Ethanol
“THE PETROLEUM AGE IS COMING TO AN END” says Bruce Dale, the associate director of MSU’s Office of Bio-based Technologies. He claims that the study which proves ethanol fuel takes more energy to make than it produces, is bunk:
Ethanol requires 29 percent more fossil energy to produce than the fuel it produces, according to the study by David Pimental, a Cornell University professor of agriculture and ecology, and Tad Patzek, a University of California-Berkeley professor of civil and environmental engineering.
Dale contends the study is off-base because it measured energy used and produced with British Thermal Units (BTUs).
A BTU is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree. It takes 143 BTUs to melt a pound of ice.
“It’s an irrelevant measurement,” he said. “We cannot add up different forms of energy on a straight BTU basis any more than we can add up different (monetary) currencies on a straight equivalency basis.
“It’s a dumb idea, and it’s surprising that it’s lasted this long.”
Whether or not the study is well-founded, the future for ethanol fuel appears to be in “biomass“. According to the US Dept. of Energy:
Advanced Bioethanol Technology allows fuel ethanol to be made from cellulosic (plant fiber) biomass, such as agricultural forestry residues, industrial waste, material in municipal solid waste, trees, and grasses.
Once the technology and infrastructure matures, biomass ethanol should cost about half as much to make as that based on corn. So even if the “net negative energy” study is accurate, the new sources of mass will make ethanol viable.
Another option would be to perform more of the ethanol production with electricity-based equipment and power the electric equipment with energy from nuclear power plants. In that case, even if ethanol is a “net negative energy” product, the “lost” energy would come from near-infinite atomics and the portable energy of ethanol would be able to replace the portable energy of petroleum.
The real problem is the “portable” part of portable energy. Electric cars work just fine. Except that electric power isn’t portable enough because batteries are so big and heavy and don’t last very long. Batteries cannot power large aircraft at all. So more portable energy is needed, and fuel in the form of gasoline or ethanol can meet those needs. Spending “extra” nuclear power to create sufficient energy to power things needing portable fuel would be worth it if there was no other way.
For what it’s worth, besides nuclear power for electricity, Murdoc is a fan of oil shale/sands. Colorado and Canada are sitting on a ton of the stuff.