Quote:
Originally Posted by ksgrainman  'It sounds like a really good alternative way to create gasoline, much better than using food products to make a fuel additive. Here is an article on it that I found on the internet.'
Might be something to look into, so I did. How Competitive Is Coal-To-Liquids Conversion? - Knowledge Problem
BTW, have anyone of you tried to eat the corn they use in Ethanol production. Give it a try, tell me what recipe you used. |
The problem isnt with the actual corn being used, its the fact that farmers are converting existing to crops to it that is the problem, or one of the many myriad of problems. Now crops that used to be used for feed or food are now being used for ethanol. Now corn takes more water to grow than wheat, so now we deplete even further the water tables. Next there is the fertilizer problem, corn is very nutrient hungry and requires lots of fertilizer so now you are poisoning water wells and increasing the dead zone in the gulf of mexico(yeah for dead fish and cancer). There is the amount of energy that is needed to convert to alcohol, a ratio of 1 to 1.2, that is 1 gallon of fuel to 1.2 gallons of ethanol end product. Since alcohol itself is less energy efficient than foossil fuels you need to burn more of it. There is a reason why no reasonable company invested in ethanol until the government began subsidizing it.