AVENTINE RENEW ENRGY (AVR)

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  • commenter
    RDMiller
    Aug 04 09:55 AM
    My Website
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    Objectivity:

    Do you think anyone can take your story of the "energy out to energy in" balance as being more scientifically valid than one done by Argonne National Labs and other scientific research facilities? I asked you not to simply create some personal opinion about this matter but to DOCUMENT with a scientific study by a reputable body. Since you didn't do that, it's becoming obvious you have a personal opinion about the energy balance, but nothing hard to support it. As such, your statements can't be taken seriously.

    You can start by going here to learn more about the facts behind cellulosic ethanol:

    www.coskata.com/AboutF...     Reply
  • commenter
    Objectivity
    Aug 04 09:41 AM
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    Mr. Miller, you are unfortunately quite wrong about my desires, and my objective view of the world we live in.

    First of all, I am quite certain that our current low nat-gas prices are to rise substantially, and so will the cost of using nat-gas as a "input" to creating some other "fuel", which is what I was referring to. Using a prime fuel like nat-gas to distill ethanol is foolhardy in the extreme... but with current tax-credits and absurd accounting, this is exactly what happens.

    It takes over 8 cubic feet of nat-gas to evaporate 1 gallon of water in an IDEAL system, unfortunately, if you understand Newton, you will realize that no such system would ever exist... the entire system, even if somehow placed in a vacuum (doing away with conductive losses) would still lose energy via infrared heat loss ... the most likely input of nat-gas in the current distillation of ethanol is estimated at 30 cubic feet nat-gas per gallon ethanol, the gas being valued calorically at over 30,000 btu. Unfortunately, ethanol contains less than 80,000 btu per gallon, so even if ALL OTHER INPUTS were provided by Angels with no human or resource inputs to consider, an EROEI of greater than 2.7 is IMPOSSIBLE if distillation techniques are anything "worldly".

    I'll dose out some more after you chew on that one for awhile.

    Reply
  • commenter
    fireball
    Aug 04 09:36 AM
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    a repeal? you never know what the clowns in d.c. will do next. i was not expecting obama to become an oil man. i watched the news with great amusement this weekend. so anything, no matter how ridiculous or absurd can come from the beltway. i mean instead of something that works as JACAMER suggests. JOE LOVSHE understands. Reply
  • commenter
    RDMiller
    Aug 04 09:23 AM
    My Website
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    Objectivity:

    Unfortunately, the facts really don't support much of anything you have said. To the extent you wish to refute what I am about to say, please document your statements.

    1. The latest studies on cellulosic ethanol production put the "energy out to energy in" balance at approximately 8:1. These are independent scientific analyses by organizations such as Argonne National Laboratory.

    2. To understand expected production costs, you can go here: thecesite.com/calculat...

    Your point about transportation costs is meaningless. Much of the work in the CE sector is in regards to using wood chips as a feedstock. Those costs are well known, as large volumes of wood chips are delivered every day to biomass energy facilities around the country... and all costs are obviously factored in.

    3. Not only is cellulosic ethanol a renewable fuel, it is considered one of very few potentially "carbon negative" fuels (meaning, it can reverse global warming). Solar, wind and hydro, for example, cannot replace this critical function. Please... before you respond to this and state that burning wood or using wood as a fuel contributes to greenhouse gases, DOCUMENT your statement with facts. You won't be able to. And please don't talk about corn ethanol. We're not discussing that. We're discussing cellulosic ethanol.

    Your statements are simply opinions of how you would like things to be to support some kind of agenda you have about renewable energy, but they are not supported by facts.

    All forms of renewable energy are vital to solving our energy problems. Natural gas... being a non-renewable... has a limited, short-term function to play in addressing this problem, but let's be clear that it is still a major contributor to greenhouse gases, is not renewable, is becoming more expensive by the day, and is controlled by a handful of corporations (including Mr. Pickens). If you think natural gas prices will remain low, I've got a bridge to sell you...     Reply
  • commenter
    Objectivity
    Aug 04 09:09 AM
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    Just a note about User 237607...

    The idea that algae would be used as feedstock for alcohol is fairly puzzling for someone "so well versed" in his subject matter.

    Algae can be nearly 40% kerogen type oil... it is a feedstock for synthetic diesel, not alcohol. The "green" remainder may be processed perhaps, but would be extraordinarily inefficient, IN COMPARISON TO THE BIODIESEL SO PRODUCED.

    If algal oil ever becomes a large scale alternative fuel, the wasted energy used in converting the "green residue" into alcohol would already have been obviated by the better use of that energy and investment in greater algae production... for more biodiesel.

    Think of it like scientific resource allocation, AFTER a breakthrough technology emerges... in this case large scales are needed for any solution to this overall fuel scarcity problem, but also if a large scale solution becomes a reality, other processes would now exist in a new paradigm.

    One more reason that the car of the future will most likely be powered by hybrid turbodiesel-electrics.     Reply
  • commenter
    Tim Plaehn
    Aug 04 09:05 AM
    My Website
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    Has anyone figured how much more energy farmers are using to harvest the same amount of corn that they harvested before ethanol became a major user of corn. I would guess that energy usage in the farm belt has not changed since the ethanol boom. The corn raised is just going for a different purpose. The same number of corn acreage is still being planted.

    Since this is a stock market blog: buy VeraSun Energy, VSE, enjoy the boom.

    Final note, at the present time Brazil has enough excess ethanol capacity to provide less than 10% of the U.S. demand and are already shipping most of their excess capacity to the U.S. It would take them several years to tear up enough rain forest to plant enough sugar and build enough plants to make a major dent in the U.S. usage.     Reply
  • commenter
    Objectivity
    Aug 04 08:47 AM
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    So much disinformation on ethanol that it just screams for some "Objectivity"...

    First of all, corn (or other higher rank feedstock) ethanol's extremely energy intensive distillation phase make the nonsense of "we can make ethanol for $1 a gallon" nearly impossible if nat-gas or other heat source fuel is even remotely priced near market costs of the recent past. And you can Fuggediboutit at todays prices.

    Secondly, pining away for "cellulosic" is missing some basic input costs likely to burst that particular bubble. The diesel fuel alone for transporting large volumes of "switchgrass"... or other feedstock to a processing plant probably eats up any net end value as an energy source, and let's try not to forget the laborers, irrigation pumping, and land cost as realistic inputs to true cost...

    The problem with all these "renewable" fuels is... they really aren't renewable. Without hydrocarbons as an accessory before the fact... or limitless fusion power, that is.

    You simply cannot distill large amounts of alcohol without massive heat inputs... from... (drumroll) cheap (read: hydrocarbon) fuels. Better to just use the nat-gas in the car engine in the first place... and eat the corn. T-Boone ain't dumb.

    I can hear the objections to this reasoning already... "Boy, it sure would be nice if something that didn't need massive distillation energy would be feasible", (and that is just what excited many about butanol)... or... "Boy, I'll bet some scientists already perfected this but the oil companies bought the patents"...

    But the reality is... To make bio-butanol or other higher order alcohol fuel (from non-hydrocarbon source) isn't any piece of cake either... witness the extremely difficult tasks in solving the solubility concentration/toxicity... problems. If it was easy we would already see it... maybe in a decade there might be a breakthru making EROEI a non-issue, but knowing science and engineering, and remembering Newton's thermodynamic truths about TANSTAAFL, I have to doubt it.     Reply
  • commenter
    john s.
    gordon
    Aug 04 08:28 AM
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    yes admit brazilian EtOH duty free.

    corn-to-ethanol is a method of converting natural gas to motor fuel since NG is used to make hydrogen for fertilizer manufacture. you can do the same thing using NG-to-MeOH and Mobil's MeOH-to-high octane gasoline process,
    > jack     Reply
  • commenter
    RDMiller
    Aug 04 07:06 AM
    My Website
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    1. Pay attention to what User 237607 has posted. This person has studied this issue well. If anyone wishes to refute what User 237607 has said, you should document your statements. PA007 attempted to refute a small portion of the statements by pointing to a study from three years ago. This is senseless. That information is completely outdated.

    2. Redbaron... it is a weak argument to state that research into cellulosic ethanol was not completely successful in the 70's, therefore it will never be. That's a silly argument. There are literally 100 times more researchers and research dollars doing into cellulosic ethanol now than there was 30 years ago. Tremendous progress has been made. There's a reason why the top venture capital firms in the world have invested over $500 million into this sector in just the past 18 months. CE facilities are now being built in several locations and costs of production are estimated to be $1 per gallon. Expect this to be successful.

    3. Much of the work being done in this sector is based on using wood as a feedstock. If one actually takes the time to figure out how much biomass can be produced sustainably from forests and from fast growing "energy" plantations, the potential energy contribution is enormous. Again, there's a good reason why so much money is flowing into this work from many very smart people. One of those reasons is because it's clear that the only way to replace the oil used in plastics and chemicals is to get it from biomass. You can't make plastic from solar, wind or hydro power.     Reply
  • commenter
    Joe Lovshe
    Aug 04 06:54 AM
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    Anytime the government is involed with the business world the business world will suffer. If the government back in the 1920's wanted to ensure the growth and expansion of the telephone we would still be turning a crank to get the operator on our telephone. Government employees are the worst of the worst and their "helping hand" simply retards business growth. Reply
  • commenter
    David White
    Aug 04 04:57 AM
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    Redbaron: The US government gave out $385 million in 2007 for research on cellulsic ethanol. The government and a lot of other people seem to think the prospects for efficient cellulosic ethanol production are very real. I did mention that the "promise" of cellulosic ethanol was a possibly good reason not to kill the corn ethanol business. There is a lot of infrastructure that would be destroyed. This would then have to be rebuilt when cellulosic ethanol became truly viable. I think this is a valid point. Another point is that cellulosic ethanol apparently causes less pollution than gasoline (as opposed to the made from corn variety, which cause more pollution). Further people are talking about harvesting switchgrass crops in order to make cellulosic ethanol. This may indeed be the first step. However, the real future appeal of this to me is just using people's garden trimmings. Most cities already collect these each week. They would only have to change the delivery points to ethanol plants (or railyards for transport). This process would mean we could produce a lot of ethanol for very little effort.

    I should also note that they currently have two processes to produce cellulosic ethanol. One is fermentation. The other is gasification. Currently both of these are relatively expensive. However, I don't find it hard to believe that enginuity will find a way to make it cheaper.     Reply
  • commenter
    Leistonlegen
    d
    Aug 04 12:53 AM
    My Website
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    Everyone compains about using corn for ethanol production, and it being the cause of the rising food prices... why do we have so much corn in our diets is the question we should be asking. corn syrup and by products of corn are a leading cause of diabeties and obeisity in the US. I say cut a majority of corn out of our diets and let it help replace oil. Reply
  • commenter
    PA007
    Aug 03 10:55 PM
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    Here comes a shill for the ethanol industry - User 237607

    > creating a higher-quality animal feed than the original corn.

    Maybe we can do that with our wheat and rice and oats - make ethanol and eat leftovers and become leaner animals and drive ethanol filled cars. Maybe even drink some of that given the completely made up arguments.
    Look at the work of UC Berkeley scientists instead of this bizarre comment to get some facts: berkeley.edu/news/medi...

    Reply
  • commenter
    User 237607
    Aug 03 09:25 PM
    My Website
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    Please listen to both sides of this debate before you rule out ethanol as part of the energy solution.
    David Blume is the best source of information I have found that gives you up to date detailed info on the ethanol debate not a 30 second sound bites from 25 year old studies done with outdated equipment to make ethanol look bad and oil look good.

    With alcohol fuel, you can become energy-independent, reverse global warming, and survive Peak Oil in style. Alcohol fuel is "liquid sunshine" and can't be controlled by transnational corporations. You can produce alcohol for less than $1 a gallon, using a wide variety of plants and waste products, from algae to stale donuts. It's a much better fuel than gasoline, and you can use it in your car, right now. You can even use alcohol to generate electricity. Alcohol fuel production is ecologically sustainable, revitalizes farms and communities, and creates huge new opportunities for small-scale businesses. Its byproducts are clean and valuable. Alcohol has a proud history and a vital future.

    To learn more, watch the Five-Minute Video www.permaculture.com/ by ethanol expert David Blume he hits many of the high points as to why alcohol fuel is the smart, sustainable alternative energy solution, in this mind-opening 5-minute version of a longer interview (conducted by Wayne Garcia of Portland, Oregon, Fox 12 KPTV, in October 2007).
    David Blume’s Two-Minute Summary www.alcoholcanbeagas.c... .

    Busting the Ethanol Myths
    www.alcoholcanbeagas.c...

    Myth #1: It Takes More Energy to Produce Ethanol than You Get from It!
    Most ethanol research over the past 25 years has been on the topic of energy returned on energy invested (EROEI). Public discussion has been dominated by the American Petroleum Institute’s aggressive distribution of the work of Cornell professor David Pimentel and his numerous, deeply flawed studies. Pimentel stands virtually alone in portraying alcohol as having a negative EROEI—producing less energy than is used in its production.
    In fact, it’s oil that has a negative EROEI. Because oil is both the raw material and the energy source for production of gasoline, it comes out to about 20% negative. That’s just common sense; some of the oil is itself used up in the process of refining and delivering it (from the Persian Gulf, a distance of 11,000 miles in tanker travel).
    The most exhaustive study on ethanol’s EROEI, by Isaias de Carvalho Macedo, shows an alcohol energy return of more than eight units of output for every unit of input—and this study accounts for everything right down to smelting the ore to make the steel for tractors.
    But perhaps more important than EROEI is the energy return on fossil fuel input. Using this criterion, the energy returned from alcohol fuel per fossil energy input is much higher. In a system that supplies almost all of its energy from biomass, the ratio of return could be positive by hundreds to one.

    Myth #2: There Isn’t Enough Land to Grow Crops for Both Food and Fuel!
    According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. has 434,164,946 acres of “cropland”—land that is able to be worked in an industrial fashion (monoculture). This is the prime, level, and generally deep agricultural soil. In addition to cropland, the U.S. has 939,279,056 acres of “farmland.” This land is also good for agriculture, but it’s not as level and the soil not as deep. Additionally, there is a vast amount of acreage—swamps, arid or sloped land, even rivers, oceans, and ponds—that the USDA doesn’t count as cropland or farmland, but which is still suitable for growing specialized energy crops.
    Of its nearly half a billion acres of prime cropland, the U.S. uses only 72.1 million acres for corn in an average year. The land used for corn takes up only 16.6% of our prime cropland, and only 7.45% of our total agricultural land.
    Even if, for alcohol production, we used only what the USDA considers prime flat cropland, we would still have to produce only 368.5 gallons of alcohol per acre to meet 100% of the demand for transportation fuel at today’s levels. Corn could easily produce this level—and a wide variety of standard crops yield up to triple this. Plus, of course, the potential alcohol production from cellulose could dwarf all other crops.

    Myth #3: Ethanol’s an Ecological Nightmare!
    You’d be hard-pressed to find another route that so elegantly ties the solutions to the problems as does growing our own energy. Far from destroying the land and ecology, a permaculture ethanol solution will vastly improve soil fertility each year.
    The real ecological nightmare is industrial agriculture. Switching to organic-style crop rotation will cut energy use on farms by a third or more: no more petroleum-based herbicides, pesticides, or chemical fertilizers. Fertilizer needs can be served either by applying the byproducts left over from the alcohol manufacturing process directly to the soil, or by first running the byproducts through animals as feed.

    Myth #4: It’s Food Versus Fuel—We Should Be Growing Crops for Starving Masses, Not Cars!
    Humankind has barely begun to work on designing farming as a method of harvesting solar energy for multiple uses. Given the massive potential for polyculture yields, monoculture-study dismissals of ethanol production seem silly when viewed from economic, energetic, or ecological perspectives.
    Because the U.S. grows a lot of it, corn has become the primary crop used in making ethanol here. This is supposedly controversial, since corn is identified as a staple food in poverty-stricken parts of the world. But 87% of the U.S. corn crop is fed to animals. In most years, the U.S. sends close to 20% of its corn to other countries. While it is assumed that these exports could feed most of the hungry in the world, the corn is actually sold to wealthy nations to fatten their livestock. Plus, virtually no impoverished nation will accept our corn, even when it is offered as charity, due to its being genetically modified and therefore unfit for human consumption.
    Also, fermenting the corn to alcohol results in more meat than if you fed the corn directly to the cattle. We can actually increase the meat supply by first processing corn into alcohol, which only takes 28% of the starch, leaving all the protein and fat, creating a higher-quality animal feed than the original corn.

    Myth #5: Big Corporations Get All Those Ethanol Subsidies, and
    Taxpayers Get Nothing in Return!
    Between 1968 and 2000, oil companies received subsidies of $149.6 billion, compared to ethanol’s paltry $116.6 million. The subsidies alcohol did receive have worked extremely well in bringing maturity to the industry. Farmer-owned cooperatives now produce the majority of alcohol fuel in the U.S. Farmer-owners pay themselves premium prices for their corn and then pay themselves a dividend on the alcohol profit.
    The increased economic activity derived from alcohol fuel production has turned out to be crucial to the survival of noncorporate farmers, and the amounts of money they spend in their communities on goods and services and taxes for schools have been much higher in areas with an ethanol plant. Plus, between $3 and $6 in tax receipts are generated for every dollar of ethanol subsidy. The rate of return can be much higher in rural communities, where re-spending within the community produces a multiplier factor of up to 22 times for each alcohol fuel subsidy dollar.

    Myth #6: Ethanol Doesn’t Improve Global Warming! In Fact, It Pollutes the Air!
    Alcohol fuel has been added to gasoline to reduce virtually every class of air pollution. Adding as little as 5–10% alcohol can reduce carbon monoxide from gasoline exhaust dramatically. When using pure alcohol, the reductions in all three of the major pollutants—carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and hydrocarbons—are so great that, in many cases, the remaining emissions are unmeasurably small. Reductions of more than 90% over gasoline emissions in all categories have been routinely documented for straight alcohol fuel.
    It is true that when certain chemicals are included in gasoline, addition of alcohol at 2–20% of the blend can cause a reaction that makes these chemicals more volatile and evaporative. But it’s not the ethanol that’s the problem; it’s the gasoline.
    Alcohol carries none of the heavy metals and sulfuric acid that gasoline and diesel exhausts do. And straight ethanol’s evaporative emissions are dramatically lower than gasoline’s, no more toxic than what you’d find in the air of your local bar.
    As for global warming, the production and use of alcohol neither reduces nor increases the atmosphere’s CO2. In a properly designed system, the amount of CO2 and water emitted during fermentation and from exhaust is precisely the amount of both chemicals that the next year’s crop of fuel plants needs to make the same amount of fuel once again.
    Alcohol fuel production actually lets us reduce carbon dioxide emissions, since the growing of plants ties up many times more carbon dioxide than is created in the production and use of the alcohol. Converting from a hydrocarbon to a carbohydrate economy could quickly reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide.

    Reply
  • commenter
    jacamar
    Aug 03 07:13 PM
    Is the Ethanol Mandate Likely to be Repealed? [view article]
    If we would eliminate the tarrifs on imported ethanol, Brazil is the best choice for imported ethanol if you don't mind converting tropical forests to row sugar cane. As for PBR and I don't mean "Blue Ribbon. Have owned it for about 4 years. Great investment. Lots of offshore oil and ethanol investment to boot. Also don't have the negative climate conditions tha the Gulf of Mexico has, nor the politics of the Middle East or Venz. Reply
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