? on wood alcohol

[Reed Wells]

Hi Guys, My brother in law and I were talking while we drove 18 in the cart, one thing we talked about was wood alcohol instead of grain for fuel. It seems that it would be more plentiful and would leave the corn for food and feed. I don't know the best woods that could be used, but I certainly know that around here logging has been very depressed. It would seem a natural choice , but then again I am certainly no chemist. Any thoughts from those in the know? Certain trees that would be better than others?

[curtis rosche]

then you would have people stealing trees, and then the price for use to do our hobbies would go way way up. grass would be a better idea since we all cut our lawns and through it out anyways

[Pete Simmons]

Here is a link to a local newspaper article a friend of mine recently wrote

http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080526/COLUMNISTS0205/805260307/1138/OPINION


I think that is wood alcohol.

It has some drawbacks but better than using corn of fighting in middle east.

[Richard M. Wolfe]

Alcohol from wood and wood alcohol are two different things. Wood alcohol is another name for methyl alcohol or methanol. The alcohol used for fuel now is ethanol - grain alcohol..

Making alcohol from wood would not work well due to high concentrations of other compounds in the wood that grains and grasses lack. Ethanol is a fermentation product of sugars and starches (cellulose). The other compounds in wood are things like lignins which give the wood structural strength but are pretty much untouched by fermentation organisms. Fermentation of cellulose in wood would require fine chopping to expose the cellulose fraction which would otherwise be unavailable. Also a lot of 'gunk' would remain in the fermentation vessels to be dealt with. Using wood is not nearly as efficent.

[Joe Chritz]

There are other things to make ethanol from than corn. Some are promising, some are not so promising.

Unless the cost of ethanol fuels can be substantially lowered I don't see it as an answer.

Switchgrass is supposed to theoretically deliver over 5 times the energy used to produce it. Corn for ethanol produces about 25% more than it takes to produce.

It has been a while but there was an article in a science journal about a DOE funded project to build some refineries to produce ethanol from switchgrass.

People looking for a one word answer for a complex problem need to open their eyes a bit.

Joe

[Craig Summers]

I agree about the wood, not a good fuel source

There are several ways to make alcohol, just as there are many ways to imbibe it as well

The current ones are:
1) Grain
2) Bio Mass: Switch grass, Rice Stalks, Corn Stalks etc

In order to make bio mass work, they have to covert cellulose to sugar, which can then be fermented. How to convert it affordably is still being developed in the lab.

There is alot of new technology being developed for energy, the best website i found that gives the latest news is Next Energy News dot com (http://www.nextenergynews.com/)

[Joe Chritz]

Nice websight Craig. I hadn't seen that before, thanks for the heads up.

Joe

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Yah there's some professor in Georgia who wants to clear cut the state for Alcohol.

I am unclear why Alcohol is seen as a panacea for the fuel problems. It's costly to make and the fuel gain is not all that great.

There's 85 billion barrels of supply and 87 billion of demand. The oil drilling technology has come light years from the bad old days when technology and total lack of environmental interest made drilling such a filthy messy ugly business. Everything has changed. It's time to start drilling for more.

The things the US could do:. Oil, coal, gas, Nuke, wind solar, bio.
It's all so do-able and together it might be adequate to kiss OPEC goodbye.

Even the fresh water supply concerns are manageable if nuke power were applied to desalinization and pumping.

The only problem with energy is that an erg of energy is fungible. If some guy in East Bazoo will pay a given price for that erg then you are going to have to out bid him.

[Joe Pelonio]

If only we had the Flux Capacitor, and could power our cars on garbage!

[Craig Summers]

If only we had the Flux Capacitor, and could power our cars on garbage!

Well we have the "Political Flux Capacitor", thats the perpetual motion machine powered on the political hot air garbage. :D

Now if only campaign promises could power our cars :rolleyes: ......