[ok-sus] Ethanol, made from many crops, can power cars cleanly

Mon Aug 18 17:02:11 PDT 2008

I saw the video, read the book, "Alcohol Can Be a Gas" and am investigating building a "production station" using cattails as feedstock. The production station would be on my land near Porum, a rural community. I want to find out if any of my local municipalities use cattails in their treatment schemes and perhaps make an arrangement for harvesting the feedstock. I plan on visiting the Water Dept of Porum and risk being laughed out of the office when I say "cattail". It would be useful to know if there are treatment plants anywhere in Oklahoma using cattails. Do you know of any or an easy way to find out?

Wado (Tsalagi-thanks)

huti

Dissent is the right of every citizen and the duty of every patriot.

iyelisdi nvwato hiyadv (Tsalagi-Imagine Peace)

--- On Tue, 7/15/08, Allison Blanchard <adoc55 at hotmail.com> wrote:
From: Allison Blanchard <adoc55 at hotmail.com>
Subject: [ok-sus] Ethanol, made from many crops, can power cars cleanly
To: "Sustainability Issues in Oklahoma" <ok-sus at lists.oksustainability.org>
Date: Tuesday, July 15, 2008, 7:23 AM

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Natural gas may be a choice for powering cars, but that is not sustainable in the long run.

Having just been to the 19th annual MREA renewable energy fair in Wisconsin, I've heard lots of ideas and brought back more info. But the best thing I've heard in several years of attending sustainability and peak oil conferences, is using locally produced ethanol, and not from corn. 

Having just met Dave Blume, read some of his book "Alcohol Can Be a Gas" and seen the 2.5 hour video of a talk he gave on the chemistry, use, history and politics of ethanol, I am not pessimistic about the coming years. By the way, I have many many copies of the video for anyone interested and would like to start showing it around OKC.

More info on that from www.alcoholcanbeagas.com

Ethanol burns clean. The crops used to make it will sequester more CO2 during their growth period than will be released when it's burned as a fuel. Ethanol uses this year's sunlight, and can be made in pretty large quantities for local use, just to name a few I can remember from the talk:

1000 - 1300 gallons a year from an acre of sugar beets,

1000 - 1300 gallons a year from an acre of sugar cane,

2500 gallons a year from an acre of Cat tails (more if it's harvested 3-4 times), 

      and cat tails clean the water they line in, so use them in the water purification plant to absorb all those extra "nutrients" then harvest them for getting fuel to get to the farmer's market to by more nutrients

but only 200 gallons a year from an acre of corn etc,etc,

Grass clippings are a major crop that is locally available, once enzymes for breaking down cellulose are added.

And, the leftover mash from producing ethanol from crops is a good fertilizer for those rops and is a better food source for cattle/pigs than the original crop was, ie, corn mash keeps 9 of 10 corn pests at bay. And, we get one pound of beef from 10 pounds of corn kernels,  but it only takes 3.3 pounds of corn mash to get that pound of beef, so, we get the sugar out to make the ethanol and give the leftover to the cow = more efficient use of the corn. And as I mentioned above, there are many many better crops for making ethanol than corn. 

Prior to WWII in Germany, there was a farmer co-operative system where the farmer brought his crop to the ethanol plant, received back 1/3 of the ethanol that it would produce and the leftover "mash" for his pigs. He could use the ethanol or sell it. The co-op took the 2/3 ethanol they made and sold it to run the plant. No middle man.

In the early days of the auto world here in the US, all farmers had stills and made ethanol. Henry Ford designed his first cars to run on it, as that was the only fuel widely available. When Rockefeller, the largest refiner of oil figured out that the waste product he had an abundent amount of (gasoline) could be used in the combustion engine, he started selling it in the cities. People would gas up in town with gasoline, make adjustments in the engine with a knob on the dash, listening for the disappearance of the pinging noise. When they ran low out in the country side, they would just go to any farmer, fill up on ethanol, readjust to stop the pinging noise with the dashboard knob and drive back to town. Only after prohibition did that two fuel system breakdown.

We have to use much less and use locally grown/made, but we can make our own fuel locally, in a co-op situation, leaving out the middle man, with ethanol.

Get the book, get the video, get the history of how we did it in the early days of cars and switched to gasoline because it was the cheap byproduct of refining oil. We can easily switch back, use less, etc.

Allison Blanchard

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