Anything Into Ethanol

[fireandrain]

Forget about corn—future biofuels will be made of wood chips and trash.

Anything Into Ethanol | Alternative Energy | DISCOVER Magazine

[Windguy]

And here is a partial reason why we need to continue with the ethanol industry rather than take a shallow view to stop all ethanol production because of the food crisis. This would not have occurred if we back pedalled now.

[Rog]

Biofuel works on limited-scale operations, when all that is being used is waste and that waste has a very high energy density (i.e. waste vegetable oil). However, using stuff like this will take more energy to convert it to fuel than would be extracted from the final result.

The answer is wind/solar/nuclear, combined with better battery technology. Still a decade or so off at least. Until then, it's best if we focus on conserving fuel and researching new technology.

[August]

We could also start utilizing the technology that is already in place. Like solar panels and wind mills: technology that is already here. We're going to find out that what we are grappling with is all too often a problem of political will. We've got the know-how; what really is lacking is kind of like a real change of political, economic, and industrial attutudes: I'm thinking of a kind of change that anyone can believe in. And not at all of the cap-and-trade and carbon-offsetting change that is really on both American presidential candidates' less than future-minded agenda. But okay: this only goes to make me come out as a headless utopist or a normal lunatic, I know. Hell, I even believe we should be giving peace a chance! Oh yes! I'm that stupid!

[Windguy]

I think we have to be a little realistic. Biofuel will be needed for transport, because there are no batteries big enough to go long distances.

I'd love per family to have one car purely electric and the other a plug in biofuel hybrid.

You cannot just pick and choose what technology can save us when most forms of technology will need to be utilised the world over.

i.e a giant logging industry using pine plantations has excessive waste, why can't that country turn it into ethanol? Australia can grow massive amounts of sugar and in doing so is supplying 10% ethanol in each litre of fuel we use. We are a nation that could just go 100% biofuel and all it will hurt is exports of sugar. I'm not saying that is a solution mainly because the world can't do it. But in saying that if half the cars were electric and the other half were the plug in biofuel electric, Australia could cover most of asia in biofuel exports. So we need to change from oil, but also increase our efficiency in our fuel usage, and that should see us way into the future until our future generations are flying/driving nuclear fusion flying vehicles around.

[William Djubin]

Beware Ethanol, she is a nasty addiction.
It's not what we could produce Ethanol from, it's what we have already commited to produce Ethanol from.
Ethanol could be pronounced the #1 cause of massive hypoxia and coral reef collapse in 2009. -actually Brian LaPointe and Simon Donner have already made that prediction.