Lawsuit Says US Environmental Agency Ignores Harm of Biofuel Production (theguardian.com) 100
An anonymous reader writes: The US biofuel program is probably killing endangered species and harming the environment in a way that negates its benefits, but the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is largely ignoring those problems, a new federal lawsuit charges. The suit alleges the EPA failed to consider impacts on endangered species, as is required by law, when it set new rules that will expand biofuel use nationwide during the next three years, said Brett Hartl, government affairs director with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which brought the litigation.
The agency has twice ignored court orders to study the impacts and is probably dodging the requirements because ethanol production "props up" the corn industry, which has a politically powerful lobby, Hartl added. "The Biden administration failed to even modestly reform this boondoggle and crumbled again in the face of political pressure from powerful special interests," Hartl said. "Our streams and rivers will choke with more pollution and coastal dead zones will continue to expand." The EPA said in a statement that it does not comment on ongoing litigation. About 40% of all corn grown in the US is used for ethanol production, and nearly half is used as animal feed.
The agency has twice ignored court orders to study the impacts and is probably dodging the requirements because ethanol production "props up" the corn industry, which has a politically powerful lobby, Hartl added. "The Biden administration failed to even modestly reform this boondoggle and crumbled again in the face of political pressure from powerful special interests," Hartl said. "Our streams and rivers will choke with more pollution and coastal dead zones will continue to expand." The EPA said in a statement that it does not comment on ongoing litigation. About 40% of all corn grown in the US is used for ethanol production, and nearly half is used as animal feed.
Biggest tax payer subsidy scam (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Biggest tax payer subsidy scam (Score:5, Interesting)
Meh. Corn ethanol is a braindead idea, but it makes perfect sense from a physics perspective. Ignoring that it has a positive EROEI and just pretending that it doesn't, as you're doing. For most people:
* You can't put electricity, natural gas or stover (as used in making ethanol) into your gasoline car
* You can put (some) ethanol into your gasoline car
So even if the EROEI was awful, it still "makes sense". There is no rule in the law of physics that says that the majority of the energy inputs must go into the output. You're transforming resources you can't use for a particular purpose into ones that you can. And - as mentioned - the EROEI is actually positive.
EROEI isn't what makes it a dumb idea. It's that it's entirely unjustifiable from both a cost perspective and an environmental perspective versus alternatives.
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You're using up soil and making fertilizer from fossil fuels instead of burning them directly.
Until the inputs are sustainable, large scale "bio"fuels don't make sense.
Re:Biggest tax payer subsidy scam (Score:5, Informative)
You are not [slashdot.org].
And I'll repeat: you can't put stover, natural gas, or "soil" in your car's fuel tank. You can put ethanol in your car's fuel tank. Hence, it is a viable option. The issues of it have nothing to do with "whether it would be better to consume them directly" - you can't consume them directly. They're not oil.
The issues have to do with the fact that it's much more expensive, and even more environmentally destructive, than just pumping more oil. And way worse than switching off of fuel-based vehicles altogether.
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By "using up soil", I don't think the poster means literally putting it in the tank. Exactly what they're are talking about is unclear, but it may be the opportunity costs involved with corn, specifically.
Bad policy seldom involves attempting to do things which are physically impossible. It's usually more of a misallocation of resources to something that makes sense on paper if you ignore everything else. You can't look at one narrow aspect of something like this to decide it's justifiable, that's how bad
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By "using up soil", I don't think the poster means literally putting it in the tank. Exactly what they're are talking about is unclear, but it may be the opportunity costs involved with corn, specifically.
There is the opportunity cost from that land being occupied growing fuel instead of food, which is potentially a problem because there's only so much arable land out there. But you're also potentially using up nutrients in the topsoil, reducing its utility for future crop growth.
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But you're also potentially using up nutrients in the topsoil, reducing its utility for future crop growth.
Farmers are choosing to farm that way - it's not required. It's just easy to farm that way and requires no real specialized knowledge or planning.
There are much better ways to farm, but farmers are some of the most conservative, resistant-to-change people out there.
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There are much better ways to farm, but farmers are some of the most conservative, resistant-to-change people out there.
So why keep paying them the subsidies to grow it like that? Who's fault is that?
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There are much better ways to farm, but farmers are some of the most conservative, resistant-to-change people out there.
So why keep paying them the subsidies to grow it like that?
Because the farm lobby is pretty powerful.
Who's fault is that?
Presidents who are too afraid of losing Iowa.
Stop that shit (Score:2)
Burning food is bad practice
Generating food using fossil energy as fertilizer is bad practice
Misusing taxpayer money as subventions is bad practice
Burning food generated using fossil energy as fertilizer, and financing the whole scam with taxpayer subventions is worst case.
Stop that shit.
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even if the EROEI was awful, it still "makes sense".
You might think that, if you know literally nothing about corn ethanol production, which appears to be the case. But:
1) Virtually all corn for ethanol is grown continuously, meaning it's depleting soil
2) Corn is actually one of the crops grown mostly on rainwater, but still about 25% of the water comes from irrigation systems, and ethanol fuel is therefore competing with humans for the most basic of necessities of life.
3) There are alternatives to ethanol, like acetone. Acetone can be produced along with bu
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Boy, if you think ethanol is harsh on your fuel system, wait until you see what happens when you put acetone, a substance mainly used as a solvent, in it :P.
You "can" make anything organic from anything organic. Incomplete combustion of organics in the presence of gas mixtures with low oxygen content yields readily polymerizing mixtures (with names like syngas, coal gas, wood gas, town gas, etc) which then can be further processed. You can make acetone, butanol, methane, petrol, you bloody name it. Indust
Re: Biggest tax payer subsidy scam (Score:2)
Corn is an horribly inefficient source of ethanol. Most other crops are better. Just take a look at how much plant material is grown for com and how much is harvested for ethanol production. It's not a good ratio.
The subsidy on corn ethanol is stifling research into other, better, less wasteful, more efficient crops. Switchgrass keeps getting touted as a miracle of efficiency and has never taken off for probably many reasons. It is, however, already way more efficient than is corn for ethanol. Why is it onl
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Boy, if you think ethanol is harsh on your fuel system, wait until you see what happens when you put acetone, a substance mainly used as a solvent, in it :P.
Alcohol is used as a solvent constantly. I've used it for that purpose myself extensively. If you thought you were making a point there, I'm not sure what you thought it was.
Re:Biggest tax payer subsidy scam (Score:5, Interesting)
Meh. Corn ethanol is a braindead idea, but it makes perfect sense from a physics perspective. Ignoring that it has a positive EROEI and just pretending that it doesn't, as you're doing.
Barely positive. The EROEI for ethanol from corn is estimated to be only about 1.040 [sciencedirect.com]. And that's an average, so unless the entire industry is unusually consistent, that likely means that at least some ethanol manufacturing results in a net energy loss.
Worse, for that mere 4% annual return on your investment, you're depleting the soil, diminishing its future usability for growing food. Eventually, you won't be able to grow corn on that land anymore. Best guess is 150 years. So if 100% of corn were used for fuel, you'd only increase the amount of fuel by about a factor of 6 before we lose the ability to grow food for people. So even if it arguably *barely* makes sense from a physics perspective, it still doesn't make sense from a chemistry perspective.
And that's before you factor in the amount of human effort being wasted on such a tiny EROEI.
If all the money we're wasting on corn ethanol subsidies went into subsidizing lithium extraction and lowering the cost of EVs for consumers, those subsidies would have a *much* bigger positive effect on the environment, and would go a *lot* further in terms of helping us achieve energy independence. So I fully agree with the GP. Corn subsidies are a mistake and should go away.
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Gasoline used for personal transportation also competes with food production.
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In the US we throw away food daily by the ton...
And have you looked at the average US citizen these days? Those overhanging bellies would seem to posit that no one here has a problem not getting enough food.
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Soil is not "consumed", though agricultural practices determine how its fertility trends. Note that you can grow plants even in soil 100% devoid of fertility (we call that hydroponics). Fertility offers advantages in outdoor culture, including water and nutrient retention (improving economics), but even bare sand can be farmed. That said, of course you generally want to maximize soil fertility, and this was admittedly significantly ignored through much of the 20th century (not so much anymore), with the f
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That said, this topic does raise one issue, which is the burning of stover to fuel ethanol production, or the focus on cellulosic ethanol from ag waste. As per the point above, these things ignore the fact that "waste" carbon-bearinig material isn't really "waste", but rather adds back carbon to the soil (soil carbon is slowly oxidized over time - deep plowing amplifies this), as well as feeding the soil ecosystem, which provides various "services" such as aeration and some kinds of pest/disease control (t
Re:Biggest tax payer subsidy scam (Score:4, Informative)
Soil is not "consumed"
Yes, in fact it is. Tilth causes soil to blow away on the wind. Machine cultivation creates hardpan, which impedes drainage and causes anaerobic conditions in soil which destroy beneficial nematodes and other biological components of soil, changing it from soil into simple dirt. Growing corn for ethanol literally destroys topsoil.
Re:Biggest tax payer subsidy scam (Score:5, Informative)
I'm literally a horticulturalist. See my above post, which you skipped.
Nematodes are not a meaningful "biological component of soil", measuring a near-zero percentage. And no shortage of nematode species are harmful as well. This is not to dis the importance of soil fauna (see above).
Tilling *increases* soil aeration. Low-till decreases it. You have it backwards. Tilling also helps bring up deeper minerals, while low-till does not. But low-till is still generally overall beneficial to long-term soil health. I'll repeat from the above post: oxygen destroys soil carbon over time. The topic of erosion exists on top of this and depends on numerous factors. The best practices I listed above help reduce it as well. Low-till. Leaving behind crop residues. Growing winter crops or cover crops. Etc. Barren = bad. Taking away the carbon = bad. Over-tilling = bad.
Soil is not static. It is not a finite resource; it is constantly created, and simultaneously constantly destroyed. The ratio of the two in a given area determines its fertility trends. You can spread fertilizer and irrigate on literal sand and grow crops on it, and over time, that sand will be converted to soil (I have some great pics somewhere of projects in Iceland that I could dig up). Here, where our topsoil in most places was heavily eroded from past overgrazing, you wouldn't believe how quickly areas can be restored if you just replace the missing nutrients by fertilizing. The plants that grow add carbon, which serves numerous roles**. The increased plant cover decreases frost-lifting damage by acting as insulation, helping plants survive. The growing plants nurture mycorrhizal associations, which secrete acids into mineral grains, "mining" for nutrients. The rate in which a barren bed turns into fertile soil can be honestly shocking if you provide the missing nutrients as needed (and irrigate if needed).
But at the same time, soil is constantly being destroyed. Through oxidation, through wind erosion, through water erosion (and nutrients are removed with crops, but that's why we fertilize). The practices you use in agriculture determine the balancing point between creation and destruction.
** Carbon is not essential in soil, but it just happens to be very good at a lot of different things. It has a high cation exchange capacity. It has widely varying grain sizes, which equals widely varying pore sizes, thus for both storing water in small pores and air in large pores, and channels between. It provides nutrients for microorganism food chains, which (while having the capability to do both good and harm), at the higher levels nurtures organisms (such as earthworms) whose actions help further granularize the soil and create macroscopic passages for air and water passage. Etc.
Many different soil components are good at specific things. Clay has very high cation exchange capacity. Sand has excellent aeration. Silt can be very retentive of readily-accessible water (pores that are too small hold water too tightly for root hairs to access). Etc. But soil carbon tends to have a nice mix of all desirable properties.
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(I do want to stress that this whole topic is a big oversimplification - not least, the topic of soil "carbon", which is not in the form of free carbon, but rather humus, a whole zoo of chemical compounds and structures in varying states of decay, including relatively fresh matter dominated by cellulose, somewhat older matter dominated by lignin, and then various resistant proteins, fats, waxes etc and hard-to-decompose decomposition products of the above)
Re: Biggest tax payer subsidy scam (Score:2, Informative)
Tilling increases aeration of the top foot or so of soil, so if you only look at the surface then, like your comments, that might seem correct. But one has to look deeper than that, as you are not. The hardpan is created below that point, in the soil not being tilled.
Nematodes themselves are a small percentage of the mass, but there is a lot of other living material that is destroyed when water stands in it. Healthy top soil can be around half living organics.
Zero tilth agriculture produces a superior soil
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Where did your lady get her horticulture degree from? I've attended the Agricultural University of Iceland. I was presented an award for my research by the president of Iceland. And your lady? The fact that you put "gardener" in the same category as "horticulturalist" just screams that you don't even know what a horticulturalist is.
Your comments simply make no sense. The B horizon, which is rarely well aerated to begin and has much lower carbon influxes, has a much lower density of life than the A hori
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We have more than enough food production in the US, have you seen the numbers pertaining to how much food we throw away EVERY day?
Re: Biggest tax payer subsidy scam (Score:2)
Yup. Plenty more Amazon to be burned err upgraded to corn desert for biofuels. /s
Greenwashing is what biofuels is, to sustain the illusion that ICE have a future.
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I really doubt the US needs much of anything from the Amazon.
We have more than enough land and farm land here for our needs.
Re: Biggest tax payer subsidy scam (Score:2)
How's your water supplies keeping up down south? Plenty to spare for extra growth?
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No shortages of water in anywhere in the southeast of the US that I know of....we seem to have plenty.
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Biofuel makes sense if you are using cellulose like various grasses, or even better, waste from a food crop - like sugar cane bagasse or maybe corn stalks. But the trick of using cellulose to drive fermentation is proving tricky.
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The fact that it exists and works means it does fundamentally make sense from a physics point of view. You may be thinking about a different point of view.
Also are you hungry? The USA doesn't have a food production issue, and there's no benefit to excess production. In fact you are a net exporter of foodstuff which means any additional food not locally produced is actually adding to a significant carbon problem due to shipping and logistics, so complaining that it competes with food production is a truly he
1/3 gallon (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're buying puregas for your small engines at a pump with a single nozzle, the first third of a gallon will usually contain ethanol which will foul your engine.
Small repair shops have provided ample video evidence. They usually don't charge for the dx so they don't want this business.
Find a dedicated pump or put the initial flow in your car.
Re:1/3 gallon (Score:4, Informative)
If you're buying puregas for your small engines at a pump with a single nozzle, the first third of a gallon will usually contain ethanol which will foul your engine.
Small repair shops have provided ample video evidence. They usually don't charge for the dx so they don't want this business.
Find a dedicated pump or put the initial flow in your car.
If you're running an engine designed in 1962. In the rest of the world, running E10 or E15 (that's a percentage, E10 is 10% ethanol) is fine on an engine made in the last 30 years. Biggest issue these days is carbon build up and often, an Italian tune up every now and then will remove a lot of built up carbon, this has nothing to do with ethanol, rather modern injectors. E10 fuels have been common in most countries for decades (Australia allowed the sale of E10 petrol in 2003) and they haven't seen masses of fouled engines.
If you're running a car that cant handle E10 or E15 as a daily driver, you should consider updating to a car using 1980s technology.
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Ok, I give...
What's an "Italian tune up"...?
I've not heard that term before.
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What's an "Italian tune up"...?
I've not heard that term before.
What we've just discovered is that you don't actually own a muscle car, and also you don't know how to find google. Wait, we knew that last part. Real car guys in the USA have known that phrase for decades, you clearly aren't one.
Re:1/3 gallon (Score:4, Interesting)
My dad's been a car guy his entire life and I've never heard him and his buddies say "italian tune up" ever. And I've spent a TON of time around those guys. After googling, they definitely practice it, but nobody in this part of the country would ever call it that. They just say, "You need to redline that fucker and burn the carbon out."
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After googling, they definitely practice it, but nobody in this part of the country would ever call it that.
Well, I've only spent a lot of time in TX and CA, but I've heard it a bunch of times in both of those places. And presumably it's even more common on the East coast, where there's lots of Italians. So that leaves... the northern midwest? Get out while you still can, I guess.
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After googling, they definitely practice it, but nobody in this part of the country would ever call it that.
Well, I've only spent a lot of time in TX and CA, but I've heard it a bunch of times in both of those places. And presumably it's even more common on the East coast, where there's lots of Italians. So that leaves... the northern midwest? Get out while you still can, I guess.
Too late for me. I'm flyover for life.
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never heard it in NY, NJ, MA, CA in the past many decades. never heard of google, either. no wait, google -- isn't that the outfit that spies on me?
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An Italian tuneup was far more common in the carb/points era than in modern cars, so the phrase died away. I used the term a great deal in the 90s when I drove Italian sports cars, but this is the first time I've heard it in association with modern cars.
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I grew up in the seventies and eighties and never once heard the term. My uncle ran a mechanic's shop his whole life, and my dad and him grew up rebuilding cars or just straight building them up from parts from the time they were barely old enough to hit the pedals. Maybe it's just not said in the midwest?
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My dad's been a car guy his entire life and I've never heard him and his buddies say "italian tune up" ever. And I've spent a TON of time around those guys. After googling, they definitely practice it, but nobody in this part of the country would ever call it that. They just say, "You need to redline that fucker and burn the carbon out."
OK, this is the closest post I have found to one actually describing an "Italian tune-up." Thank you for the info.
If carbon deposits are a problem in your engine, I would posit that ethanol would actually _help_ with this. the extra oxygen would help oxidise the carbon, and the extra H2O as a combustion byproduct would also help remove accumulated carbon.
If you have carbon build-up in your engine, one way to remove it is to use carburetor cleaner (yes, even on EFI engines). There's a good thread at http:// [fordlaser.com]
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Well...I would think my former corvette (C5, new at the time) would qualify as a muscle car...but I've never (yet) owned my dream one...a '75-'76 Trans Am with a 455 4-speed. I'd like to get one, get rid of the air restrictions of the last years of the muscle car era and resto-mod it with better suspension, etc.
But my other cars were more "sports cars"....280Z, MR2 Turbo (the ones that looked like a mini Ferrari), Porsche 911 Turbo, Mi
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Re: 1/3 gallon (Score:2)
Who are you, coward? Speak up, you don't have to be afraid.
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Because they'll gunk up way faster than larger motors. Talk to any actual mechanic about how they view burning any percentage of ethanol in engines not specifically designed for it. You may want to set aside an hour and brace yourself for a stream of profanity before doing so.
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I'm not the guy that said that, and I disagree with that person quite vehemently on that particular statement.
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the first third of a gallon will usually contain ethanol which will foul your engine.
There's no problem with a 1/3rd of a gallon of ethanol being part of any engine built this century. Heck some countries run almost pure ethanol through their engines.
You're complaining about a non-problem.
The Guardian clearly does not do journalism. (Score:1)
And for a special-interest group to decry the EPA for listening to special-interest groups is just plain ridiculous. Albeit profoundly common.
This stuff helps who? (Score:2)
First a bit of history -- from what I have read, adding corn-derived alcohol was originally developed back in the Depression as an additional income source for struggling farmers. Then the idea was revived when peak oil was considered a problem and we needed stuff to replace petroleum distillates in our cars. The, out of nowhere, came the idea that it was somehow good for the environment and we all needed to consume it. Now I know that it took a lot of work to change gaskets and hoses to not be destroyed by
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Mileage is pretty much guaranteed to be poorer, if not merely for the fact that ethanol contains much less energy than petrol on a volumetric basis.
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And yet in the racing world ethanol is preferred...
Even if its somewhat less total energy per unit of volume it offers ignition, combustion, and vaporization characteristics that generally speaking make it a better fuel for high performance otto-cycle engines (at least based on current architectures and materials) than gasoline.
The real problem is you can't optimize an engine to run other both or either. You can get to 'works ok' with fancy engine management that can respond to telemetry, but ultimately if
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The real problem is you can't optimize an engine to run other both or either.
Yes, of course you can. It's called variable turbocharging, and it can be achieved with VGT, VVT, or an electric supercharger. You also need a fuel quality sensor to determine the ethanol ratio, and a higher volume fuel pump than you would need for gasoline alone. You can literally do this with aftermarket engine management as a hobbyist, and it's quite common for performance tuned turbocharged vehicles. You certainly don't need different nozzle sizes on injectors, because modern injectors can be fired mult
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from what I have read, adding corn-derived alcohol was originally developed back in the Depression as an additional income source for struggling farmers.
Almost, it was a way to decrease expenditures for struggling farmers, who could re-tune the carburetor and run their tractor on ethanol. It didn't have as much power and used more fuel to do the same work (same thing, kinda) but the government also gave out plans to build solar stills for the purpose of producing the fuel from silage.
Nothing will come of this lawsuit (Score:2)
Biofuel != Ethanol (Score:5, Interesting)
Ethanol is biofuel, but not all biofuel is ethanol.
Ethanol is a terrible motor fuel on its own lack of merit, because it is hygroscopic and it's not good to put water into your fuel system.
Biodiesel from algae is the best diesel lubricity substitute, in independent testing 5% biodiesel improves the lubricity of petrodiesel literally more than any additive you can buy.
"Green diesel", or diesel fuel made by processing fats in a fractional distillation column similar to what you would use for crude, is a 1:1 replacement for diesel fuel (it can be used even in diesels which do not tolerate biodiesel) which improves mileage and decreases emissions.
Butanol is a 1:1 replacement for gasoline made by bacteria from any organic matter.
Reducing "biofuel" to "corn ethanol" is a massive fuckup which can only be intentional, and which gives an unearned handy to the fossil fuel industry.
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Algae farming is ridiculously expensive, also water intensive if done in open ponds.
Maybe with genetic engineering they can create some high conversion efficiency oil exuding microbes for bioreactors.
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Algae farming is ridiculously expensive, also water intensive if done in open ponds. Maybe with genetic engineering they can create some high conversion efficiency oil exuding microbes for bioreactors.
Transport seawater into the desert using thermal heat pipes. We figured out at Sandia NREL in the 1980s that a) you don't derive any benefit from engineering algae, the "right" algae for your conditions will simply dominate in the ponds and the growth rate is so much better when you just use whatever colonizes them that there's no point in tampering and b) that it could be profitable with the technology of the 80s with even lower crude prices than what we have now.
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And what do they do with all the salt?
Either dump it into a salt pan, or recover and use it. People pay good money for sea salt, and it also has many industrial uses even if you don't refine it.
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The problem is consistently:
* If you don't engineer your algae, your yield is terrible (and you have to remove vastly more water per unit fuel)
* If you do engineer your algae, your capex to exclude wild-types is terrible.
Everyone keeps trying to do algae biofuels. Everyone keeps failing horribly.
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Bioreactors don't care and glass isn't that expensive .... if they could get yields up to say 50% of PV level energy wise for bioreactors, it would be on level with hydrogen from PV. Harvesting is the problem, which is where the oil exuding species come in.
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Tell that to the endless sea of bankrupt algae biofuels companies.
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"Maybe with genetic engineering they can create some high conversion efficiency oil exuding microbes for bioreactors."
I didn't say it was feasible now.
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That is why we MUST stop BURNING IT. Using O&G for plasics, rubber, etc is not the issue. Burning it for energy is just plain stupid. Hell, if the GD goon squad/far lefties like Drinkypooo had not ran around screaming about nuclear energy in the 70s/80s, we would not have an issue today with AGW.
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Still need fuel, regardless of the cost of electricity.
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This has been worked on TO DEATH. I worked on this back in the 80s. It is great when doing high value products like Medicine, but for something as cheap as Oil/Gas? Nope. Hell, the stupid thing is, that fuel based on algae is already what we are getting; The oil/nat gas that we get are from algae. That is why we hit large reservoirs of it in past oceans. And yes, there is OIL AND OIL AND OIL AND
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At net zero it isn't competing against the status quo. It is competing against hydrogen, synthfuel and fossil&air-capture&sequestration.
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Re: Biofuel != Ethanol (Score:2)
Growing continuous corn for ethanol destroys soil diversity due to hardpan and synthetic fertilization which kills beneficial organisms in soil. It literally decreases yields and leads to what is essentially hydroponics in a dirt medium, which is why it is so scarcely energy positive. It takes too much energy to produce the fertilizer. It also compromises the micronutrient value of the food because those are depleted from soil as well, so you literally wind up with less nutritious food in the end. Your plan
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Ethanol is biofuel, but not all biofuel is ethanol.
I quickly searched for what proportion of biofuels are ethanol. Looking at the data here [eia.gov], ethanol is over 80% of US biofuel consumption. It's not a bad approximation to say biofuels are ethanol in the US.
Stop that (Score:2)
Burning food is bad practice
Generating food using fossil energy as fertilizer is bad practice
Misusing taxpayer money as subventions is bad practice
Burning food generated using fossil energy as fertilizer, and financing the whole scam with taxpayer subventions is worst case.
Stop that
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Burning food is bad practice
Yes, however, using ethanol to lower emissions from LICE vehicles makes sense. But that is likely a small fraction of the ethanol.
Generating food using fossil energy as fertilizer is bad practice
Sigh. We do not use fossil energy for fertilizer. We DO use Oil as fertilizer. We DO use fossil fuel to run tractors, etc. but that needs to change. But killing making fertilizer from Oil? Just plain stupid.
What should be happening is spraying the PLANT, not the ground. IOW,limit it to providing food for the plant and not for weeds.
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Ethanol is a terrible motor fuel on its own lack of merit, because it is hygroscopic and it's not good to put water into your fuel system.
Small amounts of ethanol in your fuel is a GOOD thing. It allows the water in your fuel to be burned. Using ethanol AS a fuel is a NIGHTMARE. Why? Well, you have no real science background so I doubt that you will understand this, but others will.
So the big issue is that burned alcohol form aldehydes. In fact, large amounts of them. You get things like CHO, otherwise known as Formaldehyde. Yes, the same t
Unpossible! Biofuel is Gaia friendly (Score:2)
So many heresy.
Surprised this isn't a bit more contentious.. (Score:3)
"About 40% of all corn grown in the US is used for ethanol production, and nearly half is used as animal feed."
So if I'm reading this correctly, presumably only about 10% of all corn grown in the US is actually eaten by humans..?
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"About 40% of all corn grown in the US is used for ethanol production, and nearly half is used as animal feed."
So if I'm reading this correctly, presumably only about 10% of all corn grown in the US is actually eaten by humans..?
Could be. I'm surprised about the 40% number. I knew we use a lot of corn to make ethanol but wasn't aware it was that much. I'm less surprised that half the corn we grow is used as animal feed.
I think this is just another good example of how little most of us know about agriculture in the US and the world. I think we imagine that most farmers produce products which show up at the local produce section. I expect that's a tiny portion of the industry.
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Hell, we make corn syrup. So, less than 10% of corn goes into sugar manufacturing along with feeding humans?
Hmmm.
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With that said, I am guessing that someone does not know about stats and just made them up.
Ethanol != all biofuels (Score:2)
I wondered how biodiesel hurt the environment.
Oh... it's that fake gas stuff (only). The one with worse mileage, that costs extra, and took food to make. Oh, and that some cars would die if they used without special hoses (why not just mandate them, and be done? You won't force them for 10-20 years anyway).
Interesting (Score:2)
I am guessing that they need money so are doing a push on the edges and hopes that goon squad followers will throw it at them.