Ethanol Craze

[The_Professor]

Also, XO, a solar water heater may take care of your hot water needs, but isn't that small potatoes compared to your TOTAL electricity needs?
   
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All a solar water heater would do would be to take care of some to all of my hot water needs. But these things are low-tech, simple, and have only a pump, and still, there is no one that will sell one for anything like a reasonable price. All the salespeople I spoke with were total flakes who did not know even as much as one could glean from a 1950's issue of Popular Mechanix.

Solar cells are expensive and the system is far more complicated. Again, I know the technology exists, but it doesn't exist here and now, and it should.

I just did a Google search and found some for around $1500. Does that seem unreasonable to you, XO?

[Xavier_Onassis]

Being as these are passive devices and the $1500 does not include t thanks. Eventually installation, and I am sure the guarantee ios invalid unless you pay their guys to install the thing, yes, that is a bit pricey. 

A standard electric water heater costs around $300, plus maybe $100-$150 installation. at $20 per month, it would take 45 months, or four hurricane seasons, for this thing to pay for itself. T^he most expensive component would be a water pump. That by itself could cost no more than $200.

But thanks. I suppose I will be looking into this again. Perhaps someone competent has decided to sell these.

[Plane]

http://www.macon.com/274/story/199366.html

Algae

Some varieties of algae are as much as 50 percent oil, and that oil can be converted into biodiesel or jet fuel. The biggest challenge is slashing the cost of production, which by one Defense Department estimate is running more than $20 a gallon.

"If you can get algae oils down below $2 a gallon, then you'll be where you need to be. And there's a lot of people who think you can," said Jennifer Holmgren, director of the renewable fuels unit of UOP LLC, an energy subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc.

Researchers are trying to figure out how to grow enough of the right strains of algae and how to extract the oil most efficiently. Over the past two years they've enjoyed an upsurge in funding from governments, the Pentagon, big oil companies, utilities and venture capital firms.

[kimba1]

but here the thing about deisel
 you need petroleum to make it
so no matter what your still using fossil feul
what the goal should be is to use as little as possible
how much algea deisel can be made from one gallon of petrol
this goes for all feuls.
no matter what we`re gonna be using petrol

[Xavier_Onassis]

but here the thing about deisel
 you need petroleum to make it
so no matter what your still using fossil feul
what the goal should be is to use as little as possible
how much algea deisel can be made from one gallon of petrol
this goes for all feuls.
no matter what we`re gonna be using petrol

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No, this is not true.

You make biodiesel from vegetable oil, methanol, and lye.This yields biodiesel, soap and glycerine.
Methanol can be distilled from cellulose, hence the name 'wood alcohol'
Lye can be made without using petroleum as well.

The fuel used in making algae could itself be made from algae.

[kimba1]

I meant you need petrol to power the device to make the deisel.
distilling require heat and heat come from petrol
no matter what your still using fossil feuls.

[Plane]

I meant you need petrol to power the device to make the diesel.
distilling require heat and heat come from petrol
no matter what your still using fossil fuels.

Heat can be from some other source , like previously processed biomass.

The real source for such a system would be the solar energy that the Algae would be concentrating.

Th Algae cold be grown in in glass panels and tubes covering the sides and roofs of large buildings.

Result?

Emerald city

[Xavier_Onassis]

I meant you need petrol to power the device to make the deisel.
distilling require heat and heat come from petrol
no matter what your still using fossil feuls.

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No, you don't need petroleum to power the device. There is no heat needed to make biodiesel from vegetable oil, other than the Sun, meaning the reaction between the lye, methanol and veggie oil takes place at room temperature.

Again: NO PETROLEUM REQUIRED. None, Zip, Nada, Bupkiss.

[kimba1]

I thought you need machines to process the stuff
methenol by corn takes 1 gallon of feul to make 2 gallon of methenol
cane is a 6 to 1 ratio
I got this from popular science
deisel would require processing,so that will need petrol wouldn`t it?

[Plane]

I thought you need machines to process the stuff
methenol by corn takes 1 gallon of feul to make 2 gallon of methenol
cane is a 6 to 1 ratio
I got this from popular science
deisel would require processing,so that will need petrol wouldn`t it?

You could use some , but the point would be to make a replacement that would really replace the Petrol.

At first we might use it as an ingredient to simplify the processing , but the more the cost of Petrolium rises the more practical it will be to substitute biomass derived fuel for all of petroliums roles.

This is not likely to reduce costs rather we will use the more expensive alternatives as the cheaper ones grow scarce .
 

[kimba1]

that the rub
are we even near replacing petrol
brazil is totally using ethenol as a car feul and even they still use petrol to process it
the info is from nov. issue of popular science
page 99 on the subject which is better corn or sugercane
funfact
1acre
corn=400gal of ethenol
sugercane=590 gal

but rememberr you can`t exactly grow cane in serious amounts in the U.S.
and corn can`t possibly produce enough to cover feul demands ever
the atrticle did say thier is research to make an enzymes to breakdown plant fibers
so maybe corncob and grass will be viable sources.

[Lanya]

Maybe it will come to pass that in the next few years, someone who is inventive and knows how to solve this dilemma will be saved by universal health care and will be alive to see the project through.

(Steps off soapbox)

Only thing "green" I've heard about locally is that our state highway department is going to start using beet juice as an additive to the brine it uses on icy and snowy streets. 
It is good down to -60, I think, and has a lower freezing temperature than the regular stuff they use.   
http://www.wksu.org/news/story/21649

[BT]

Maybe it will come to pass that in the next few years, someone who is inventive and knows how to solve this dilemma will be saved by universal health care and will be alive to see the project through.

Odds are anyone inventive and knows how to solve dilemmas is already insured.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Brazil is totally using ethenol as a car feul and even they still use petrol to process it
the info is from nov. issue of popular science
page 99 on the subject which is better corn or sugercane
funfact
1acre
corn=400gal of ethenol
sugercane=590 gal

but rememberr you can`t exactly grow cane in serious amounts in the U.S.
and corn can`t possibly produce enough to cover feul demands ever
the atrticle did say thier is research to make an enzymes to breakdown plant fibers
so maybe corncob and grass will be viable sources.

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Sugar cane could be grown in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, not to mention Cuba and the Dominican Republic.
Sugar can be made from beets, and those can be grown in Colorado and the Dakotas.

Brazil uses mostly bagasse (the dried squeezed-out cane) to heat the refinery process, npot petroleum.
Everyone who makes sugar uses bagasse.

Government subsidy of a patent-free  process to make ethanol from cellulose would be wise. This is how we managed to produce synthetic rubber during WWII, when the  trade with Malaysia was cut off by the Japanese, but we have not done this because the balls of the current government are in the pocket of Big Oil.

It is already possible to refine alcohol from cellulose. The problem is  coming up with a cost- efficient process,

[kimba1]

actually the bagasse would explain how they get 6gal. for 1gal of petrol.
but that process is not done with sugarbeets
the waste product from that is usually sold as livestock feed.
so it`s not gonna be used that way
not sure it`s really possible to totally not use petrol yet
bagasse is the heat source but what about the machines ?