[SEL] Corn-gas a BUST!

[JR504 at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/27/2007 10:18:42 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
falcon at telenet.net writes:

Here is  a small item. If you took ALL the corn currently grown and 
converted it to  ethanol. You would come up with 12% of the fuel used in 
the US. The last  number I saw basically said that in order to use corn 
alcohol for total  replacement it would mean putting ALL the croplands 
available in the US  into corn production. No corn left for food or any 
other  use.



The same thing is true for Biodiesel.  I've seen similar numbers  talked 
about at the National Biodiesel Convention.  If we took all the  waste grease and 
all the soy beans produced in the country, then used all the  fallow crop land 
and grew more soy beans....turned all of it into Biodiesel,  we'd only 
produce about 20% of our current daily consumption of diesel  fuel.  
Here's the bottom line as I see it.  There is probably never  going to be a 
single energy source that is going to replace petroleum as  transportation 
energy.  There's no magic bullet on the horizon.  We're  going to need every 
viable source of energy to deal with the increasing  prices, (and someday lower 
supply) of Petroleum. 
I don't believe ethanol is the cure simply because it takes more than  a 
gallon of petroleum to make a gallon on ethanol.  Why bother?  It's  politics at 
it's most ridiculous.  There is still hope for biodiesel, Most  recently 
they're working on growing a couple of different types of slime in  large vats.   
One yielded 80% oil content which really cuts down on  the acreage required to 
feed our oil addiction.  Now if we could only get  them to grow at sewage 
treatment plants we'd be getting somewhere.
Joe
 
Joe



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