AutoblogGreen

"The amount of energy that can be extracted from corn in the form of ethanol is substantially less than amount energy that must be put in to produce it."

oh-oh... now you're going to make all those ethanol supporters mad with such an UN-Politically-Correct assertion. After all, ethanol production isn't about ethanol, it's about CORN.

"A new research report is showing progress in producing biodiesel from algae."

So, at long last, this actually made it to a top-level article on AutoBlogGreen.

Biodiesel is one of the two technologies current available that has the potential to substantially reduce the amount of money we regularly send to people that hate us. And, as an added bonus, it's actually GREEN, unlike ethanol, or the pathetically stupid hydrogen. (The other of the two is SVO)

This article points out one advantage that biodiesel might have over SVO, namely, biodiesel production can be directly used to reduce CO2 emissions from existing power plants. All in all, however, I think I would still prefer to use SVO if possible.

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"The amount of energy that can be extracted from corn in the form of ethanol is substantially less than amount energy that must be put in to produce"

This statement conflicts with multiple independent scientific studies. It is also irrelevant to the article, which discusses plant oil and biodiesel production. The article only mentions ethanol as a possible use for algae remains after oil extraction.

This is a good article about a promising technology. You do not need to compromise it with ethanol misinformation.

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I love the algae-into-biodiesel experiment mentioned in this article, but otherwise the article is rather frustrating. As another commenter has noted, the clear majority of research at this point shows that corn-based ethanol does have a positive net-energy balance, and this has been the case for many years. The balance is not very impressive (roughly 1.3 to 1), but it is what it is.

Further, Sam's article contains a kind of bait-and-switch: he is writing about ethanol and it's limitations, then points out that an acre of corn only gives you 18 gallons of oil (per year), which he then compares to the algae experiment. But nobody is interested in corn oil for fuel, and it plays no part in the question of whether ethanol is a good fuel source to pursue. Ethanol is not made from the oil of corn. You get about 2.8 gallons of ethanol from a bushel of corn, and the average US corn farm produced 154.7 bushels of corn per acre in 2006. (Source: USDA, NASS, http://www.nass.usda.gov:8080/QuickStats/indexbysubject.jsp?Pass_group=Crops+%26+Plants)

That works out to 433 gallons of ethanol per acre of corn.

Is ethanol a good fuel to pursue? Yes, probably. Is biodiesel better? Yes, probably. Is there any reason not to pursue both? No, not really. Are we all doomed anyway? That's my bet, but I hope I'm wrong!

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1.
Here is just one article that refutes the claim that it takes more oil to produce corn than it yeilds. http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Feature_Stories/Ethanol_fuel_presents_a_cornundrum.html
Aslo, found here at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/103/30/11206

The real problem with corn, as either of those links will tell you, is that all of the corn in the nation could only produce enough oil to replace 12% of our gasoline consumption. For ethanol to be effective we need to dramatically decrease our consumption by using hybrid and electric vehicles as well as use biomass such as switchgrass instead of the heavily subsidized corn. Corn requires far too much fertilizer, water, pesticides, herbicides and tractor usage to be good for anything but eating whole, not at corn starch and syrup in everything that we eat.

2.
The solution proposed here is good for scrubbing CO2 from electric plants emmissions, but if we then use the that carbon from the algea in biodiesel and burn it, it goes strait back into the atmosphere. Sure, it reduces the amount of diesel burnt but ultimately, is not a carbon neutral way of producing electricity from coal, oil, or any other petroleum fuel. Scrubbing the CO2 from the power plant exhaust with algea is a good proximate solution but doesn't resolve the ultimate issue of greenhouse gasses increasing in atmosphere.

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Very cool.

But I believe your assertion that "The amount of energy that can be extracted from corn in the form of ethanol is substantially less than amount energy that must be put in to produce it" was once true, but is not in line with current technologies. The current most commonly quoted figure is a 1.3 energy balance for corn ethanol. Not great, but ethanol produced does contain more energy than required to produce it. And that number has been steadily on the rise.

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You know, Sam has a point. If we could only replace 20% off our corn fields with algae-infused power plants, we'd kick the oil-habit in no time. Just look at those differences in gallons per acre!

Seriously though, once you remove that useless fact, ethanol has no ties to this story. I fully support what these researchers are doing, but this is just irresponsible reporting. I expect this sort of garbage from the Times.

And Howard, how about adding something useful to a discussion sometime, instead of flapping your jaw calling everything "insanely stupid"?

For the record, I don’t think corn (or strictly ethanol) is the end-all solution to our energy problems, but it’s the source we have the most experience working with. Give the researchers time and our efficiency at producing ethanol will only improve. When’s the last time you saw computer processors take a step back in performance?

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I want more details about Algea and Bio Diesal

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