Ethanol conversion?

clare, at, snyder, dot, ontario, dot, canada wrote:

> With a cellulose conversion process we could use fall leaves, straw,
> cornstalks, waste paper,sawdust, forestry waste, the grass cut from
> the sides of roadways, and all manner of other "waste" along with
> non-food crops like sawgrass.

Hi,

I agree w/ the concept...

However, in all these proposals we have a HUGE problem, called
"politics." And before we jump on the bandwagon of condemning all
politicians as evil or anything else that may be the popular "cause du
jour," let's look at the definition of the word politics as given me by
a poli sci professor many, many years ago: "Politics is the interaction
that occurs whenever TWO or more people get together to discuss an
issue." Notice when the process STARTS? At only TWO people. What we see
at the statehouse level is the end of the line, not the beginning.

Ok, let's apply that locally to the conversion process Clare proposes.
It's been tried... what happened?

Here in SoCal we have huge expanses of desert. Most of it is barely
habitable without imported water, imported electricity, etc., etc. In
other words, any "development" is an artificial environment created on a
basis of being supported externally. Quite a bit of that land is Indian
reservation land. Those of you familiar w/ the institution of Indian
reservations in the US may key in on the fact that means the US
government itself viewed that land as the worst of the worst when they
gave it to the Indians.

The Indians have turned the tables in some areas by building and running
casinos. These bring in BIG bucks. But the people who can look past
their noses realize the casinos operate essentially at the pleasure of
the governmental agencies that COULD take away the right to operate them
at any time, and have started to put some of those big bucks into other
"on reservation" ventures to make the tribes self-sustaining. I mention
"on reservation" as that's an important player in cutting thru certain
kinds of red tape.

One of them locally is a bio-mass electric generating station. SoCal
generates HUGE quantities of green waste--agricultural, commercial AND
personal--and disposal of it has become problematic as the population
has exploded. A solution was developed to help use some of it by
building this station. Using state of the art technologies, the green
waste is dried, pulverized into tiny bits and fed into a burner that
works similar to an oxygen-blast oven in a steel mill, the exhaust is
"scrubbed" so it's very clean, and the heat created is used to produce
steam to drive the electric generators.

Sounds like a win-win, doesn't it? Well, not so fast--let's get back to
the good professor and those TWO people. The plant had barely gone
online when the lawyers got into the picture. Seems a couple of the
non-Indian locals (remember where this plant is: pictures of the local
"settlements" are hardly disimilar to pictures of villages in Iraq. To
say these people live in a "hole" would be polite) started to complain
about the "smell" from the green waste as it was piled up to dry prior
to being processed (on their own, or "coached" by outside interests?
We'll probably never know for sure.) Then some environmentalist types
started to complain of the extra truck traffic bringing that waste in.
And on and on: it looked like a cash cow to someone if they just
complained loudly enough.

I don't know how these problems were resolved. I do know the plant is
still in operation, a fact I'd venture to guess is most likely because
it's on Indian res land and the "whiners" don't have the resources to
fight this at a federal level, but if it were on anything but
"protected" land, I'd predict it would NOT still be operating, IF it had
even been built in the first place.

Until we come to grips w/ the fact that everything that "looks good" up
front also has some "not so pretty" side effects at the other end, I
can't see us coming up w/ the solutions we need in the quantity we need.
I've mentioned population controls as being part of that solution. Part
of the reason I say that is simply because of the scale we're dealing
with. But the main reason is no matter HOW cute the baby looks, it STILL
produces dirty diapers!

In other words, there's no "have your cake and eat it, too" in the
solutions we're going to need... we go back to that pesky "Law of
Conservation of Matter" thing I woke up long enough to hear in that long
ago class and what do we find out? Mother Nature will NOT be bested!

Rick

On May 21, 4:36 am, Rick Courtright <rcourtri....DeleteThis@iname.com> wrote:
> Uncle Ben wrote:
> > Not to mention that with ethanol I pollute less, I cause less money to
> > flow to bad people, and I enjoy driving more, because I get higher
> > torque and higher horsepower.  My old 1999 OB goes 0 - 60 mph in under
> > 12.5 seconds.
>
> Hi,
>
> Well, I guess all that's left is to gather around the campfire and all
> sing "Kumbaya!"
>
> You pollute less? What were the emissions test results before the switch
> and what were they after? Were the emissions tested for "new" polluting
> compounds that could result from the burning of ethanol vs. gasoline?
>
> You cause less money to flow to bad people? Who ARE these bad people?
>
> You get higher torque and higher horsepower? What were the figures on
> both before the switch, and what are they afterward?
>
> You get a 0-60 time under 12.5 seconds? What was the time before the
> switch? What was the car rated for when it was new?
>
> What's that funny feeling in my shorts? Surely it's not someone trying
> to blow greenhouse gases up me bum?
>
> Not to belittle your efforts and whatever interesting results may come
> from them, but I haven't seen anything that really convinces me you've
> improved upon your previous lot in life. How 'bout some numbers?
>
> Rick

Finally there are some numbers to report -- not from me, an ordinary
motorist without a lab, but from a major car company. Saab has
produced some interesting flex-fuel cars:

http://www.saabbiopower.co.uk/saabBiopower/

They report that on E85, torque increases 16% and horsepower increases
20%, compared to gasoline. A sporty model, the Aero X, runs on pure
100% ethanol clocks 0-62 mph (that's 0-100 km/hr, the common metric
measure) of 4.9 seconds. Top speed is quoted at 155 mph.

These cars are not yet available in the US, I understand, but physics
and chemistry are international.