Sugar Cane ethanol?

hornpharmd

5,000+ Posts
After watching a story on Brazil and how they are not dependent on foreign oil b/c of their flex use cars and 40% usage of sugar ethanol it got me wondering why we can't do that here? I mean if it works there why not here? I did a quick search and found this:

www.usda.gov/oce/EthanolSugarFeasibilityReport3.pdf

This report is nearly 2 years old but a few things stuck out to me. One is that this reports conclusions are derived seemingly solely on the cost-effectiveness of producing ethanol from sugar compared with corn ethanol....reducing dependance on foreign oil is not mentined and the low yield of ethanol from gasoline is what really is limiting the success of this technology right now. Also mentions that there are no US facilities producing ethanol from sugar feedstocks.


I don't know if we will ever come up with the one breakthrough that solves the energy problems of today and tomorrow. But I do think that there will have to be advances in many areas and that there will need to be a greater diversity in fuel selections available. Sugar ethanol is clean burning and offers an alternative to oil. Other technologies like corn ethanol certainly can help to cut down on oil needs as well and hopefully they will have breakthroughs in the areas of cellulosic conversion technology that will increase its value. We all know that fuel conservation and measures such as increased fuel efficiency standards help in this area as well. Why not add sugar ethanol production to the pie?
 
NO!! NO!! NO!! NO!! NO!! NO!! NO!! NO!! NO!! NO!! NO!! NO!! NO!! NO!! NO!! NO!!

Ethenol of any sort is NOT economically efficient!!!

ONLY OIL!!!!! ONLY OIL!!!!!

wink.gif
 
Alright. Let's assume the most badass possible scenario for producing ethanol: 80% of the biomass can be converted to ethanol at a concentration of 25% in a bacterial culture. It's important to note that this scenario is impossible, but we are going to assume it anyway.

Now you have to boil 3 gallons of water and 1 gallon of ethanol AND you must dry zeolite for every gallon of 95+% ethanol you get to keep. Hell, let's assume that the ethanol magically teleports itself into people's gas tanks. I still want to know how you are going to boil off all of that water.
 
Cool link.

To other poster, yes the climate is more conducive to sugar cane growth in Brazil. They will have a higher yield b/c of this all things being the same. But doesn't mean we shouldn't produce some anyways and hope that technological breakthroughs will help along the way. Again, why not add this piece to the pie?
 

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