On Wed, 31 May 2006 17:51:14 -0500, "Dan Luke"
wrote:


"180pilot" wrote:

The bottom line is that at the moment producing Ethanol from corn
wastes more energy than it makes according to experts.


I ain't got a dog in this fight, but any time I read a sentence like that,
my bs meter starts to twitch.

What experts? Employed by whom? What are their qualifications? What
peer-reviewed studies did they publish?

Well, you can do a search and find a good many studies by legit?
universities and corporations. Unfortunately the results for "Net
energy Gain" for alcohol production vary from a negative 50% to an
outlandish positive of several hundred percent (by a university). IOW
if you hunt you will be able to find a study that will support just
about any position.

Some of these studies are commissioned and come with criteria. You
some times really have to dig to find said criteria and often it's not
available. Without knowing the criteria under which the study was
undertaken leaves the study pretty much meaningless to me. That is
unless you place complete blind faith in both who ever did the study
and who ever commissioned it.

"Department of Energy" should be a good starting point for the feds
and states although they have a way of cataloging docs that could be
considered camouflage.sigh

The validity of Wipi is often questioned, but it's a good starting
place to find the referenced studies and then hunt for the studies.
The good articles will have references back to specific studies.

I've been following/studying alternative energy sources for some time
and have had to devote far more time digging than I would have liked,
or planed. I've also worked with some researchers with both passive
and active solar as well although it was some time back.

As near as I can discover the "general consensus" is a small "net
energy gain" when producing alcohol. This took into account using the
byproducts as well and came up with about a 50% net energy gain. That
is not a lot and the real price of alcohol when subsidies for both
growing the corn and producing the alcohol is around $3.50 a gallon.

"They" are going to be building a large Ethyl Alcohol plant about 30
miles from here in an industrial park at Alma Michigan. Probably
close to the site where one failed back in the 70s energy crisis.

"Currently" there is no large scale, "wide spread", economical
alternative energy source, but there are several areas where large
farms of wind generators are proving to be viable. They are running
into environmental concerns as far as locations particularly here in
Michigan. We have few areas within the state that would work well,
but we have several "off shore" that would work very well. However
the "shore dwellers" in both Wisconsin and Michigan are basically
saying "Not in the middle of our tourist industry!". Nor are these
farms cheap with a price tag some times passing several billion. (That
was with a "B".)

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com