# Ethanol. It seems so simple now. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 18, 2006, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethanol-it-seems-so-simple-now/373120 "2006-09-18T00:32:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2006, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethanol-it-seems-so-simple-now/373120/41 "2006-09-20T13:14:27Z")
> [@](#): > > Bold mine. While I don’t know if they do or don’t deplete the soil, one thing is for sure it has a effect. You are preventing energy from reaching the ground. Does it make a difference, well at first glance it doesn’t seem to, but such effects can’t be entirely rulled out either. Yeah, but nobody’s be stupid enough to put shadowing solar panels over prime farmland. You can put them over barren land. The Meinel’s (non-photocell) “Solar Farm” concept was supposed to be used in the desert. So why not use corn-for-ethanol _and_ solar energy? I’m not convinced that converting biomass to ethanol (or methanol) is a winning proposition. It seems too likely to be an energy sink than a source, and it costs effort and money and depletes the soil. But, to be fair, I don’t have the facts on this. I have to read the above literatutre, and other stuff. But my recollections on biomass power (from data now very old) was that it wasn’t even break-even. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2006, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethanol-it-seems-so-simple-now/373120/42 "2006-09-20T15:00:06Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] That’s what I was thinking. There’s a reason we eat the corn itself and not the stalks. 🙂 [/QUOTE] Only that we can’t digest it. The stalks still include a lot of sugar (from which ethanol is derived) but it’s linked in ways that our digestive systems can’t process. The “fiber” in foodstuffs is the parts we can swallow but not digest; most of it is cellullose (which is 100% sugar same as the “carbs” we can digest, but with bonds for which we don’t have a “knife” enzyme). In the case of hard plants (trees) you also get the lignine family of compounds, which includes some sugar but also other stuff and which is indigestible to herbivores. The “unbreakable bond” in cellulose can be broken by highly acidic environments; some of it gets broken down in our stomachs but not enough to really make an impact. Herbivores like cows and goats get both an enzime that can break it (and we lack) and extra-long digestions, with the cellulose spending extra-long time under those acidic conditions. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2006, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethanol-it-seems-so-simple-now/373120/43 "2006-09-20T15:03:41Z")
[QUOTE=ralph124c] Actually, METHANOL (wood alcohol) is a better choice for the USA. methyl alcohol can be synthesized from natural gas, or wood or coal. Its a better fuel than ethyl alcohol, and can also be blended with gasoline. Methanol solves another problem-the alcoholics in Brazil buy a lot of fuel to drink-methanol is fatal, so no unauthorized, non-vehicular use problems. [/QUOTE] But you need to spend energy synthesizing it. So it’s a black hole, that energy has to come from somewhere; also, if you’re using those sources to make MeOH you’re not freeing them for usages with higher added value (like synthesizing medicines). The point with plant-originated ethanol is that it both uses the sun as an energy source and frees up the gas and oil for higher value usages. ---
**Author:** ![scm1001](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c4cdca/32.png) [@scm1001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scm1001)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2006, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethanol-it-seems-so-simple-now/373120/44 "2006-09-20T16:49:16Z")
[QUOTE=jjimm] That’s what I’d always understood, **John**. The real calculation, of course, is the tipping point between how much energy it takes to produce 1 watt of energy from fossil fuel, vs. how much it takes to produce 1 watt from ethanol; but the net carbon output will always be lower in the latter case, so in “carbon cost” terms, at some point will be cheaper. [/QUOTE] It depends where your energy is coming from. But, if it takes a gallon of fuel to drive the tractors, transport the sugar, heat the frementation tanks etc to produce a gallon equivalent of ethanol, then the carbon balance is the same. You could argue that that you could have used hydroelectricity etc to generate the power in which case you are in the black. However, the electricity you used meant someone else could not use it, and so might have had to use a nonrenewable source, generating the carbon instead of you. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethanol-it-seems-so-simple-now/373120/45 "2006-09-21T02:38:51Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] Except that the CO2 released from ethanol burning is CO2 that was recently captured in the crop. There is no net CO2 increase in the atmosphere. With coal, you are releasing CO2 that has been trapped for millions of years, which increases the current CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. . [/QUOTE] Point taken [QUOTE=Sam Stone] Capacitors are great for rapid release of energy, but the quantity of energy they can hold is relatively low. New technologies like nanotube capacitors may increase that dramatically, however. Still not enough to replace batteries, but enough that you could use a capacitor in your car to provide peak power for better acceleration. [QUOTE] Not capacitors, capacitor batteries. I’ve seen them work. They don’t store as much electricity compared to a battery of similar size but they may very well outperform batteries by weight. I’ve seen them demonstrated in power tools and although they don’t hold a charge as long as a conventional battery they can be recharged in minutes so the downtime is much better. If you take something like a car hood and put solar cells on one side and capacitor batteries on the other side then you are combining 2 technologies into a structure that serves no purpose other than appearance. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethanol-it-seems-so-simple-now/373120/46 "2006-09-21T02:39:53Z")
Not sure why the coding above isn’t working. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethanol-it-seems-so-simple-now/373120/47 "2006-09-21T03:48:12Z")
No “/” on that second quote tag. ---
**Author:** ![mattwhittall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bc79bd/32.png) [@mattwhittall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mattwhittall)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethanol-it-seems-so-simple-now/373120/48 "2006-09-22T22:08:02Z")
how about instead of building expensive specialized fuel factory, that isnt even feasible or sensible but apparently profitable. how about nuclear power and electric cars. with gas pumps replaced by charging stations. home run for us, its a no brainer etc. thats the future. i think hippies created environmental oriented organizations during the 70’s and then over the years theyve turned into monsters trying to make a buck. its pretty disgusting. and besides think about how many innocent people would be arrested for dwi, think about the people hippies [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethanol-it-seems-so-simple-now/373120.md?page=2)