Ethanol's future is looking bleaker and bleaker... http://gog2g.com/2006/09/23/deathanol.aspx Anyone still in any of these companies?
Good luck with your injectors if you use the junk... also you get far worse gas mileage... it takes more energy to produce than is released... it is profitable only with subsidies and high petro costs... everybody and their brother is getting into ethanol production... The future is pig manure. Some scientist in Illinois discovered a way to turn pig manure into useable petroleum in two days with minimal equipment and cost.
I've said it from my first post about ethanol, it is a scam in this country. Only viable ethanol is from sugar cane, biomass and woodchips, and it's still barely economical. The rest requires more energy & polution than it saves. Ethanol and biodiesel are still polluting sources of energy, not compatible with most energy technology and require being combined with regular gasoline for autos. Biodiesel can be used as a sole source only with special technology. There is a claim of one these idiotic inventions a day. It's pointless, why would you want to make petroleum and continue useing the same polluting energy source. Most likely BS anyway. Even if it wasn't, I highly suggest you take a look into large scale commercial livestock farming and how destructive it is to the environment. How do think they are gonna get all that manure. The future is wind, solar & geothermal (geo is well underway). Hydrogen fuel cells seem to work well but I'm suspicious of it a bit. Be on the look out who is going to own the infrastructure behind it.
No. This isn't some penny stock scam. It is real. I read it in the newspaper about 2 months ago. In two days under pressure and a fixed heat, pig manure becomes petroleum. I believe the scientist is from U of Illinois (Urbana Champaign?). The primary probs with pig farming are the waste and the smell. This solves the former at least. Hydrocarbons are hydrocarbons; it doesn't matter where it comes from. Look for pig dooty gas in the next two years. By extension, there will be cow gas, septic tank, etc. My take on the near future is energy coming from many different sources both traditional and untraditional. Nuclear is the future of electricity for most of the world. Thank Jimmy Carter for making nuclear energy prohibitive in this country. Now we have acid rain, energy scandals and brown outs.
How much manure is needed to make 1 barrel of oil, what temperature is needed, how long? All those numbers may not add up on top of manure's current price. The energy required to make it may not be even close to economical. When you "cook" manure, it does produce exhaust gas. Sh*t is toxic, that's why our bodies expel it. And depending on the amount needed, pigs will be grown en masse factory style by the big corps. That has its own round of consequences. Nuclear plant have some real nice waste, like those radioactive rods whose halflifes are a bit long. So they have been burying them in conrete blocks but leaks have happened. Scary stuff. Also, no matter what the experts say, I do not think most people would want to live anywhere in the far vicinity of a nuclear plant. A french company has made advancements in the making smaller and very low cost nuclear plants. Supposedely super safe, but still, the potential risks are still there.
I don't think most folk who use biodiesel do it for cost, or pollution. Its more of a self sustaining thing. And yep, if everyone did it, we'd have to eat a lot more fries!