It was on BBC TV science show called Tomorrow's World.

When the oil crisis struck, the price of oil went up and no more was heard of the idea.

Anyone else hear about this idea?

peanut butter and petroleum jelly sandwich.

Axle grease and fried noodles is really a treat too, especially if you stir fry with some onions.

Someday the 'atom-rearranger' will be a reality. Depending on the size you buy, you'll shovel in ANY type of 'has weight and occupies space' matter into the hopper, set it to whatever it is you need, hit 'start' and then in short order out comes a Dodger Dog or two Philly Cheese Steak or a Lexus or whatever molecular blueprint you've loaded.

Then you can kiss the Rockie Mountains goodbye.

Do you use coffee creamers by Nestle or International Delight. Those are essentially made from oil....so from crude oil. LOTS of food products are made from organic compounds that are NOT grown in the ground...…

They just quit telling us about it is all.

Thanks
That's an interesting point.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/01/2019 11:55AM by matt.

There are many things derived from oil by-products.

Sometime in the 1980's, Saudi Arabia was investigating the possibility of extracting edible protein from chicken manure. I have forgotten if this was intended for livestock feed, or human consumption.

The problem is taking food products (industrial corn, especially) and turning it into "fuel."

The ethanol industry started with the OPEC-instigated petroleum shortages back in the Carter administration. I remember bumperstickers, "We can burn our food--Let them eat their oil!" The idea made sense. What we didn't know was:

1) Agribusiness knew, but obfuscated, that grain-based ethanol is an inferior fuel to petroleum distillates (less caloric energy per volume).
2) It takes more energy to distill ethanol than it will yield.
3) Ethanol distillation consumes huge amounts of water.
4) It has been very harsh on the environment. Farmers can use more dangerous chemicals for ethanol-designated crops than they can for food-directed crops.
5) Lots of land (Brasilian rain forest, notably) has been cleared for this lucrative cash crop.
6) Ethanol requires extensive tax subsidies and mandates
6-A) Note that the notorious Kingston crime family in northern Utah got caught in ethanol-subsidies fraud
7) Ethanol is harmful to engines, especially when standing in storage for long periods of time like season recreational vehicles (boats, ATVs, especially), lawn mowers etc.
8) Land that can be used for food is diverted to ethanol-designated crops, driving up the price of good, meat especially.

All this is well known, but ignored in the media. Something to think about when people say "science can fix this" and "science is self-correcting." Powerful commercial, political, and ideological constituencies can thwart "science."

The Arab Oil Embargo was 1973-74. Nixon was president. The next administration started and supported the ethanol programs and Gerald Ford, from the Midwest, supported them. The Carter administration continued that support.

1) Ethanol has somewhat less caloric energy per volume. It is partially oxygenated to start with, so it combines with less oxygen when burned. It also burns cleaner, produces far fewer nitrous oxides (the main component of smog). It also mixes with both water and gasoline, so it virtually eliminates gas line freeze ups in cars. the ethanol allows any water drops in the tank to simply mix with the gas, and flow through the gas lines and into the engine. Heet, a gas line antifreeze, is just a small bottle of ethanol.

So ethanol has pluses and minuses. It does lower the caloric content of gasoline 3 percent or so, iirc. As a replacement for gasoline, it is pretty much a wash, maybe even a mild detriment. As a protector of clean air, it does pretty well.

2) Misleading. The distillation itself requires relatively little energy. They mostly use vacuum distillation, which means the ethanol is distilled under very low air pressure at close to room temperature. There is waste heat in ethanol processing, and they use it to heat the undistilled ethanol, because why not. Creating a vacuum takes energy too, and the warmer the liquid, the less vacuum needed to make it boil. [fun fact, most (all?) cruise ships do not use reverse osmosis desalination for shipboard water. They vacuum distill sea water]

OTOH, planting, watering, and maintaining the corn requires energy, as does the harvest, and transport to the processing plant, the yeast processing to create ethanol, and then transport of the ethanol to the oil refinery. The total cost of doing all that is arguably higher than the value of the energy in the ethanol. It may not save any petroleum at all, and hence it may not reduce our carbon footprint either.

3) Also misleading. The distillation doesn't require huge amounts of water. Growing the corn does, and turning the corn into ethanol does. The distillation of the ethanol, not so much. So yeah, the entire endeavor requires lots of water.

4) Alarmist. Not being allowed in food is different from "dangerous". The chemicals in liquid latex paint would never be allowed in food, but we don't have house painters dropping dead from constant exposure to it. Lifespans in the Midwest are typically the highest in the US. Nitrogen runoff is a big problem, but that would be the case no matter what was grown on the land.

5) Agreed. (See, I can agree sometimes. :). Brazil is a bit of a special case, because when the Arab Oil Embargo hit, they were well and truly screwed, as a large country that had to import 100% of its oil. They did have plenty of sugar cane, so they went on a massive campaign to convert their entire transportation fleet to 100% ethanol (or maybe E-85, not sure on the details).

They were largely successful. You can buy gas in Brazil, but it is very pricey. Then, in one of life's little ironies, they discovered oil off the coast of Brazil. And yes, the Amazon is taking it on the nose. President Bolsonaro thinks that's just peachy.

6) Agreed. I used to live near the corn belt. You bad-mouth ethanol there, they will run you out of town on a rail, as the expression goes. I think without the subsidies, ethanol in gas would definitely be a specialty product, like for the Wasatch Front in wintertime inversion season.

7) Agreed. The problem is that the rubber hoses used in gasoline engines get eaten by ethanol. That's why you are warned not to put E-85 into a regular gasoline vehicle - hose damage - that plus the computer controlling the fuel injectors would need to be adjusted. Brazil uses different materials in their auto hoses to handle pure ethanol. Gas degrades over time too. You really ought to drain all fuel for long term storage, but at least avoid ethanol.

8) It drives up the price of corn, which drives up the cost of grain-fed beef. I suppose to some extent it drives up the price of all grains. I personally think increasing world demand for both meat and grain for human food will be what finally dials the ethanol market way back. Food will be a better use of the land. I suppose caffiend is saying that is already true. Perhaps.

It is mostly important now for clean air, and if we are transitioning to electric vehicles (we'll see how that goes), in fifty years, ethanol will be irrelevant for air quality. We can return it to whiskey like God intended.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/01/2019 02:51PM by Brother Of Jerry.

The problem, as both of you implicitly recognize, is that the agricultural sector wields great political power. The idea was originally to offer subsidies to get the industry started, then wait for science and farmers to improve efficiency to the point where producers could be weaned from that public support.

With such an influential lobby, though, the subsidies never end. Sugar is the best example in the Us, perhaps, but ethanol is good too. The corn farmers and others simply pressure their Congressional representatives and the White House and the money keeps flowing. And that money counteracts market forces and discourages innovation and rationalization. I don't know the science, but it is possible that we will never know how efficient ethanol or some variant of it could be since the politics neutralize, rather than enhance, market forces.

sugar is the best example globally. Number 1 crop in acres planted and income as I recall.

"7) Agreed. The problem is that the rubber hoses used in gasoline engines get eaten by ethanol. That's why you are warned not to put E-85 into a regular gasoline vehicle - hose damage - that plus the computer controlling the fuel injectors would need to be adjusted."

And in older cars (like I tend to own), it will melt the floats in your carburetor. That one took me a bit to figure out. Luckily, NAPA carries brass floats.

It was introduced with a mix of ideological, economic, and ecological arguments some of which were naive others cynically self-serving. And there's plenty of bipartisan blame for finger-pointing. Now it's kept in place by the power of agribusiness and Midwestern electoral votes, essential to Republican presidential hopes.

There's also residual eco-ideological carrying power, that this is somehow part of the answer to "global warming." Bro'Jerry, I've come across a few articles that stated that ethanol production is energy intensive, and an overall negative (uses more than it creates). Perhaps the distillation alone is a minor part, but the overall production (not counting agriculture, transport, etc.) is a process negative.

I happened to notice a young woman filling her Prius with E85 in progressive Cambridge, and asked her why she chose that. "My part to fight 'global warming,'" or something to that effect.

(Sigh...)

Ethanol is really an emperor-has-no-clothes situation.

CHON are the building blocks of life. Outside of the nitrogen, the rest is hydrocarbon=carbohydrates=starches=sugars. Oil is just concentrated leftovers of life. Stripping nitrogen from protien is what the body does to convert protein into calories as a carbohydrate. That's why protein and carbohydrate have the same calories per gram.

There's an argument that our petrochemical age is wealthy because we leveraged the life work of the past. If that argument is factual, then the transition from fossil fuels may collapse a good segment of the global economy that can't otherwise afford the transition.

lots of fertizer stems from natural gas. The Haber-Bosch process for nitrogen fixation intoi ammonia from the air is the other half of it all. Without those more than half the world would starve.

TVP tasted like oil!

Haven't heard of that.

But that does offer an explanation to the food I ate in the Navy. Especially if the galley didn't get the memo to use FRESH oil for the coffee instead of USED oil.