Green Daily

Carney, since we can't expect enough alcohol to be available to supplant all petroleum tomorrow, you may be interested in a very cost-effective interim step. Rather than diluting all that good ethanol into E10/E15/E20 mixes, adding a small separate tank for E85 (actually E85+ to M85+) to vehicles, and designing the ICE to inject the E85 only as needed to suppress detonation allows greatly increased turbo pressures without reducing compression ratio, thus facilitates significant engine downsizing for a given performance. The main, larger, tank could then contain anything from E0 to E85 (whatever is most economically available). With this system, the average user would save approximately 3 gallons of gasoline for every gallon of E85 burned. The volume fuel efficiency would be at least on par with the best Diesels; therefore producing lower CO2 than a comparable Diesel. The estimated cost to add this to a DI turbo ICE is only about $400. Ford is working on productionizing this within a few years.

While alcohol is still a smallish percentage of the fuel supply, this would be a MUCH more efficient way to use it than if everybody were burning E20 for their main fuel, and it would stimulate the production and infrastructure, greasing the skids for your preferred all-alcohol economy to occur, if it ever will.

Take a look at http://www.ethanolboost.com/

Interesting, Keith, but the problem with your system is cost, complexity, and confusion for ordinary consumers.

Full flex fuel capability only costs $100 per car for an automaker to add from the get-go at the factory.

It lets a driver fill up on gasoline or any alcohol fuel as he wishes at any time, transparently to him.

And with recent further OPEC production cuts, gasoline prices are sure to rise again, making alcohol cost competitive, making the choice of buying a fuel a simple one for Joe Average. (It would be nice if we were smart and tariffed foreign oil to prevent the cartel from undercutting alcohol, but focused, sustained, effective leadership from our political class in this field that is not diverted to or dissipated by frauds and distractions is chronically lacking).

So the way to go is to make full flex fuel capability a mandatory standard feature in all new cars, like seat belts.

Within 3 years we'd have tens of millions of alcohol compatible cars on the road, enough of a market for many existing gas stations and new entrepreneurs to begin offering alcohol pumps to, especially when gasoline prices start rising again.

Really? People are talking about many thousands of dollars for hydrogen and batteries, and you think adding $400 of parts and having to fill a small alcohol tank every few months, to reduce total fuel consumption by 15-20% is too complex and confusing? My feeling is people who insist on "all or nothing" right away will usually get nothing for a very long time. I respectfully recommend you mull it over some more. I can't really evaluate whether your all-alcohol economy would ever make sense, but I can see clearly this dual-fuel system does, and it sure looks like a step in the right direction, as we would actually get some clear benefit from whatever percentage ethanol the government wants to mandate for the overall fuel supply in the short term.

Keith, don't lump me in with hydrogen advocates. Hydrogen is one of those frauds I indirectly alluded to earlier.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoax

As for batteries, I think they are also not a short or mid term solution, because EVs are too small, short-ranged, and expensive to be anything other than sports car toys for the wealthy, or short range commuter vehicles for singles who don't mind being in small cars. Research may improve that situation but meanwhile we're still burning gasoline waiting for that day.

And if I were an "all or nothing" type I'd reject the use of E85 because it contains 15% gasoline, and insist on replacing the gasoline with butanol. In fact I'd reject flex fuel and insist on alcohol-only cars that are incapable of running on gasoline.

I realize you have a product to push but in my view it, like cellulosic ethanol and other not-terrible ideas, is in effect a delay, a distraction, and constitutes a loss of focus of mindshare, and a loss of momentum away from moving away from oil.

Ultimately we have a divergence of strategy. You seek to reduce gasoline use, but I think that's not worthwhile. With rapidly rising automobile use (quadrupling in China within the last decade), no conservation strategy can match per capita gasoline consumption, and thus will only at best slow down oil demand.

What we need to do is get OFF oil, not find a way to move further down the road on a tank full of planet-fouling, economy-wrecking, terrorist funding gasoline. By the way conservation doesn't hurt OPEC at all, since it can just cut production to match and keep prices up. Zero effectiveness.

Nor is your product in any way a worthwhile interim step. It does not even indirectly lead to flex fuel cars. As for scaling up the ethanol industry, that already happened to the tune of several fold in the the great run up of gas prices from 1999 to 2008, but we did NOT liberate ourselves from foreign oil in that time frame, precisely because we pursued a failed strategy of using ethanol as a way to conserve gasoline, as you advocate, rather than switching TO ethanol and other alcohols.

That failure has had catastrophic consequences and we need to avoid making it again.

How many square miles of corn (or any other plant) do we have to grow to create enough alcohol to run everything that runs on gasoline right now? How much is available in the USA? How much do we need for growing food? And don't forget that growing food without fossil fuels requires more land surface.

What happens to the people in poor countries if food prices go through the roof if we begin growing edible plants for transportation purposes?

Water vapor is a result of burning ethanol. It contributes big time to the greenhouse effect I hear. If you include water vapor, does burning ethanol still do better then gasoline in regard to the greenhouse effect?

In the name of efficiency, what is wrong with small cars? I cannot imagine the use of ethanol to be a viable solution if we do not ALSO promote dramatic reductions of consumption of anything that requires fossil fuels right now.

Karsten
http://www.polluteless.com

Karsten, asked,

"How many square miles of corn (or any other plant) do we have to grow to create enough alcohol to run everything that runs on gasoline right now? How much is available in the USA? How much do we need for growing food? And don't forget that growing food without fossil fuels requires more land surface"

If you had read the article at the link I had posted, you would know the answer.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/in-defense-of-biofuels

There are 1,600 million acres of arable land in the United States; only 800 million of which is farmland; only 280 million of which is cultivated; only 85 million of which is used for corn; only 17 million of which is used for ethanol. There's enormous room for expansion.

"What happens to the people in poor countries if food prices go through the roof if we begin growing edible plants for transportation purposes?"

Prices won't go up as a result of ethanol crops. If anything they'll fall, because the more ethanol takes the place of gasoline, the more the price of petroleum fertilizer and petroleum fuel for generators, transportation goes down, reducing farming and fishing costs.

Furthermore, although there is plenty of land available in the US, there probably isn't the manpower and production capacity to produce all the ethanol we'd need to replace our gasoline. That's fine; it means our farmers have all the business they can handle with plenty more to go to desperately poor Third Worlders.

Those poor people need a cash crop to sell to us that we will not block with trade barriers to protect our own farm sector. With our own farmers as busy as they can be, we will no longer fear Third World agricultural imports.

Thus, the world's poor will at last have a source of hard currency earnings they can use to feed themselves and lift themselves out of poverty. The hundreds of billions we currently lavish on OPEC are far greater than the $60 billion total foreign aid budget of all advanced nations combined, and a fraction of that would be far more effective, trade not aid, in promoting development and improved quality of life for the world's poor.

Ethanol will help reduce, not increase, hunger as result.

"Water vapor is a result of burning ethanol. It contributes big time to the greenhouse effect I hear. If you include water vapor, does burning ethanol still do better then gasoline in regard to the greenhouse effect?"

Yes. Gasoline engines also produce water vapor BTW. Even fuel cells do.

"In the name of efficiency, what is wrong with small cars?"

They are a distraction from the goal of switching fuels away from petroleum, and are unsuitable for families, long trips, and hauling stuff.

"I cannot imagine the use of ethanol to be a viable solution if we do not ALSO promote dramatic reductions of consumption of anything that requires fossil fuels right now."

Even now, with needing petroleum based fertilizer and transportation, one gallon of petroleum produces over ten gallons of ethanol. That's enough to make a REAL difference, and we can eventually replace the transportation and tractor portion with alcohol fueled ones.

Break out of the cramped, limited mentality of guilt-ridden austerity! It's no longer appropriate with a clean renewable fuel.