Would love to get this so called research and let us pick it apart here.

Alternative Fuels is BAD GRRRRRRRRR..... dang nabbit..... the article is now in member only archives. Anyone make a copy or seen it some place else?

Well the article showed up in our news paper too. It specifically says making Biodiesel is a NET LOSS...... how in the hellifer to they come up with that? They say the same thing about ALL alternative fuels.

As much as I hate to see reports which seem anti alternative fuels I try to keep an open mind as much as possible. In the past reports like this on Ethanol have been "discredited" by other reports which are sponsored by those who have a heavy financial interest in Ethanol production/subsidies.

Both often appear to a neutral mind to be equally suspect as far as stretching the truth to "prove" the point the authors/sponsors wish to make. Pewrsonally I hope the new report is wrong...but what if it is at least partially correct?

What exactly does it claim specifically?

From personal experience I know that news reports can often take a relativly innocuous report and "spice up" the info presented..or at least "header" to make it seem much more significant than it really is. Occasionally reporters only read far enough into a report to discover part of the reports "conclusion"...and the resulting "story" fails to even accurately "report" the message in the study.

One of the first things I do when I see such a report is try to see who sponsored its' creation. This may not be readily apparrent since a report sponsored by Exxon on how safe it is to breath exhaust emmissions from petroleum fuels..compared to (for example) the unsafe emmissions of bio fuels is greeted with much more skepticism than one sponsored by someone with nothing to gain from such a reports creation/distribution.

So..
Who sponsored it?
and
Have the authors produced similar anti-alternative fuel reports before? Are important questions to ask.

Lets also consider the possability that they may be technically correct. Maybe more energy IS required to produce (for example) a gallon of ethanol than a gallon of ethanol contains. That would seem to be a pretty strong argument that we should not waste energy on producing ethanol.

But...suppose other products are also produced..such as cattle feed. And suppose the majority of the energy used to produce the ethanol would have been expended to grow the corn to produce the feed anyway. In such a case it is incorrect to include the cost of crowing and harvesting the corn in the cost of ethanol production. Only the additional energy costs should be included to honestly determine if there is a net energy gain or loss.

Personally I have mixed feelings every time such a report comes out. I am unhappy because it is used for years by those opposed to alternative energy as a "fact" to "support" thier othewise often unsupportable veiws/arguments. But..at the same time I really DO want to know IF some alternative fuel we routinely take for granted is a net energy loser or gainer. It will not be too long when we will not be able to afford large scale implementation of any net loss energy process.

So...can anyone find a copy of this report we can closely scrutinize?

Update:
Can't find THE report yet..but found this info on one of its' authors.
David Pimentel .
It has a few links to previous research by DP as well.
I also found THIS info on Pimentel including his email address.....HEHEHE.

And wonder of wonders THIS one is on Ethanol.
Take a look at the authors "logic" on the cost of Ethanol. It seems to me it is very similar to the one sided example I used above. I am not a big fan of ethanol...but the obviously faulty logic used in most of the arguments in this Anti-ethanol report renders it essentially so supect as to be useless to me in determining if ethanol is a net energy gain or loss. And the clear predjudice it takes to openly present such clearly flawed arguments not only taints the ethanol report..it makes me wonder if ANY report published by this author can possibly be considered valid.

Geez..this guy expects the avg. reader to "take his word for it" on his supporting "facts".

As an example..and building on my previous ethanol "energy loss" example above Pimentel claims in his earlier ethanol report that:

quote:

The total fossil energy expended to produce 1 liter of ethanol from corn is 10,200 kcal, but note that 1 liter of ethanol has an energy value of only 5130 kcal. Thus, there is an energy imbalance causing a net energy loss. Approximately 53% of the total cost (55¢ per liter) of producing ethanol in a large, modern plant is for the corn raw material (Pimentel 1991). The total energy inputs for producing ethanol using corn can be partially offset when the dried distillers grain produced is fed to livestock. Although the feed value of the dried distillers grain reduces the total energy inputs by 8 % to 24%, the energy budget remains negative.

Yet while corn sells for around $90 per ton...the feed supplment which is left over from fermenting the same corn sells for over $120 per ton. So in fact there is a net "gain" from the fermentation process in terms of feed value of approximately 25%. This is much more than simply "fudging" the values..it is grossly mis-representing them.

There is no way there can ever be a net loss from using used oil.

quote:

Originally posted by neutral:
There is no way there can ever be a net loss from using used oil.

I agree completely.
And the best research I can find indicates that even using current fresh oilseed production techniques the energy return is over 2-1. Which is why I chose Vegoil to invest my time researching/promoting.

Still..I want to know if this report has valid conclusions or not. If Biodiesel IS a net energy loser...I want to know. Similarly IF ethanol is a net loss technology..I want to know.

And IF this is just bogus report designed to smear alternative fuels in general..I want to know who paid for it. They deserve to be outed as the anti-social (in every sense of the word) ba****s they are.

Here's an interesting (at least to me) aside.
The 2003 article referred to above (on ethanol "using more energy than it produces) is referred to in hundreds of articles on alternative energy since published. They use this obviously flawed Pimentel/Cornell study to "prove" thier point that ethanol is "bad".

I suppose whichever aternative energy he targeted this time is in for the same string of bad..and undeserved/faulty bad publicity.

WHO is paying for these studies?

Wait..gasoline ALSO takes more energy to produce than it creates.

According to Pimentel in this article

MORE...

quote:

The study, released Sunday, raised academic and industry hackles in Colorado.

Supporters of ethanol and biodiesel contend that biofuels burn cleaner than fossil fuels such as coal or oil, reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and give farmers another market to sell their produce.

Bob McCormick, a senior engineer at the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, said he was skeptical about the findings. McCormick said that since 1990, Cornell's Pimentel has done three studies, all of which contend that it takes more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the energy derived from the fuel.

But nine of the 11 other studies conducted - many of them sponsored by the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Energy - found the opposite. Those show ethanol produces as much as 60 percent more energy than what it takes to make it.

"My opinion is that DOE's and USDA's are definitive studies and these other studies are not going about it properly," McCormick said. "Pimentel uses methodologies in his analysis that are not acceptable to peer reviewers in his field.

"He uses old data and doesn't take into account that agricultural productivity improves every year, that farmers grow the same or more corn with lower energy and fertilizer inputs.

"I, personally, think Pimentel has some agenda that he is trying to promote."

Link to entire article "roasting" Pimentel

Here's the "abasract of the article"...I am requesting a full text version.

quote:

Abstract Energy outputs from ethanol produced using corn, switchgrass, and wood biomass were each less than the respective fossil energy inputs. The same was true for producing biodiesel using soybeans and sunflower, however, the energy cost for producing soybean biodiesel was only slightly negative compared with ethanol production. Findings in terms of energy outputs compared with the energy inputs were: • Ethanol production using corn grain required 29% more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced. • Ethanol production using switchgrass required 50% more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced. • Ethanol production using wood biomass required 57% more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced. • Biodiesel production using soybean required 27% more fossil energy than the biodiesel fuel produced (Note, the energy yield from soy oil per hectare is far lower than the ethanol yield from corn). • Biodiesel production using sunflower required 118% more fossil energy than the biodiesel fuel produced.

I now also have the full study in PDF form.
It is in PDF format and so I cannot attach it to this forum.

If you want a copy email me with "Pimental" as the email heater.

Email link is below.

Dana ... This is in the artical you linked to;

The ethanol equation
by Mark Steil, Minnesota Public Radio
March 21, 2005
"In other words, it takes 10 percent more energy to make gasoline than it produces. Pimentel's gasoline equation puts him at odds with some of his supporters. Oil industry officials have quoted Pimentel's findings on ethanol to support their case against the fuel."

Here it clearly states that his supporters come from the oil industry.
Kg

Yes..but they would use anything to support "their case". I am more interested in if he recieves financial support/compensation for releasing "research" which they then use to support "their case".

If so...it would tend to provide strong evidence his "research" is is so heavily biased against alternative fuels because his "employers" direct(and pay) him to make it so.

This is all interesting, but if it take 10% more gasoline to produce gasoline, how are we able to get enough to keep up with production?

Mark

Some good info here from Keith

"News release from Cornell:

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July05/ethanol.toocostly.ssl.html
Biomass for biofuel isn't worth it

Pimentel's paper:

Ethanol Production Using Corn, Switchgrass, and Wood; Biodiesel
Production Using Soybean and Sunflower
David Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek
Natural Resources Research, Vol. 14, No. 1, March 2005 (C 2005)
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/Pimentel-Tadzek.pdf

FYI:
David Pimentel
Email: dp18@cornell.edu

See:

http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol_energy.html
Is ethanol energy-efficient?

Scroll down to "Ethanol under fire" for more on Pimentel.

Best wishes

Keith"

It seems to me that Pimentel's claims might not be that far-fetched if you take into account the amount of energy required to distill the ethanol (to a concentration of about/at least 99.5% mind you (to make biodiesel)) and the fact that methanol is produced using fossil fuels, and assuming that the distillation/scrubbing processes of the ethanol production are fossil-fueled, as well as the growing, harvesting and pressing processes...

<<However>>

If the energy requirements of growing the oil and corn were reduced (less pesticides, natural fertilizers, etc), the heat for distilling the ethanol came from, say, waste from the oil processing operation, and the oil press and harvesting equipment were all powered by fuel made in this manner with little or no fossil fuel input, the data would appear differently. I think Pimental's argument is that the industry is so deeply woven into the use of fossil fuels that it is not sustainable in its present capacity.

Also, im not sure what the story is with gasoline, but even if it takes more energy to make the stuff than you get from burning it, its a hell of a lot more convenient to burn gasoline than crude oil or bunker fuel. My point is that you pay for what you get. Personally I consider myself an advocate of burning SVO or WVO because of the small amount of energy (and money) wasted (compared to biodiesel or ethanol) but not everyone wants to take the time to build, troubleshoot, and deal with an SVO system.

Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI)refutation of Pimental's claims, with specific details explaining why his figures are out of date:
article from EESI
Ethanol is 1.34, net positive. Biodiesel is roughly 3.2, net positive. Dino diesel is 0.83, a net loss (which skips the fact that it's non renewable - it took NO energy to make the petroleum. Perhaps that's equivelant to our veg oil being made for free by the sun, except we get it each year, whereas petroleum takes much longer)

Last summer I met one of the directors of Reap Canada,(http://www.reap-canada.com/) a research body into third world sustainability projects and the discussion turned to exactly this subject and while he went on and on with joules and figures that I have no idea what they are, he did come to the end conclusion that while making biodiesel from virgin oil isn't all that energy viable, but still is higher than a break even scenario, he was very enthusiastic about using WVO for biodiesel use, saying that that WAS energy sustainable.
My 2-1/2 cents worth

There is a need to find studies which assess each type of veg oil separately. For instance in the case of soy the oil is little more than a byproduct of the soy meal industry. It would be grown even if it contained no oil. I want to see a study which apportions the production cost of the bean in some logical manner between its various uses.

And I've just thought of another monster issue. If you subtracted the loss to the nation due to heart disease from consuming Sunflower oil the benefit of burning the oil instead of eating it would put it way in front!

I dont want to come off as a supporter of fossil fuel use, or as disagreeing with the viability (economically, socially, technologically, politically, and otherwise) of plant oil fuels, and after reading the EESI article I understand some more of the background behind Pimentel's research, however I remember reading somewhere, and I can't remember where and I dont have the time to search around and find out right now, but I remember reading that biodiesel has an energy balance of about 2.5:1 wheras fossil oil has an energy balance of about 30:1. Could the vast array of (harmful) products derived from fossil crude somehow play into this type of analysis? It seems that this number is somewhat unreliable because fossil fuel becomes harder and harder (i.e. more energy used) to find as it is used up. However, from those numbers it seems that biodiesel is no match for fossil fuel oil as a direct plug-in replacement. To quote (loosely) a recent National Geographic article "the replacement for oil will have to be in the form of a congress rather than a king", or alternatively, oil cannot be fully replaced by any one form of energy. It would be interesting to see the energy balance for burning SVO, has anyone here encountered such data anywhere?

We have to look at the numbers equated to the energy value of crude oil in the respect that it is used. Which is to say that, like livestock, the industry has come up with a way to use just about every part of crude oil to some use: tar, diesel, gasoline, naptha, ketones, plastics, methanol--just to name a few. Those products no doubt sway the equation to an unrealistic number as little energy is required to crack the lighter volitiles but more is required to make, say, petro diesel.

So a more fair comparison to petro diesel vs biodiesel would have to account for the amount of PD derived from a litre of crude only and the same for a litre of veg oil. Only then do we even come close to a fair comparison.

One can easily sway the equation in favor of petroleum if one counts the energy value of the lighter components of crude. Only, they are not typically used for fuel but rather as solvents and building blocks for other petro-derived substances, where their energy potential is never realized.

Gee, I hope this rant makes some kind of sense. . .

Your rant makes perfect sense Hoon, thats exactly what i was trying to get at. I guess my point is that looking at biofuels as a plug in replacement for fossil fuels is unrealistic, because they do not, at least at present, replace the energy or the products that can be derived from fossil fuels. That doesnt by any means make biofuels a dead end, it just requires a lifestyle change that should have already happened, and serious analysis of ALL sustainable (i.e. NOT nuclear) alternatives to petroleum.