Corn ethanol only accounts for 4% of our gasoline supply. To help end our addition to foreign oil, we’ll need 25-35% of our gasoline converted to ethanol. Corn simply can’t scale that high.

Have you clicked on this link yet?
http://www.coskata.com/EthanolFeedstockPotential.asp

It is surprising for me that major part of energy is used to grow corn. On other hand you have to grow corn anyway because you have to feed cows and pigs. And you don’t loose any food when extracting ethanol. In fact you can totally avoid this energy usage in your calculations.

On other hand you have to use lot of energy to grow cellulose (trees) especially when cutting and transporting from remote places. Evaluation and comparison of those figures very problematic.

P.S. Sorry for being too hesitant.

I agree with you about Congresseman Stupid. Mr. Markey was in the wrong line when they were passing out brains.

But your comments about powerplants are completely offbase. Mr. Hardwicke is correct. Yes it is true that many powerplants are run 24×7, but that does NOT mean that they are working hard all the time.

Consider this, suppose you had your car hooked to a heavily loaded trailer and were pulling it up a steep mountain road. Do you think you would be using the same amount of fuel, as if you were at a stop light and had shifted into Neutral and were just idling the engine? Of course not!

Yet the engine is running in both situations. Such is the case with a power plant too. Some plants are always on-line to to “load-follow” and to produce electricity as and when the demand is created by customers. Others are idleing at “no-load”, just as your car at the stop light when shifted into neutral. Your car pulling that loaded trailer is “load-following”, and works harder as the road grows steeper, and works less hard, and consumes less fuel, as the grade gets less steep. Your engine is “load-following” just like a powerplant.

No excess electricity is ever generated. Think about it, if the power plants cannot produce enough momentarily, the lights dim; if that condition persists you have a “brownout”. If they produce too much, the lights would be at over voltage, and grow too bright and burn out. Power plants “Load-follow”. Period.

Having the capability to generate 300 HP in your auto engine, does not mean that your auto makes 300HP all the time. Usually the demand is much less. Similarly you have paid for the car and you don’t use it all day and all night, but you could. The power companies are in the same boat. If you did run your car day and night it would wear out faster but suppose you had bought it and used it as a taxi. You would make a lot more fares if you ran it as much as you could. Power companies are in the exact same position. They can run all their equipment heavily and generate enough power to recharge most of the nations electric autos. But they would need to build new power plants as the old ones wore out sooner.

Thankfully, adults are in charge unlike the Markeys and Odumma’s of the world and they are already preparing to do exactly that. They need to prudently plan ten years ahead, and they are. The decisions to build, have been made.

Now all we have to do is make sure the mentally challenged like Odumma’s choice for EPA, Ms. Browner, possibly the only person stupider than Markey; or John Holgren his choice for Science Advisor don’t screw it up. Since Mr. Holgren lost his famous wager with Julian Simon revealing his utter lack of foresight and common sense; and his prediction that the population of the USA would now be only 22 million starving peasants eaking out a bare existence, was hopelessly screwball; the hope is only that. These two are hardly other than dimbulbs at best.

For corn ethanol, fossil fuels are used primary to grow the corn, not extract the ethanol from it.

Cellulosic ethanol is made from Crop Residue, Energy Crops, Municipal Waste, and Forest/Mill waste. Energy crops grow in places where food crops wont, so it’s probably not the same land used to grow food. It’s a myth that cellulosic ethanol will affect food production.

Liquid fuels have the highest energy density, way higher than any battery, including EEStor. Liquid fueling stations are everywhere. In the future, the majority of personal road travel will be electric, but longer distance travel will remain on liquid fuels. So I see the combination EREVs and Ethanol as the solution for the foreseeable future.

Another way of animal feed separation and final water purification – microfiltering. But still you need energy for drying animal feed. So there are some developments in this area.

I was always suppressed by speculation of advantage of cellulosic ethanol over grain ethanol. To grow cellulosic it is necessary to use the same land. Cellulose or biomass is better incinerating locally for heat and electricity production. In order to increase world food supply most efficient way to become all of us vegetarians since you need lot of food for poor cow or pig and you get very little meet.

Finally the personal road transportation shall gradually become electrical. Various ethanol blends will be used for other transport.

If you add a supercharger or a turbo to a 4 cyl that would help with a lack of power. If the reduced the weight of newer cars, that would help as well.

#29

If I remember right the Highlander is a full framed SUV not a crossover. If that is the case there is a lot of weight for a small engine to pull around. Basically the same reason the do not put the 4.3 V6 in a Tahoe or Suburban. I think we as Americans have put ourselves in a situation where we expect more on new cars but at the same time we complain about the price if the cars when these items are added. These items also add weight to a car.

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My hobby is building hot rods. Most guys I know are taking old engines and matching them with newer transmissions and the right rear end gearing to get better gas milage than a lot of newer cars. I have a Corvair that gets 26 mpg with a 4 spd, if I was able to put a 5 spd behind it I would get 30 or so with that extra gear. My ‘50 Chevy Sedan with a 454 Th350 and 4.42 gears gets better milage than my ‘04 Chevy truck with the Duramax, Allison 6 spd and 4.11 gears. If some guy using an old car with no aerodynamics gan do it why can’t the OEMs do it?

The problem is on the demand side. Once demand ramps up, supply will follow. When all new cars sold in the U.S. are FlexFuel, things will happen very quickly. Besides, people like having more choices, which is what FlexFuel cars give you. The Volt has the ultimate choice of fuels: electricity, gasoline, or E85.

Doesn’t selling gasoline require a little energy here and there?