Startup Says It Can Make Ethanol for $1 a Gallon, and Without Corn
 

http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/news/2008/01/ethanol23

good article. Imagine what would happen to the economy if we actually used this shit. Not good for the war monger crowd though. They would rather send peoples sons and daughters to die for oil to keep the top 1% pockets lined.

the ones in power dont want to give the american farmer the power with corn fuel.

if the american farmer was allowed to make corn fuel, imagine the change!

America has the power, but would never let farmers have that sort of control ever again.

ughm... thought we used corn to do it because corn was cheap and alot of bad corn can be put to use

They can use almost any organic material the article says. Ethanol fuel still wouldn't put "the power" in the hands of the farmers. So that crazy conspiracy theory is just that.

The good thing about this is that by using misc assorted organic materials it won't cause inflation in the food markets. Which we are currently seeing.

Now we just need to get E85 at all the pumps and all the cars to handle it. Then the next problem comes from ethanol burning at a much higher rate then gasoline and our cars not lasting as long. They need to stop trying to make the engine work with XYZ and make an XYZ engine.

more corn for the kitties

The most relevant sig placement I have ever seen here.

Nice. :1orglaugh

Amazing!

Corn does not produce as much energy as say sugar cane or sugar beets.
Not to mention corn is directly tied to the food supply, true we eat very little of it. The vast majority of it grown is for feed which covers everything from chickens to pigs. Which raises the prices of everything else.
Then we have this tiny issue that middle America is really not the right spot to be growing vast fields of water loving corn. Look at the underground aquifer and also keep in mind dust bowl statistics. Reality is water is the world real important resource and not oil.

Once the start-up has it's funding what will the new estimate per gallon be?

You are missing the entire point behind corn ethanol. They only want to use corn, because the farmers lobby is pushing for it. It's nothing more than a scam and any politician whom pushes it is part of the scam and is getting money from the farmers lobbyist to fuck over the American citizens.

Corn ethanol is one of the worst ethanol's that could be used to create gas.
It's expensive to produce and gets less mileage than gas does now. There are several other ethanol's that can already be produced and would be cheaper than corn ethanol yet they get ignored because the farm lobby is pushing corn.

Yea we would be paying more for gas than we already do. Not to mention the farmers couldn't produce enough to make a dent in what we need. Corn kitty would likely starve to death, the Mexicans and stoners would be ticked off that they couldn't get anymore Taco Bell.

You're a retard. The reason food is so fucking high is because corn farmers are now growing corn for FUEL instead of FOOD. Farmers that grew other shit stopped doing that and are now growing corn for FUEL. Thus leaving other crops in short supply. Anyone that thinks that FOOD based fuels are a better alternative than oil is a retard to the Nth degree.

By time the investors get paid back it'll be $2.5/gallon


Also we keep looking in the WRONG places for an oil solution. Moving to corn drives up costs EVERYWHERE which means we MAY save up to $.5/gallon an GAS but you'll be paying DOLLARS more for your steak and cereal.

HYDROGEN is a better solution, make it a law that all new gas stations must have a hydrogen pump and BOOM infrastructure is here to support it within 5 years. The only realistic option in my mind is figuring out a CLEAN way to take H20 and simply remove the hydrogen and bottling the oxygen. If we can figure out a way to do this without horrible side effects we're set

Electric cars aren't the solution because what makes that electric?

We eat more than you think. Most everything processed has some corn based product in it. For example Coke is made up of mostly water and CORN SYRUP.

Electricity, ethanol and hydrogen can be all good.

I'm more worried about water, global warming, overconsumption, immigration... etc.

.....dictators with nuclear arsenals......

Cheap energy encourages waste, and the planet has very limited resources for a growing number of residents. Soon we will be 9 billion.

One of the major hurdles with any alternative fuel is fueling stations. Our infrastructure and therefore economy is based around the gas station. When any new alternative fuel is introduced to the market they will have to tackle the very large and expensive job of getting it into fuel stations. That alone is a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

the one good thing about using an organic based fuel where we grow the stuff we use to make it is that most of the money that is spent on fuel would go back into our country and our economy instead of into the pockets of some prince or dictator in another country.

We have enough sunshine for about 4 BILLION years.

We're at 6.7 billion not projected to be 9 billion until 2028. You also realize outside of India and China which actually make up a small portion of land mass the rest of the world has apopualtion of 4.3 billion. Also the US is 3rd most in population at 300 million.

Bye bye Chavez. :)

Percentage wise I think human consumption is around 10% to 20%.

if people had that attitude 100 years ago we'd still be using horses. No one wuld have bothered building gas stations in the first palce.

Yes save a few pennies on gas meanwhile my food bill is almost double what it was a few years ago. $2 for a dozen eggs( use to be 79 cents ) $6 a gallon OJ( used to be $4), $4 for a gallon milk( used to be $2.50 ) I could go on and on.

That's enough to cause a serious supply problem then, now isn't it?

that is pretty fantastic

not to mention live stock are fed grains largely based off corn.

If you have not got it I am against corn ethanol. Yes 10-20% may seem like a lot yet honestly that is a small chunk compared to the usage for grains in feeds and the like which do drive up the costs of milk, eggs, beef, chicken, bacon, pork, etc.

Though I am still concerned more with the water issue and corn than rising food prices. Yet I doubt we will start hearing about that issue for a few years to a decade or so.

Now I did see some research about using algea that also looked promising and well much of that shit is what became oil in the first place.

Yeah Buddy!

http://zedomax.com/blog/wp-content/u.../mr_fusion.jpg

Yep. I think I'm going to turn vegan and buy some 99 packages of seeds and grow my own fucking food. Sell leftover veggies at the farmers market. Or trade with the Amish that come to town twice a week.

My uncle is in a test program with the Univeristy of Florida and is growing algae oil for them.

Yes when I said corn in FOOD I'm also counting the animals we eat that consume corn based feed. Because in the end that feed cost is put into the price of the meat.

Well food prices are rising NOW because of this shit. Water may in short supply in places but not because of ethanol. I read were they are making great strides in water desalination. If we can do that the water supply would be endless.

I saw on NBC nightly news a few weeks back about farmers in special government program that were growing saw grass to use in ethanol which looked promising. At the end of the story the news guy mentions the town he was doing the story in and it's 20 miles from me. Hard to believe this place would be on the cutting edge of anything. Hopefully this research pans out.

Expensive oil protects richer countries from global competition. If tomorrow, every country could produce very cheap energy, Asians would come to dominate global trade. They are more productive, hungry, more technology oriented, not individualistic, they have a vast pool of talent...etc.

It's not in the Western world interest to play fair.

I never said they shouldn't build the gas stations, I'm just saying it won't be easy, fast or cheap. You can make a fuel that can be manufactured for 2cents a gallon and it won't matter if you can't get it into gas stations and out to the people.

Secondly, I don't know enough about it to know how much a person's food bill will go up. You would think if suddenly corn and beets were what we were using to make gas, gas companies might turn to farming to raise those things. There may be enough of increase in production that food won't go up in price that much.

Any change won't be fast, cheap or easy, but I think it is something we as a nation need to do if we want to continue to thrive.

China should be the world's economic and military superpower. Imagine a country with over 10 times more human resources than Japan and vast lands.

They have the climate, the human resources, the culture.

"When China awakes, the world will tremble." NAPOLEON.

It's a sleeping dragon, if you wake him up, it will eat you.

Listen dipshit corn is being used NOW as in NOW as in TODAY. And food prices are increasing because of it. If every scrap of available farmland was used for corn prodcution and that corn was used for fuel only it still wouldn't be enough. Which part of that don't you get? I'm trying to educate you. You already admit you don't know shit so take the words from someone who has actually studied this and done the research ok?

And ethonal isn't any cheaper anyways. Sure it's cheper by the gallon by you get less gas milage so in the end it's still costing you $3 a gallon. Except then milk is $8 a gallon and eggs are $4 a dozen and maybe a pound of cheap ass ground beef is $3.

99% of everyone that owns a SUV or pick-up doesn't need it. If they went back to buying regular cars we'd solve most of our oil problem right there. I see all kinds of idiots that own pick-ups that never ever haul shit in it. Which is the whole fucking purpose of a god damned pick up truck.

China is too dependant on us to do shit. They may have more people but they need Americans buying their crappy shit. The poorest Americans earning minimum wage earn 10X what the average "middle class" Chinese earn.

I love being called dipshit. . . it makes me feel all warm inside.

I agree most people don't need an SUV and getting rid of them would help a lot.

I admitted I don't know much about the growing aspect when it comes to how much of what food it would take to create enough fuel for us to use and how it would effect costs of other foods. I simply suggested that maybe if more people were growing these things it wouldn't drive up costs as much. Maybe it will make milk $37.95 a gallon, maybe it won't. I don't know. Admitting that doesn't make me a dipshit.

But that doesn't change the fact that I believe we need to explore other options. What happens if one day other countries just stop selling us oil? The answer is we are fucked. What happens if the oil just runs out and we have done nothing to get an alternative source of fuel going? The answer is we are fucked. Does thinking this make me a dipshit?

I don't know all the answers, hell I don't know much of anything about this entire thing, my point in all of this is that I feel something needs to be done. It won't be easy. It won't be fast or cheap or painless, but the potential alternative is really ugly.

Oh, and I never said corn alone. I do know enough to understand that corn is probably the least effective thing to use. If you actually read my post you would see that I said, "if suddenly corn and beets were what we were using." By saying this I implied that we would be using some type of food item be it corn, beets, cabbage or whatever. But maybe the dipshit in me gave you too much credit in assuming you could read and understand what I was saying.

Not to mention a huge chunk of China is desert and it is expanding. Then if you ask or even tell the average rural Chinese citizen who is still driving a yak that China is a world power let alone one of the super powers they will laugh at you with their near toothless mouths.