[AT] E85/Flex Fuel conversions

[Henry Miller]

On Saturday 03 February 2007 11:39, Mike wrote:
> I saw a program on Discovery or some such channel about how a country
> in South America, Brazil I think, was going to be completely
> independant from foreign oil in a couple of years. They will be
> making all their fuel from sugar cane alcohol. They had started
> phasing out oil years ago, and are now to a point where they can do
> completely without it. It sure seems like we could do the same thing
> with all the corn we produce.

Brazil became free of foreign oil last year.  However this was more because of 
their own oil drilling than ethanol.   The US will probably produce more 
ethanol this year than they will (but who knows, we are both building plants 
so fast that it wouldn't take much to change things)

They have a large advantage over corn: they get a bout 3 times as much ethanol 
from an acre as we do.   They also use much less fuel total.    In the end 
the US cannot grow enough corn to replace oil.    

We can grow enough to replace oil IF we use algae (mostly biodiesel) and 
cellulose, but both of those are just barely out of the lab, and won't be 
ready for mass production for a few years yet.   (But don't be surprised if 
in a few years you are growing grass not corn)  Algae could replace all the 
fuel we use in the US just on unused desert land in Arizona.   (it turns out 
open ponds don't work for growing the right algae, so evaporation won't be a 
problem)

I would suggest that nobody buy a NEW (if you buy used you of course have to 
live with what you can find) car/tractor that cannot run on either E85 or 
biodiesel.   I can't tell you how things will turn out, but you don't have to 
be a genius to see that most of the places with oil to spare are not our 
friends.  Combine that we consistante warnings about the greenhouse effect 
(something I don't want to get into) and you can be sure if the 
ethanol/biodiesel industries ever start meeting the promise and oil will get 
expensive.   Those who buy new cars will want to be prepared should that 
happen.

Note that you might get lucky by doing nothing.   The ethanol industry is 
experimenting with butanol, which appears like it can replace gasoline 
directly in any car.   It appears that the only reason biodiesel isn't 
approved at 100% in today's diesel engines is there is some bad quality 
biodiesel out there that nobody wants to be responsible for.