Strategists continue to bring up bio-fuels as a short term solution to re achieving energy independence for the US. I fail to see how ethanol is all that much better than gasoline from the view of sustainability, efficiency and the release of carbon into the atmosphere.
Ethanol requires land, water, and nitrogen all of which compete with food production. We simply do not have enough of the three to feed the World's population now, much less when we hit 9 billion.
The history of energy usage evolves in a natural progression from the inefficient casual abundance of wood to coal, to oil and lately to natural gas, methane, and hydro electric. One might suppose that the evolution will proceed to solar, hydrogen and atomic, (think Thorium[1] rather than Uranium) and eventually to fusion, anti mater, dark energy and beyond. Arguably, each step moves to a higher level of effency and a lower level of pollution.
Comparing ethanol, C2H6O, to methane, CH4, the later contains a greater ratio of hydrogen to carbon. From a thermodynamic view, the hydrogen contains greater energy than carbon in combination. They call it enthalpy. Weight for weight, methane yields more bang, is more abundant, cheaper and does not compete with the food chain. The US has enough to be energy independent now and there is a near limitless supply under the ocean in the form of methane hydrates, already liquefied.[2]
Lastly methane releases less carbon for the energy produced than does ethanol. Ethanol, a liquid, already in our gasoline supply at the pump, requires little change in infrastructure. Compressed natural gas or liquefied natural gas, LNG, requires a little more development to deliver it from the same filling stations. South America uses large amounts of compressed natural gas now -- not at all high-tech.
T "Bone" Pickins, a well respected oil-man, advocates switching all of our long hall trucks to methane now and there is legislation pending to facilitate that switch. The switch will actually save the trucking companies a great deal in fuel costs. Methane is much cheaper than diesel fuel.
1 thoriumenergy.blogspot.com
2 Science 327 1/8/2010
Ethanol requires land, water, and nitrogen all of which compete with food production. We simply do not have enough of the three to feed the World's population now, much less when we hit 9 billion.
The history of energy usage evolves in a natural progression from the inefficient casual abundance of wood to coal, to oil and lately to natural gas, methane, and hydro electric. One might suppose that the evolution will proceed to solar, hydrogen and atomic, (think Thorium[1] rather than Uranium) and eventually to fusion, anti mater, dark energy and beyond. Arguably, each step moves to a higher level of effency and a lower level of pollution.
Comparing ethanol, C2H6O, to methane, CH4, the later contains a greater ratio of hydrogen to carbon. From a thermodynamic view, the hydrogen contains greater energy than carbon in combination. They call it enthalpy. Weight for weight, methane yields more bang, is more abundant, cheaper and does not compete with the food chain. The US has enough to be energy independent now and there is a near limitless supply under the ocean in the form of methane hydrates, already liquefied.[2]
Lastly methane releases less carbon for the energy produced than does ethanol. Ethanol, a liquid, already in our gasoline supply at the pump, requires little change in infrastructure. Compressed natural gas or liquefied natural gas, LNG, requires a little more development to deliver it from the same filling stations. South America uses large amounts of compressed natural gas now -- not at all high-tech.
T "Bone" Pickins, a well respected oil-man, advocates switching all of our long hall trucks to methane now and there is legislation pending to facilitate that switch. The switch will actually save the trucking companies a great deal in fuel costs. Methane is much cheaper than diesel fuel.
1 thoriumenergy.blogspot.com
2 Science 327 1/8/2010
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