Ethanol and Other Future Fuel Alternatives

The high price of gas has intensified the search for alternative fuel resources to help lessen our dependence on fossil fuels. Methods such as carpooling, mass transit, and hybrid cars will not, by themselves, solve the problem.
As the debate goes on for ethanol and alternative fuels, President Bush has backed federal funding for continued research and Congress is calculatng the best way to implement it.

One alternative that has received a great deal of attention is ethanol. There is some debate about the efficiency of ethanol. One side feels the energy costs to produce ethanol outweigh the benefits. These opponents state producing and running tractors, the production costs and even the energy consumed by workers including food, transportation and police protection raise the costs. The worker cost is not usually figured in comparisons like this. The naysayers also didn't take into account the added value of ethanol byproducts, which can be used in cattle feed.
The analysis was based on the technology in use at the time, which included old processing plants. There is reason to believe ethanol production will become more efficient, possibly at a faster rate than the mature petroleum industry. The newest plants incorporate technology to streamline the process and save energy and money.

"There are a lot of new technologies", said Hosein Shapouri, an agricultural economist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "It's going to continue to improve the yield, and also lower the energy."

Besides bushels of corn, researchers are looking for other energy efficient methods to produce ethanol. They're researching sugar cane and switchgrass. There are three more challenges they have to face: the fuel has yet to prove its market viability for cars without subsidies; the high price of natural gas may force some plants to switch to coal, harming their environmental profile; and the cost to revamp fuel stations for ethanol blends is steep.

Earlier this year, when President Bush suggested instead of corn, we could use switchgrass, many laughed. But this past October, Governor Brad Henry of Okahoma, held a biofuel conference in Norman, Oklahoma. He said, Oklahoma was "well positioned to establish a biorefinery sector with abundant native grasses, that are excellent feedstocks for cellosic ethanol and winter-hardy canola", as reported on Growok.com. He also said, "it would be a superior oil seed crop for biodiesel, have significant research commitments to biofuel feedstocks, as well as biobased and thermochemical processing, and have five operating petroleum refineries, a well developed product pipeline and their central location at the crossroads of two interstate highways."

Conference participants were informed of the latest developments in the biofuel industry: The Oklahoma Biofuels Initiative, the ongoing Oklahoma biomass resource stock, and the Noble Foundation's development of a dedicated crop. Also it detailed a biorefinery construction in Oklahoma, the Federal and state initiatives are to have policy reviews, expert testimony, program design to meet specific state or community goals, resource assessements and cost data, traiining and education and clearinghouse information on other states's expertise, and petroleum and automotive industries' commitment to alternative fuels, including the impacts and advances in feedstock conversion technology. Biomass is an organic matter used as a fuel, especially in a power station for the generation of electricity. A biorefinery is a facility that integrates biomass conversion processes and equipment to produce fuels, power, and value-added chemicals from biomass; the biorefinery concept is analogous to today's petroleum refinery, which produce multiple fuels and products from petroleum.

One more resource for ethanol is trash. According to an August 5th WBIR news report by WBIR in Knoxville, Tennessee, a company in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, plans to convert garbage into gas. The process takes carbon-based trash and turns it into gas, then the micro-organisms from a natural bacteria convert the gas into ethanol in 60 seconds.

BRI Energy, an Arkanasas-based company, awaits a company loan guarantee provided for in the 2005 Energy bill to build an ethanol planet in Oak Ridge. According to an online article on WBIR.com, BRI President Bill Bruce explained, "that it would help the environment of the Tennessee Valley here, just by getting rid of 80% of the waste in nine counties."

The plant would process as much as 3,000 tons of trash a day, waste that's now buried in nine area landfills. This process will recycle landfills except for glass and metal.

However, an ethanol mix would help the environment by enabling engines to burn cleaner.
Construction of the plant will create about 300 jobs and put an abandoned building back on the tax rolls is approximately one year.

The following are comparisons of gasoline and various alternative fuel costs and consumption for travel from New York to Oregon.

Using gasoline, the trip would require 91 gallons. If the price of gas was $2.34, and the car got 33 mpg, the cost would be $212.70. It takes four-and-a-half barrels of crude oil to produce the necessary gasoline.
The cost of ethanol would be about $425 as it gets 17 miles to a gallon at a cost of $2.41 per gallon. The production for the 176 gallons of ethanol requires 53 bushels of corn and a half barrel of crude oil.

Another very expensive alternative is methanol, which has a low BTU, (British Thermal Unit), which means 35% fewer miles per gallon, compared to gasoline. The trip to Oregon would require 18, 190 cumulated feet of natural gas and a half barrel of crude oil, for a cost of $619, as you would need 214 gallons of methanol. It would cost you about $2.89 a gallon, and your car would get about 14 miles per gallons.

Bio-diesel is one of the cheapest methods, if you're able to spend the time and effort, locating sourced for used vegetable oil. If you had to purchase used vegetable oil, the cost would run about $3.40 a gallon. The cost of the necessary 68.2 gallons of oil would be $183.

Another even cheaper fuel source is compressed natural gas, but it has the same drawback as the bio-diesel: lack of sources. There are few places you can stop and refill your tank. If you were able to, it would take 10,650 cumulated feet of natural gas to make the 88 gallons needed. At 34 miles per gallon and a cost of $1.25 per gallon, it would cost only $110.

The most inexpensive mode would be by an electric car. Even if gas cost $3.66 a gallon, it would only cost $60.00, as you would get 202 mpg for the 16.4 gallons of needed gas. For every 100 miles, you would need 20 kilowatts a hour, but would do better in traffic, because of regenerative braking. The battery pack would have a total capacity of 26.5 kph. It would take about a ton of coal to generate enough energy for the trip.

At the other extreme, at a cost of approximately $804, is a hydrogen fuel cell. The trip would need 16,000 cumulated feet of hydrogen. Compressed hydrogen costs four times as much as gasoline, so at 41 mpg, the cost would be $11.00 a gallon for the necessary 73 gallons. The Department of Energy projects the cost to be below $2 a gallon of gas by 2012. New technology will double vehicle range by raising tank presssure to 10,000 psi. Until the technology and availability improves, hydrogen fuel cells would be by far the most expensive way to travel from coast to coast.
The debate continues as to which alternative offers the best option for the future, but as this summer's gas prices demonstrated, we must stay focused and redouble our efforts to lessen our dependency on oil.