> Rising gas prices? We're living on borrowed time with our
> subsidized fuel
> prices. We'll be paying European prices soon -- we can't live the
> cheap-energy lie forever.
Uh, European prices are high because of the very high taxes on fuel. And a
huge chunk of what you pay at the pump is taxes as well. How are US fuel
prices subsidized? Crude oil is a commodity product, as it gasoline.
> sells soy-diesel right now. A recent National Geographic
> estimated that all
> the waste restaurant grease in the US would make 400 million
> gallons of
> diesel per year.
Drop in the bucket. In 1998, about 30 billion gallons of diesel fuel were
sold for motor fuel in the US. With those numbers, bio-diesel based on
restaurant oil could only provide a hair over 1 percent of the diesel used
on the road. All the statistics I see about tractor-trailers says they're
driving more miles every year. And with the current diesel technology such
as what VW is selling, automotive diesel use is likely to increase as well.
> Then, if we get a collective brain, we'll grow industrial
> hemp like crazy,
> because it's even more efficient at producing fuel per acre
> than soy is.
> Hemp was made 'bad' in the '30s by big plastics, logging, and cotton
> industries.
Well, hemp would be useful for a lot more than fuel. It grows, well, like a
weed. Doesn't need as much care, pesticides, etc. as plants like cotton.
Actually, the feds were promoting hemp growth through WWII so it could be
used to make military supplies.
> I've read that ethanol has more output per gallon than
> gasoline. I'll try to
> find that article again.
The current claim that's being made by ethanol backers is that when looking
at the total energy cycle, it's more efficient. In other words, fewer BTU
are used to create one BTU of ethanol than for 1 BTU of gasoline.
However, I haven't looked into their numbers in detail, and in fact a number
of studies claim just the opposite. There are a lot of numbers that the
proponents may be excluding in their production costs as well. And what of
the secondary effects of soil erosion, pesticides, fertilizers, etc.? If
the ethanol is made with corn, and all the cars in the US ran on 100%
ethanol, 97% of our land area would need to be planted with corn.
As for the energy stored, one gallon of ethanol has a value of 77,000 BTU.
A gallon of gasoline typically has a value of about 115,000 BTU. The E85
blends (85% ethanol) have about 81,000 BTU per gallon. So you can't go as
far on a gallon of fuel that contains an ethanol.
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