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Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:34:38 -0500
From: Charlie England <ceengland@bellsouth.net>
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To: Rotary motors in aircraft <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Subject: Re: [FlyRotary] Re: MoGas (thread drift)
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Hope it's ok for the thread to drift a bit...

I don't claim to be any sort of expert; I just read way too much & I 
know people who know more than me. :-)

The most believable stuff I've read indicates that there is a net energy 
gain from corn, but it's just nowhere near as good as almost any other 
source. Sugar cane, sugar beets, even switch grass & tree trunks have a 
better yield than corn. I believe that Al is right about the reason that 
we are so focused on corn in the USA. In DC there are a few more than 
500 legislators and over 37,000 lobbyists. Corn prices seem to be going 
up faster than crude oil lately. Farmers here in MS, where corn has 
never been a preferred cash crop, have quit growing soy & cotton to grow 
corn.
The most promising stuff isn't even alcohol; there are companies working 
now on some (old) technologies that use algae to make substances like 
butanol, etc that can directly replace gasoline & diesel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biobutanol

Indirectly related: A couple of years ago when diesel was around 
$3.00/gal, a friend who's family runs a trucking operation told me that 
he could make biodiesel from virgin soy oil for around $2.00-$2.50/gal. 
That's without any government subsidies for 'alternative energy'.

Charlie


Al Gietzen wrote:
> I'm not Charlie but in my opinion, corn is one of the worst due to
> competition w/ food consumers. 
> -------------
>
> I'm not Charlie either, but in my opinion corn is the worst because it is a
> no-gainer - meaning it takes as much energy (+- depending on data source) to
> produce the corn and make the ethanol as you get back from the ethanol.  And
> burning ethanol still puts CO2 into the atmosphere.  If it weren't for the
> heavy lobbying (read campaign contributions and other perks for politicians)
> by the major grain companies (ADM, Cargil, etc.) over the past decade or
> more; who are now making big bucks producing the stuff from corn with
> government subsidies - there would not be a corn/ethanol program in this
> country.
>
> Making ethanol from sugar cane, as they do in Brazil, makes some sense.
> They are achieving energy out/energy in of greater than 8 : 1 in the newer
> plants.
>
> Al G
>
>
>
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