NationStates Jolt Archive

If it isn't one thing, it's another. Turns out that the way to save on fossil fuels is to mix ethanol with them. But that cloutd turns out to have a darker lining. The production of ethanol requires enormous amounts of water. That has to come from somewhere. The first cut is that it will come from the same systems that are supplying our drinking water. Around here, and certainly in other parts of the country, that means draining lakes and aquifers that are already stressed.

This isn't the kind of alternative energy we need. It's like replacing high cost health care with the rationed shortages of socialized medicine.

What sorts of alternative energy will really be a benefit? Or are there undesirable side effects to all of them?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060619/ap_on_bi_ge/ethanol_and_water_4

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - City officials in Champaign and Urbana took notice when they heard that an ethanol plant proposed nearby would use about 2 million gallons of water per day, most likely from the aquifer that also supplies both cities.

"There was concern about impacting a pretty valuable resource," said Matt Wempe, a city planner for Urbana. "It should raise red flags."

I still think that in the long run, solar and wind are going to be the answers--it's just getting to that long run tha's going to be a bitch. And since, as humans, we tend to look at stopgap answers as permanent ones, I sometimes wonder if we'll ever get there.

I still think that in the long run, solar and wind are going to be the answers--it's just getting to that long run tha's going to be a bitch. And since, as humans, we tend to look at stopgap answers as permanent ones, I sometimes wonder if we'll ever get there.

Once we have consumed the stopgaps, we get serious about renewable sources of energy. Not before.

PS: I'm a great proponent of nuclear power.
Every ounce of uranium that is consumed and destroyed in reactors doesn't turn up as a bomb later on.

Earth! Wind! Fire! Water! Heart!

Go Planet!

But yeah, I think Bogmarsh hit the nail on the head. First we rape nuclear. Then we look to sustainable energy.

I presume you mean reap nuclear, otherwise you seem a bit gung ho and frankly deranged.

I'm mostly considering gasoline replacements when I think about renewable and alternative energy. The hybrids have a lot of promise when you think about some of the nearly available technology. There is quite a bit of research into Ultracapacitors.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/Maxwell_supercapacitor_MC2600_series_2600F.jpg/350px-Maxwell_supercapacitor_MC2600_series_2600F.jpg
These caps can store 2600 farads. Back when I was an undergraduate, a capacitor about the size of a 55 gallon drum was needed to store 1 farad. Technology is amazing.

If you couple up a few of these to a storage battery, you have a long-lived source of constant voltage. Enough to drive an electric motor. Plus, the caps charge quickly. That means that recovering energy from kinetic motion will be more efficient.

The missing link is that a small motor will be required to charge the caps, much like a diesel motor provides electricity in locomotives. Fuel? Maybe biodiesel.

I still think that in the long run, solar and wind are going to be the answers--it's just getting to that long run tha's going to be a bitch. And since, as humans, we tend to look at stopgap answers as permanent ones, I sometimes wonder if we'll ever get there.
Orbital solar platforms, better designed fission plants (that destroy nuclear waste in the process of operation), and eventually, fusion. These will meet residential and industrial needs.

None of this solves the portable energy problem.

Corn ethanol is a joke. It's energy-inefficient, wastes water, and is totally uncompetitive with gasoline or biodiesel without massive subsidies. It's a handout to the corn lobby that will only result in higher prices for corn, wasted water and fossil fuels, and wasted billions in tax dollars. We're not going to achieve energy independence with corn ethanol, and we're only going to pay for it with environmental damage and more pollution.

This is totally unlike the next-generation cellulosic ethanol, which will be a superior fuel to gasoline even without subsidies and could replace easily 50-60% of our gasoline demand alone, without any other alternatives. Cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel are promising technologies, and plug in hybrids/fuel cells and the like are also viable. There are numerous technologies superior to and more efficient than corn ethanol, yet they are being neglected due to the power of lobbyists and Midwestern politicians.

We're better off putting money in to these programs and other viable ones like alternative power rather than wasting money on what is tantamount to another handout to farmers and the corn lobby. In some ways, though, this is a good thing because these technologies are being developed by the market relatively free from subsidies and are becoming competitive; they're entering the market now and can compete with corn ethanol directly, so eventually these superior market-driven solutions will emerge as dominant.

This is totally unlike the next-generation cellulosic ethanol, which will be a superior fuel to gasoline even without subsidies and could replace easily 50-60% of our gasoline demand alone, without any other alternatives. Cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel are promising technologies, and plug in hybrids/fuel cells and the like are also viable. There are numerous technologies superior to and more efficient than corn ethanol, yet they are being neglected due to the power of lobbyists and Midwestern politicians.

We do way too much subsidizing. Why would the farm lobby want to maintain the current ethanol, rather than moving to better solutions? Aren't the next-generation fuels you mention still crop-based? Bio-diesel certainly is.

I still think that in the long run, solar and wind are going to be the answers--it's just getting to that long run tha's going to be a bitch. And since, as humans, we tend to look at stopgap answers as permanent ones, I sometimes wonder if we'll ever get there.

We've done it before, and I think we can do it again. Already, wind power is the main form of new power generation ahead of natural gas and coal. That means most new power is not fossil fuels, but renewable energy. The potential of these technologies and others has barely started to be tapped; it's way beyond the scale of anything possible with fossil fuels.

Solar power is really promising for heating water and homes, which are a major source of natural gas consumption. It's also good because it can be put on individual houses, turning our suburbs in to massive power plants that can support themselves or transmit power to where it's needed. The best thing is that both of these are competitive on a MWh basis with coal and natural gas. They're both viable and powerful, and are only going to get bigger. This is an exciting time in alternative energy, and I think it is a permanent solution for real this time rather than just a stopgap measure in response to high oil prices. Unlike the 70's, the energy return and economics of alternatives work at any price of oil or gas.

Put it in perspective: every 12 hours, the Earth gets enough solar energy to surpass all of the energy from fossil fuels generated in human history. That's on Earth, not in space or on the moon. And that's only one source of renewable energy.

Once we have consumed the stopgaps, we get serious about renewable sources of energy. Not before.
I'd prefer to get into renewable energy right now, so that we can make something decent before the oil, gas and coal runs out and we have a minor dark age (no pun intended).
PS: I'm a great proponent of nuclear power.
It's crap. Face it.
Every ounce of uranium that is consumed and destroyed in reactors doesn't turn up as a bomb later on.
Those intentions are noble, but the facts of the matter speak differentely.

Uranium is not 'consumed and destroyed' in reactors, it's turned into a different form.

And radioactive waste is very, very dangerous for thousands, nay millions of years.

We still have no way to dispose of any kind of nuclear waste at all. All we can do is put it in a box, apologise to future generations and put it underground or put it in the sea and try to ignore the fact that it's there.

We do way too much subsidizing. Why would the farm lobby want to maintain the current ethanol, rather than moving to better solutions? Aren't the next-generation fuels you mention still crop-based? Bio-diesel certainly is.

No, actually. Crops aren't needed for the feedstock for the next-gen biofuels. The new generation of biodiesel technology can be produced from sewage or algae, and cellulosic ethanol can be produced from anything with cellulose in it. These technologies don't require crops to produce, and that is why they will not support them in favor of traditional corn ethanol.

Plus, biodiesel can be made on-site almost instantly from vegetable oils, so farmers would not have to sell their crops to another company to produce fuel. Companies like ADM would lose a lot of money on the sector, so some of the opposition comes from the corporate side rather than the farmers. These technologies aren't being suppressed, though. They're economic enough to grow on their own, and will be entering the market by 2010 at the latest...corn ethanol's days are numbered unless a dramatic breakthrough occurs.

I'd prefer to get into renewable energy right now, so that we can make something decent before the oil, gas and coal runs out and we have a minor dark age (no pun intended).

Well, oil is the only one we have to worry about right now. The good thing is that oil is used for only 9% of our electricity generation, so it could be replaced or eliminated through conservation right now. Most of it is concentrated in the OPEC nations anyway. Natural gas and coal still have decades or even centuries of reserves; they're being replaced by alternatives because the alternatives are cheaper and independent of fuel prices.

We won't face a dark age, but we'll face inflation, recession, and likely depression if we don't do anything. Oil probably has between 10 and 20 years left before it peaks and begins to decline, but that's a lot of time to prepare even at the speed of the market.

And radioactive waste is very, very dangerous for thousands, nay millions of years. We still have no way to dispose of any kind of nuclear waste at all. All we can do is put it in a box, apologise to future generations and put it underground or put it in the sea and try to ignore the fact that it's there.

Reprocessing technology is changing that; it's only hundreds of years now instead of millions or thousands. The main issue with nuclear is the cost to build the reactors; once they're running, they are a great source of electricity and are perfect load stabilizers in place of natural gas or coal but are very expensive to get off of the ground.

No, actually. Crops aren't needed for the feedstock for the next-gen biofuels. The new generation of biodiesel technology can be produced from sewage or algae, and cellulosic ethanol can be produced from anything with cellulose in it. These technologies don't require crops to produce, and that is why they will not support them in favor of traditional corn ethanol.

Plus, biodiesel can be made on-site almost instantly from vegetable oils, so farmers would not have to sell their crops to another company to produce fuel. Companies like ADM would lose a lot of money on the sector, so some of the opposition comes from the corporate side rather than the farmers. These technologies aren't being suppressed, though. They're economic enough to grow on their own, and will be entering the market by 2010 at the latest...corn ethanol's days are numbered unless a dramatic breakthrough occurs.
2010 isn't all that far off. I guess the best that can happen is that the corn ethanol production doesn't cause more problems that it solves. Unfortunately, planning ahead, past the next election, has never been a strong suit of any politician.

Ahem...
I am about to take a position that may seem flawed to many people who think that they keep up with this sort of thing, but with a little research wil actually prove to be correct.

Let me explain.

There Is No Shortage Of Water

Indeed, Earth's surface is more than 70% covered in water.

"But most of it is SALTY, you can't drink SALTY water."

That's an excellent point, but you can desalinize water :eek: and despite what you may have heard, desalinization on a useful scale can be accomplished cheeply and efficiently using clean and abundant energy.

Here's the gist of this wonderful water desalinizationt echnique:
Water evaporates...
Salt, even salt dissolved in water, and even those minrals and what not that aren't really salt but are disolved in what is normally called 'salt water' does not evaporate...
after that, I believe the solution to our so called 'water crisis' becomes obvious, we don't even have to clean up grey and black water (water that has already been used that is not normally treated for re-use, but is rather discaded), despite the fact that every city with a municipal water purification facility (every where there's running water) already has the capaility of recycling grey and black water (which would greatly reduce the actual amount of water those municipal systems use.)

Now all we have to do is find distribute water to areas without municipal or other water supplies.
and once there's constant access to clean water, you can also Irrigate and grow crops.
It's been estimated that it would take less money than was spent on the Karina recovery to give water to every nation on the planet that doesn't already have it.
For less than 10 billion dollars, we can end the (non existant) water crisis, and the very real world hunger crisis, all in one go.
Man, I'm good.

Ahem...
I am about to take a position that may seem flawed to many people who think that they keep up with this sort of thing, but with a little research wil actually prove to be correct.

Let me explain.

There Is No Shortage Of Water

Indeed, Earth's surface is more than 70% covered in water.

"But most of it is SALTY, you can't drink SALTY water."

That's an excellent point, but you can desalinize water :eek: and despite what you may have heard, desalinization on a useful scale can be accomplished cheeply and efficiently using clean and abundant energy.

Here's the gist of this wonderful water desalinizationt echnique:
Water evaporates...
Salt, even salt dissolved in water, and even those minrals and what not that aren't really salt but are disolved in what is normally called 'salt water' does not evaporate...
after that, I believe the solution to our so called 'water crisis' becomes obvious, we don't even have to clean up grey and black water (water that has already been used that is not normally treated for re-use, but is rather discaded), despite the fact that every city with a municipal water purification facility (every where there's running water) already has the capaility of recycling grey and black water (which would greatly reduce the actual amount of water those municipal systems use.)

Now all we have to do is find distribute water to areas without municipal or other water supplies.
and once there's constant access to clean water, you can also Irrigate and grow crops.
It's been estimated that it would take less money than was spent on the Karina recovery to give water to every nation on the planet that doesn't already have it.
For less than 10 billion dollars, we can end the (non existant) water crisis, and the very real world hunger crisis, all in one go.
Man, I'm good.
Evaporation is too slow, too difficult to scale, and other methods cost too much in terms of energy, mooting the point.

Au Contraire, enhanced evaporation is both fast enough, and scaleable. (Enhanced Evaporations means doing tricky little things like using very shallow evaporation ponds to maximize surface area, and using solar energy via mirrors/lenses/solar cells to maximize heat energy in the evaporation ponds.)

I say that we should make more ethanol, make our automobiles 100% ethanol vehicles, and make the stuff at the pumps 100% ethanol. This will be infinitely awesome, because those of us who are not 21 yet can just go to the pump and purchase some fresh moonshine. Yepper, that's all that ethanol is, moonshine. And I like moonshine.

2010 isn't all that far off. I guess the best that can happen is that the corn ethanol production doesn't cause more problems that it solves. Unfortunately, planning ahead, past the next election, has never been a strong suit of any politician.

Thankfully, it isn't the politicians that run our economy. The cost of subsidizing ethanol is getting higher and higher as the cost rises and more economic competitiors enter the market. Eventually, they'll be forced to give up because the sheer cost of subsidies will be too much to bear.