MAY 26

You mean Diesel?

Ethanol C2H5OH, produces two greenhouse gases, CO2 and H2O when burned. This is the bottom line. Please repeat after me: When ethanol is burned it produces greenhouse gases. We need to eliminate greenhouse gases.

Glenn,

H20 is a greenhouse gas, but it's highly transient in the atmosphere, since it precipitates readily. Moreover, since 71% of the earth's surface is covered with the stuff.

The real greenhouse problem with corn ethanol is that the commercial production of corn relies heavily on the use of nitrogen-based fertilizer, primarily ammonia which is produced using fossil fuels, specifically methane.

Edit: since 71% of the earth's surface is covered with the stuff, it's pretty much unavoidable.

Great to see new technology in the works. Thanks for the article. Hey Ethanol Carbon Footprint, when you breathe you emit CO2 and H2O. I'm sure that your carbon footprint is something you are very concerned about. Do us all a favor and hold your breath for a while.

Yes, Bruno we emit CO2 and H2O, and this is the one of the arguments climate change deniers use! The fact is, we are needlessly putting enormous quatities of extra CO2 and H2O into the atmosphere with combustion of hydrocarbons. This would not be necessary if we used our creativity to develop alternatives to hydrocarbon combustion, and used our ethics to follow what's best for the common good, instead of being tempted by the fossil fuel and industrial lobbies.

Can't agree more with Glenn. Burning **anything** = CO2 = bad for the environment. Except for burning H2, which I'm no sure whether it would be its best use.

Ethanol does not come from fossils, neither does biodiesel. The CO2 that is released when these fuels are burned is part of what could be a carbon-neutral process with further development. The big CO2 problem stems from all the CO2 that had been previously sequestered underground being released into the atmosphere (petroleum, natrual gas, and all of the refined products). The problem does not come from people burning crops.

Why does no one ever remember the Carbon Cycle or the Conservation of Mass when ethanol is considered? The carbon in ethanol comes from the corn. The corn gets the carbon from the atmosphere. We know, from the Conservation of Mass, that matter can be neither created nor destroyed. This means that one atom of carbon is always in existence as an atom of carbon.

True, the CO2 released by ethanol is a greenhouse gas. But, it is in tern absorbed by next year's crop of corn. Is it just me, or does everyone forget their grade-school science the second they begin a discussion on biofuels?

The article also mentions that biofuels are a temporary solution until we get to better battery and fuel cell technology. I agree with this, to a point. One of the problems we have with oil is that it is our primary energy source. This allows oil companies to take advantage of their market domination. If we have a variety of fuel sources, this would stimulate competition and keep prices low. Also, reliance on one source would be minimized so, if something were to go wrong and disrupt the supply of energy, we would still have a reliable source of fuel.

Besides, electric and fuel cell technology are good, but not the best solution for everything. Other than being dirty and in nonrenewable, oil was great. It had many uses, was convenient and so on. If we operate on a multi fuel society, we can use different fuels in different applications to which they are better suited.

I would like to introduce Eco Village. This is just what its name implies - a Green Ecosystem Carbon Crop Biomass Community, which offers its contract participants a "New Environmental Carbon Economy Real Estate Opportunity" through the growing of Biomass and the sale and distribution of the EternaGreen™ BioChar

HeadTater, the carbon absorbed during the corn growth and the carbon emitted during combustion might be considered a cycle and carbon-neutral. However, as was pointed out earlier on, the fertilizers needed to grow the corn are not carbon neutral, nor are the processing plants to produce the ethanol.

It's like with hydrogen. Hydrogen doesn't produce CO2, however, more often than not, it's origins are fossil hydrocarbons.

Much of the discussion treats corn-based ethanol as a negative - and in many ways it is. But that belies the point that corn-based ethanol should merely be a transition fuel toward cellulosic ethanol, which will remove the link between food crops and fuel crops and open up what today is agricultural waste to being used as a fuel source. Furthermore, cellulosic ethanol can also be produced from native grasses, like the switch grass that grows across the prairies of the US. These grasses grow without the assistance of fossil-fuel produced fertilizers. Finally, there are renewable energy approaches to producing hydrogen, as is currently being done on this military base in Hawaii:

http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123150314

Cellulosic ethanol is in our future. Right now, there is no reason to use corn for ethanol. In his book "Alcohol can be a gas," David Blume lists 30 different feedstocks for ethanol production, including cattails. Most of the negative press on ethanol comes from the petroleum industry, which would hate for people to realize they could make their own fuel. Ethanol needn't displace food crops or forest. If done intelligently, we could end our dependence on oil tomorrow, and solve the global warming problem at the same time. Of course, with we humans, that's a big "If". Alas.

Question: will the Ricardo cars be available in the U.S.? I'm planning to convert my Subaru to 100% ethanol, but these new engines sound like an even better way to go.

Storing electrical energy is always going to have its limits. Even today, we have battery packs that move a heavy vehicle at highway speeds for about 20-40 miles, but even if we double, triple, quadruple, or tentuple that amount, it's only a one-way vacation car-ride.

Electric cars with range extended electricity generation on-board, are going to be the transition. If you've seen any of those CSX train commercials and know anything about diesel-electric engines, you know this is how they are so energy efficient. The Internal Combustion Engine only does one thing. Make electricity. The electric motors do the hard work of acceleration and forward motion because they are more efficient at this. The ICE just makes the electricity and it can do this at the same relative RPM. No variable RPM and torque loads to waste that energy.

Range Extended Electric Vehicles are the only way that the American public (quite frankly any public, even the ones with itty bitty towns) is going to take on the financial burden of a loan to buy an electric vehicle. I don't want to remember to charge my car up every night. I can barely remember to take out the trash every day. I also don't want to leave my car in the driveway when I go on vacation, just because the silly batteries only take me 20, 40, 100, 200, 400, or even 600 miles. Even a 1,000 mile range would mean that I would have to completely constrain my trip planning to places that I could stop to charge for a few if not several hours. Maybe Google could cook us up an electric car vacation trip planner map with all the benevolent charging stations that will let EV owners sit in there parking lot for a few hours to recharge.

On the other hand, Range Extended Electric Vehicles will let me own an electric car, now, and still let me go to the gas station when I feel like it. When enough of us own Range Extended Electric Vehicles then we will begin asking our cities, counties, shopping centers, employers, etc. where we can plug in our car to save on gas. Then the grid will become feasible.

Pure electric car advocates try to put the cart in front of the horse. They want to build out huge charging grids, hoping that people will notice that electrical outlet when they park, or be jealous of the "special" parking spaces up front, and then go out to buy an electric car that can barely get them to work and won't get them home if they don't charge up during the day. This "green angst" is supposed to make consumers buy these secondary EVs that definitely can't take the family on vacation or even a business trip or weekend get away. We'll have the burden of our "normal" car and our "electric car" just to "participate" in the "green revolution".

Range Extended Electric Vehicles that can fill up at any gas station, are the transitional key that America needs. This is where biofuels will work together with Range Extended Electric Vehicles. Imagine flavors of the Chevy Volt with a Flex Fuel HCCI generator. Relegating the Internal Combustion Engine to electricity production is the most efficient thing that America can do right now. When batteries improve, or Super Ultra-Capacitors emerge from development, or Fuel Cells and Hydrogen replace the "liquid fuel grid", or some super plant is found to produce ultra-high ethanol yields then the electric car base will already be in place.

Any energy source can make electricity, but we need to move to and perceive electricity as the energy carrier, not the fuel itself.

I don't mean to be a stick-in-the-mud, but how about we get back to the subject. Into what kind of vehicle is this 3.2L V6 being inserted, or it is still a bench test? What kind of MPG is being acheived/extrapolated? Information, not pontification, please.

Ethanol should not even be a transitional technology. The problem with it is not in its' environmental impact but rather in the fact that it burns food. Because Western Companies are suddenly buying huge quantities of these foods from overseas we are seeing people from poorer nations unable to afford food and therefore starving to death. We saw it in Hati last year and we will continue to see it as long as we use there food to get us around

looks technical but hopefully it works