Toyota Starts Ethanol Cars

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»Toyota Starts Ethanol Cars

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This is really good news for the Midwest and Hawaii. Also, the cane plants are starting to make eating utensils from cane pulp instead of burning it. They're pretty bitching.

Said By aphremen

This is really good news for the Midwest and Hawaii. Also, the cane plants are starting to make eating utensils from cane pulp instead of burning it. They're pretty bitching.

Prove It. (assuming your talking about the utensils)

if they can find a safe way to use it, then it would be great.

And a collective "so what" is heard from everyone who actually knows how much good ethanol will actually do, particularly in the U.S. but also world-wide.

Sorry Tornado. That's dead wrong.

Sugarcane ethanol will provide much more energy per unit than corn based. Brazil does this with sugercane already. They seem to not have an oil problem.

Said By Aron Schatz

Sorry Tornado. That's dead wrong.

Sugarcane ethanol will provide much more energy per unit than corn based. Brazil does this with sugercane already. They seem to not have an oil problem.

That is true. But it does not, however, negate the fact that ethanol is merely a convenient stopgap at best, and that there is still no feasible way to convert every new car sold into ethanol only. Yeah, doing it in Brazil is great. But, um, not very many new cars are sold in Brazil. In addition, the same problem that plagues corn-based ethanol will plague this, only more so: There is simply not enough space to make enough ethanol to run every thing in the world deidicated to petrol. This plagues sugar cane even more than corn-based ethanol, in fact, as sugar cane can not be grown in as many places.
Yeah, running mixtures is great. But basing the entire alternative fuels crisis on ethanol will cause a global problem when fossil fuels (which are still cheaper and more efficient to use to actually produce ethanol anyways) run out. It's the same reason that the idea of hydrogen cars is garbage.

Hydrogen is not garbage. Neither is anything else that is an energy storage. If you have a good supply of energy such as nuclear or fusion, these are good solutions.

The problem is that until hydrogen production completely gets away from fossil fuels, it is a useless alternative. Especially since it is technically less efficient than fossil fuels due to transitive loss of energy. The same applies to ethanol, except ethanol is even worse as it isn't a possible full alternative for fossil fuels like hydrogen could be.

You have all negatives about alternate sources of energy but pose no alternatives yourself.

What is your suggestion?

Personally, I say put more effort into developing different ways to produce hydrogen other than fossil fuels; and in the meantime switch over to natural gas, diesel fuels and vegetable oil. Which means lowering the rediculous emmissions standards that make mass-produced diesels all but impossible in America.
In addition, I truthfully don't have any real alternative, but there is no possible way for ethanol to be one, and hydrogen would only work if the way it is developed changes completely. Supprtign what is essentially a stop-gap solution does not solve the problem. It merely delays it.

Well, Aron will teach you some things about burning grass but for now, lemmie just say this as a resident of Hawaii: EAT IT Alaska! We have sugar cane AND geothermal so either way we are the new Power source bitch! You want Hydrogen? Go to Big Island or Maui. You want ethanol? Go to Maui....hell, go anywhere in the state!

Mwahahahahaha!

Switchgrass is the key for cellulose ethanol production. There is enough farmland in America to do this as well including keeping with food production.

http://www.harvestcleanenergy.org/enews/enews_0505/enews_0505_Cellulosic_Ethanol.htm
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Business/story?id=1566784

I was going to write a big post, but I got lazy. Those are some links to read over.

This is a new type of ethanol to learn up on. Give me a day to look up on it. I assumed you were going to use corn of sugar cane, so I prepared for those.

Na. Those take too much fuel to produce. Switchgrass is crazy efficient.