yeah and thats without the big companies investing a the amount of money that they have with oil.

think of all the money put towards researching better and more efficient ways, not only of burning fossil fuels, but also of how to more effectively extract them from the earth. now imagine that amount of research and effort put into BioDiesel....

personally i think america is stupid for not going biodiesel 10 years ago, like brazil, but hey.... its america, its got a bit longer of a learning curve...

 

In a couple years things will be very different, there will be farms and farms of biodiesel im not sure which type but im sure one day well have cars that just run on water.

 

i would love to be able to make any car run on E85 i was told not just any car can as for the diesel scoob that would be a torque monster from hell.

 

i'd much rather work on a diesel than a gasoline car. they in general are always easier in my book and i couldn't see this one being too much different.

 

That's also with subsidies on ethanol from the government. Its artificial low pricing.

 

That's not really quite a deal considering that a vehicle (unless tuned strictly for ethanol) would experience a semi-hefty decrease in mpg.

It's sort of a catch-22, it's great for the environment emissions wise, but takes large amounts of resources to make. I haven't seen any exact numbers, but i'd say it's a pretty safe bet that after you factor in the energy consumption of the distillation process, the energy cost and detriment of fertilizer, tractors, and any other resource that still relies on an oil or gas based powerplant, that you're either marginally better off or equal to gasoline in the pollution sense. And really you don't benefit much unless you have an engine tuned to take advantage of the capability of ethanol, but if you do then you know exactly the crazy amounts of power to made even w/ an N/A application.

Bio-diesel on the other hand is a much better fuel to produce and use. However, I think it'll be a long way off before that becomes mainstream. Ppl have a skewed view on diesel b/c they equate excess black exhaust w/ pollution when in all actuality the emissions you cant see from a gas engine are insanely worse.

 

the arguement about gasoline engines still being needed to produce the ethanol is kinda invalid, ofcourse gasoline powered engines will be needed to produce it at first, no alternative engine has been offered for the tractors and power plants and such, but once it goes mainstream it should take care of itself through private enterprenuerialism (sp?).... always money to be made when something revolutionary is designed

i do however agree with the fertilizer issue, thats much more dangerous to the environment than most people realize


and as far as bio diesel goes... ah.... i can't wait...

 

I wasn't saying the gas engines to produce ethanol offset a large margin, I was just giving an example of something minor used in production that would aid offsetting the benefits. It's something easily overlooked that increases cost and uses energy. And w/ the processing of ethanol you need massive amounts of power. Power comes from power plants. More than likely that power plant is oil or gas, so it boils down to cars polluting less, but processing and power plants picking up all if not most of that slack.

But, yah, bio diesel, good stuff. I'm a firm believer in Bio-Willie, willie nelson's own brand of bio diesel! Now he can evade the IRS legally w/ environmentally friendly tax breaks lol.