Hard Math

By | October 8, 2005
2 Comments

Getting back to non-conventional fuel sources, the argument is often made that ethanol can’t really work as a fuel source, seeing as ethanol fuel in the U.S. is actually produced at a net loss of energy. That doesn’t seem to be the case in Brazil.

Maybe sugar provides more robust alochol production than grain does. Or Maybe the Brazlians know something we don’t?

  • djnowhere

    It was true in the 70s that ethanol production used more energy then the ethanol produced, but now you get about 1.6 units for every 1 you put in. For biodiesel its over 3 units out for every 1 unit in and there are new production techniques that have come about in just the last couple of years that make it way more efficient. You can make biodiesel from plants that grow on unfarmable land or from algea and they can make ethanol now from the whole corn plant. Check out http://biodieselnow.com

  • Engineer-Poet

    A bushel of corn can be burned to make about 390,000 BTU of heat; the ethanol from that same bushel yields about 224,000 BTU, and there’s about 88,000 BTU of heat required for distillation.  A lot of that distillation is done with the very same natural gas and LPG which are expensive and in tight supply this winter, so fuel ethanol is literally competing with people trying to keep themselves warm.

    Ironically, we could get more miles out of a bushel of corn by burning it, using the heat to run a generator, and charging batteries to run cars.  I did some numbers here.