Yet Another Reason to Gripe About Ethanol: Water
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 04.15.07
Even after all our interminable rants about the silliness of ethanol from corn, we have found yet another thing to complain about. It seems that besides fossil fuel, pesticides, and corn, making it also uses a lot of water, 4.5 gallons per gallon of ethanol produced. There are concerns that this is not being taken into account when planning ethanol plants. Richard Cruse, director of the Iowa Water Center at Iowa State University, pointed to potential conflicts when the ethanol industry seeks to use the same pure water that people drink and give to their livestock.
"I'm not suggesting they're maniacs running wild not thinking about water, But with the industry growing so fast and drawing so much water, it can become a risk issue. When we go for three, four or five months with shallow aquifers being drawn down to the point where we have to limit or ration high-quality water, who has the priority?"
::St.Louis Dispatch
read more ethanol rants here here and here.
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I know that corn ethanol is a very stupid idea, but I never hear anything about switchgrass ethanol. How does it work? Is it's impact less intense? Is it harder to process? It's always the pro-ethanol guy's trump card, but no one seems to know anything about it.
My non-eco friends always use it in their "The Planet is Fine" defense when I tell them that ethanol and hydrogen aren't really going to fix everything. Individual conservation and really helpful technologies will help. The most marketable solution isn't always the best.
to be fair, a lot of watter is used when drilling for oil.
To increase yields of an oil well they pump water into the will to increase the oil pressure. That water is essentially unavailable to the water supply since it is locked in the well for several thousand years.
Of course I have no idea if more or less water is used in ethanol production.
Solar stirling looks better and better. No water required there.
When I first read the title, I thought it was about the water that separates from the ethanol when it sits in your gas tank for a while. I know that boaters are experiencing problems due to the tanks being 'cleaned' by the ethanol in the gas, the 'cleaned' matter gets sucked into fuel filters and clogs them.
Also, I have heard that when the gas sits for more than about 2 months, phase separation can occur between the ethanol and gas. Since Ethanol absorbs water, you end up with a layer of water at the bottom of the tank. In addition, old fuel lines which are not designed for the fuel can get spongy and develop problems.
vsk
Another ethanol rant here:
http://littlebloginthebigwoods.blogspot.com/2007/03/green-light-slow-down.html
Somewhat different perspective.
Tim- try searching on "cellulosic ethanol" - that's the more common catch phrase. In my opinion - and I've been invited to cellulosic ethanol conferences- it's not going to pan out. Everybody is saying "hey, we'll make the enzymes we need in 5 years or so"- but- nobody HAS got a commercially viable enzyme system. A couple demo plants, yes- but their costs are way high.
FACT: cellulose is what keeps stuff inside bacterial and plant cells. So- since there have been bacteria- all the forces of evolution have been at work making SURE that cellulose STAYS where it is put- ie, making it resistant to any kind of attack that can be mounted. This is not trivial.
Say somebody DOES come up with a really good enzyme that attacks cellulose. Hm. And what would that do if/when it gets out of the lab?
FACT: switch grass has to be harvested in spring, dead dry- or you'll kill the plant. Ergo- you will have millions of acres of dry grass sittiing there, the week before harvest. Will it burn? Oh, yeah. With flames 50 feet high.
Don't bet on it.
Investors in "green tech" are tradition bound into defining "Risk Management" as dealing with the price of insurance, inflation, currency fluctuations, and so on. About as close they ever get to environmental "risk" is coping with the possibility of a toxic tort lawsuit. When will the learn to think about the resource inputs and outputs and the local community? Its not hard. Its being a good neighbor. And its common sense.
In my opinion water use is going to be the rate limiting factor for the geographic spread of EtOH production. If water limits require processing at distance from the crops, the economics fall apart...at they know it. But the conundrum here is that farmers, their corn raw material suppliers, are also their neighbors and have pricing power over their customer.
It seems that the shortcomings of ethanol are proliferating, thus inspiring a wave of creativity among biotechnologists.
See this story for one take on how far scientists are willing to go.
Scruffy Dan- In most cases, the water pumped into oil/gas wells is SALT or brackish water. So they're not wasting good fresh water. Mostly.
It seems that the shortcomings of ethanol are proliferating, thus inspiring a wave of creativity among biotechnologists.
See this story for one take on how far scientists are willing to go.
It is called embedded water. There is embedded water in everything we use, including eat. Of course more water is used in some things more than others and we should aim to use as little water in process as possible, especially potable water. You can read more
http://www.waterwise.org.uk/reducing_water_wastage_in_the_uk/the_facts/embedded_water.html
It makes no sense to even consider ethanol. It just takes away precious farmland when its used for oil and ethanol only makes sense when it has a fifty cents a gallon federal subsidy. That stuff cannot stand on its own. The local Mobil station in St. Charles, MO just raises e-85 in price just like it does gasoline. Until we have some price controls on the sale of e-85 for cars so that the big oil guys cannot gouge us it makes no sense to subsidize them with half a buck. This is one of the most abused federal programs in the nation. If it were so profitable Shell, Exxon, and the others would have been building ethonal plants all along. They know this is a farce. Watch in the next few years when we remove the subsidy and the market completely disappears for ethanol. That will put the end to it the oil companies always wanted and we will be facing $4.00 a gallon gasoline by then. Go Electric Cars. We need a breakthrough.
Corn ethanol is a way to build out a national infrastructure for distributing ethanol, and getting cars powered by ethanol. Once that is in place, more efficient technologies like celluostic, sugar cane, etc can replace the ethanol from corn. The key us using the corn ethanol lobby to get the cars on the roads and the ethanol stations up and running.
Ethanol - not worth the effort
Ethanol is far from a cure-all for the nation's energy problems. As frequently discussed on this website, it's not as environmentally friendly as some supporters claim. Besides all the technical problems (attracting water, highly corrosive, etc.), there just will not be enough feedstock.
And there is another severe side effect - rising food and other commodity prices. 2 years ago pig farmers in the Midwest paid $2 for a bushel of corn this year it is $4, next year....? In 2005 about 14 percent of the corn crop went to ethanol, compared with 11 percent in 2001.
Have you any idea, what tremendous wealth of products is made from corn? Amazing! Have a look at:
http://www.iowacorn.org/cornuse/cornuse_6.html
And all these products will increase in price.The same is basically the fact for biodiesel-related products (margarine, cooking oil).
Pig farmers have already now a hard time to make both ends meet, but so will the ethanol and biodiesel industry. Was restaurant waste free a couple of years ago, 'yellow and even the gooey brown grease today costs more than 1$ a gallon. The times of free raw material is over for the "First generation alternative fuel industry".
I am really wondering, how their business plans from 3 years ago are looked at today....
It makes much more sense to use other material for cellulosic ethanol or diesel fuel. The logisitics look staggering, though - even if a jumbo jet could fly with ethanol (which is actually not feasible), you would need more than 1000 tons or 30 eighteen wheelers of switch grass to 'fil her up'.
Diesel looks more feasible. I found an interesting website where they promote making diesel from organic waste material, including waste wood and glycerol (!). They claim to be able producing twice as much energy from the same feedstock than cellulosic ethanol.
http://www.energy-visions.com/faq.htm
(look for comparison with ethanol)
If that really works out, we may have a feasible solution for alternative vehicle fuels, especially considering how clean the diesel technology became over the last 10 years. Honda will import a car to California, which is as clean as any ULEV.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/28/bloomberg/sxhonda.php
Prius performance without the battery costs and hustle? Not impossible. 80 mpg with a diesel hybrid? Already reality.
Once we go above ground for our fuel, instead of drilling from underground, the sheer quantity we use becomes frighteningly visible!