Robert,

I'm with you. Where is all the water going to come from? That is going
to be a seriously limiting factor on any volume of alcohol production.

John Rodgers
88 GL Driver

Robert Fisher wrote:

> The thrust of that article was that some company had engineered an enzyme
> that would efficiently break down cellulose and extract the sugars (if
> I'm
> remembering this correctly) out of almost whatever plant matter in
> which it
> happened to be- the idea being that you didn't have to use the corn, you
> could use the stalk and the husks. Taken to its logical conclusion this
> means that the millions or whatever tons of waste plant matter discarded
> each year could be turned toward ethanol production without tapping
> the food
> supply itself. Basically the idea is you build the processing plant near
> farms or food processing facilities so you don't have to truck the waste
> plant mass very far, and then the fuel is distributed outward from the
> plant. You would have several smaller distillery/refineries all over
> instead
> of massive centralized refineries like we have now with oil. This
> would also
> help with problems with supply like those that happened with the
> hurricanes.
> IIRC, the enzyme was also more effective in getting sugars out of high
> sugar-yield crops; if you could expect to get X amount out of your corn,
> sugar cane or sugar beets, then you would get X+ out of them with the
> enzyme.
> They also reported that they have done small area trials with this and
> the
> model has worked as expected in those trials.
> Part of the article was about current and near-future engines that are
> supposed to be ethanol compatible, which led to my original question
> about
> the WBX. My other question was, where is the water supposed to come from?
>
> Cya,
> Robert
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Wesley Pegden" <wes@CS.UCHICAGO.EDU>
> To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 6:03 PM
> Subject: Re: Ethanol is the fuel of the future?
>
>
>> Sorry to revive this old thread, but here's more food for thought.  They
>> say that a pound of food requires a pound a oil to produce.  Unless that
>> ratio is much better for ethanol, we're no better off.  From the linked
>> article, this sounds promising: getting ethanol from switch grass almost
>> sounds like getting it for free.  But every time I see one of those "go
>> green" GM commercials with SUV's and cornfields, I'm overcome with
>> skepticism.  Call my crazy, but I have a feeling that every ineffective
>> way of reducing oil dependence will be pushed as hard as possible before
>> we actually move onto to the effective ones.
>>
>> -Wes
>>
>> Evan Mac Donald wrote:
>>
>>>     <snip>
>>>
>>>   I seem to recall a thread on this a few months ago- what needs to be
>>> done to a WBX to burn ethanol properly? Higher compression...?
>>> This brought to mind the Zetec conversion, among others- what are the
>>> current conversion options that will handle ethanol readily?
>>>
>>> <snip>
>>>
>>>   In general, an alcohol-fueled engine runs slightly cooler and gets
>>> poorer milage than a gasoline-fueled one. This is mostly because of two
>>> related factors. Alcohol burns cooler than gasoline, and does not have
>>> the same energy density. You need to burn more than a gallon of alcohol
>>> to get the same amount of enegy that you get from a gallon of gasoline.
>>> But, as was mentioned in the article, the emissions from burning that
>>> more-than-a-gallon are far less. And that is before you consider
>>> some of
>>> the other factors involved in gasoline production. Tranport efforts,
>>> production problems, the list is long. There are lots of costs, and not
>>> all are monetary.
>>>   Personally, I liked the part for Brazil about NOT sending all that
>>> money out of country, and being able to keep in at home. That looked
>>> good
>>> for their economy. Any country that sends lots of money away is asking
>>> for trouble.
>>>
>>>
>
>