When will Ethanol triumph over Gas?

[Elite Engineer]

When do you believe ethanol will be the main fuel used instead of gasoline? Yes there are land issues, and its not as efficient, but when will it come to the point where either A) Pollution, Global Warming gets too much or B) We essentially "run out" of ethanol. I know this is mainly based on the consumer demand of ethanol as a fuel...so..when will PEOPLE, (i.e. consumers) want to start filling up with ethanol fuel?

 

~ee

[EdEarl]

IMO biodiesel is a better fuel than ethanol, because algae for biodiesel can be grown using saline and soda water; whereas, ethanol crops so far require fresh water. Moreover, by about 2050 estimates are that 1/5 of the Earth's population will be short of fresh water due to climate change. However, there are many untapped salt water aquifers and much of it is under semiarid or arid land that is not being used to grow crops. In addition, ethanol is not as powerful a fuel as gasoline; whereas, biodiesel is more concentrated and thus, a better fuel than gasoline.

Another option is to use fuel cells or a flow-battery, as described below.

phys.org

... a metal-free flow battery that relies on the electrochemistry of naturally abundant, inexpensive, small organic (carbon-based) molecules called quinones, which are similar to molecules that store energy in plants and animals.

[Enthalpy]

Brazilians already use ethanol on a daily basis. More precisely, a mixture with gasoline. It works nicely, especially as it pollutes less than pure gasoline: in Rio you can have 5 lanes full of cars waiting at a traffic light, and you cross in acceptable air.

 

I can't tell if the crop for ethanol needs artificial irrigation in Brazil. But we can still use fresh water at one place when it's missing at an other, because water is too difficult to transport.

[swansont]

It's not clear that ethanol is net energy positive if you do it the way we do it in the US.

 

I think that ethanol vs gasoline is incorrectly narrowing the choices — a false dichotomy. I think electric power will supplant them both.

 

 

So, never?

[AndresKiani]

Organic fuels seem like a great source, just the idea of how much organic matter there is on the planet and how much more of it we can harvest if we can double our plant populations, which is very likely, which will not only provide us with tons of energy but it would help us cure our biosphere's problems

[AbeMichelson]

Anything with combustion will have CO2 exhaust, so why bother running a different polluting fuel?

Agree Electric. Battery technology needs to be improved, tho.

[EdEarl]

Anything with combustion will have CO2 exhaust, so why bother running a different polluting fuel?

Agree Electric. Battery technology needs to be improved, tho.

Petroleum and coal come out of the ground, and when burned add CO2 to the atmosphere. Algae and other biofuels remove CO2 from the atmosphere when they grow. When burned, they add the same CO2 into the atmosphere. The amount removed equals the amount added, so they do not add CO2 to the atmosphere. They are carbon neutral.

 

Growing algae has a couple of nice benefits that other crops do not have. First, it grows faster than any other crop; algae can double its mass in 24 hours. Second, there are millions of acres of desert with underground salt water where algae can be grown, and that algae will sequester CO2 that is currently in the atmosphere. By the time the algae oil and other algae parts are used and the CO2 released into the atmosphere again, there will be several days delay, which means that more CO2 will be sequestered than will grow in one day.

Edited January 18, 2014 by EdEarl

[Elite Engineer]

Petroleum and coal come out of the ground, and when burned add CO2 to the atmosphere. Algae and other biofuels remove CO2 from the atmosphere when they grow. When burned, they add the same CO2 into the atmosphere. The amount removed equals the amount added, so they do not add CO2 to the atmosphere. They are carbon neutral.

 

Growing algae has a couple of nice benefits that other crops do not have. First, it grows faster than any other crop; algae can double its mass in 24 hours. Second, there are millions of acres of desert with underground salt water where algae can be grown, and that algae will sequester CO2 that is currently in the atmosphere. By the time the algae oil and other algae parts are used and the CO2 released into the atmosphere again, there will be several days delay, which means that more CO2 will be sequestered than will grow in one day.

so are you saying the most efficient fuel is relative to its way of production is ethanol when produced by algae?

[EdEarl]

Algae makes biodiesel most efficiently. But the remainder of it, which includes protein and carbohydrates might be made into ethanol.

[swansont]

By the time the algae oil and other algae parts are used and the CO2 released into the atmosphere again, there will be several days delay, which means that more CO2 will be sequestered than will grow in one day.

Once you hit steady state they will be equal.