[Rhodes22-list] Hey Roger, Ethanol News

[Roger Pihlaja]

Rummy,

At the moment, US ethanol production capacity is about 4.1E9 gal/yr.
Construction of new corn to ethanol plants is booming, with about 2 or 3
world scale plants coming on-line adding about 60E6 gal/yr additional
capacity each.  This rate of capacity growth is set to continue for at least
the next couple of years based upon the number of plants currently in the
pipeline.  There are only a couple of companies that design & build these
corn to ethanol plants in the United States.  They are operating at or near
capacity as far as building new plants is concerned.  The current ethanol
capacity is sufficient to replace about 3.3%wt of the gasoline burned in the
United States.  The 1st capacity milestone will be reached when the ethanol
production capacity is about 3X today's capacity.  That production capacity
will provide sufficient ethanol to completely phase out the use of MTBE in
gasoline.  After that goal is reached, the rate of increase in ethanol usage
will slow down and match the rate of increase in gasoline usage unless the
US Congress changes the rules.

Some vehicles, like the Toyota Prius hybrid, can already accept any blend of
gasoline/ethanol from 0%wt to 95% wt ethanol.  Note that you don't want to
burn 100%wt ethanol because the flame burns without color.  So, for safety
considerations, you blend in at least 5%wt gasoline and the flame is nice
and yellow & smoky.  Basically, the only changes required to run any spark
ignited engine on ethanol are to upgrade some of the elastomer components
like hoses and gaskets in the fuel system to a material that is not degraded
by ethanol, adjust the spark ignition timing, and provide for up to about
20% greater volume of fuel being injected in the fuel injection system.
With modern computerized engine management systems & fuel injection, the
fuel injection volume and ignition timing can be changed on the fly to
accomodate any gasoline/ethanol blend.  For example, The Toyota system uses
the engine knock sensor & exhaust gas air/fuel ratio sensor to adjust the
engine's fuel delivery and spark ignition characteristics to suit whatever
the ethanol/gasoline blend happens to be at that moment.  It all happens
hundreds of times per second and is completely transparent to the driver.
This is mature, well-understood, easily implemented technology and almost
every manufacturer's on-board engine management and fuel injection systems
could be made compatable with minimal effort.  If ethanol became the fuel of
choice; then, every manufacturer could offer a kit that would probably sell
for a couple hundred $ and would be installed by a mechanic.  These kits
would retrofit all the existing cars on the road to be compatable with any
blend of ethanol/gasoline.

Why, in the midst of this apparent boom, I can't get any of these companies
to talk to me is a complete mystery to me.

Roger Pihlaja
S/V Dynamic Equilibrium


----- Original Message -----
From: "brad haslett" <flybrad at yahoo.com>
To: "The Rhodes 22 mail list" <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2005 9:00 AM
Subject: Re: [Rhodes22-list] Hey Roger, Ethanol News


> Rummy,
>
> I'll let Roger handle the question why current
> production engines can't handle a higher concentration
> of ethanol.  In Brazil, where about 40% of the fuel
> supply is ethanol, they have dual fuel tanks and
> vehichles designed to run on ethanol.  My personal
> preference is for diesel-electric hybrids powered by
> biodiesel.  This is old technology (think trains) and
> Detroit could start building them next week if the
> market demands them. Here's a couple of timely
> articles.
>
> Brad
>
> ------------------------------------------------
>
> Imagine: 500 Miles Per Gallon
> There have been many calls for programs to fund
> research. Beneath the din lies a little-noticed
> reality-the solution is already with us
>
> By Fareed Zakaria
> Newsweek
>
>
> March 7 issue - The most important statement made last
> week came not from Vladimir Putin or George W. Bush
> but from Ali Naimi, Saudi Arabia's shrewd oil
> minister. Naimi predicted that crude prices would stay
> between $40 and $50 throughout 2005. For the last two
> years OPEC's official target price has been $25.
> Naimi's statement signals that Saudi Arabia now
> believes that current high prices are not a momentary
> thing. An Asian oil-industry executive told me that he
> expects oil to hit $75 this decade.
>
> We are actually very close to a solution to the
> petroleum problem. Tomorrow, President Bush could make
> the following speech: "We are all concerned that the
> industrialized world, and increasingly the developing
> world, draw too much of their energy from one product,
> petroleum, which comes disproportionately from one
> volatile region, the Middle East. This dependence has
> significant political and environmental dangers for
> all of us. But there is now a solution, one that the
> United States will pursue actively.
>
> "It is now possible to build cars that are powered by
> a combination of electricity and alcohol-based fuels,
> with petroleum as only one element among many. My
> administration is going to put in place a series of
> policies that will ensure that in four years, the
> average new American car will get 300 miles per gallon
> of petroleum. And I fully expect in this period to see
> cars in the United States that get 500 miles per
> gallon. This revolution in energy use will reduce
> dramatically our dependence on foreign oil and achieve
> pathbreaking reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions,
> far below the targets mentioned in the Kyoto accords."
>
> Ever since September 11, 2001, there have been many
> calls for Manhattan Projects and Marshall Plans for
> research on energy efficiency and alternate fuels.
> Beneath the din lies a little-noticed reality-the
> solution is already with us. Over the last five years,
> technology has matured in various fields, most
> importantly in semiconductors, to make possible cars
> that are as convenient and cheap as current ones,
> except that they run on a combination of electricity
> and fuel. Hybrid technology is the answer to the
> petroleum problem.
>
> You can already buy a hybrid car that runs on a
> battery and petroleum. The next step is "plug-in"
> hybrids, with powerful batteries that are recharged at
> night like laptops, cell phones and iPods. Ford, Honda
> and Toyota already make simple hybrids. Daimler
> Chrysler is introducing a plug-in version soon. In
> many states in the American Middle West you can buy a
> car that can use any petroleum, or ethanol, or
> methanol-in any combination. Ford, for example, makes
> a number of its models with "flexible-fuel tanks."
> (Forty percent of Brazil's new cars have flexible-fuel
> tanks.) Put all this technology together and you get
> the car of the future, a plug-in hybrid with a
> flexible-fuel tank.
>
>
> Here's the math (thanks to Gal Luft, a tireless-and
> independent-advocate of energy security). The current
> crop of hybrid cars get around 50 miles per gallon.
> Make it a plug-in and you can get 75 miles. Replace
> the conventional fuel tank with a flexible-fuel tank
> that can run on a combination of 15 percent petroleum
> and 85 percent ethanol or methanol, and you get
> between 400 and 500 miles per gallon of gasoline. (You
> don't get 500 miles per gallon of fuel, but the
> crucial task is to lessen the use of petroleum. And
> ethanol and methanol are much cheaper than gasoline,
> so fuel costs would drop dramatically.)
>
> If things are already moving, why does the government
> need to do anything? Because this is not a pure free
> market. Large companies-in the oil and automotive
> industry-have vested interests in not changing much.
> There are transition costs-gas stations will need to
> be fitted to pump methanol and ethanol (at a cost of
> $20,000 to $60,000 per station). New technologies will
> empower new industries, few of which have lobbies in
> Washington.
>
> Besides, the idea that the government should have
> nothing to do with this problem is bizarre. It was
> military funding and spending that produced much of
> the technology that makes hybrids possible. (The
> military is actually leading the hybrid trend. All new
> naval surface ships are now electric-powered, as are
> big diesel locomotives and mining trucks.) And the
> West's reliance on foreign oil is not cost-free. Luft
> estimates that a government plan that could accelerate
> the move to a hybrid transport system would cost $12
> billion dollars. That is what we spend in Iraq in
> about three months.
>
> Smart government intervention would include a
> combination of targeted mandates, incentives and
> spending. And it does not have to all happen at the
> federal level. New York City, for example, could
> require that all its new taxis be hybrids with
> flexible-fuel tanks. Now that's a Manhattan Project
> for the 21st century.
>
> Write the author at comments at fareedzakaria.com
>
> © 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
> URL:
> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7037844/site/newsweek/page/2/
>
> ------------------------------------------------
>
> Neocons for Conservation?
> By Robert Bryce
> Slate.msn.com | February 1, 2005
>
>
> President Bush has a simple policy about energy:
> produce more of it. The former oilman has packed his
> administration with veterans of the oil and coal
> industries. And for most of the first Bush term, his
> energy policy and his foreign policy were joined at
> the hip. Since the Bush administration believed that
> controlling the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf was
> critically important to the American economy, the
> invasion of Iraq seemed to serve both the president's
> energy goals and his foreign policy ones.
>
> But a curious transformation is occurring in
> Washington, D.C., a split of foreign policy and energy
> policy: Many of the leading neoconservatives who
> pushed hard for the Iraq war are going green. James
> Woolsey, the former director of the Central
> Intelligence Agency and staunch backer of the Iraq
> war, now drives a 58-miles-per-gallon Toyota Prius and
> has two more hybrid vehicles on order. Frank Gaffney,
> the president of the Center for Security Policy and
> another neocon who championed the war, has been
> speaking regularly in Washington about fuel efficiency
> and plant-based bio-fuels.
>
> The alliance of hawks and environmentalists is new but
> not entirely surprising. The environmentalists are
> worried about global warming and air pollution. But
> Woolsey and Gaffney-both members of the Project for
> the New American Century, which began advocating
> military action against Saddam Hussein back in
> 1998-are going green for geopolitical reasons, not
> environmental ones. They seek to reduce the flow of
> American dollars to oil-rich Islamic theocracies,
> Saudi Arabia in particular. Petrodollars have made
> Saudi Arabia too rich a source of terrorist funding
> and Islamic radicals. Last month, Gaffney told a
> conference in Washington that America has become
> dependent on oil that is imported from countries that,
> "by and large, are hostile to us." This fact, he said,
> makes reducing oil imports "a national security
> imperative."
>
> Neocons and greens first hitched up in the fall, when
> they jointly backed a proposal put forward by the
> Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a
> Washington-based think tank that tracks energy and
> security issues. (Woolsey is on the IAGS advisory
> board.) The IAGS plan proposes that the federal
> government invest $12 billion to: encourage auto
> makers to build more efficient cars and consumers to
> buy them; develop industrial facilities to produce
> plant-based fuels like ethanol; and promote fuel cells
> for commercial use. The IAGS plan is keen on "plug-in
> hybrid vehicles," which use internal combustion
> engines in conjunction with electric motors that are
> powered by batteries charged by current from standard
> electric outlets.
>
> The Natural Resources Defense Council and the American
> Council on Renewable Energy (Woolsey is on the
> latter's advisory board, too) both endorsed the IAGS
> plan. The environmental groups, who have been in the
> weeds ever since George W. Bush moved in at 1600
> Pennsylvania, are happy for any help they can get.
> "It's a wonderful confluence. We agree on the same
> goals, even if it's for different reasons," says Deron
> Lovaas, the NRDC's point-man on auto issues.
>
> For Woolsey and Gaffney, the fact that energy
> efficiency and conservation might help the environment
> is an unintended side benefit. They want to weaken the
> Saudis, the Iranians, and the Syrians while also
> strengthening the Israelis. Whether these ends are
> achieved with M-16s or hybrid automobiles doesn't seem
> to matter to them.
>
> They aren't the only Iraq hawks who have joined the
> cause. The Hudson Institute's Meyrav Wurmser also
> signed the IAGS plan. In 1996, she was one of the
> authors-along with Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, of
> a famous strategy paper for Israeli Prime Minister
> Benjamin Netanyahu that called for the overthrow of
> Saddam Hussein and military assaults against Lebanon
> and Syria. (Wurmser's married to fellow neocon David
> Wurmser, an adviser to Dick Cheney, former AEI fellow,
> and enthusiast for the Iraq war.) Clifford May, the
> president of the Foundation for the Defense of
> Democracies, endorsed the IAGS scheme, too. And the
> Committee on the Present Danger is about to join the
> Prius-and-ethanol crowd, as well. A driving force for
> America's military buildup since the '50s now
> reconstituted as an antiterror group, the CPD will
> issue a paper in the next few months endorsing many
> elements of the IAGS plan. CPD members include Midge
> Decter, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Newt Gingrich, and Steve
> Forbes, as well as Woolsey and Gaffney.
>
> So far, the neocons are the only ones on the right to
> break with Bush on energy policy. They can do this
> because opposing the energy policy doesn't cost them
> anything-either politically or economically. The
> neocons come mostly out of academia and government so,
> unlike other conservative Republicans, they have few
> ties to big business and no significant connections to
> the energy lobbyists who are so influential with the
> White House.
>
> Despite the setbacks in Iraq, the green neocons
> believe they can convince Congress and the White House
> to adopt their program. May, the head of the
> Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, predicts
> that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will be "open to
> arguments that we can increase and enhance national
> security for a reasonable price." Gaffney won't name
> names, but he too is confident, saying, "We continue
> to enjoy access to and friendships with people who are
> key policymakers."
>
> If they can convince Congress and the White House to
> enact meaningful legislation on energy efficiency and
> conservation-issues that have been marginalized since
> the Carter administration-then perhaps the neocons
> will finally have a success story that they can brag
> about. Better still, it won't require the services of
> the 82nd Airborne Division.
>
>
>
>
> --- R22RumRunner at aol.com wrote:
> > Brad,
> > Great article, but why is the amount added to
> > gasoline so low? Why can't an
> > automobile engine burn a mixture let's say of 50/50
> > mix or even higher? Roger,
> >  help.
> >
> > Rummy
> > __________________________________________________
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>
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