The Problems With Ethanol Fuel

Further Investigating Ethanol as an Alternative Fuel Source
post by Jim Bashkin at Chemistry for a Sustainable World

I’m a very serious environmentalist, but some of the “solutions” to problems have become so politicized that people are losing track of the facts.

One flaw in ethanol is that it is already partially oxidized (which is a chemical term for partially burned, and in this case already containing an oxygen atom). That is one of the reasons why burning ethanol the rest of the way doesn’t release as much energy as burning gasoline does, requiring about twice as many gallons of ethanol per mile to be used to power a car versus the mileage per gallon from gasoline / petrol.

The huge amount of gas that we use in the US simply overwhelms what can be produced from farming. Further, we can do a lot of damage to the environment producing all that ethanol without helping the “oil problem.”

One of the biggest problems with ethanol production is that it uses very large amounts of water in the final stages, so this is added on top of all the water used for agricultural processes. According to Environmental Defense (formerly Environmental Defense Fund), we do not have enough water between the Rockies and the Mississippi to handle this heavy water usage.

To find out more on this subject, read James Bashkin’s “So What’s So Bad About Corn” published at Chemistry for a Sustainable World.

This blog posting is Copyright 2007 James K. Bashkin

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