Bush State of the Union: Work with me

[rst95eclipse]

I watched a pretty sweet documentary on ethanol once. In Brazil, IIRC about half cars are set up for 100% ethanol while the half is E85. They went to a ethanol plant that made it from corn, but used the stalks as fuel instead of gas in production. I thought that was a pretty good way to do it.

From what I've read about Brazil, they should have claimed energy independance last year and they make their ethanol from sugarcane. Every new car that hits the road can run gasoline or ethanol. And Ford is putting most of them out.

[Jakey]

There are some new ways to make ethanol that are just coming around now, cellulistic ethanol seems to be the one with the most promise.

Yes and no. The problem with cellulistic ethanol is that there has yet to be any recommendations on how much biomass can be safely removed from fields without causing detrimental effects to the soil structure and whole carbon sequestration process. Plus, the issue of harvesting biomass is still in the air. My roommates are both heavily involved with biomass harvest through their graduate research:
http://www.iastate.edu/~nscentral/news/2006/dec/stover.shtml
From what I've read about Brazil, they should have claimed energy independance last year and they make their ethanol from sugarcane. Every new car that hits the road can run gasoline or ethanol. And Ford is putting most of them out.
Correct and they're getting an incredible amount of ethanol out of their inputs compared to what we are simply because they're using sugarcane.

[rst95eclipse]

Correct and they're getting an incredible amount of ethanol out of their inputs compared to what we are simply because they're using sugarcane.

What was most interesting about what I've read about Brazil is that the factories that make the ethanol do not use energy from an outside source. Therefore, the production of their main source for energy is completely renewable. Apparently they burn the waste material from the sugarcane to make power, which the plants run on.

[JET]

Yeah, sugar cane makes like 9x as much ethanol as the same amount of corn.

When I was talking cellulistic I was not talking about corn stalks and such, I agree that they need to be returned to the ground. I am talking switch grass and meniscus. There is a cellulistic plant under construction in NY already.