We also need to look at the total cost to put that gallon in a fuel tank...
With petroleum... drilling the hole, building the extraction system,
transporting the raw petroleum, refining, etc.
With ethanol, clearing the land, preparing for planting, planting,
fertilizing, harvest, processing all of the "feed stocks" (note all of
these activities are done with petro-fuel powered systems), and so on.
Everyone forgets the concept of "total cost of ownership".
This will be my last comment on the subject because it looks like the
rabbit hole beckons!
CAVU
Mark W.
On 9/30/2022 5:10 PM, Steve Loebs via KRnet wrote:
On Fri, Sep 30, 2022 at 2:41 PM Flesner via KRnet
<[email protected]> wrote:
The fact that it takes more energy to produce a
gallon of alcohol than you get back out of it and it simply
removes food
from the table dampens my opinion on the validity of the
environmental
benefits anyway not to mention it destroying equipment not
designed to
use it.
It is common to see ethanol disparaged by Big Oil's public relations
folks. They will tout numbers showing every bit of petroleum that is
used to grow a bushel of corn, but will "forget" to mention that
ethanol is just one product of a well-managed corn farmer. The
intelligent farming takes the carbohydrate out of the corn (bad for
cattle anyway) to make ethanol, but the residue is distiller's grains
rich in protein and fat. The corn stalks are converted into silage.
Since most of America's corn is cattle food, we are merely taking the
carbs out for ethanol and feeding the cattle the silage and dried
distiller's grains that they love (good for cattle).
Corn produces about 300 gallons of ethanol per acre. Sweet sorghum
produces 800-1000 gallons per acre in my area from two harvests per
summer/fall. Scientists are working on a midwest variety of sweet
sorghum. We'll see it. Cattle love sweet sorghum forage and silage, also.
--
KRnet mailing list
[email protected]
https://list.krnet.org/mailman/listinfo/krnet
