5 gallons of water = 1 gallon of ethanol
What I'm about to tell you isn't new. It's not new like Tori Spelling endorsing a line of baby clothes. Heck, it's not even new like, bananas could go the way of dinosaurs. No, this is just a reminder of what we already know:
One gallon of ethanol on average requires five gallons of water. Not only that, ethanol is an expensive fuel to produce. Currently the U.S. government subsidizes its production at .54 a gallon. That's to drop to .47, due to the 2008 Farm Bill.
Renowned environmental researcher David Pimentel of Cornell University has completed numerous studies that show ethanol, no matter the biomass used to produce it, simply uses more energy than it produces.That's because ethanol is made from heavily tilled and fertilized crops that then are shipped hundreds of miles to ethanol plants where the process of conversion begins. Corn-based ethanol uses 29-percent more fossil fuel than it produces.
Researcher David Green agrees that the process uses more energy than it produces, and he says it cuts a negligible amount of greenhouse gases from our atmosphere. He's a senior researcher at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
But let's get back to water. Most plants today are 50 million gallons. At five gallons per, that's 2.5 billion gallons of water for one year of ethanol production. That water typically comes from regional aquifers that are quickly drained. While that frequently hurts regional wells, particularly rural residential wells, that's not going to stop these plants.
Energy production is a high priority in our nation. So that even in the Phoenix desert, companies can justify building an ethanol plant.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-23-2008 @ 9:34AM
Robert said...
I hope that everyone that reads this post will take more time to review the facts than what was taken to write it. Where should I begin?
We have seen more than a 20% efficiency gain in water usage at plants in the last 5 years, bringing down the number to 2.8 gallons of water for each gallon of ethanol. Ironically, this is also the best number available for the refining of gasoline. In some oil refineries, that number can spike to over 8 gallons of water needed to make one gallon of gasoline. The ethanol industry continues to improve, despite what we are use to in the petroleum industry.
Dr. Pimentel is an entomologist or a bug doctor. How he became an expert on ethanol still baffles most with any intelligence. Only he and his partner in crime, Dr. Patzek, have found issue with regard to energy balance in over a decade, using old corn yield numbers and giving no credit to distillers grains.
The subsidy that you mention is actually $.51/gallon, and does not go to the ethanol industry. This is given to the entity that blends ethanol with gasoline, or typically, the petroleum marketer. Once again, this does not go to the plants.
Ethanol is an easy target, but really our only option to petroleum, which continues to climb higher each week. It is not the silver bullet, but at least a weapon we have today.
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6-23-2008 @ 10:29PM
Sea said...
Robert,
Thanks for writing, and for correcting my error on the blender's credit subsidy.
I'd like to clarify a few things. Firstly, based on your email and Website you are the Deputy Director for Ethanol Promotion and Information Council. Is that correct?
Secondly, while it may be possible to produce ethanol with as little as 2.8 gallons of water--and here I'm relying on your information-- each ethanol plant uses a different amount of water per gallon of ethanol. Older plants, and by older I mean five years, will use on average slightly less than 5 gallons of water. These figures are for corn-based ethanol and they come from data provided by several Midwestern states.
Dr. Pimentel is not the only researcher to criticize the efficiency of ethanol. As I mentioned, David Green at the government funded Oak Ridge National Laboratory has also indicated the fuel may not be a better alternative to fossil fuels. He points out that the production and use of ethanol puts out nearly as much greenhouse gas as fossil fuels and it is heavily subsidized. Whether .51 a gallon and federal and state mandates to use ethanol goes directly to ethanol producers or not, it certainly helps those producers survive.
Finally, I would disagree that ethanol is an easy target. Increasingly states are requiring ethanol be blended with gasoline. The federal government has a biofuels goal. Half a buck for every gallon goes toward helping ethanol make it to market. Ethanol has many supporters on its side. Pointing out that it uses a lot of another scarce resource isn't targeting.
6-23-2008 @ 10:32PM
Sea said...
One more thing: David Pimentel is an ecology and agriculture professor.
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6-24-2008 @ 9:20AM
Robert said...
You are correct, I am the Deputy Director of the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council.
Here is Dr. Pimentel's link from his own university that supports his efforts, all of it relating to entomology - http://www.entomology.cornell.edu/Faculty_Staff/Pimentel/pimentel.html I am surprised you would support his theories, as one of his best known (other than ethanol) is the idea of population control. Dr. Pimentel believes that there should not be more than 100 million people in the U.S., and therefore we need to get rid of 200 million. Interesting concept, and an interesting one to support.
As far as David Green is concerned, he was quoted as saying, "There's a small greenhouse gas benefit.' He also points out the subsidy, as do you, but does he understand it? The petroleum industry is still subsidized after 100 years, as is the railroad, NASA, and other industries. Nearly every industry does or has received support from the federal government. The ethanol industry expects that to end at some point, but we also hope that it is expected out of our competitors.
You admit in your response that some of the older plants use an average of less than 5 gallons, and also assume that my numbers are correct for newer facilities at 2.8. My question then is where does your 5 gallon quote come from if the two numbers that we are averaging are 2.8 and 5? Let's compare water usage a bit while we are at it. To give everyone a frame of reference, a 50 million gallon per year ethanol plant uses less water than an average 18 hole golf course.
Ethanol is an easy target. The Grocery Manufacturers Association, along with Big Oil, have openly admitted that ethanol is not the cause of increased food prices, among other things, but it is the easiest to target and the most likely thing that they can get reversed.
Finally, what is your solution? At gasoline averages above $4/gallon, status quo no longer works.
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6-24-2008 @ 10:47AM
Sea said...
Robert,
I only have a minute here. But let me quickly respond to your question on water usage. Frequently when I check into the estimated quantity of water used by a 2008 proposed plant the water usage is still 3.8 - 4.5 per gallon of ethanol.
And let me point to one more source. Brian DeVore is the head of the Minnesota DNR. In the DNR's May 2008 newsletter he wrote about water usage in the state. Here's an excerpt:
"It's not surprising that a growing population and a demand for more consistent watering of plants have put increased pressures on ground water. But perhaps the fastest growing user of ground water in the state -- ethanol plants -- has caught a lot of people off guard.
"We weren't ready for it," concedes Dave Leuthe, regional hydrologist for DNR Waters in New Ulm. "It kind of landed on the landscape out here, and people didn't give water availability a thought."
As of 2007, Minnesota had 17 ethanol facilities. Six more facilities are being built, and 11 more are on the drawing board, according to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. On average, such plants use 4 gallons to 5 gallons of water for each gallon of ethanol produced. During the past decade, as ethanol production in Minnesota has skyrocketed, the industry's overall volume of water use has increased more than 250 percent, according to information compiled by the DNR and published in a report by the nonprofit Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy."
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/volunteer/marapr08/gauging_groundwater.html
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