Ethanol is retarded

uscitizen said:
Damo, my fellow commie :)
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I support innovation and self-preservation. It has nothing to do with communism. Limiting our innovation lines to only specific solutions isn't a good idea, it simply limits the amount of innovative ideas that may be produced.

Those innovations are going to make somebody very rich in the future. God Bless America.
 
Watermark said:
Cellulosic ethanol isn't efficient either. We'd have to grow that switchgrass on 10% of the land in America to supply all of our needs.

The fundamental problem here is that we are at a northern latitude here. And where does the energy that causes plants to grow that is later converted into ethanol come from? The sun. We don't get much sunlight. The tropics get a lot more sunlight, and their ethanol producing plants can be grown on much less space using much less labor. It's just science.

So we must either import plants from the tropics, or wait some more time for another alternative. Currently, we have huge tariffs on the plants from the tropics, so I guess it's just the corn lobby wanting us to be dependent on a volatile region for more time.
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I don't think you neccessarily need to use switch grass, or tropical plants like sugar cane for cellulosic ethanol. I think virtually any agricultural waste product, or even wood chips can be used in theory.
 
All energy on Earth comes from three sources. The sun, the stars, and the center of the Earth. Oil is energy that was apparent in the past, and is now buried. All energy sources are just various permutations of energy gained from those processes. Ethanol is from the sun - plants convert the heat from the sun into their mass, and we convert the plants mass into ethanol mass, which is burnt, and the heat from the burning powers our cars. This is why ethanol from brazil is more efficient than ethanol from America. But the entire process is obviously inneficient in itself.

Power plants are generally far more efficient than the power producers in your car, even if the power comes from oil. Hydrogen keeps about 80% of the energy from power plants, but has the advantage over plug-ins that it can be pumped. If we'd have "hybrid hydrogen", we could have lots of efficiency.


As it is, you guys seem to think that you can get something from nothing, and that inneficient corn ethanol is a vast permutation of what it real is.
 
Damocles said:
I support innovation and self-preservation. It has nothing to do with communism. Limiting our innovation lines to only specific solutions isn't a good idea, it simply limits the amount of innovative ideas that may be produced.

Those innovations are going to make somebody very rich in the future. God Bless America.
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Tell me why ethanol is a good idea. It's not an innovation.
 
Watermark said:
Tell me why ethanol is a good idea. It's not an innovation.
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Again, your theory is to cut off all research in one area and that makes it all better?

Give it a rest. Innovation comes from people, not product. Your problem is underestimating the ability of mankind to find solutions to what you see as problems. If you discount that ability, then there is nothing that could make ethanol viable in the US. If you realize that humans are amazingly innovative and have the strong ability to come up with surprising solutions, well, you don't just cut off people from coming up with a good solution if there might be one there.
 
Watermark said:
How do you convert the plant mass into a heavily compact energy source, US? Doesn't that take energy in itself? Why do no power plants use, nor will ever use, ethanol?
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I think (and I could be wrong) that most ethanol is produced using natural gas, or coal-driven energy. Which doesn't come from the middle east.
 
Damocles said:
Again, your theory is to cut off all research in one area and that makes it all better?

Give it a rest. Innovation comes from people, not product. Your problem is underestimating the ability of mankind to find solutions to what you see as problems. If you discount that ability, then there is nothing that could make ethanol viable in the US. If you realize that humans are amazingly innovative and have the strong ability to come up with surprising solutions, well, you don't just cut off people from coming up with a good solution if there might be one there.
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OK. Then make it so that plants convert themselves into ethanol and automatically jump into cars with no need for tranportation. Then, and only then, will it not require oil at some point in the process.
 
El stupido read some info on it. ethanol by products are also used and do the plants burn the byproducts to power themselves to a degree. some of them do anyway. It is still a developing industry. The oil industry is far more efficient at producing gas than it was 30 years ago. But of course the ethanol industry will never get more efficient :rolleyes:
 
Watermark said:
OK. Then make it so that plants convert themselves into ethanol and automatically jump into cars with no need for tranportation. Then, and only then, will it not require oil at some point in the process.
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Good booze WM ? Of smokeus dopeus.
 
uscitizen said:
El stupido read some info on it. ethanol by products are also used and do the plants burn the byproducts to power themselves to a degree. some of them do anyway. It is still a developing industry. The oil industry is far more efficient at producing gas than it was 30 years ago. But of course the ethanol industry will never get more efficient :rolleyes:
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Not efficient enough to not require oil.
 
Watermark said:
OK. Then make it so that plants convert themselves into ethanol and automatically jump into cars with no need for tranportation. Then, and only then, will it not require oil at some point in the process.
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Rubbish. Use Propane. Use Natural Gas. Use Wind Power. If somebody is amazingly innovative and figures out a way to get the ethanol out without using so much energy, use domestic oil if you find oil use necessary.
 
Damocles said:
Rubbish. Use Propane. Use Natural Gas. Use Wind Power. If somebody is amazingly innovative and figures out a way to get the ethanol out without using so much energy, use domestic oil if you find oil use necessary.
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Ethanol is nothing but a trillion dollar waste. Why do you guys cut off research into hydrogen, and put it all into ethaonl?
 
Watermark said:
Why don't YOU guys do the fucking research? I've done the research, and you fucking morons are just operating on assumption.
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It seems that you are. Link us up to future discoveries that prove that humans are too stupid to make a different resource efficient.
 
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