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Caribbean-Latin America
Brazilians gain from surge of interest in ethanol
2004-11-18
Growing global demand for cleaner vehicle fuels and the possibility of falling farm subsidies in Europe have sparked several investments in Brazil's ethanol industry. Brazilian and foreign investors are set to invest as much as $3bn (€2.3bn, £1.6bn) over the next five years to increase ethanol production by 40 per cent, according to Unica, the S'o Paulo sugar cane federation. Current ethanol production is about 15bn litres a year. Huge water and land supplies help make Brazil the world's largest, cheapest producer of ethanol, derived locally from sugar cane. Production costs for one cubic metre average $160, says FNP, an agricultural consultancy in Sa~o Paulo. In the US corn-based ethanol costs roughly 40 per cent more and Europe's beet-based ethanol roughly double.

With far lower emission levels than hydrocarbons, demand for ethanol is expected to surge, with many parts of Europe, Asia, and the Americas legislating for ethanol or other clean fuels to be mixed into petrol. In Brazil, ethanol makes up between 25 per cent and 100 per cent of automotive fuel. "Ethanol is becoming a global commodity and Brazil is its most competitive producer," says Luiz Guilherme Zancaner, president of Unialco, a cane distiller and refiner.
Lots more in the link
Posted by:Mark Espinola

#9  ed, that was our production in 1999. In 2004 we're gonna produce well over 3 billion gallons (increase of factor of 3 from that survey) and in 2005 we're gonna produce over 4 bilion gallons. Also the costs have dropped from that survey. More importantly you need the fuel in easily transportable and storable form for cars. Electricity from a nuclear plant doesn't fit the bill... ethanol does.

Btw, I think we should be building more nuclear plants to limit our coal and natural gas usage.
Posted by: Damn_Proud_American   2004-11-18 4:47:07 PM  

#8  BlueMeanie, you're right of course. But as the price of ethanol production drops (we have technology already that should cut it in half when it's implemented) the cost ceiling of oil will continue to be lowered. At least once ethanol production is somewhere near ethanol demand (right now it's not even close).

Jackal, i think ethanol is about 80% of the energy content of gas, not 2/3s. Also it's higher octane so you get more acceleration (power) not less. You don't lose range if you make fuel tanks slightly bigger. And if ethanol costs less than gas per gallon than the fuel efficiency isn't relevant (cost per mile should be how it's measured).

It would increase the costs of grain in the short term (as demand exceeds supply until demand is built up) but shouldn't affect in the long term.

Yields from corn is about 3 gallons of ethanol per bushel. Also with cellulostic production we can use literally any cellulose material... which means you could use the parts of plants that are currently being thrown in landfills. This is a BIG deal and the tech is only first coming online now.

Some other points you should be able to use up to 15% ethanol mix gas in all current cars without an upgrade. The upgrade to a FlexFuel Vehicle (FFV) mainly consists of applying a coating layer to the fuel line because alcohol is corrosive and replacing the chip that controls the combusion in the car to handle the increase in octane based on the fuel mix. It wou ld cost about $1000... so probably significantly less than 10% and to do it in new cars currently costs manufacturers only a few hundred bucks/vehicle.
Posted by: Damn_Proud_American   2004-11-18 4:41:26 PM  

#7   USDA's 1998 Ethanol Cost-of-Production Survey
In late 1999 and early 2000, USDAsurveyed 28 ethanol plants, both wet and dry mills, to estimate their 1998 costs of production (net corn costs and cash variable costs). These ethanol plants processed more than 400 million bushels of corn and sorghum in 1998 to produce more than 1.1 billion gallons of ethanol. The average variable cost of production of ethanol (the sum of the net corn cost plus net variable operating costs) weighted by industry sector was 93.9 cents per gallon. The net feedstock cost averaged about 53 cents per gallon for dry mills and 48 cents per gallon for wet mills.

Another way to look at it is that it is the same energy output of 3 1000MW nuclear reactors run 365 days for 1 year. In addition, the corn feedstocks eat up $2 billion each year (more if you include corn subsidies).

As for energy efficiency, here is another article quote using biomass (e.g. waste wheat stalks) ethanol production:
A performed system assessment for a bio-ethanol plant (156 kton/yr; Fig. 1) for three feedstocks. Bio-ethanol (99.9 vol%) is produced at an energetic efficiency of 40-55%. CHP of non-fermentable residues provides the total steam and electricity demand of the plant plus an electricity surplus, giving a total efficiency of 56-68%.

So add in the surplus electricity from burning the waste and you get another 1000MW reactor of power out of it. To see just how little this is, 4000MW is 1% of US electricity production, or 0.3% of total US energy consumption. If the US would put in the effort, we could put online every 1 or 2 months in nuclear energy production, the entire US ethanol energy production, and without the huge feedstock costs.
Posted by: ed   2004-11-18 4:27:41 PM  

#6  I agree with BlueMeanie up to a point. Granted if you go from nukular or solar or wind, then conversion losses are OK to produce ethanol, since you can't use those directly. If the source is coal, it's a somewhat different matter, since liquification is an (expensive, but perhaps no more so) alternative. If they are using oil or natural gas, then this is just plain stupid.

However, to consider it for the US, we have to consider several other factors:

1. How would the cost structure work here? We have higher labor costs, lower taxes, different climate and soil, etc.

2. What is the yield per acre? How much land would it cost to substitute for our gasoline/diesel consumption? What would happen to the grain market if we used it all for alcohol? Would half the world starve?

3. What are the conversion costs? I just bought a new car. I would hate to have to trade it in in less than 5 years, or spend 10% of the purchase price to retrofit it.

4. Ethanol is something like 2/3 energy content per gallon of gasoline and even lower compared to diesel. You lose power and fuel economy and range.

5. Of course, you have to build all the conversion plants. That's a big capital cost.
Posted by: jackal   2004-11-18 3:35:11 PM  

#5  Nuclear power. Faster, please.
Posted by: lex   2004-11-18 1:46:56 PM  

#4  The statement, "ethanol requires twice as much energy to produce as it delivers" is meaningless because it doesn't have a $ figure attatched. What are the energy inputs from: electric, diesel, mule power? But most importantly, what are their total cost? The bottom line is what is important. That is, what is the price differential between your total cost of production and the selling price?. If it's enough to give you a healthy ROI, then it's a winner. The article states that in Brazil, sugar based alcohol was very attractive when oil was $30/barrel. Well, with the price now hovering around $50/barrel it must beextremely attractive. My feeling is that companies were hesitant to jump on the bandwagon until now because they weren't sure the price would stay up there or not. But now the consensus seems to be that it will because of continued strong demand for oil from Asia, especially China, which will only get more so in the years ahead. Hence the new interest in this fuel. What I like about alcohol is that it can be mixed with gasoline in almost any proportion.

Btw, we will never free ourselves from "Saudi Black Skag", because Saudi light crude is the cheapest to produce in the world, something like $1/barrel on average. What widespread adoption of alcohol would do is terminate the high cost producers of oil, like those deep sea wells in the Gulf of Mexico and Canadian tar sands oil(maybe). Ethanol would in effect act as a cost ceiling for oil - oil would not go beyond a certain cost because there is a widely available alternative which is cheaper. This will not impoverish the Saudis, only make them somewhat poorer than they would be otherwise. To impoverish the Saudis you would need a fuel alternative that is dirt cheap.
Posted by: BlueMeanie   2004-11-18 1:38:40 PM  

#3  Ethanol is awesome thankyou for reminding me Mark!

The grand thing about ethanol is it isn't expensive relatively to convert to it.

Unlike Hydrogen or whatever fad is on now, Ethanol can be pumped out of existing petrol stations.

Ethanol was used in the past for farm machinery and farmers used to brew their own fuel: for free.

Fuel cost: 0.

Ethanol is used now in high-performance racing cars.

Your engine needs modifications to run on ethanol as it is very corrosive. It needs a teflon coated engine.

You can buy cars that run on ethanol. Once long ago i posted the links I can't be bothered looking again, but anybody who is interested can just do a google search.

It is my dream that we should be weaned off Saudi Black Skag so the Saudis can go back to being the povo-stricken third world neanderthals they really are and stop trying to own the whole world with the money we are stupidly throwing at them.

We rantburgers should be the first ones lining up to convert our engines as WE KNOW just how bad it is to give money to rabid Islamonazis.

I agree with you Damn Proud American.

All the best from a Damn Proud Australian (ready to go out and sink Indo fishing ships at that)
Posted by: Anon1   2004-11-18 11:33:01 AM  

#2  Actually it releases more of some types of emissions and less of others than gas, but to say it releases more or twice as dirty as petrol isn't right... Also the fact that it is renewable and the growth of new ethanol crops absorbs all the emissions is a valid point and leads to net zero emissions. Using oil from the ground is releasing emissions from a sink and reintegrating them into the environment, growing fuel doesn't do that. Whether this is really having an effect on the environment (or whether that effect is positive or negative) I'm have no idea.

Also, it's no longer true that ethanol requires more energy to produce than it stores. This used to be true but with new methods of farming and ethanol distilling it's a net energy gainer. When the new method of cellulostic ethanol comes on line it will become even more.

I like ethanol, it removes a source of income for terrorists (the oil sold from the ME) and reduces our trade deficit. The crazy thing is that with oil where it is today, ethanol is almost the same price as gas without the net dollar of tax subsidy (~50 cents for gas and ~-50 cents for the ethanol).
Posted by: Damn_Proud_American   2004-11-18 9:17:42 AM  

#1  This just greenie lunacy. Even in Brazil ethanol requires twice as much energy to produce as it delivers. Its cleaner becuase the dirty fuels are burned in the production process. In reality it's twice as dirty as gas/petrol.
Posted by: phil_b   2004-11-18 8:47:31 AM  

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