Is Ethanol Really A Viable Option?
18 May
Most people recognize the simple fact that there is only a certain amount of oil reserves in the planet. And anything that is in limited supply is certain to run out sooner or later. Because all societies are so dependent on oil, if oil ran out before a sufficient alternative was created, there would be bedlam and chaos. The good news is that there are plenty of alternative energy sources being investigated. The bad news is that many of them are years away from fully replacing oil completely.
While there are plenty of energy sources being currently researched, one hopeful contender is ethanol. Ethanol is similar chemically to gasoline, so an ethanol based engine would give about the same horse power as a gasoline based engine. Although there are several good reasons to use ethanol, there are several drawbacks as well. In this article I’ll talk about the pros and cons of using ethanol.
For many reasons, corn is the most desired crop to make ethanol from. Generally, it gives the best yield per acre. The main benefit of using ethanol is that it is renewable. That means from the same patch of dirt, you can keep growing corn year after year that can be turned into fuel for engines. That small piece of dirt can be the source of unlimited fuel.
The second benefit to using ethanol is that it is much cleaner burning that gasoline, and has virtually zero carbon emissions. That means no contribution to global warming, no greenhouse gasses, and no pollution. That we could have an unlimited source of clean energy almost seems to good to be true.
Unfortunately, at this point in time, it is. The major drawback to creating ethanol from fields of corn is that in order to plant, harvest, and transform the corn into ethanol, gasoline powered equipment is required. And with current technology, on average, it takes about a gallon and a half of gasoline to produce one gallon of ethanol. This is clearly a losing proposition.
Another major drawback is that for every acre of corn that is set aside for ethanol, that is one acre of farmland that is not being used to grow food. At with the capacity of the world’s farms just barely keeping up with the food demands of the world, setting aside thousands of acres to grow fuel doesn’t make much economic sense.
What’s the best thing to do now? It’s clear that it’s going to take more research and development until ethanol is a viable energy replacement. After scientists and farmers can break even, so they can produce more than a gallon of ethanol with a gallon of gasoline, ethanol shouldn’t be considered out of the experimental stage. However, the world food demands must also be taken into consideration, and tough decisions must be made.
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