Calif Bill wrote:
"tillius" wrote in message
ups.com...

Calif Bill wrote:
"tillius" wrote in message
oups.com...
Also, I've looked for the past week at the effects and up/downsides of
Ethanol vs. Butanol. This thread was one of the last things I did
searching for my answers.

I am still seeking downsides to butanol, but again, aside from the odor
during production and the possible hard starts in cold wheather with a
95 degree flashpoint, and the toxicity (not more toxic than gasoline,
however), the only other con I can find was it's high cost of
production. The new processes using fibrous fermentation beds have
changed the cost of production ($1.05 - $1.25/gallon using corn
feedstock) AND yeilds per bushel of feedstock to the same as ethanol,
only with higher energy yeild per gallon of fuel.

Using a feedstock such as dairy waste from cheese manufacturing reduces
the production cost per gallon of butanol to approximately $0.50 per
gallon.

Again, if you know of links to more downside information on butanol,
please let me know. I'm considering forming a co-op to investigate
butanol production for the personal use of co-op members in my area.

Till


The downside of ethanol, butanol or any other manufactured from grown
crops
fuel, is that there is not going to be enough of the stuff. Would take
just
about all our present food grown to provide our present fuel usage.

I understand the quantity of feedstock it would take to supply our
present fuel usage with bio-fuels, however, there are several points
that should be considered:

1. Using these newer fermentation methods, butanol (or ehtanol) can be
produced from waste agri-products, such as rice straw, corn stalks,
sawdust, and the dairy waste from cheese production.

2. Bio-fuels can be produced from crops such as Jatropha (yeilding 200
gallons per acre), Coconut (300 gals/acre), and Palm (600 gals/acre).
All of these crops can be grown in arid regions where the current
agricultural footprint is very small.

3. Over 60% of the US corn crop is low quality Bt corn, which has
hardly any market value and which is usually discarded (at tax payers
expense) into inefficient ethanol production, or dumped into 3rd world
countries as sub-par livestock feed.

4. Over 40% of our farmland is currenly unfarmed. Thanks to well
intentioned governement subsidies that actually pay the farmers not to
produce certain crops, we are wasting a vast portion of our natural
resources.

The feedstock to supply our energy needs with bio-fuel could easily be
produced by putting our agricultural industries back to work, while at
the same time reducing their dependancy upon government subsidies AND
reducing out tax burden.

Till


Water is the reason a lot of land is not farmed. And as to amount of fuel
required. California uses 36,000,000 gallons a day of gasoline. Using palm
at 600 gallons an acre, you will require 21,900,000 acres of palm for just
California. Plus the additional fuel required to make the fuels from palm
oil. The major way to reduce oil consumption is to build nuke plants and
run electric and hydrogen fueled vehicles and reduce the amount of plastic
packaging that we use. Go to the grocery store and they ask "paper or
plastic?". Then they use a couple of plastic bags together for bagging.
Not much oil in each bag, but look at the amount of bags used. Take a cloth
bag with you and use that. Look at the thick plastic on all those cheap
items at wal-mart and K-mart, and Costco. Per capita we in the US are the
biggest users of gasoline, but I do not think we are the the biggest user
per capita of a lot of other oil products.

I'm not saying bio-fuels are the sole answer. As far as replacing petro
based fuel with bio-fuels, it would take between 300,000,000 and
500,000,000 acres to produce enough biomass to replace our current
petroleum use. Keep in mind those figures given in my previous post did
not consider the additional fuel produced from conversion of waste
biomass (corn stalk, rice straw, etc) into bio-fuel. There are currenly
over 600,000,000 acres of viable farmland not currenlty being farmed.
This farmland is capable of producing high-level feedstocks such as
corn and is not being used because of lack of demand. That alone is
more than enough to replace our gasoline supply with bio-fuels.

Other biomass feedstock can be grown on those arid lands where water is
a problem, look at Jatropha or even Hemp which can easily grow on those
lands. Hemp is a potential feedstock I didn't mention before, primarily
because of the reaction mentioning hemp gets, but hemp is capable of
yeilding 1000-1500 gallons of bio-fuel per acre.

I do agree, proper utilization of hydro, solar, wind and nuclear energy
is critical to satisfying our energy needs going forward. I also agree
we need to commit more resources to developing hydrogen fuel cell
technology. There is absolutely no reason future vehicles could use a
hybrid IC/electrical propulsion system using bio-fuels such as butanol
and hydrogen-fuelcell technology. As a matter of fact, with the newest
methods of producing butanol, the primary byproduct of the process is
hydrogen, which can easily be reclaimed as the primary fuel source for
bio-fuel production.

Till