Landon

Its a novel idea. Here is the article from abc news on this... http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a...29063009990001 Now how far would you be willing to drive for a tank full of "Terror Free Gas"?

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youpey

usually my tank is completely on empty, so i always go to the closest gas station, regardless of price

rotarygod

"It's goal is to buy gas from countries that do not support terrorism." That's a really funny line. Unfortunately just because you bought gas from country A doesn't mean that they also aren't buying oil from someone else and they probably are. Maybe we don't support terrorism but buying from another country could still involve a middleman who does. It's a noble idea but the reality is that it can't be done.

Landon

Very true RG, I am personally im a fan of ethanol because thats the true terror free gas. I just dont understand why its so scarce in our country. Take brazil for example... they are 100% energy independant running on ethanol made from sugar. Hell you can make ethanol from corn, sugar or other organic materials. I dont see why we are only pushing corn ethanol when there are so many other options.

Feras

just more sensationalizing in order to scare the public into following dogma. Goosestepping here we come. Oil companies buy oil on exchanges not from countries but if some sheep i mean people sleep better because they have a false sense of security more power to them.

rotarygod

We should be running Butanol rather than ethanol. It's a straight swap and shouldn't even require a retune. Power and mileage also wouldn't suffer. You can get just as much Butanol out of corn as you can Ethanol.

Feras

frankly using corn based fuels is a total win win for everyone.

Cheap and easily accessed
great for the government (not having to pay subsidies to farmers to not grow crops)
great for farmers (makes them important)
Renewable resource
Domestic product
(everyone wins)

Cons:
Oil companies don't wanna switch so it is unlikely to happen anytime soon, they need to wake up and switch their refineries. I see the switch to ethanol/butanol to be like the switch from standard film to digital, those who adapted are thriving.

TownDrunk

I agree, however there's a problem. We wouldn't be able to grow enough corn to provide 100% of the fuel needed. Hopefully technology can provide the means to transform other things like grass clippings, branches, leaves, etc... into the same fuel.

Landon

See RG that’s why you should be president LOL. Someone that can solve the energy problem at a reasonable cost. Id vote for ya!

Feras, there is 1 big problem that you missed though. The price of corn is going up because of the demand (primarily here on the east coast) for ethanol. In the DC region alone we have mandated that ALL gas be 10% ethanol out here instead of using MBTE. I think the Baltimore area is the same way too. I say we use Corn, Sugar and anything else we can make ethanol from. RG Why is it that we don’t use Butanol instead of ethanol? Especially considering we can use it in cars now with no conversion like you need for ethanol?

Nemesis8

What happens if the crop is wiped out by bugs, or draught?

rotarygod

A lot of it has to do with knowledge but some of it just pure technique. Anyone can ferment anything and distill it into Ethanol. That's pure Everclear and the main alcohol in any liquor. Butanol would normally be just a byproduct of the fermentation process that gets distilled of along with methanol and other things leaving primarily ethanol behind. That's how most liquor is distilled. To get an equal yield of butanol rather than ethanol isn't quite as easy. It takes some special yeast strains to do it but they do exist. The nice thing about yeast is that it has 3 byproducts: alcohol, CO2, and more yeast! It's a never ending supply. We feed it, it has waste (alcohol and CO2) and it has children (more yeast). We can take this and distil it and now get pure butanol rather than ethanol. It's all in who does the job during fermentation.

Butanol is almost gasoline's equal. Not quite but closer than anything else we have. It doesn't evaporate nearly as quickly as ethanol, and doesn't absorb water as easily either. It can be moved through pipelines just as easily as gasoline. Ethanol can not. It also isn't harmful to the parts that ethanol and methanol are. It's a pretty safe and easy switch and most cars would run with little to no modification to their engine management systems.

Now as any homebrewer or distiller knows, if it contains sugar, it can be fermented. If it contains starch (not your shorts!), it can be converted into sugars that can be fermented. Lot's of things contain starches that we throw away. Any food trash can be used. Ever think about where old rotten fruits go? What about the millions of pumpkins each year? Even grass clippings can be used. Imagine mowing your grass for fuel! We call these cellulosic ingredients and they are everywhere. It is true that we can't grown enough corn to yield more than about 1% or so of our total need. That's OK. By recycling our trash, we can increase that number greatly. What if we could yield 10% of our total consumption this way? That's significant. Especially considering we are also not filling up our landfills as fast. Turn this into Butanol and it will directly mix with gasoline no questions asked. Easy to use, no power tradeoffs, no corrosion, no problems with transferring it or storing it. Now combine this 10% decrease in gasoline consumption with an increase in efficiency AND performance by using series (not parallel such as the Prius) hybrid technology. It doesn't take too much effort to see that we could rid ourselves of (foreign) oil. That's a big step in the right direction. This should be our short term (20 year) goal with a long term goal of weening ourselves away from oil. The nice thing is that all of this can be done with currently available technology. Later on as other technology such as hydrogen fuel cells take off, we can integrate them in easily.

I make it sound overly easy but it wouldn't be too hard to slowly make reality if we could just redirect ourselves a bit from ethanol to butanol. It's not a big change but the benefits would be far better. We've got the right idea. We just turned the wrong way at the fork in the road.

shaunv74

True but we should at least stay away from Citgo gas stations. The company is wholly owned by the government of Venazuela who currently doesn't like us. No reason to throw extra money at their politican agenda.

Feras

citgos are the worst looking stations and mediocre gas. I support shell because of the quality and overlook the fact that its payed for with nigerian blood.

Clavius

He actually doesnt like President Bush and this administration from what I read and heard. But anyways....


RG you should run for president or sumthing lol I'd vote for ya.
If what you say is true.. especialy in the respect to using Grass clippings to produce ethanol.. how come or do you think possibly.. that small towns should attempt to set up a distilling station to produce this and turn around and sell it? Reason I ask or suggest this is because atleast at my town, we bag our clippings and the town collects it. After that I think they just put it into a huge pile and let it be made into manure or sumthing.. Also in some towns I know this would be more plausable but how come none (that I know of) havent attempted to make its own BioDisel?

rotarygod

It's not quite as easy as just going to the store to buy some bakers yeast to ferment old grass clippings. Brewing or baking yeast just can't ferment it. There is a lab that has developed a yeast strain that can do it quite well though. The problem is they won't tell anyone else what they did as they claim that it could be used as an environmental weapon of some sort. The true behind it is that they want to get rich off of it at our expense. That's fine. Anything that one person can make, another one can too. It's only a matter of time until someone else figures it out. This is really the biggest issue with fermenting our waste efficiently. It's the special yeast strains and processes used right now. This is changing everyday though so there is hope in the near future.

Here's a little bit of info on Biobutanol: The Other White Meat.

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2006/12...er-white-meat/

See what it can do when blended with diesel or biodiesel:

http://pdf.aiaa.org/preview/CDReadyM...V2003_6027.pdf

Cool-Blue-Dad

It's worse than that RG - even if those stations *did* only buy "Terror-free" oil, the oil from states who support and export terrorism would still sell on the world market - it would sell into other distribution channels within the US and it would sell everywhere outside the US.

I'm sure even if the USA completely converted to nuclear electricity plants and hydrogen cars the world market for oil would provide plenty of funds for "bad" dictatorships and terrorists.

However, if their gas wasn't complete crap I might still gas up there instead of the Citgo just on principle, but that's all it would be - a statement of principle, not an effective action.

Wilson

I am not sure how Terror Free this gas would be, but we had a new Citgo station open locally and I rarely see anyone stop there. The eXXon across the street is always crowded. I don't expect the Citgo to remain open very long. My guess is that they have not had a fuel delivery since the day they opened. The gas is going to go bad right there in the underground tanks.

ScudRunner

Citgo is just about it where I live. On my drive home from work there is one Circle K that sells gas, one Exxon, and no less than 5 Citgo stations.

And this whole idea of "Terror-Free Gas" borders on ludicrous. The only way that you could put a dent in the funding that terror groups get from oil-producing nations is to put a dent in the price of oil, thereby reducing the amount of funds available to those nations. Once it gets to the pump, it's too late.

Cool-Blue-Dad

Yes, but OPEC regulates the price to charge all-the-market-will-bear. I think an alternative energy source would need to emerge that crushes world-wide demand for oil. Then they could scale back production and restrict supply to try to keep the price up, but they'd still sell less oil and therefore get less money.

Landon

Like I said before, we should all be taking notes from Brazil. They are 100% energy independent. The only country in the world who is which is sad... If anyone beat them to it, it should have been the US, Canada or Japan for god sakes. I don't see why 3 technological powerhouses were beat to finding and implementing the solution to getting the hell off oil.

Edit:

By the way, have a look at this article. (http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=1938027&page=1) They are producing ethanol at $30.00 (US) a barrel. Hmm can we say "OPEN UP TRADE WITH BRAZIL FOR ETHANOL"? I think if we start importing ethanol while we get our infrastructure up to speed so we can make more on our own, I think it would be very beneficial. For one the price of corn would go back down for the lack of demand for Corn Based ethanol, 2.) we can start working on more sources for producing ethanol and 3.) we could open more stations that can actually provide the fuel. I still like RG's idea about the butanol since its less corrosive than ethanol. Why not buy the butunol by product from brazil as well? I think they might see it as waste and we could probably get it cheap if its of no use to them. This could be even better because we could then use it with our current vehicles.

By the way... ROTARYGOD FOR PRESIDENT IN 08! Representing the RX8-Club Party

rotarygod

How big is Brazil and what is their population compared to other countries? How much open land do they have? What is their climate like when it comes to length of their growing season compared to other countries? Answering those questions should also go a long way to answering yours.

Landon

True but the fact remains that they learned their lesson with the oil problem years ago and started working on a solution. We all got burned by the oil embargo in the 70's and we should have learned our lesson then too. I dont see why we sat on our asses and did nothing because now it has us in a bind which sucks.

Oh yeah I edited my previous post RG, check it out :-)

rotarygod

The problem is that you can't just turn their ethanol into butanol. That would be nice though. The base stock needs a different fermentation process to yield butanol rather than ethanol. Once everyone finally comes around to butanol, Brazil will still be driving their less efficent cars around!

A really big problem here is with taxation. A good idea is only a good idea until the government realizes it is. Once they do that, they tax it heavily, put heavy restrictions on it. and suddenly it isn't a nice option anymore. It doesn't matter what party is in power. It's all the same story. Ethanol is highly taxed here even though they claim there are subsidies which hold the price down.

I've heard people say that it's more expensive to make ethanol than it is to just buy crude from other countries. Why is that? Logic sure says otherwise. Let's think about this for a moment. To get oil we need to find these oil fields. Sometimes they are on the plains, other times they are offshore under thousands of feet of water and rock. Then we need to get to it. On land it's fairly straight forward. Offshore is another matter. We need to build these giant floating platforms and then install huge drills on them. What part of all of this sounds cheap again? Then after we find oil and get a hole drilled down to it, then we need to set up a collection system for it which involves pipelines, wells, etc... Then of course we need to transport it. It might need to come from the Gulf of Mexico or it might come from the middle east. How much do these huge tankers cost and how much fuel do they use? Then this crude gets sent to a refinery. These huge places need to be built which costs money. Remember all of the pollution created in just getting the oil to this point and it isn't even usable yet! Now it gets refined which takes energy and money and is finally separated out into usable contents such as oil, gasoline, diesel fuel, kerosene, etc... Then we need to transport all of this to wherever it's going. Since most of our refineries are on coasts, it leaves many of them (and our offshore oil rigs) open to hurricane damage. We all know this does happen. It costs money to fix and rebuild them.

How is this cheap or easy?

Now lets look at distilling ethanol or alcohol by comparison. You are really going to wonder why it's so damn expensive after this!

First we need a sugar source or a starch source. Everone here thinks corn. It's not that efficent and we don't have enough of it but OK let's use corn as an example and then I'll elaborate into other easy alternatives. Every year farmers do what they do anyways and plant corn. It gets harvested and sold to a distillery. This big distillery did cost money to build but remember when it comes to oil you've got research money for oil exploration, digging equipment, oil platforms, derricks, barges, pipelines, refineries, etc... Now at a distillery they take this corn and soak it in water at a controlled temperature to convert any starches in it to sugars. These sugars are then fermented by yeast. Yeast gives off 3 waste products; more yeast, CO2, and alcohol. It's usually ethanol and a few traces of other compounds but different yeast strains could be used to ferment primarily into butanol instead of ethanol. I know CO2 as a byproduct sounds bad but how much CO2 do you think is being given off by all of the other items listed in the oil business? When plants, animals, etc decompose, they naturally give off CO2 anyways. It isn't as bad as everyone thinks it is and the total amount given off balances out with the amount of CO2 that the corn absorbed when it was alive. We break even. How many oil fields absorb CO2?

Now we take this fermented mash and separate the grains from the ethanol/water. The spent grains get sold back to the farmers to be used as feedstock. Some of the excess yeast can go back into the next batch to ferment it while the rest left over can be flushed away. It's immediately biodegradable. No harm done. Now the remaining liquid gets distilled. This gets done through heat and it is this step of the process that is controversial. Many distilleries use coal or other energy sources to heat up the liquid and people claim that this is pointless when it comes to cleaning up the air. Remember when you distill oil, you also heat it up but at much hotter temperatures which requires MUCH more heat. Even using coal as a heat source (which we don't need to do!) we still don't release as much in the way of pollutants as a refinery does. Now if we used wind power or hydroelectric power instead of coal to heat these tanks, we wouldn't have any waste from it.

After distilling, we get a few products. Most of it will be ethanol but there will be some other small amounts of other products such as acetone, methanol, etc that get sent to other industries but for the most part they aren't that much. The ethanol gets shipped out and in our case has to get mixed with gasoline which costs more money, takes more effort, and releases more pollutants as a result. Most of the remaining liqid left over after distillation is good pure clean water. Much of this goes back into the process again. It's a finite supply but the point is you don't just use it once and dicard it. The distillation process is actually quite clean by comparison to oil refining.

Basically all we have is fields, distilleries, product and the necessary transportation. With oil we have research vessels, drilling equipment, oil rigs, oil derricks, tankers, refineries, pipelines, trucks, etc... Why is this cheaper? Government!

Now if we were smart we'd use our trash too. Cellulosic ethanol comes from the harvested waste products of the fields such as the shucks and stalks left over from harvest. ti can use grasses, weeds, etc. We could be sending all of our waste that is food based off to plants that could ferment it into usable product. This takes strain off of our landfills which is a benefit. It's also basically free waste. There was no effort in growing it. We've always got it and always will. The cost comes in collecting it which doesn't have to be difficult.

Now let's say that we make as much of our fuel as we can. That still probably only means 15-20% total max of what we need. How do we make up anymore of it. Gas mileage! Hybrids are the answer but not these parallel hybrid pieces of junk like the Prius. I'm talking about series hybrids. There are finally a couple of concepts out there now that do this. Drive the wheels with electric motors only. Use a gasoline or diesel engine as a generator that kicks in when power gets too low. You could have an incredibly high performance vehicle this way. It doesn't need to be slow. You could also get much better mileage. Theoretically you could improve a cars performance and double it's mileage over the norm now and with currently available technology. I've gotten into this more in depth in the past. So if our consumption were cut down by let's say a third total due to fuel economy gains, now how far does our grown fuel take us? Suddenly our 15-20% are more like 35-40% and we're doing it cleaner. That's a benefit in my book! We don't import that much oil so foreign dependence is gone. What if other countries took this same approach? You can use rice, sugar cane, coconuts, animal fat, fruits, etc... to make alcohol so it's something that almost any country anywhere has some resources to do. Imagine if our world's oil usage were cut in half. How long do you think our oil fields would last then? It buys us a lot of time (hundreds of years) until we find even more efficient ways to do things but the most important thing it would do is to return the middle east back into a worthless desert that no one needs to rely on!

I make it sound easy and it wouldn't be too hard to do. The hardest part is with the government. They'll make anything hard and expensive. Don't count on this making the price you pay for gas cheap, they'll just tax it more.

The other big hurdle is environmentalists. They think any alternative is a pollution increase. They are never happy with any improvements because they don't think they were good enough and a better solution that doesn't exist yet should be implemented now. They believe that everyone is close enough to walk to work and shouldn't be driving. They believe that we all should ride bicycles everywhere. They don't provide solutions for most people. They expect you to alter your lifestyles to fit theirs. My idea is to keep our lifestyles, improve our cars performance on every level, to clean everything up, and get rid of foreign oil dependence. It can be done and this is how it would work if it weren't for big government and (generally wrong) public opinion.

That's how my world would work if I had my choice!

Landon

Very well put RG... very well put indeed!

reidswitch

Other than alternitive fuels that are not available to most, and im speaking of the most common now the Flexfuel vehicals by GM. If you look at the Flexfuel web sites looking for a filling station in you state you may be lucky to find one or two. These stations are usually not available to the public. For now if this was such a big concern with our goverment we would be using our own oil, we have a lot of it.