Bio diesel and the quest to be self suffient

[John *.?-!.* cub owner]

The rest of the world has evolved a little differently, with a little more emphasis placed upon the employee, and his family. This is part of the reason they do not understand our "oil addiction".

The thing that many countries don't realize about the United States is it's geographical size and population density compared to most other industrial countries. It hadn't realy registered with me, until my son went to England a couple of years ago, and was talking about traveling across England The distance completely across England is less than across the state of Mo. The area devastated by Katrina last year is greater than the entire area of England. Our population, except for in cities, is considerably less dense than most European countries, hnece distances between towns is considerably more. Some of those numbers take a little thinking about to comprehend.

[Lurker Carl]

Another great thread that's taken some interesting turns!

I've owned among the smallest and largest passenger vehicles available to US consumers during my driving lifetime. Some new, most used - I was the final owner of all but a select few lemons. I have a few observations.

The smallest vehicles were fuel stingy but expensive to own because they wore out quickly and were cheaply manufactured, not designed for American driving conditions. The largest vehicles burned 3-4 times the fuel of the smallest but exceeded the life by 3-4 times than the smallest. The creation and purchase of replacement vehicles far outweighs the economy of purchasing fuel for a gas guzzler.

I live 1/4 mile from a commuter rail station. This same rail line stops right at my employer's front door, roughly 35 miles north of my house. I would gladly take this train to work every day EXCEPT it doesn't run north in the morning or south in the afternoon.

Don't even explain the glowing virues of long distance carpooling to me. I've been burned by those glowing virtues. The blatent disregard and unreliablity of others made it a poor choice. Nothing like being stranded 35 miles from home because the car pool driver decided to go home early without calling all the riders. Oh yeah, the commuter train doesn't go south in the evening!

[John *.?-!.* cub owner]

Carl, I knlw what you mean aobut the carpooling, I ran into that problem a time or two myslef.

[400lbsonacubseatspring]

Carl.....I hear you....

I had a few FIAT 131's that I adored....they were a feature-packed little car that were designed for big guys to actually fit into. They got 30+ mpg back in the mid-80's, when I owned them. But, alas, their unibody design was not made for Pennsylvania salt, or Pennsylvania potholes, and both of them cracked like eggs in time. Aside from their quirky double points and quirky double valves, I thought they were just the best little car ever.

I had a few VW rabbits that had just enough room for me to get my leg up along the left side of the steering wheel to step on the clutch. My head was tight to the roof (not just to the headliner) so every bump was very painful. One of them had a sunroof, so, if I opened that, and cocked my head sideways, I was spared that agony. Shifting was done under my right leg. Mechanically, the injectors were always getting full of junk, and were a real pain in the buttocks.

I had a K-car of some sort once....don't really remember what happened to that one.....might have misplaced it.

Then the pontiac sunbird with the std transmission, that I put over 150,000 miles on driving to and from work, while I lived in Reading. That thing got about 25 mpg, and made good sense all the way around.

Point is, those cars were great for driving back and forth to a job.... and in a way it's sad that people spend all the money they do for good vehicles like new pickups and suv's and then just burn them up driving back and forth to work, when they could buy old beaters that get better mileage for that purpose alone. I'm sure that there are a lot of Ford Festivas out there that'd be good work cars...........

[johnbron]

Back in 2000 I bought a little dinky Geo Metro convertible for $700.00 and it is still my grocery getter to this day at 45-MPG. Only thing is it kinda scares me thinking what would become of me if it ever gets hit or worse run over. I think it might be a close fit in the bed of My D-Max CC/LB.

[Lurker Carl]

Back in 2000 I bought a little dinky Geo Metro convertible for $700.00 and it is still my grocery getter to this day at 45-MPG. Only thing is it kinda scares me thinking what would become of me if it ever gets hit or worse run over. I think it might be a close fit in the bed of My D-Max CC/LB.

We had 3 Chevy Sprints, the prelude to your Metro. The Sprint was Suzuki's "luxury" model in Japan - hardly luxurious by US standards! They were great fun to drive but scary during rush hour. 2 expired horribly in auto accidents. Occupants survived. In a larger automobile, they would have been fender-benders. You never see them in demolition derbies.

[Rudi]

Canada is geographically the largest country in the world, again.. now that the Soviet Union is no more. Our geographic and geological challenges are great, plus toss in Mother Nature and it becomes extremely problematic. Our population density outside of the 5 or 6 major cities makes your rural population huge... Mass transit exists only in the largest cities such as Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec, Halifax (to a degree) and a few others.

Where I live, yes we have bus service, but it is dismal. One must own a car or two just to be able to go to work or get groceries.. We have a bus stop not more than 200 feet from our house, yet we never use the bus because the service is terrible.. maybe 8 trips per day and one can never make a connection to get anywhere in the area on time.. especially to the university or the workplace.

People in Europe and Asia have no idea of what this is like, and have no idea why we have big vehicles...

When Em and I lived in Germany we travelled as much as we could, usually in our 79 Olds Cutlass S.. a big car by European standards..

Some of the things people over there drove were cute, but were nothing more than coffins on wheels.

Example the Citroen 2CV... a rolling coffin , but tres cheap to buy..

The Ape - those 3 wheeled trucks/cars in Italy.. basically 3 wheel scooters.. origainally made by Vespa
cheap but tres dangerous...

and the Messerschmidt KR200


Interesting ideas, but not practical in a country such as Canada or the US. We have great distances to travel and the climate/geography can change radically in a very short time in some areas.

We will never be able to compete with Europe or Asia when it comes to these small vehicles.. and they will probably never be economical for us to use. Unless of course we look at technologies that currently are not popular.. such as Nuclear Pellet fuel cells, etc... which could be economical and safe. The only place where this type of vehicle would be useful is in our cities..

Some of the world's best scientific minds reside in North America. If we can land a man on the moon, if we can go to Mars or if we can design a spaceship 30 years ago that can escape the solar system and still keep talking to us.. we SHOULD be able to design a vehicle that is both economical, safe both environmentally and physically and not use hydrocarbons to fuel it..

[Eugene]

Another perspective. The biggest problem to solving our energy problem is governmental regulations and red tape at all levels.

Example. There is over one trillion barrels of oil located in oil shale in western USA. Most of the oil shale is on US government land. Only recently has the US government opened up 4 small parcels to study various extraction methods. Shortly after the Fed's announcement the environmentalist started protesting.

Example. A small US company has proprietry methods of converting coal to fuel. The company sold licenses to extract the fuel. The IRS stepped in stating that the conversion method did not provide significant chemical change to qualify for tax credits. The company put 20 million US dollars plus into escrow for the licenses and taxes. 2 1/2 years later the IRS appears to be relenting. In the mean, time no one appears to be trying to convert coal to fuel.

If you are a publically traded company - why bother. You can tie up multi-millions of dollars in a project only of get it delayed, revised, or rejected at any government level.

I get wrapped around the axle on a few topics. This is one.

Eugene

[Rudi]

Eugene:

Got a question...

The US has oil shale.. I am assuming that it is similar in recovery to the Oil Sands projects in Alberta. If so, why the problem? We have been doing this for decades... and in fact.. all of that production goes entirely to feed US consumption requirements... most of us never see a drop of it..

I get wrapped around the axle on these issues as well.. mostly on how stupid bureaucracy is... and then they tell us we the consumer must conserve whilst they waste billions of our tax dollars. (yeah.. here too.. we got the 1.2 billion gun registry fiasco to name one)... Canada has enough of our own resources to be entirely self sufficient and still export vast amounts...

I do not understand why we are forced to pay such extortionist prices ... and yes I am a free market supporter.. I do not believe in price regulation unless it is to fight monopolistic or cabal type operations...

We also have vast deposits of coal and of course one of the world's finest nuclear technologies... what gives????

Ah well.. that is why I am an independantly poor, no longer have to work for a living, disabled veteran who don't know shat from shinola it appears..


gotta have a humongeous sense of humour...

[George Willer]

Don't get me started on the Grand Staircase National Monument, where a previous administration took billions of tons of high quality fuel and locked it away forever. Might be because of his tree hugger VP he did it without any prior notice at all?

[Eugene]

Oil shale produces about 1 barrel of oil for every ton of shale. One method of extraction is open pit mining. The second is similiar to methods used to extract oil from oil sands - use heated water pumped through the sand and extract the oil from just below the heated area. Shell oil has been working on the second method for several years. Third method. Raytheon has a concept where they heat the shale using (i think) a technology along the lines of the kitchen microwave to heat the shale.

Oil from the north slope in Alaska goes to Japan.

There is a two reactor nuclear power plant about 12 miles north of my home. The power company wants to install a third reactor. If everyting works out it will take about 5 years to get the third reactor on line. Providing - providing the proposed third reactor is not tied up in the courts and bureaucratic red tape.

Peabody Coal has a proposal to place an electric power plant at the mouth of a coal mine. Really good idea. Ya well, good luck on that proposal. In the mean time coal trains from western USA transport coal to power plants on the east coast.

The longer I set here working on this message the more peeved I get.

Eugene

[Jack fowler]

Eugene wrote:

Oil from the north slope in Alaska goes to Japan.

Actually since the price of oil has gone up, the oil companies have more buyers at the higher price.

It’s all about money.

Currently, the bulk of the oil extracted from Alaska (almost all of which comes from federal lands) is being exported to countries in Asia, where better prices can be obtained by the oil companies. U.S. refineries receive little or no crude oil from Alaska, despite Alaska being capable of providing over 7% of the daily needs of the United States. Currently Alaska provides less than 1% of the United States daily needs, with the rest of Alaska's production being sold to countries in Asia.

Oh ya, I forgot to add politics along with money….

4 billion in government subsidies are encouraging the ethanol program without substantial benefits to the U.S. economy. Large ethanol industries and a few U.S. government agencies, such as the USDA, support the production of ethanol.

Corn-farmers receive minimal profits. In the U.S. ethanol system, considerably more energy, including high-grade fossil fuel, is required to produce ethanol than is available in the energy ethanol output. Specifically about 29% more energy is used to produce a gallon of ethanol than the energy in a gallon of ethanol. At this time, fossil energy powers corn production and the fermentation/distillation processes.
The tax exemption for ethanol is 30 percent higher than that for gasoline. Gasoline marketers pay 18.3 cents per gallon of conventional fuel to the government while marketers of the ethanol blend only pay a tax of 12.9 cents per gallon. That comes to $300.00 a barrel tax lost or government subsidy.

Ethanol subsidies cost U.S. taxpayers and the economy about $1 billion a year. Farmers only get about thirty cents of every dollar spent on ethanol, with the rest going to ethanol producers such as agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland.

Federal tax breaks. The 1978 Energy Tax Act, exempted ethanol-blended fuels from some $60 million in federal excise taxes which otherwise would have gone into the Highway Trust Fund. Congress raised ethanol tax subsidies to 50 cents per gallon in 1982 and to 60 cents per gallon in 1984. In 1990, the tax subsidies were reduced to 54 cents per gallon. The 1980 Crude Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act also provided income tax credits for the production and blending of alcohol fuels - thus, oil production directly subsidized ethanol production.

Federal mandates. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 extended tax breaks to ethanol blends of less than ten percent and mandated the use of alternative fuels, including ethanol, in some areas.
A January 1994 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule required the use of ethanol or ETBE in 15 percent of the reformulated gasoline sold nationwide beginning in 1995, rising to 30 percent in the following years. (A federal court later struck down this rule.)

Tariff protections. In 1980, Congress imposed a tariff on foreign-produced ethanol (made from cheaper sugar cane) to make it more expensive than domestic supplies derived from corn.

Loan guarantees. The Energy Security Act of 1980 gave over $1 billion in loan guarantees for ethanol plant construction. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also set up a loan guarantee program for ethanol plant construction. Many of these loans were eventually defaulted on, costing U.S. taxpayers almost $300 million.

Producer payments. The 1990 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act provided 10-cent-per-gallon payments to smaller ethanol producers who underutilize production capacity.

Discounted corn. Oil prices fell to $10 per barrel in 1986 and ethanol could not compete with gasoline. Archer Daniels Midland purchased $29 million of cut-rate priced government corn stock earmarked for the troubled cattle and dairy industries.

State subsidies. Between 1995 and 1996, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota and Kansas implemented payments to ethanol producers of up to 20 cents per gallon. Some states also funded ethanol plants construction. And starting in 1997, Minnesota will require all grades of gasoline to be blended with ethanol. To my understanding every states are required all grades of gasoline to be blended with ethanol.
There would be little or no market demand for ethanol without tax breaks and other government supports. Ethanol costs about twice as much as gasoline to make.

Everyone has their opinion about why the U.S. (and other countries) is fighting in the Middle East. If it’s for getting rid of the terrible Dictators, making the Middle East a democracy, the threat of nuclear bombs or the pay back of 9-11 we the people vote a leader(s) in office to hopefully make good decisions how to handle the problems when they arise.

In my opinion if the fighting in the Middle East is all about oil the cost for the American tax payer (What I found in my research) in 2005 in Iraq alone was $5.6 billion per month.

If so, I would much rather allocate my tax dollars to the support the production of alternatives energies in the friendlier part of the world. I’ll bet my next week pay check at $5.6 billion per month someone in the free enterprise system will develop a safe energy for the good of all of us.

George wrote:

but I'll be damned if I'll throw any of them away and forfeit the purchase price for any greenie. To do so would make their purchase price/miles driven compute to more than $1.60 for every MILE DRIVEN!

You're right George, I can’t comment on the “greenie” part, but I can comment on the “forfeit the purchase price”.
First let’s talk about the fuel consumption of your Dodge truck. Say you get 15 mpg; drive 25 miles a day and gasoline cost is $279.9 per gallon. 25 ÷ 15 = 1.666 gallons per day at $2.799 per gallon =$4.66 per day for fuel cost. Now let’s say you want to buy something a little more economical on fuel cost, something around 25 mpg. You save $1.86 a day, $9.30 a week. As you know at 25 mpg the only type of truck you could purchase is a “mini pickup” 4 cylinder stick shift. You won’t be going on any trips to purchase any tractors to trailer them back home. You will not carry anymore than two people in the cab comfortably. You will not carry anything in the bed that weighs anything and expect to pull it. Now let’s say the new small truck cost $13,000 and you sold your seven year old Dodge for $6,000. Let’s see you’re in the “hole” for $7,000 to gain $10.00 a week. What a deal!


The average cost of driving a car is 56 cents a mile for gas, maintenance, insurance, etc.,but when you “forfeit the purchase price” your price per mile jumps way up.


John wrote:

The thing that many countries don't realize about the United States is it's geographical size and population density compared to most other industrial countries. It hadn't realy registered with me, until my son went to England a couple of years ago, and was talking about traveling across England The distance completely across England is less than across the state of Mo.

Yes I found the same thing. But I also found people don’t move out as much as they do in the U.S. probably because of Europe’s geographical size. Most people live in the same house their family built years before. The commute to work is very short and mass transit is more common place than in the U.S. or Canada. This was probably dictated because of the high fuel cost Europe has always had to live with.

When in France, when we traveled to Paris which was a two hour commute we journeyed by bus or train which was always on schedule. In Canada or the U.S. a two hour commute is commuting back and forth to work everyday (in most cases) with one person per vehicle.

I have to live on a stringent budget as many of you do, especially; some of you that are retired on a fixed income. When extra unexpected expenses come along like the jump in fuel cost the only thing I can do is cut back on the use of fuel when I can, like George said “use less”. I can’t throw away a car that cost me $12,000 (that’s worth $6,000 now) three years ago to get something that gets 35 mpg for $15,000.

I’ve noticed in the news that incentives are given if you buy one of the hybrid cars. I wonder who pays for that? If the Government gives the incentives, you know who pays it. Bank of America offers $3K incentive on hybrid cars to its employees. Good for them. I bank at Bank of America and since they don’t really pay any interest to speak of, on the money I have in their bank, I guess I’m subsidizing this incentive on hybrid cars to its employees. I do enough subsidizing every April 15, so I will withdraw my money from Bank of America, unless they what to subsidize me. My guess if they subsidize the people that support the bank, they won’t have the money to offer $3K incentive on hybrid cars to its employees, so I guess I’m out of luck.

This is the article:
http://www.bizjournals.com/triad/stories/2006/06/05/daily23.html

[400lbsonacubseatspring]

Jack,

You've provided all the data to draw the conclusion that I've been stating for almost a year now.

Ethanol from corn will never work.

Archer Daniels Midland, and ConAgra have committed themselves to producing ethanol from corn......they are so committed, in fact, that even though the real dollars and sense do not work out, they have manipulated the government subsidies in order to make it work out anyway.

The only studies you will find on the web state that it takes more BTU's to produce energy from Ethanol, than the Ethanol itself contains....the reason for this, is the figures obtained using the corn process.

Corn in nice, it's convenient, we can store it in silo's and use it at our liesure....we also produce an incredibly huge surplus of corn each year...Big Agribusiness wants to use corn because of these reasons.

At the end of the day, however, it is madness.

Brazil is running on ethanol...from bagasse (sugar cane after first pressing) and they're saving a fortune. We have sugar-rich crops.....corn is even one of them, but not in the conventional sense....we need to use corn-syrup varieties....but Big Agribusiness makes so much money off of "High fructose corn syrup" by selling it as a sweetener to almost every food manufacturer in the nation, that they don't want to part with a single drop of this precious stuff. They've already destroyed the US sugarcane market with this stuff.

We need sugar-rich feedstocks as a basis of ethanol production......then you'll see the true economics of the process. Waste fruit, maple sap, jerusalem artichoke stalk, sugar cane, sorghum, and syrup corn varieties..... There's a sugar-rich crop for every climate in the US, and most of the arable land of Canada. If processed correctly, using the waste materials as part of the fuel supply, these stocks can yield three times the BTU's of their process energy input.

So we need to stop saying that "Ethanol doesn't work".....and start saying that "Ethanol from corn doesn't work"........The distinction is as large as the US trade deficit.

The opportunity to put some profit back into the pockets of some farmers for these sugar-rich feedstocks exists......we simply need to work on it's development, and use those subsidies to our advantage instead of Big Agribusiness' advantage.

[Eugene]

Abengoa is currently building a celluloisc ethanol plant in York, Nebraska. The ingredient for ethanol at this plant is to be stover. The plant is going to use a licensed pretreatment process owned by Sunopta (STKL) (SOY - Canada). The plant is to be on line in the fall of 2006.

Why can we not harvest available energy sources? The FAA has received 1400 applications for wind turbine power so far this year. Last year the FAA recieved a total of 4300 applications. Wind turbine projects have been put on hold due to a portion of the 2006 Defense Authorization Act. The legislation wants a study by the Department of Defense as to whether wind turbines could interfere with military radar. Source of information is Washington Post by Kari Lydersen.

Frustrated. Notice the wording "could interfere with radar". Not will or does interfere with radar.

Eugene

[Lurker Carl]

Least we all forget one of the three biggest lies of all time:

"I'm with the government and I'm here to help you."