprove the information presented

on the blog are promptly removed. I-r-squared is not a good source of information and, I am certainly not going to copy his technique.

2nd, Energy balance is very important. It comes from physics, conservation of energy and mass. In any process, all of the energy and mass can be accounted for. In addition, any process to use energy, is negative. You can never convert 100% of any fuel and turn it into usefully mechanical energy. There will always be losses from inefficacies. It doesn't mater what the fuel is. In other words, you can't get something for nothing. And you most certainly can not get more energy out of a system than you put in. That is impossible.

Biomass can claim a positive energy balance because of the sun and photosynthesis. Solar energy and photosynthesis are free. We did nothing. They just show up every day and we pretend not to notice, but at the end of the year, Dang, the weeds are high. Biomass is solar energy without the solar panels.

When people claim that gasoline/oil has a positive energy balance, it's a lie. You can not get more energy out of a barrel of oil than what was there to begin with...or a lump of coal.

Here's a link if you want some peer reviewed information.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/pdfs/program/ethanol_brochure_color.pdf

[kristopher]

42. OK, I thought that was were you were going with that.

I'm on dialup so I won't read your unidentified "peer reviewed" source. As to your other claim that most studies support the conclusions of the USDA; that simply isn't true. There is certainly work out there that proceeds in the same vein, however the problem is the basic slant of the analysis itself makes it virtually useless as a tool for determining the allocation of scarce energy resources. By playing fast and loose with parameters to be considered these analysis look much more to be agenda driven conclusions rather than an honest attempt to 'distill' the essence of facts relevant to guiding policy making.

What I-r-squared did IS peer review on a nonpeer reviewed document that ethanol proponents are widely using as a basis for their claims that the programs are cost effective and worthwhile. So when you say you "aren't going to copy his technique" it sounds like you are basically dismissing peer review.


I've previously mentioned the fallacy of limiting the discussion to a direct comparison of fossil fuels (where you count the energy stored as if it were an input today) and more importantly in my mind, to the very obvious and probably deliberate truncation of the cradle to grave analysis well before the point of greatest waste - the miserable 12% efficiency of the Internal Combustion Engine.

The criticisms of the use of EROI as a measure are frankly the type of "science" I expect from the Bush administration. While some explanations on the use of EROI as a tool are appropriate, to disregard it in it's entirety in favor of analysis based on treating the energy inputs from eons ago as relevant while disregarding the idiocy of preserving ICE technology is a mind boggling choice that can only be explained by the accusation of writing to a predetermined conclusion. As far as I can tell, the only possible reason such a fallacious argument would be deployed would be to hide the obvious failure of current ethanol policies to make a meaningful contribution to solving our energy problems. With the BILLIONS of dollars in tax money and false markets at stake I suggest extreme caution in evaluating claims that support ethanol as a solution to to our transportation energy woes.


Here are a couple of responses to a journal Science article written with the slant you seen to support. I include these (and not those supportive of the article) because they deal with the scope of the analysis and the fatal weakness flows from writing towards a preselected conclusion. At the end is the link to the letters posted and another to the original article.

Science 23 June 2006:
Vol. 312. no. 5781, pp. 1746 - 1748
DOI: 10.1126/science.312.5781.1746

Letters
Energy Returns on Ethanol Production
In their Report "Ethanol can contribute to energy and environmental goals" (27 Jan., p. 506), A. E. Farrell et al. focus in part on whether biomass-derived ethanol fuel delivers positive net energy . Their analysis neither resolves nor clarifies the fundamental issues that make net energy important and contentious. First, in their comparison of ethanol and gasoline, they confuse EROI--a productivity index--with the energy efficiency of an oil refinery. Second, their use of energy break-even as a litmus test is a red herring; it is more crucial that EROI is high compared with competing energy sources. Exploration for domestic petroleum in the 1930s returned 100 Joules for each Joule invested; the EROI for oil production today is ~15:1 (2). Because the present EROI of fossil fuels is high, the ~90 net Quads (1 Quad = ~1 exajoule) delivered annually to the U.S. economy results from an investment of only about 10 Quads (2). To provide that same 90 net Quads from corn-derived ethanol would require an investment of 145 to 500 Quads (based on an EROI = ~1.6:1 to 1.2:1, implied by Farrell et al.'s fig. 1). The current transportation system cannot be maintained on a fuel system delivering only a 1.6:1 return. Third, the focus on petroleum inputs is too limited. Natural gas is often the principal input to biomass fuel production, but its future is no more certain than oil's; we already import more than 15% of what we use (3). Fourth, the authors ignore the energy cost of repairing soil erosion.

Finally, the one (speculative) result for an energy technology based on cellulose in fig. 1 implies an EROI of ~50:1. This (very uncertain) EROI indicates that this source of biomass could be potentially useful, but ethanol from corn remains too marginal to survive without heavy economic subsidy.

Cutler J. Cleveland
Center for Energy and Environmental Studies
Boston University
675 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215, USA

Charles A. S. Hall
College of Environmental Science and Forestry
Syracuse, NY 13210, USA

Robert A. Herendeen
Illinois Natural History Survey
Champaign, IL 61821, USA

References

1. C. J. Cleveland, R. Costanza, C. A. S. Hall, R. Kaufmann, Science 225, 890 (1984).
2. C. J. Cleveland, Energy 30, 769 (2005).
3. Official U.S. Energy Information Web page, eia.doe.gov.



In their Report "Ethanol can contribute to energy and environmental goals" (27 Jan., p. 506), A. E. Farrell and colleagues offer hopeful opinions about corn-based ethanol. Their analysis suggests that, since the ratio of ethanol produced to fossil fuel used is positive, ethanol should be further developed. If replacing oil is our goal, we must look at two parameters of this approach: (i) energy return on investment (EROI) including environmental impacts on soil, water, climate change, ecosystem services, etc.; and (ii) scalability and timing. Farrell and colleagues' most optimistic EROI of 1.2:1 (which does not include tractors, labor, or environmental impacts) implies that we need to produce 6 MJ of ethanol to net 1 MJ of energy for other endeavors. Thus, the yield of ethanol would not be 360 gallons per acre gross yield, but rather a mere 60 gallons per acre net yield, not even two fill-ups for an SUV. The entire state of Iowa, if planted in corn, would yield approximately five days of gasoline alternative.

To devote half the nation's corn crop to ethanol would require an input of 3.42 billion barrels of oil (almost half our current national use) to net 684 million barrels of "new" ethanol energy. We would also lose food and soil nutrients, suffer ecosystem damage, and use massive amounts of water for irrigation.

We need alternative energy. But ethanol from corn is neither scalable nor sustainable. Let's pursue better options.

Nathan Hagens
Gund Institute for Ecological Economics
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT 05405, USA

Robert Costanza
Gund Institute for Ecological Economics
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT 05405, USA

Kenneth Mulder
Gund Institute for Ecological Economics
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT 05405, USA




The methodological flaws in A. E. Farrell et al.'s Report "Ethanol can contribute to energy and environmental goals" (27 Jan., p. 506) are revealed in the authors' fig. 1b, which shows that motor gasoline has a negative net energy and the highest input/output ratio, while ethanol technologies have positive net energies and lower input/output ratios. These numbers imply that motor gasoline is the marginal fuel seeking to displace biomass fuels.

This contradiction is caused by inconsistencies in the boundaries that are used to analyze their energy balance. For motor gasoline, the authors add the energy content of the gasoline to the effort used to produce it. The energy used to produce motor gasoline is much less than its energy content--estimates for the total energy input/energy output ratio are about 0.06 (1).

For biomass fuels, the authors report only the petroleum input/output ratio. Other fuels used in the process should also be included; these cannot be assumed to be sustainable (as exemplified by natural gas shortages) The biomass fuels are not used as liquids--(much of the co-products are used to generate electricity), which also needs to be taken into account. Including these additional fuels raises the input/output ratio to 0.79 (ethanol today) or 0.82 (CO2 intensive). If the U.S. economy used oil with an energy input/output ratio of about 0.8, the energy equivalent of about 80 million barrels per day of oil would be used to generate the 20 million barrels per day of refined petroleum products that the United States uses outside of the oil sector.

Once the boundaries are made equivalent, motor gasoline has a much higher energy surplus and a lower energy input/energy out ratio than biomass fuels. This result matches the economic reality described by the authors' first paragraph--biomass fuels, not motor gasoline, need subsidies and tax breaks.

Robert K. Kaufmann
Center for Energy and Environmental Studies
Boston University
675 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215, USA

Reference

1. C. J. Cleveland, Energy 30 (no. 5), 769 (2005).


http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;312/5781/1746

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/311/5760/506

[Fledermaus]

43. Claiming I-r-squared is pier reviewed is absurd.

Mentioning a pier reviewed paper and then deliberately filtering out all opposing views does not make i-r-squared pier reviewed.

You claim that there are many papers/authors refuting the positive energy balance of corn ethanol. Perhaps you could list them pro and con. I would like to see that head count.

Using your same criteria, I will not waste my time going to your links. Apparently, it is nothing but one big circle jerk of laundered responses to someone that has an apparent agenda that may or may not have mentioned a pier reviewed paper.


The GREET energy balance has been pier reviewed

[kristopher]

44. Are you being deliberately obtuse?

Your link was a 6MB file that would take nearly an hour for me to download. Not exactly the same as your snit, is it?

I didn't say that the blog was peer reviewed, I wrote that the blogger was accomplishing peer review. Since it is a matter of dealing with issues and arguments instead of personalities, it is often done anonymously.

Likewise, I didn't refute or reject the claim to a "positive energy balance" for ethanol nor did I say that there were papers refuting the claim of a "positive energy balance" - what I'm rejecting is the conclusion that this information is a useful metric when evaluating the desirability of spending money to encourage augmenting or replacing fossil fuels with ethanol. It isn't at all useful and I've listed several of the many reasons this is so; both as I see it and as a couple of letter writers to Science see it.

Of course, you've yet to respond to even one specific point raised. Instead you prefer to focus on red herrings and indignation - but I suppose that's only natural when you are trying to support an insupportable proposition.

Let me repeat (and try to get it right this time): the entire concept of "positive energy balance" as being the only meaningful (or even a significant) hurdle to viability is absurd. The forcing to the front of this metric as if it were meaningful is deliberately deceptive and becomes overtly dishonest when much more relevant metrics are ignored in favor of pushing this concept.

Ethanol sucks, is a political boondoggle of the first order, and takes money from where it is badly needed. You should be ashamed of yourself for pushing this claptrap.

[JohnWxy]

49. GREET model is the gold standard for well-to-wheel analyses of vehicle/fuel systems - SAE

http://www.transportation.anl.gov/software/GREET/greet_gold_standard.html


The GREET (Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation) software model addresses the need for truly comparative full fuel cycle (or well-to-wheel) analyses. Developed in a user-friendly Microsoft® Excel platform with a graphical user interface, the model is available to the public free of charge.

The Society of Automotive Engineers maintains that GREET has become a "gold standard" for well-to-wheel analyses of vehicle/fuel systems.

Users that can benefit from GREET include government agencies, the auto industry, the energy industry, research institutes, universities, and public interest groups. Already, more than 5,600 GREET users in both the public and private sectors are registered throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.

To date, Argonne has used GREET to evaluate various engine and fuel systems for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), other government agencies, and industry (see publications list). Other organizations have used GREET to evaluate advanced vehicle technologies and new transportation fuels.

[kristopher]

51. The issue is accuracy, honesty and clarity

Wang and his followers are being deceptive and pushing a false conclusion using data of extremely limited applicability in a, frankly, dishonest way.

http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/08/battling-with-critics.html

[JohnWxy]

52. I really shouldn't waste my time but - I quote the utter nonsense from the blog you referred to:

From the R squared bullshit blog:

"If, however, I make gasoline, the efficiency is 80%. That is where the 0.8 number comes from. In this case, I only consumed 20% of the BTUs to make 1 BTU of gasoline. {Now this is total bullshit. you consume MORE energy to produce LESS energy in gasoline. SEE BELOW_JW}. My net is 0.8 BTUs. What they have done is convolute energy return and efficiency, and act like 1.3 for ethanol is the same metric as 0.8 for gasoline, when they are actually 2 different metrics."

Here is the link to a summary of the Argonne National Laboratory study by Wang. look at it for yourself:

http://www.ncga.com/ethanol/pdfs/Wang2005.pdf

"As you can see, the fossil energy input per unit of ethanol is lower—0.74 million Btu fossil energy consumed for each 1 million Btu of ethanol delivered, compared to 1.23 million Btu of fossil energy consumed for each million Btu of gasoline delivered."

I don't know how much simpler you can say it:

to get 1 million BTUs of gasoline you consume 1.23 million BTUs of fossil fuel. 1/1.23 = .81

This is a negative yield of -19% or perhaps you could call this a negative "efficiency" of -19%.

The return on energy consumed to produce ethanol (as of about 1996) was 1 million BTUs for each .74 million BTUs (i.e.740,000 BTUs) of energy consumed to produce the 1 milliion BTUs of ethanol. 1/.74 = 1.35. In other words you have an energy gain of 35% (over the energy consumed to produce the ethanol).

Nowadays the yield is considerably higher as the newer ethanol plants are more efficient than the older plants. NOte that even though the price of corn keeps going up the price of ethanol is going down.

[kristopher]

53. You don't really expect to get away with that bullshit do you?

First, let me recommend that you read this for a broader perspective: http://ips-dc.org/reports/070915_biofuels_report.pdf.
the false promise of biofuels: A SPECIAL REPORT FROM the international forum on globalization and the institute for policy studies

Now, as to specifics already in play: What part of "That's an apples and oranges comparison" don't you understand?
Start here and think about this for a minute: What about all the documentation for the FACT that PETROLEUM returns many times the energy invested in locating, recovering and processing it; somewhere around a 1:8 ERoEI for BTUs in the form of gasoline and between 1:10 and 1:25 for petroleum as a whole.

Let's turn back to the ethanol-gasoline comparison.

We have an seeming contradiction between Wang's quote and the known EROI of petroleum. According to Wang's method, we've been fooled all these years by that seemingly high EROI of petroleum because it is actually (according to your quote) a "negative yield of -19%". I mean, that is his/your claim right? That a) we are using more energy to produce gasoline than we are getting back in gasoline and b) we are using less energy to produce ethanol than we are getting back in ethanol, right?

How do we account for this?

I mean, your claim certainly flies in the face of everything we thought we knew, doesn't it? Either 1) Wang has discovered with this analysis something we never really understood before, or 2) there is something wrong with what you are claiming of Wang's results or 3) there is a fundamental flaw in Wang's analysis.

For convenience here is your bold, blue quote:
to get 1 million BTUs of gasoline you consume 1.23 million BTUs of fossil fuel. 1/1.23 = .81

This is a negative yield of -19% or perhaps you could call this a negative "efficiency" of -19%.

The return on energy consumed to produce ethanol (as of about 1996) was 1 million BTUs for each .74 million BTUs (i.e.740,000 BTUs) of energy consumed to produce the 1 milliion BTUs of ethanol. 1/.74 = 1.35.

In other words you have an energy gain of 35% (over the energy consumed to produce the ethanol).

I think the discrepancy arises because of both a deliberate conflation of terms and a gerrymandering of the boundaries subject to analysis. The maroon is the delivered at the pump fuel (Note it is set at 1 BTU across the board, same as in the title). The blue is then the amount of energy required to deliver that fuel to the pump. Do I really need to say more?
Everything (EROI, known properties of ethanol, and chart) adds up except the spin you and others are putting on this extremely narrow analysis by Argonne.







Here is Rapier (author of r-squared blog) responding to your assertion placed in the context of actual transportation:
Hal: The bottom line remains that to produce enough ethanol to drive a car 100 miles takes LESS fossil energy out of the ground than to produce enough gasoline to drive a car that far. If Robert disagrees with this last fact, I'd like to hear him say it.

Rapier: Do I disagree? Of course I do. Your statement is absurd. Let's say it takes 1 BTU to drive the car the preferred distance. To net 1 BTU of ethanol, I am going to have to physically consume (1/0.26) = 3.84 BTUs of fossil fuel. Remember, when making ethanol, you have to burn 0.74 BTUs of fossil fuel just to make 1, for a net of 0.26. If your desire is 1 net BTU of energy, then you will burn 3.84 BTUs of fossil fuel to end up with 4.84 BTUs of ethanol. If you are merely concerned about the gross, then you still burned 0.74 BTUs of fossil fuel to produce 1.0 BTU of ethanol.

To net 1 BTU of gasoline, I am only going to have to physically consume 0.26 BTUs of fossil fuel to get the oil out of the ground, refine it, and get it to your tank. I had to pull 1.26 BTUs of fossil fuel out of the ground to net 1.0 BTUs of gasoline. To net 1.0 BTUs of ethanol, I had to pull 3.84 BTUs of fossil fuel out of the ground (actually more, since it would have to be refined). Again, ethanol only wins here if comparing apples and oranges (net energy of gasoline to gross energy of ethanol).
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/8/25/221617/881?page=1


And there are these critiques of your position from letters to Science. Please pay attention to the points in bold. If you respond, please be sure to address them specifically.

"Because the present EROI of fossil fuels is high, the ~90 net Quads (1 Quad = ~1 exajoule) delivered annually to the U.S. economy results from an investment of only about 10 Quads (2). To provide that same 90 net Quads from corn-derived ethanol would require an investment of 145 to 500 Quads (based on an EROI = ~1.6:1 to 1.2:1, implied by Farrell et al.'s fig. 1). The current transportation system cannot be maintained on a fuel system delivering only a 1.6:1 return. Third, the focus on petroleum inputs is too limited. Natural gas is often the principal input to biomass fuel production, but its future is no more certain than oil's; we already import more than 15% of what we use (3). Fourth, the authors ignore the energy cost of repairing soil erosion."

AND

"n their Report "Ethanol can contribute to energy and environmental goals" (27 Jan., p. 506), A. E. Farrell and colleagues offer hopeful opinions about corn-based ethanol. Their analysis suggests that, since the ratio of ethanol produced to fossil fuel used is positive, ethanol should be further developed. If replacing oil is our goal, we must look at two parameters of this approach: (i) energy return on investment (EROI) including environmental impacts on soil, water, climate change, ecosystem services, etc.; and (ii) scalability and timing. Farrell and colleagues' most optimistic EROI of 1.2:1 (which does not include tractors, labor, or environmental impacts) implies that we need to produce 6 MJ of ethanol to net 1 MJ of energy for other endeavors. Thus, the yield of ethanol would not be 360 gallons per acre gross yield, but rather a mere 60 gallons per acre net yield, not even two fill-ups for an SUV. The entire state of Iowa, if planted in corn, would yield approximately five days of gasoline alternative.

To devote half the nation's corn crop to ethanol would require an input of 3.42 billion barrels of oil (almost half our current national use) to net 684 million barrels of "new" ethanol energy. We would also lose food and soil nutrients, suffer ecosystem damage, and use massive amounts of water for irrigation.

We need alternative energy. But ethanol from corn is neither scalable nor sustainable. Let's pursue better options.

AND

"The methodological flaws in A. E. Farrell et al.'s Report "Ethanol can contribute to energy and environmental goals" (27 Jan., p. 506) are revealed in the authors' fig. 1b, which shows that motor gasoline has a negative net energy and the highest input/output ratio, while ethanol technologies have positive net energies and lower input/output ratios. These numbers imply that motor gasoline is the marginal fuel seeking to displace biomass fuels.

This contradiction is caused by inconsistencies in the boundaries that are used to analyze their energy balance. For motor gasoline, the authors add the energy content of the gasoline to the effort used to produce it. The energy used to produce motor gasoline is much less than its energy content--estimates for the total energy input/energy output ratio are about 0.06 (1).

For biomass fuels, the authors report only the petroleum input/output ratio. Other fuels used in the process should also be included; these cannot be assumed to be sustainable (as exemplified by natural gas shortages) The biomass fuels are not used as liquids--(much of the co-products are used to generate electricity), which also needs to be taken into account. Including these additional fuels raises the input/output ratio to 0.79 (ethanol today) or 0.82 (CO2 intensive). If the U.S. economy used oil with an energy input/output ratio of about 0.8, the energy equivalent of about 80 million barrels per day of oil would be used to generate the 20 million barrels per day of refined petroleum products that the United States uses outside of the oil sector.

AND

"In the net-energy analysis in their Report "Ethanol can contribute to energy and environmental goals" (27 Jan., p. 506), A. E. Farrell et al. do not (i) define the system boundaries, (ii) conserve mass, and, consequently, (iii) conserve energy. Most of the current First Law net-energy models of the industrial corn-ethanol cycle are based on nonphysical assumptions and should be discarded.

When properly formulated, mass and First Law energy balances of corn fields and ethanol refineries account for the photosynthetic energy, some of the environment restoration work, and the co-product energy (1). These show that production of ethanol from corn is two to four times less favorable than production of gasoline from petroleum. From thermodynamics, it also follows that the ecological devastation wrought by industrial biofuel production must be severe. With the DDGS co-product energy credit, 3.9 gallons of ethanol displace on average the energy in 1 gallon of gasoline. Without the DDGS energy credit, this average number is 6.2 gallons of ethanol. Equivalent CO2 emissions from the corn ethanol cycle are 50% higher than those from gasoline and become 100% higher if methane emissions from cows fed with DDGS are accounted for.

The U.S. ethanol industry has consistently inflated its ethanol yields by counting 5 volume percent of #14 gasoline denaturant (8% of energy) as ethanol. Also, imports from Brazil and longer chain alcohols seem to have been counted as U.S. ethanol (1). A detailed statistical analysis of 401 corn hybrids from Illinois reveals that the highest possible yield of ethanol is 2.64 ± 0.05 (SD) gallons EtOH/bu (1). The commonly accepted U.S. Department of Agriculture estimate of mean ethanol yield in the United States, 2.682 gallons EtOH/bu (2), is one standard deviation above this estimate.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/long/312/5781/1746


THE INFORMATION YOU ARE PROPAGATING IS DISHONEST AND MISLEADING. YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF.

[Fledermaus]

54. It's absurd to claim gasoline/oil has a positive energy balance.

Anybody that claims to have a energy system with a energy return greater than one has allot to explain.

Thermodynamics is the study of the inter-relation between heat, work and internal energy of a system.

The British scientist and author C.P. Snow had an excellent way of remembering the three laws:
You cannot win (that is, you cannot get something for nothing, because matter and energy are conserved).


You cannot break even (you cannot return to the same energy state, because there is always an increase in disorder; entropy always increases).


You cannot get out of the game (because absolute zero is unattainable).

http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae280.cfm

If you want a more scientific explanation you can google up "thermodynamic laws"

Biomass does not violate these laws. Free solar energy/photosynthesis gives biomass a positive energy balance.

[kristopher]

55. You appear to be confused

No one is suggesting anything that would be considered a violation of the laws of physics. The fact that you think it is being suggested is therefore a statement that you either don't understand the what is being discussed or you are employing a red herring. I'm not surprised if it is confusion, since that seems to be the entire point of Wang's work on ethanol. It is, in my view, as deliberate an attempt at creating confusion as anything produced by Exxon or the tobacco companies.

If you have a more specific criticism, I'd love to discuss it with you, but so far, all you've done is throw some crap against the wall to see what sticks.

From the referenced paper:

"It takes energy to produce energy, and it is obvious that a desirable fuel should provide considerably more energy than it takes to produce it. The amount of energy that is left after the input energy is subtracted from the output energy is referred to as net energy. Input energy for oil production, for example, includes items like the energy costs of the drilling process, the construction and transport of the drilling rigs, the manufacture of all materials used in these processes, and so on. The net energy is the amount of surplus energy available beyond the energy used to produce it."

[JohnWxy]

56. I am propagating nothing. I merely report what legitimate researchers , Wang, Dale, Shappouri, and

others have determined.
there are about 4,000 users of the GREET model (developed by Wang at Argonne National Laboratory) in private industry, government and the academia. I yield to the Society of Automative Engineers (SAE)when they say it is the gold standard when evaluating the energetics of producing various fuels.

Again I refer anyone interested in actually gaining an understanding of the issue to take a look at theis summary of WAng's analysis of producing gasoline and ethanol:
http://www.ncga.com/ethanol/pdfs/Wang2005.pdf

as for those who enjoy seeing there words in print I don't have the time to point out the flaws in all their circumlocutions. I have other tasks which demand my time. I post here to help clarify issues and point out where legitimate research can be found.


Regarding the report you referenced "A SPECIAL REPORT FROM the international forum on globalization and the institute for policy studies" it's author is identified as Jack Santa-Barbara the director of the The Sustainable Scale Project, an organization wholly funded by the Santa-Barbara Family Foundation. Mr. Santa Barbara's resume (unless i have the wrong guy) here:http://www.uvm.edu/giee/ESDA/jacksantabarbara.html">Jack Santa-Barbara. If this is the correct guy he is a former Psyhologist with the following academic background:

B.A. 1963 Boston College Boston,MA Experimental Psychology

M.A. 1967 McMaster University Hamilton ON Physiological Psychology

Ph.D. 1971 McMaster University Hamilton ON Experimental Social Psychology

Not real heavy in agricultural science, Chemical Engineering, or economics. He seems to be a behavioral scientist. When it comes to analysis of fuels he seems to be self taught.

I am just about to run out of time now so I'll have to leave further comment to another time.

[kristopher]

57. Don't "have time"? More like "don't have credibility".

That is one more cop out in a long list of them by you. You've been shown for the purveyor of bad information that you are and you know it.

I gave you a series of comments responding to a meta-analysis of the 4 studies (only one of which was peer reviewed) out there that use Wang's method. All of the comments were critical and rejected the method.

So the only thing you can think of to respond with is a "shoot the messenger" fallacy. Too bad the document you are pointing to is a policy planning document and not a work of chemistry, engineering or physics. You also left of the rest of the authors of the paper, around 12 of them.
Character assassination is the same thing you tried with r-squared blog writer, Robert Rapier. Quoting you "R squared bullshit blog" and "the utter nonsense from the blog you referred to".
Let me point out that in spite of have specific criticisms of Wang's method placed before your eyes several times you have chosen to respond ONLY with ad hominim, false appeals to authority, and shoot the messenger logical falsehoods.
YOU REFUSE SUBSTANTIVE DISCUSSION.
Rapier Vs Wang etal on The Oil Drum: http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/8/25/221617/881?page=1

Rapier's discussion on his blog:http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/03/how-reliable-are-those-usda-ethanol.html

Rapier's CV: http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/03/how-reliable-are-those-usda-ethanol.html

Here is his resume:

CURRICULUM VITAE

NAME:

Robert Rapier

ADDRESS:

(edited), Arnhem, the Netherlands.

CONTACT INFO:

My Email

NATIONALITY:

U.S.

EDUCATION:

Master of Science in Chemical Engineering Texas A&M University, College Station, TX in May 1995 GPA: 3.63/4.00

Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and Mathematics (double major), Texas A&M University, Commerce, TX in May 1995 GPA: 3.63/4.00

SUMMARY:

Seventeen years of engineering experience in the chemicals and oil and gas industries across a wide range of fossil fuel and biofuels technologies, including refining, natural gas production, gas-to-liquids, ethanol production, and butanol production. I have experience in R&D, process, production, and design. Experience includes international assignments in Germany, Scotland, and the Netherlands. Graduate school experience involved the biological conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into chemicals. I have received multiple patents for my work. Additional experience includes extensive consulting and writing on various alternative energy technologies.

WORK HISTORY:

03.08 – Present; Accsys Technologies, London, UK; Engineering Director

• Responsible for global engineering in the organization.

01.07 – 03.08; ConocoPhillips, Aberdeen, UK; Process Engineering Team Leader

• Led large international team tasked with executing projects in the North Sea sector.
• Planned, prioritized, and assigned the work load for the team.
• Recruited, interviewed, and hired new engineers into the group.
• Prepared estimates, schedules, and project execution plans.
• Ultimately responsible for the quality of all work produced by the team.
• Served as technical advisor for the emergency response team.
• Conducted semi-annual performance appraisals for all team members.
• BOSIET certified

05.04 – 01.07; ConocoPhillips, Billings, Montana; LP and Models Engineer

• Utilized Aspen Orion for refinery scheduling and planning.
• Interfaced with commercial group to develop short and long-term operating plans.
• Monitored key process indicators for all process units on a weekly basis.
• Served as primary backup for product blender and scheduler.
• Implemented control plan for Six Sigma project on crude oil quality.
• Provided technical/economic input on corporate alternative fuel interests.
• Provided testimony to the legislature on a proposed ethanol mandate.
• Published numerous articles on various alternative energy technologies.

03.02 – 05.04; ConocoPhillips, Ponca City, Oklahoma; Senior Staff Engineer

• Provided technical support for the development of gas-to-liquids (GTL) technology.
• Served as Technical Lead for ethane oxidative dehydrogenation project.
• Invented a breakthrough process that enabled the first ever ultra-high-pressure ethane oxidative dehydrogenation. This significantly improved project economics, and I received a Special Recognition Award as a result.
• Supervised a team of technicians and chemical engineers.
• Submitted 20 invention records, of which 6 are in various stages of patenting.
• Developed Excel spreadsheets for acquisition and analysis of process data.

05.01 – 03.02; Celanese, Clear Lake, Texas; Six Sigma Black Belt

• Provided technical direction for acrylic acid and acrylic acid esters units.
• Trained in Six Sigma methodology and completed Six Sigma Black Belt program.
• Served as mentor for two Six Sigma Green Belts.
• Led two successful Six Sigma teams. The results of our efforts led to a decrease in plant energy usage of $2 million/yr.

06.99 – 05.01; Celanese, Oberhausen, Germany; Production Engineer

• Provided technical support for the butyraldehyde, butanol, and 2-ethyl hexanol units.
• Conceived and designed a novel new butanol unit that was estimated to reduce production costs by $5.4 million/yr. Led team through successful piloting of the design, for which I received a patent.
• Designed advanced process control systems for several distillation towers.

06.97 – 06.99; Celanese, Bay City, Texas; Senior Process Engineer

• Provided technical direction for the butanol, propanol, and POX units.
• Engineered distillation modifications that reduced variable steam usage by 30% and increased butanol capacity by 20%. This was achieved at no capital cost.
• Designed and commissioned a new butyraldehyde distillation system.
• Recommended changes in the butanol production system which led to a 5% overall increase in propylene to butanol efficiency. The total value in energy costs, capacity increases, and propylene efficiency was approximately $9 million/yr.
• Decreased the process waste streams by 75%.
• Provided all process support for a $6 MM expansion of the butanol unit and a $20 MM conversion of POX reactors from fuel oil to natural gas.

05.95 – 06.97; Celanese, Corpus Christi, Texas; Development Engineer

• Provided technical support for butanol and propanol units.
• Modified a butanol distillation system and avoided a $5 million capital expenditure.
• Developed Aspen Plus models for a butanol purification system, a POX reactor, a synthesis gas purification system, and a butyraldehyde splitter.
• Operated a butanol distillation pilot unit.

01.94 – 05.95; Texas A&M University, College Station, TX; Research Assistant

• Instructed students in chemical engineering unit operations.
• Designed and operated a series of bio-reactors used to convert municipal solid waste and wastewater sludge into mixed organic acids and alcohols.
• Supervised interns engaged in experiments in the biomass lab.

08.91 – 01.94; Texas A&M University, College Station, TX; Teaching Assistant

• Prepared and delivered chemistry lectures each week.
• Supervised students in the lab and tutored them in general and analytical chemistry.
• Performed research in mass spectrometry instrument development.

07.86 – 08.91; Campbell Soup Company, Paris, TX; Lab Technician

• Managed quality control lab during night shift while attending school full-time.
• Collected samples from production lines.
• Performed analytical and bacteriological tests.

PATENTS:

Granted Patents

US Patent 7,067,455 - Copper modified catalysts for oxidative dehydrogenation
US Patent 7,074,977 - Reactor and process for converting alkanes to alkenes
US Patent 7,087,795 - Method for the production of aldehydes

Pending Patents

US Application 20060143980 - Reactor and process for making synthesis gas
US Application 20040138060 - Stabilized alumina supports, catalysts made therefrom, and their use in partial oxidation

Miscellaneous Patents

US 7,087,795 has also been granted in Germany (DE10160368), by the European Patent Office (EP1456162), in South Africa (2004/3935), and is pending in Japan (2003551096) and in South Korea (2003551096).

ACADEMIC AWARDS:

Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge (for biomass conversion to chemicals)
Texas A&M Regent' Fellowship
Texas Institute of Chemist’s Award
Undergraduate Award in Analytical Chemistry
Robert A. Welch Fellowship

INTERESTS:

Energy and sustainability issues, hiking, biking, writing, travel

[JohnWxy]

61. Pardon me, but I uttered no ad hominem arguments and you obviously have more time

for internet fulminations than I do.

Actually, I'm just pointing out obvious (and sometimes rather blatant) falacious argumentation, to wit, my quote from your link to the R-squared blog: http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/08/battling-with-critics.html

Also, it's entirely legitimate to point out that the author of the first report you gave a link
( http://ips-dc.org/reports/070915_biofuels_report.pdf ) to is by his own admission self taught when it comes to issues of ecology. http://www.uvm.edu/giee/ESDA/jacksantabarbara.html

"However, I developed an interest in ecological economics several years ago as a result of reading some of the work of Herman Daly. This interest persisted and grew and led me to refocus my activities. Since stepping down from my corporate role at the end of 1999, I have engaged in some self-directed study of ecological and environmental economics..."

The first report you mentioned and the Jack Santa-Barbara author has nothing to do with the squared blog author. or weren't you aware of that? I never mentioned anything about the R-squared blog author's credentials, i only addressed the specific quote I referred to (see below).


But back to the R-squared blog: http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/08/battling-with-critics.html

I quoted from the linked page you gave but here is more complete quote :

"Tom,

They are wrong. I have read all of the Argonne studies. I have exchanged e-mails with Wang at Argonne and Shapouri at the USDA. They know they are being misleading in these claims, but most people don't dig into the details to see their sleight of hand.

Here is a very simple test that will demonstrate they are wrong. After people work through this, they always see the problem. Let's say my goal is to make 1 BTU of liquid fuel. Will I consume more energy if I produce ethanol, or will I consume more energy if I produce gasoline? The implication from the Argonne et al. would imply that it should take more energy to produce the gasoline. However, that is not remotely the case. If I presume an energy balance for ethanol of 1.3, then I will consume 1/1.3, or 0.77 BTUs to make 1 BTU. My net is a mere 0.23.

If, however, I make gasoline, the efficiency is 80%. That is where the 0.8 number comes from. In this case, I only consumed 20% of the BTUs to make 1 BTU of gasoline. My net is 0.8 BTUs."


the statements in bold were what I quoted and denigrated as bull. HE is using data from this study as summarized here: http://www.ncga.com/ethanol/pdfs/Wang2005.pdf

Michael Wang's words:

" As you can see, the fossil energy input per unit of ethanol is lower—0.74 million Btu fossil energy consumed for each 1 million Btu of ethanol delivered, compared to 1.23 million Btu of fossil energy consumed for each million Btu of gasoline delivered."

Now, if you divide 1/1.23 you get .81 This is what R-squared is referring to when he says the efficiency of making gasoline is this is 80% ("If, however, I make gasoline, the efficiency is 80%."). but to then say "I only consumed 20% of the BTUs to make 1 BTU of gasoline. My net is 0.8 BTUs." is clearly b.s. - ie nonsense. According to the Argonne National Laboratory Study it takes 1.23 million BTUs of energy to return 1 million BTUs of gasoline. That is not saying you "only consumed 20% of the BTUs to make 1 BTU of gasoline" to quote the R-squared blog.

I really don't think it was untoward to call the R-squared statement B.S.

Now regarding your peer review links you provided at comments 59 and 60, they are referring to the FArrell and Kammen meta analysis which actually, I never mentioned. This is not an original study but a comparison of several studies.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=138650&mesg_id=141208 "In their Report "Ethanol can contribute to energy and environmental goals" (27 Jan., p. 506), A. E. Farrell et al."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=115&topic_id=138650&mesg_id=141209
"In the net-energy analysis in their Report "Ethanol can contribute to energy and environmental goals" (27 Jan., p. 506), A. E. Farrell et al. "

I never spoke of or referred to this analysis.

Now this is really a lot of time I have spent on this dead issue (the positive energy yield of ehtanol from corn). I know you could argue ad infinitum about this (and don't take this personally) but I do have other interests and demands for my time.

AGAIN, TO THOSE WHO ARE INTERESTED IN LEGITIMATE STUDIES AND INFORMATION ABOUT ETHANOL google Michael Wang and ethanol along with Argonne National laboratory (e.g. use: "wang ethanol argonne greet") (or "ethanol Shappouri") to find legitimate research on the subject.

Good night!

[Fledermaus]

64. Ha ha ha...

You have played fast and loose with the definitions of energy balance and EROI, freely substituting one for the other whenever you wish.

Now, let’s do a reality check on Robert Rapier.

Thermodynamics is the study of the inter-relation between heat, work and internal energy of a system.

The British scientist and author C.P. Snow had an excellent way of remembering the three laws:
1. You cannot win (that is, you cannot get something for nothing, because matter and energy are conserved).
2. You cannot break even (you cannot return to the same energy state, because there is always an increase in disorder; entropy always increases).
3. You cannot get out of the game (because absolute zero is unattainable).
http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae280.cfm

Energy and mass are conserved, there is no energy system that has an energy balance greater than one, and you can’t get out of the game.

Biomass does not claim to violate this law. In reality, photosynthesis has a negative energy balance, just as the laws of thermodynamics predict therefore the whole process, as a whole, is negative. We claim a positive energy balance be cause of the free energy supplied by the sun via photosynthesis. We do no work to receive the benefits of mother natures living solar panels. It’s a white lie that everybody accepts.

Now you claim EROI as your gasoline/oil energy balance with a positive energy balance. How did you come out with a positive number? You started out with a fixed amount of oil reserves. You removed a portion or your reserves leaving you with less. Then, you used and lost a portion of the extracted oil producing gasoline and various other products.

The whole process has a negative energy balance. You now have less oil reserves and the energy content of your products is less than the energy content of the oil you removed. Just as the laws of thermodynamics predicted, it is negative. You have less of every thing.

What Robert Rapier has done is played a shell game substituting energy balance with EROI. Basically he is removing money from a bank account with a debit card. Dividing the withdraw by the service fee and claiming a positive energy balance.

In reality, the only thing EROI tells us is how big the service fee the bank is charging us.

The only person with a credibility problem is Robert Rapier, and he perpetuates his scam by deliberately deleting reader’s comments that expose his shell game.

[kristopher]

68. The net energy concept

Don'cha just love that line: "controversy sparked by corn-state politics rather than reality". :ROFL:


The net energy concept: The true value of energy to society is the net energy, which is that energy left after the energy costs of getting and concentrating the energy are subtracted. Hundreds (if not thousands) of analyses have been conducted on various energy technologies during the past three decades, and analysts continue to disagree on the net energy contribution of various technologies. For example, different estimates of the net energy of corn-to-ethanol conversion have been made, with much of the controversy sparked by corn-state politics rather than reality, as essentially all credible analyses show that the energy return on investment (EROI) of corn-based alcohol fuels is barely better than one, at best. Evaluations of the increasing energy cost of petroleum production in the United States, and the movement of major petroleum exploration offshore, provide a stark view of how dependent our fossil-fuel-based economy is on easily obtainable oil (see, e.g. Odum et al., 1976; Hall et al., 1986; Gever et al., 1991; Hanson, 1999; Shapouri et al., 2002; Pimentel et al., 2002 and Eliasson and Bossel, 2002). One can derive EROIs for the U.S. petroleum industry in national statistics that show oil production has declined from the 50:1 or so that was characteristic of the early part of the 20th century to something on the order of 12:1 today. This has to be a very important issue for the U.S. economy. Is there a minimum EROI below which a modern industrial economy will not be very viable?

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VBS-4BJX1HY-B&_user=260508&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000015498&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=260508&md5=f0577dffb0cc201b44a28535351fc305


Energy balance has the following meanings in several fields:

* In physics, energy balance is a systematic presentation of energy flows and transformations in a system. Theoretical basis for an energy balance is the first law of thermodynamics according to which energy cannot be created or destroyed, only modified in form. Energy sources or wave of energy are therefore inputs and outputs of the system under observation.

* In biology, total body energy balance is measured with the following equation: Energy intake = internal heat produced + external work + energy storage. The Dynamic Energy Budget theory makes explicit use of energy, mass and time balances. One Calorie (or kilogram calorie) equals the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 °C. This is about 4.184 kJ.

* In energy economics, the energy balance of a country is an aggregate presentation of all human activities related to energy, except for natural and biological processes. National energy balances are compiled on at least an annual basis. Common methodology for compilation and presentation of energy balances allows simple addition of national energy balances to form supranational ones, such as is compiled for the European Union. United Nations compile energy balances for all member countries. International Energy Agency, a specialised agency of OECD is regularly preparing world energy balances.

* In engineering, energy balances are used to quantify the energy used or produced by a system. This can be used to build complex differential equation models to design and analyze real systems. To make an energy balance for a system is very similar to making a Mass balance but there are a few differences to remember, e.g. 1) that a specific system might be closed in a mass balance sense, but open as far as the energy balance is concerned and 2) that while it is possible to have more than one mass balance for a system there can be only one energy balance. If a balance is made for total energy, the energy balance becomes IN=OUT+ACC (where ACC stands for accumulation). Notice that there is no production (PROD) term since energy can not be produced, only converted. If instead some kinds of energy are ignored, e.g. if a heat balance is made the energy balance becomes IN+PROD=OUT+ACC (if heat is consumed the PROD term is negative, compare Mass balance.

* When comparing fuel production, energy balance is the difference between the energy produced by 1 kg of the fuel (i.e. biodiesel, petroleum, uranium ) and the energy necessary to produce it (extraction (e.g. drilling or cultivation of energetic plants), transportation, refining etc). Other factors affect fuel selection, such as portability. See also net energy gain and EROEI.

* In geography, specifically climatology and hydrology, the "'energy balance'" refers to the total of all energy inputs and outputs at any location; these include solar, atmospheric transfer, and ground conducted energy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_balance

[Fledermaus]

70. What shell are you trying to hide the pea under today?

Or do you still have it in your hand.

What energy balance does the GREET model use? Which energy balance uses the laws of thermodynamics?

The only person comparing apples to oranges is you. Red herring? Apparently, you are deliberately comparing two completely different energy balances as if they were the same. Apparently, the only reason you are picking out EROEI is so you can claim a positive energy balance when in reality there is none.

[kristopher]

72. The net energy concept 2

Don'cha just love that line: "controversy sparked by corn-state politics rather than reality". :ROFL:


The net energy concept: The true value of energy to society is the net energy, which is that energy left after the energy costs of getting and concentrating the energy are subtracted. Hundreds (if not thousands) of analyses have been conducted on various energy technologies during the past three decades, and analysts continue to disagree on the net energy contribution of various technologies. For example, different estimates of the net energy of corn-to-ethanol conversion have been made, with much of the controversy sparked by corn-state politics rather than reality, as essentially all credible analyses show that the energy return on investment (EROI) of corn-based alcohol fuels is barely better than one, at best. Evaluations of the increasing energy cost of petroleum production in the United States, and the movement of major petroleum exploration offshore, provide a stark view of how dependent our fossil-fuel-based economy is on easily obtainable oil (see, e.g. Odum et al., 1976; Hall et al., 1986; Gever et al., 1991; Hanson, 1999; Shapouri et al., 2002; Pimentel et al., 2002 and Eliasson and Bossel, 2002). One can derive EROIs for the U.S. petroleum industry in national statistics that show oil production has declined from the 50:1 or so that was characteristic of the early part of the 20th century to something on the order of 12:1 today. This has to be a very important issue for the U.S. economy. Is there a minimum EROI below which a modern industrial economy will not be very viable?

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_ud...


Energy balance has the following meanings in several fields:

* In physics, energy balance is a systematic presentation of energy flows and transformations in a system. Theoretical basis for an energy balance is the first law of thermodynamics according to which energy cannot be created or destroyed, only modified in form. Energy sources or wave of energy are therefore inputs and outputs of the system under observation.

* In biology, total body energy balance is measured with the following equation: Energy intake = internal heat produced + external work + energy storage. The Dynamic Energy Budget theory makes explicit use of energy, mass and time balances. One Calorie (or kilogram calorie) equals the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 °C. This is about 4.184 kJ.

* In energy economics, the energy balance of a country is an aggregate presentation of all human activities related to energy, except for natural and biological processes. National energy balances are compiled on at least an annual basis. Common methodology for compilation and presentation of energy balances allows simple addition of national energy balances to form supranational ones, such as is compiled for the European Union. United Nations compile energy balances for all member countries. International Energy Agency, a specialised agency of OECD is regularly preparing world energy balances.

* In engineering, energy balances are used to quantify the energy used or produced by a system. This can be used to build complex differential equation models to design and analyze real systems. To make an energy balance for a system is very similar to making a Mass balance but there are a few differences to remember, e.g. 1) that a specific system might be closed in a mass balance sense, but open as far as the energy balance is concerned and 2) that while it is possible to have more than one mass balance for a system there can be only one energy balance. If a balance is made for total energy, the energy balance becomes IN=OUT+ACC (where ACC stands for accumulation). Notice that there is no production (PROD) term since energy can not be produced, only converted. If instead some kinds of energy are ignored, e.g. if a heat balance is made the energy balance becomes IN+PROD=OUT+ACC (if heat is consumed the PROD term is negative, compare Mass balance.

* When comparing fuel production, energy balance is the difference between the energy produced by 1 kg of the fuel (i.e. biodiesel, petroleum, uranium ) and the energy necessary to produce it (extraction (e.g. drilling or cultivation of energetic plants), transportation, refining etc). Other factors affect fuel selection, such as portability. See also net energy gain and EROEI.

* In geography, specifically climatology and hydrology, the "'energy balance'" refers to the total of all energy inputs and outputs at any location; these include solar, atmospheric transfer, and ground conducted energy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_balance

Now if you want to make the claim that ethanol is the most productive way to go based on an analysis with rigged assumptions, go right ahead. The fact is, however, that when you make claims that when considering alternatives for transportation ethanol is a better EROI or a better choice or has a better energy balance or has more net energy than gasoline, then you are making a false statement. It is as simple as that. Is that the kind of person you are? Or do you really still not understand how goofy and idiotic the claims based on Wang's work actually are as used to determine a choice for transportation infrastructure?

I mean, are you really seriously honestly with a straight face saying that the eroi of ethanol is anywhere near the eroi of petroleum?

You really expect someone to believe that bullshit?

[Fledermaus]

73. It takes 1.23 million Btu of fossil energy to produce 1 million Btu of gasoline

It takes 1.23 million Btu of fossil energy to produce 1 million Btu of gasoline. Thats not a positive energy balance is it.

You want to hide behind EROEI because it is the only type of energy balance that gives a positive number and then claim it as the same thing as true physics energy balance. Using the bank analogy, you are removing money from a bank account with a debt card then dividing the withdraw by service fee and then claiming a positive cash flow.

Why don't you use a true physics energy balance? Because it reveals the truth?

It takes 0.78 million British thermal units (Btu) of fossil energy to produce 1 million Btu of ethanol...Thats a fact.

[kristopher]

59. Peer review 1

Science 23 June 2006:
Vol. 312. no. 5781, pp. 1746 - 1748
DOI: 10.1126/science.312.5781.1746

Energy Returns on Ethanol Production
In their Report "Ethanol can contribute to energy and environmental goals" (27 Jan., p. 506), A. E. Farrell et al. focus in part on whether biomass-derived ethanol fuel delivers positive net energy . Their analysis neither resolves nor clarifies the fundamental issues that make net energy important and contentious. First, in their comparison of ethanol and gasoline, they confuse EROI--a productivity index--with the energy efficiency of an oil refinery. Second, their use of energy break-even as a litmus test is a red herring; it is more crucial that EROI is high compared with competing energy sources. Exploration for domestic petroleum in the 1930s returned 100 Joules for each Joule invested; the EROI for oil production today is ~15:1 (2). Because the present EROI of fossil fuels is high, the ~90 net Quads (1 Quad = ~1 exajoule) delivered annually to the U.S. economy results from an investment of only about 10 Quads (2). To provide that same 90 net Quads from corn-derived ethanol would require an investment of 145 to 500 Quads (based on an EROI = ~1.6:1 to 1.2:1, implied by Farrell et al.'s fig. 1). The current transportation system cannot be maintained on a fuel system delivering only a 1.6:1 return. Third, the focus on petroleum inputs is too limited. Natural gas is often the principal input to biomass fuel production, but its future is no more certain than oil's; we already import more than 15% of what we use (3). Fourth, the authors ignore the energy cost of repairing soil erosion.

Finally, the one (speculative) result for an energy technology based on cellulose in fig. 1 implies an EROI of ~50:1. This (very uncertain) EROI indicates that this source of biomass could be potentially useful, but ethanol from corn remains too marginal to survive without heavy economic subsidy.

Cutler J. Cleveland
Center for Energy and Environmental Studies
Boston University
675 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215, USA

Charles A. S. Hall
College of Environmental Science and Forestry
Syracuse, NY 13210, USA

Robert A. Herendeen
Illinois Natural History Survey
Champaign, IL 61821, USA

In their Report "Ethanol can contribute to energy and environmental goals" (27 Jan., p. 506), A. E. Farrell and colleagues offer hopeful opinions about corn-based ethanol. Their analysis suggests that, since the ratio of ethanol produced to fossil fuel used is positive, ethanol should be further developed. If replacing oil is our goal, we must look at two parameters of this approach: (i) energy return on investment (EROI) including environmental impacts on soil, water, climate change, ecosystem services, etc.; and (ii) scalability and timing. Farrell and colleagues' most optimistic EROI of 1.2:1 (which does not include tractors, labor, or environmental impacts) implies that we need to produce 6 MJ of ethanol to net 1 MJ of energy for other endeavors. Thus, the yield of ethanol would not be 360 gallons per acre gross yield, but rather a mere 60 gallons per acre net yield, not even two fill-ups for an SUV. The entire state of Iowa, if planted in corn, would yield approximately five days of gasoline alternative.

To devote half the nation's corn crop to ethanol would require an input of 3.42 billion barrels of oil (almost half our current national use) to net 684 million barrels of "new" ethanol energy. We would also lose food and soil nutrients, suffer ecosystem damage, and use massive amounts of water for irrigation.

We need alternative energy. But ethanol from corn is neither scalable nor sustainable. Let's pursue better options.

Nathan Hagens
Gund Institute for Ecological Economics
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT 05405, USA

Robert Costanza
Gund Institute for Ecological Economics
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT 05405, USA

Kenneth Mulder
Gund Institute for Ecological Economics
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT 05405, USA


The methodological flaws in A. E. Farrell et al.'s Report "Ethanol can contribute to energy and environmental goals" (27 Jan., p. 506) are revealed in the authors' fig. 1b, which shows that motor gasoline has a negative net energy and the highest input/output ratio, while ethanol technologies have positive net energies and lower input/output ratios. These numbers imply that motor gasoline is the marginal fuel seeking to displace biomass fuels.

This contradiction is caused by inconsistencies in the boundaries that are used to analyze their energy balance. For motor gasoline, the authors add the energy content of the gasoline to the effort used to produce it. The energy used to produce motor gasoline is much less than its energy content--estimates for the total energy input/energy output ratio are about 0.06 (1).

For biomass fuels, the authors report only the petroleum input/output ratio. Other fuels used in the process should also be included; these cannot be assumed to be sustainable (as exemplified by natural gas shortages) The biomass fuels are not used as liquids--(much of the co-products are used to generate electricity), which also needs to be taken into account. Including these additional fuels raises the input/output ratio to 0.79 (ethanol today) or 0.82 (CO2 intensive). If the U.S. economy used oil with an energy input/output ratio of about 0.8, the energy equivalent of about 80 million barrels per day of oil would be used to generate the 20 million barrels per day of refined petroleum products that the United States uses outside of the oil sector.

Once the boundaries are made equivalent, motor gasoline has a much higher energy surplus and a lower energy input/energy out ratio than biomass fuels. This result matches the economic reality described by the authors' first paragraph--biomass fuels, not motor gasoline, need subsidies and tax breaks.

Robert K. Kaufmann
Center for Energy and Environmental Studies
Boston University
675 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215, USA

[JohnWxy]

75. THis too like the Patzek artilce offered in the response #60 is an arm-chair critque of the

Farrell and Kammen meta-analysis. From what i could see no emperical study refuting Farrrell and Kammen's conclusions is offered.

[kristopher]

60. Peer review 2 (full report downloadable at botom link)

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/long/312/5781/1746
Science 23 June 2006:
Vol. 312. no. 5781, pp. 1746 - 1748
DOI: 10.1126/science.312.5781.1746

In the net-energy analysis in their Report "Ethanol can contribute to energy and environmental goals" (27 Jan., p. 506), A. E. Farrell et al. do not (i) define the system boundaries, (ii) conserve mass, and, consequently, (iii) conserve energy. Most of the current First Law net-energy models of the industrial corn-ethanol cycle are based on nonphysical assumptions and should be discarded.

When properly formulated, mass and First Law energy balances of corn fields and ethanol refineries account for the photosynthetic energy, some of the environment restoration work, and the co-product energy (1). These show that production of ethanol from corn is two to four times less favorable than production of gasoline from petroleum. From thermodynamics, it also follows that the ecological devastation wrought by industrial biofuel production must be severe. With the DDGS co-product energy credit, 3.9 gallons of ethanol displace on average the energy in 1 gallon of gasoline. Without the DDGS energy credit, this average number is 6.2 gallons of ethanol. Equivalent CO2 emissions from the corn ethanol cycle are 50% higher than those from gasoline and become 100% higher if methane emissions from cows fed with DDGS are accounted for.

The U.S. ethanol industry has consistently inflated its ethanol yields by counting 5 volume percent of #14 gasoline denaturant (8% of energy) as ethanol. Also, imports from Brazil and longer chain alcohols seem to have been counted as U.S. ethanol (1). A detailed statistical analysis of 401 corn hybrids from Illinois reveals that the highest possible yield of ethanol is 2.64 ± 0.05 (SD) gallons EtOH/bu (1). The commonly accepted U.S. Department of Agriculture estimate of mean ethanol yield in the United States, 2.682 gallons EtOH/bu (2), is one standard deviation above this estimate.

Tad W. Patzek
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720, USA

References and Notes

1. The detailed calculations and arguments can be found at
http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/patzek/BiofuelQA/Materials/RealFuelCycles-Web.pdf.
2. H. Shapouri, P. Gallagher, M. S. Graboski, USDA's 1998 Ethanol Cost-of-Production Survey, Agricultural Economic Report No. 808 (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Office of Energy and New Uses, Washington, DC, 2002).

[JohnWxy]

74. SOME READERS MAY NOT BE FAMILIAR WITH TAD PATZEK, ONCE EMPLOYED BY SHELL OIL he is the

cofounder of the UC Oil Consortium which receives funds from several oil companies. ONe can certainly suspect Patzek's objectivity when it comes to ethanol. Big oil hates ethanol as they cannot control the price of it. They definitely don't want to see ethanol usage grow even though the oil companies will still make billions in profits in the coming years even if ethanol came to be one third of the fuel supply (which, if it is achieved, will take many years).

google: "Patzek UC oil consortium" and check it out for yourself - but you may have trouble linking to it so click on "cached" and you can see the page.

Patzek is widely known for his fallacious, flatulent arguments against ethanol:

"Patzek was a longtime employee of Shell Oil Company and founder of the UC Oil Consortium, which has counted BP, Chevron USA, Mobil USA, Shell and Unocal among its members. Patzek also is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x48327

Regarding the quote provided in "Peer Review 2",(I tried to down-load the full report but it's not available)------

Patzek says: "With the DDGS co-product energy credit, 3.9 gallons of ethanol displace on average the energy in 1 gallon of gasoline." this is patent nonsense. first of all, in comparing energy content of ethanol to gasoline, what does the co-product credit have to do with the amount of energy in a gallon of ethanol? - absolutely NOTHING. The coproduct credit is used in computing the proper allocation of energy to the multiple products of the ethanol production process (ethanol and Dried Distillers Grain (DDGS). The energy value of ethanol (I assume he's referring to the Heat Value of ethanol versus gasoline) in BTUs is 76,000, while gasoline's is 116,090. This means that it would take 1.5 gallons of ethanol to provide the same BTUs as a gallon of gasoline - NOT 3.9 gallons - that Patzek states.

But that's not all, looking at the heat value is only part of the evaluation. If you were burning ethanol in the open (not under pressure as in an internal combustion engine) that would be the whole story BUT these are fuels to be used in automobile internal combustion engines where combustion chamber pressure has to be considered. Ethanol has an octane rating of 113 whereas gasoline's is 92-93 (for high test gas). this means ethanol can be used in a much higher compression engine (using turbo -charging or super-charging for example) and deliver much more power than gasoline used in a lower compresssion engine. This is what three MIT researchers showed when they designed an ethanol direct injection engine which is turbo charged and produces so much power the engine can be reduced to about half the size of a similar power gasoline powered engine. The result is 25% to 30% better fuel consumption because the engine is so much smaller.

NOw, regarding Patzek's article it is a critique of a meta-analysis done by Farrell and kammen of Univ Calif - Berkeley which attempted to compare several studies of the costs of producing ethanol. Patzek doesn't appear to offer any new emperical research to counter Farrrell and Kammen's findings." Emperical research, well constructed, trumps theoretical musings or arm chair critiques any day.

[Fledermaus]

4. Study Finds Mid-Range Ethanol Blends Can Provide Better Fuel Economy Than Gasoline

Sioux Falls, SD—Research findings released today show that mid-range ethanol blends--fuel mixtures with more ethanol than E10 but less than E85--can in some cases provide better fuel economy than regular unleaded gasoline, even in standard, non-flex-fuel vehicles.

Previous assumptions held that ethanol's lower energy content directly correlates with lower fuel economy for drivers.

Those assumptions were found to be incorrect.

Instead, the new research strongly suggests that there is an "optimal blend level" of ethanol and gasoline--most likely E20 or E30--at which cars will get better mileage than predicted based strictly on the fuel's per-gallon Btu content.

The new study, cosponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE), also found that mid-range ethanol blends reduce harmful tailpipe emissions.

"Initial findings indicate that we as a nation haven't begun to recognize the value of ethanol," said Brian Jennings, executive vice president of the American Coalition for Ethanol.

http://www.grainnet.com/articles/New_Study_Finds_Mid-Range_Ethanol_Blends_Can_Provide_Better_Fuel_Economy_Than_Gasoline-51376.html

[bullwinkle428]

6. American Coalition for Ethanol helped fund the study -

I'm definitely taking those results with a big grain of salt!!

I'll wait on further study - my owner's manual says I shouldn't be using any blend stronger than E10 as it is, and am not crazy about being a guinea pig.

[Fledermaus]

8. Ok...I would like to see some other tests to

But the test were run by a university. I have run E20 in a Ford Focus and got the same milage as gasoline?

[amborin]

18. scientific articles say ethanol is not good...much more polluting long term

uses too much water

causes more greenhouse gases in the long term

reduces biodiversity habitat, etc.....

[CRF450]

19. Do people not understand automotive tech??

Yes ethanol has lower energy content, and yes, thats going to lower effecieny in an engine made for regular fuel. Wanna know to fix that? Raise the compression ratio to where it can run at its best effeciency, and it will return similar or better fuel economy! That why these so-called "flexfueled" vehicles run like crap on it, they have a low c/r to allow it to run on regular gas. Ethanol is kinda like diesel fuel, it burns alot slower than regular 87 octane and has a higher flash point (higher temp it takes to ignite the fuel) so it NEEDS a higher compression ratio. I cannot believe people are not making this point an issue! Their shouldn't be any whining over the lower energy content of this fuel, becuase all you have to do is just raise the c/r then theirs no problem.

[9outof10]

7. ethanol blended fuels

This study did not mention that the ethanol blended fuel burns much faster thus decreasing the miles per gallon of the vehicle. And in any older vehicle, older meaning only 6+ years old, the ethanol is causing major breakdowns in vehicle fuel injection systems and exhaust.

[poopfuel]

9. from time to time, I ran my 93 Olds on 50 50 gas/ethanol

never had any problems.
Fuel injection systems going back to the 80s can run on ethanol without any damage.
Decrease in miles per gallon varies. Not 33% as many like to say. Anywhere from 2 to 15% depending on the car. A few cars even gain a little, odd as that may seem. There is no cut and dry x amount of miles per gallon a car loses.
Early tests of using higher amounts of ethanol actually show gain in mileage in some cars.

[madokie]

11. where did you get the 50/50 blend???

me says somebody is blowing smoke

[poopfuel]

12. well not exactly 50 50

I'd have a half tank or a little less of gasoline, then I'd pump e85 into the tank. So the balance was sometimes 60 40 or 40 60.

[madokie]

13. Ok I understand

50/50 would to the reader maybe indicate that you were using a 50/50 blend of gasoline and ethanol. What you are saying then is that you were using a blend of somewhere around 7.5% ethanol to gas, big difference. I suspect that at that ratio it wouldn't cause a drop in mileage or increase the rusting of the fuel delivery system components to the point that you would be aware of it as a 50/50 blend would surely do.

Just trying to understand what is going on here nothing personal ok.

[poopfuel]

14. well no, guess I didn't make myself clear

If you have a half tank of gas, right? That leaves you with a half tank to fill.
I put in e85 to fill. Now what that means is I have a half tank of gas and half tank of e85

So this means I have roughly 65 percent gas and 35 percent ethanol. Right?

And as I said, I sometimes pumped more than half a tank of e85.

That's all.

[JohnWxy]

25. a daring experiment to be sure but it's not a good idea to do that too often.

there are seals and gaskets which won't hold up to more than 15% or 20% (according to the study referenced) blend of alcohol.

The Flexible Fuel Vehicles which can handle 85% blend only require about $500 of modifications to do this. Manufacturers aren'teven charging anything more for Flex Fuel vehicles.

[poopfuel]

33. john see my post to Fledermaus

Foil in South Dakota has an experiment going with 1000 people and their cars.
been going a couple years.
No problems. minnesota study not withstanding.
Sometimes you just gotta go out and test it out yourself.

[JohnWxy]

50. very interesting. thanks!

[Fledermaus]

15. E21.3 = one gallon E85 with three gallons regular...

E28.3 = one gallon E85 with two gallons regular
E42.5 = one gallon E85 with one gallons regular
assuming the regular gasoline is not E10

Where I go the E85 pump is right next to the regular gasoline. I know how many gallons to fill the tank so I know how many gallons per 1/4 or 1/2 tank. I pump a gallon or two of E85 and the corresponding gallons of regular.

I run E17, one gallon E85 with four gallons regular. I don't know if the regular is E10. If it is, then I will end up with E25. A car is an expensive piece of equipment, and that's what I feel comfortable running. If you put too much ethanol in, the computer can't mix the fuel and air properly and the check engine light will come on.

[poopfuel]

16. hi fledermaus

this is from an interview with godfather of ethanol David Blume

DB: You must learn how to hold in your laughter when you
get your vehicle smogged. They stick the probe in the exhaust
pipe, go back to the meter, see no movement in the smog
gauges and start banging on the machine thinking it’s jammed.
When I bring in my Ford Ranger for smog testing, it registers
all zeros on nitrous oxide, carbon monoxides and hydrocarbons.
DK: Are there any particulates?
DB: The petro fuel hydrocarbons contain the particulates; alcohol
registers a big zero. Most cars running on 98% alcohol
will register at zero or nearly zero in pollutants.
DK: How many miles per gallon are you getting and what’s the
cost per gallon?
DB: My car gets about 12% fewer mileage per gallon than it
did with gas. Right now I’m buying alcohol for about $1.80 a
gallon. I could make it for 43 cents a gallon.
DK: What fuel crops would you choose in California?
DB: I’m really partial to the “Donut Tree” in California. They
“harvest” those donuts and bring them into the bakeries every
morning where they sell them to the police, and the police can
only eat so many so they have to throw away all the rest.


Anyway, he has a chapter in his book about FOIL (foreign oil intervention league), a group in South Dakota that has been test running numerous vehicles on straight E-85 without adjustments to the car. It's quite amusing. Check out the book at alcoholcanbeagas.com

Fear not! Nothing bad will happen. He does mention the check engine light comes on but... ignore it or have it reset so it doesn't come on.

[Fledermaus]

32. Hello poopfuel, I don't think I will be going that far.

If the check engine light comes on, there is a problem. I have 225,000 miles on my truck. I use it. I don't abuse it.

[CRF450]

20. Ethanol burns slower because of its increased octane, not faster.

If it burned faster than regular fuel, it would pre-ignite under compression and destroy the engine in no time. When run in a regular engine, it is not completely burning like it should because of the lower compression ratio design of the engine, the o2 sensors in the exhaust sytem will detect this and it will possibly throw the whole fuel injection system out of wack.

[JohnWxy]

35. I think you'll find this interesting: links to info on the ethanol enabled direct injection engine.

Because of ethanol's higher octane rating (115) they can use higher boost turbos and get much more horsepower out of the engine, thus enabling reducing the engine size by about one third. The result is improved gas mileage by about 25% to 30%. Cost? about $1,000 extra when mass produced. Ford has teamed with MIT researchers and is shooting for volume output by 2011.


http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/05/ethanol_direct_...

also:

http://lfee.mit.edu/public/LFEE%202006-01%20RP.pdf">CALCULATIONS OF KNOCK SUPPRESSION IN HIGHLY TURBOCHARGED GASOLINE/ETHANOL ENGINES USING DIRECT ETHANOL INJECTION - Massachusetts Institute of Technology

[CRF450]

36. Yup, you can have better effeciency with higher octane/compression

Yet people are lead to believe that with a lower energy content, that means lower fuel milage. Thats only the case when you run higher octane (or ethanol) fuel in a low compression engine.

[JohnWxy]

26. You can run 15% ethanol blend in any car that runs on gasoline without any problems even older ones.

Since ethanol has a much higher octane (115) than gasoline (92-93 for 'High-test') you can make adjustments to spark advance and compression (using super-charging or turbo-charging) and gain the benefit of the higher octane and get better performance (depending on how 'rich' the blend) with the ethanol blended fuel.

years and years ago in drag racing they set up two different categories of cars those that ran on gasoline and those that ran on 'fuel" (i.e. alcohol , in the early days wood- alcohol). The reason for this was the cars running alcohol could use blowers (super-chargers) at much higher presssures and they consistently "blew the doors off" the gasoline powered cars. It wasn't fair to make gas powered cars race against alcohol powered cars.

Ford motor co. has teamed up with researchers at MIT to produce in mass quantities (shooting for 2011) an ethanol enabled direct injection engine that reduces gasoline usage about 25% to 30% because it produces adequate power from fewer cubic inches:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/05/ethanol_direct_.html

[amborin]

17. everything i've read about ethanol says it's way more pulluting long term, not the answer

[RC]

21. Ethanol Pollution Worse than Gasoline?

http://relocalize.net/ethanol_pollution_worse_than_gasoline

Ethanol Pollution Worse than Gasoline?
Wed, 2007-04-18 03:39 — MyPetGoat

Study out of Stanford says pollution from ethanol
could end up creating a worse hazard than gasoline.
- San Francisco Chronicle April 18, 2007

If ethanol ever gains widespread use as a clean alternative fuel to gasoline, people with respiratory illnesses may be in trouble.

A new study out of Stanford says pollution from ethanol could end up creating a worse health hazard than gasoline, especially for people with asthma and other respiratory diseases.

"Ethanol is being promoted as a clean and renewable fuel that will reduce global warming and air pollution," Mark Z. Jacobson, the study's author and an atmospheric scientist at Stanford, said in a statement. "But our results show that a high blend of ethanol poses an equal or greater risk to public health than gasoline, which already causes significant health damage."

The study appears in today's online edition of Environmental Science & Technology, a publication of the American Chemical Society. It comes at a time when the Bush administration is pushing plans to boost ethanol production and the nation's automakers are required by 2012 to have half their vehicles run on flex fuel, allowing the use of either gasoline or ethanol.

[amborin]

22. thanks, that may be the study

and apparently it's the big farm lobby that is linked to the push to biofuels

[poopfuel]

23. check out counter argument here

See Post # 8 for link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x138345

[JohnWxy]

27. Link to a rebuttal of the much flawed Jacobson study:

http://www.ethanolrfa.org/objects/documents/1071/reapresponse_jacobsone85.pdf

some major points:

�� Conflicts with: analysis conducted by U.S. EPA, the California Air Resources Board (ARB), the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) and the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD).
E85 and other high blend ethanol/gasoline fuels warrant further analysis. However, Jacobson’s study already stands in stark contrast to work done by U.S. EPA, the California Air Resources Board (ARB), the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) and the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD).

�� Scenario Tested Not Real World: Assumes that E85 will completely replace gasoline as the predominant motor fuel by 2020. While perhaps an interesting and important scenario to run, it is misleading to imply that more people will perish from this one scenario. Also claims to accurately predict highly uncertain air quality scenarios in an incredibly expanded timeline (2020).

�� Controversial Core Assumptions: Depends on several core assumptions that are not well-supported in the air quality control community, including: (1) less ozone forming pollution will increase ozone; (2) E85 reduces vehicle NOx emissions by 30 percent; and, (3) vehicles and fuels will not become more advanced in the next 13 years. (check this link ethanol enabled direct injection engine)

[ConcernedCanuk]

45. From an old-timer still driving with a CARBURETTED engine

.
.
.

Started using E10 about 15 years ago in my 79 F150 (4x4 with a 400cid Lincoln engine)

Noticed increased power immediately.

Gas mileage is slightly better.

One thing I see no-one mentioned, by using E10, especially where I live in Northern Ontario

I NEVER NEED GAS-LINE ANTIFREEZE.

Never had a problem with gas filters plugging up as I've read elsewhere.

When I have to tank up on a long trip with regular instead of E10 - I notice the power drop after about 1/2 hr driving, but get it back at the next Ethanol station.

I also use E10 in my lawn-mowers, and chain saws - no problems.

And one thing I think that we should really emphasize,

IT'S RENEWABLE

So if we keep working on it; to get ethanol from sources that don't deplete necessary food crops,

And the oil wells run dry . . .

We'll have a solution.

[losthills]

46. It ain't renewable.

It takes so much petroleum to produce it, that it should be labelled as a "petroleum byproduct."

It ain't "renewable."

[ConcernedCanuk]

47. By that thinking, then all our food is not renewable either

.
.
.

Good thing you are wrong,

or we'd have no food on our tables.

[NickB79]

58. When we're burning 10 cal of oil per one cal of food

No, the way we currently grow, process and transport food ISN'T renewable.

And if the oil did stop flowing, you wouldn't see much food on your table either.

[DainBramaged]

62. Now that yous guys has been arguing about this so intensely

Do you think that he ethanol producer lobby is going to read your arguments and NOT continue to rape and pillage our economy and environment and change their direction and switch to say, sugar cane (or even sugar beets) the way Brazil did?

No, they are going to "corncob" the economy and the farmers are going to milk this cow until I'm taking a dirt nap.


The "gist" of the argument is, you will get LESS millage with MORE ethanol blended into your gasoline because it just isn't as efficient in a combustion engine as petroleum. And you haven't addressed the cooling effect ethanol has on a vehicle's combustion, making them produce more pollutants. And we will not save a penny because even though we are paying for 8/10 of a gallon of gas, the savings aren't great enough to give us a fucking break.

Oh one last thing. I saw a great show on the Discovery channel or the History channel, where they are using 6,000,000 pounds of corn a day to produce the ethanol we need. ALL of the trucks lined up waiting to dump their loads were idling. So much for saving petro to make corn juice.

[Xithras]

63. E20 voids the warranty of my 2006 Subaru.

It's in big block letters in the owners manual. E10 can be tolerated, but isn't recommended. Heck, the RECOMMENDED fuel is 92 octane. E20 will not burn right and will damage the engine. Burning it apparently requires a computer upgrade.

[DainBramaged]

65. I know which Subaru you have!!!!!!

Nice hot rod!!!

[Xithras]

66. Nope!

I have a Forester. The Forester is built on the same Impreza platform as that WRX, has the same engine block, and the same drivetrain. The engine performance is similar (though slightly detuned), but the Forester doesn't get the love because its body is heavier, which kills acceleration and high speed handling when compared to the WRX (though they can still outhandle almost anything else on the road). Foresters actually come with some suspension parts from the STi (like the sway bars) because the higher quality STi parts were needed to deal with the extra body weight. I love this car...it's the ultimate sleeper.

Very close though!

[DainBramaged]

67. If I were to ever buy a Japanese car......................

It would be a WRX SI with carbon fiber hood, full tilt boogie motor, bigger blower, and extra tires in the trunk for when I fried the ones on the car.:woohoo:

[CRF450]

71. My Trans Am can take on one of those.

But those are some sweet little cars, I'm just not a fan of the 4 cylinder though. Now when it comes to turns, they will own my car lol! But not to say it handles like crap, it can hold its own against other sports car pretty well.

[poopfuel]

69. see post 16

Shhh. Auto companies are just covering their butts if something goes wrong.
Something that goes wrong could be anything, not the fuel.
But.... sshhhh..(exaggerated whisper) people are doing it anyway.
Auto companies have to cooperate in SOME way with oil companies. You know how it goes in this world.

If your warranty prohibits ethanol, here's an idea

don't tell them you put it in. majority of mechanics at dealers won't even know it's there. And your car will run so much cleaner.