perhaps I should have been more careful in my wording.

Ethanol has less chemical energy than gasoline, and gasoline has less than diesel.

Engines designed for the optimum conversion of each of those three fuels to mechanical work will ultimately be limited by the amount of chemical energy each fuel contains.

For the same work output, the diesel will use the fewest gallons of fuel, and ethanol the most, with gasoline somewhere in the middle.

Norm

"you can get very large amounts of power from an ethanol burning engine. But, because there is less chemical energy / gallon in alcohol, than there is in gasoline or diesel, you will never get more mileage. If alcohol has 10% less energy / gallon than gasoline, then you will always burn 10% more gallons to get the same amount of power from an engine using it."

That, too, is only partially true. It assumes equal efficiency between an ethanol burning engine and a gasoline burning engine. However, ethanol burns more efficiently in a properly designed ethanol burning engine. If I recall, it is somewhere around 10 or 15% more efficient at extracting motive energy from the burning fuel. So you can at least equalize the results, if not better them. Gasoline is a very hot, fast burning, flame. Ethanol, on the other hand is relatively cool burning and does so a bit slower. With a high compression, properly set up ethanol engine, less energy is lost in heat and can occur at a more optimal time in the piston stroke(tho this is largely a function of ignition timing...)

"You want to conserve energy? Stop taxing income and start taxing consumption... just don't do both and increase the overall tax load." Thank you, I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking this...

DO NOT TOUCH MY HORNS OF DOOM!

On Politics:

Regarding liberals and conservatives, you all raise some very good points, but in trying to demonize the "other side" you over generalize. A much wiser man than me once described the differences between liberals and conservatives like this:

"A Conservative is willing to sacrifice some equality for freedom.

A Liberal is willing to sacrifice some freedom for equality.

And political parties are ways to organize your animosity."

- George Will

So, while it is true that either "way" risks something, we all benefit, in the long run, by not letting any one of them run rampant, because either extreme is dangerous to most of us.

On Chemistry:

To refute one comment made above about alcohol, I just wanted to point out a common misconception made:

"(regarding ethanol)... It does reduce mileage and power in most current engines, but this is NOT necessarily true. Higher compression ratios can take advantage of the significantly higher octane and cooler burning to give you as much(possibly more) power and fuel economy."

that statement is only partially true: you can get very large amounts of power from an ethanol burning engine. But, because there is less chemical energy / gallon in alcohol, than there is in gasoline or diesel, you will never get more mileage. If alcohol has 10% less energy / gallon than gasoline, then you will always burn 10% more gallons to get the same amount of power from an engine using it. So, if we converted our economy from oil to alcohol, we'd have to produce 10% more gallons of alcohol than oil. Race cars running on alcohol get terrible mileage, but as long as their fuel tanks are large enough, or their re-fueling stops are frequent enough, and all their competitors are using the same fuel too, then its not necessarily easy to see that fact.

Norm

It's sort of like the gross generalization that leftists have a goal of nationalizing businesses. Difficult to hear (especially when you're a leftist), easy to dispute with singular ad hoc examples,  but overall more accurate than not. 

How many businesses do you favor nationalization of?

Bill

"Leftists want to conserve at the expense of growth"

 

P.S. I love it when you make gross generalities that suit your agenda.

Energy polcies are political to begin with.

Capitalists recognize the need for energy for growth.

Leftists want to conserve at the expense of growth (and for many that's the actual goal) and actively against any sort of plan that actually would provide additional energy...

How many businesses do you favor nationalization of?

Bill

ps... I love it when you refer to capitalism as "politics"... ;-)

Ah Bill, that took almost a page for you to add your politics into the conversation, surprised it took so long.  It appears it's all a leftist plot to get rid of Hummers and Suv's.

I'm outa here, gotta go wash the Mini...........

Might be a good idea to join the SAE, you can keep up with international vehicle technology development efforts, as well as industry/manufacturer/government trends. 

Future government requirements for vehicle emissions, and the rising petroleum pricing, and eco/green awareness, are pushing manufacturers towards hyrdogen fueled vehicles, thus lots of development is on now.  But it will be a long long time before there could be a hydrogen infrastructure to support zillions of hydrogen fueled cars.  Temporarily there will be some increase in other alternate-fuel vehicles.  Some progress towards fast-recharge, long life batteries has been made (e.g. Altairnano) which will allow better electric vehicles, unfortunately if zillions of electric vehicles were produced and we all plugged in every night, the grids couldn't handle it.  Oops seems nobody thought about that.  So that gets us back to hydrogen.  In the near term, small commuter cars will do well with hydrogen-enhanced internal combustion engines.  MIT and a few other researchers have done some interesting work on onboard reformation.  Onboard electrolysis of water is far too inefficient, however a company in the UK has a designed an electolysis unit to install in your garage at home, to refill the hydrogen tank in your car overnight.   But onboard reformation looks promising as a means of generating hydrogen and other interesting molecules from those long-chain hydrocarbons sitting in the gas tank, and these can then be combined in the combustion chamber to make the IC engine more efficient.  A hydrogen-assisted engine could burn 30:1 mixtures at idle and lean cruise.  Probably see a lot of that in the next 20 years.

Voluntarily not using the energy is a good thing. That leaves more energy for growth (which I agree should not require linear energy consumption for additional growth). 

Being forced by the Government not to use the energy (particularly if the conservation target is an overall goal... such as the Kyoto treaty, etc...) is a different story.  And how do you target energy conservation without having unintended consequences?

For years, the left wanted much higher fuel taxes (like Europe) to discourage use. Now we have prices similar to what they've always wanted (or maybe still a bit less) and you can already see the overall effect on the economy.

Again, conservation is great as long as it is not a primary part of the plan. To be a primary part it necessarily has to be extensive enough that it _could_  easily lead to growth stagnation or worse.

Though some hope for that outcome as it will make nationalization of industries easier and teach those evil overpaid executives a lesson.  ;-(

Those of us who are free market liberals have no problem at all with taxing consumption and in fact would strongly prefer that to taxing income. (You're punishing the wrong people for the wrong thing, discouraging savings, and letting the realtively low income (nonworking or working for themselves as a business... like most Hollywood stars who often consider their lifestyle a business expense and therefore a tax writeoff) high consumption rich off the hook.

You want to conserve energy? Stop taxing income and start taxing consumption... just don't do both and increase the overall tax load.

Bill

Not that it will ever happen, but I don't see how major energy conservation is going to stop growth??  There are different ways of accomplishing a task.  I ride the bus to work, I ride with 35 other people who are not using their vehicles, conserving petrol.  We get to work and accomplish the same task, how is not using this energy going to stifle the economy?

Conservation is certainly an increasingly difficult proposition, but I don't think a growing economy NEEDS increasing energy at the same rate. It certainly has gone that way in the past, but considering how frivolous we have been w/ energy consumption, I think there is more than a few percent that can be recovered. As to recession being a good thing, I'm not going to go that far, but too much can be just as bad as not enough...

DO NOT TOUCH MY HORNS OF DOOM!

Again, I'll pick a nit. It is not necessarily a good thing (though on the surface it sounds like it would be). As I mentioned, the US economy grows an average of 3-5%ish a year... that growth is necessary to our well-being as a country. That growth also requires additional energy use.

Regulate energy use to equal to or less than is required to sustain today's needs and suddenly there is no energy for growth. And while you might conserve a few percent per year to give a few percent to growth, after the first few "easy" percentages, that hits a wall.

Zero growth = recession. Negative growth = depression. I don't think you would consider either of those a good thing (though some actually do...) and you have to be aware that either could be the result of a poorly planned policy that relied too heavily on conservation.
Bill

Ah... poor wording on my part... What I mean to say is that the gov't cannot set hard limits on energy consumption to the levels required to get us off oil, and without that, it's not going to make a huge impact. What they could do is set an example with perhaps incentives to reduce energy consumption and everyone should realize the impacts of our habits and do what we can to conserve. The nice thing about conservation is that no matter where the energy comes from, using less of it is free, relatively easy and an overall good thing. I suppose we probably largely agree on this, I'm just a bit more pessimistic on what happens if something doesn't change..

DO NOT TOUCH MY HORNS OF DOOM!

Only because conservation "sounds" so good and makes you "feel" like you're "doing something". In reality, with the US economy growing 3-6% on average and the population (through immigration growing more than that), mathematically it doesn't make any major difference (as you youself admited.)

So why, exactly, is having something you already acknowledge won't make any major difference, a "major" part of an energy plan a good idea? We already have too much "symbolism over substance" in politics... why invite more just because it sounds good? How about making the major parts of an energy plan items that will make a major difference?

I already acknowledged that conservation should be part of any plan... but making it a major part is at best wishful thinking. "Hope" is good, but "hope" isn't a plan...

Bill 

"Any process to make fuels (alcohol, gasoline, you name it) from any converted carbon based stuff, other than cracking crude oil, uses more calories going in than you get out. That's physics (the crude oil had the energy put into it by the earth's processes over the last several million years, so we get that part "free"). So, synthetic fuels are a really neat idea (make gasoline from your garbage), and technically very doable, but always at a net loss of energy, so crude oil will have to get much more expensive before any of them become economically viable in large scale."

If you're going from the complete physics standpoint, if biofuels take more energy than they produce, then so did the crude. The trick is we currently get crude for close to free. And the sun, rain and soil nutrients(to an extent) are free as well. It will not 'cost' us more energy than we get out. You're right about the drawbacks of biofuels tho... invasive species, homogenization, rain forest destruction. But that is going to happen as long as people feel the need to take over the planet.

Bill, I do mean using less fuel of any sort. I know US energy policy isn't going to make any real difference, but saying conservation shouldn't be a major part of the plan is, I feel, short sighted.

Bah, honestly, I wonder why I care. The planet will be fine for my lifetime and I can afford my own expenses. I'm also not having children so why do I care if the planet as we know it is ruined?

DO NOT TOUCH MY HORNS OF DOOM!

there sure aren't any easy answers.

Hummer made sense because of all the money it made for GM, but, as noted, their efforts to cash in on that might have diluted their small car development, to their great loss now.

The latest I heard through the grapevine is that GM is shopping Hummer to Tata motors. That might be shrewd because gas will likely be high for a long time, and the value of a property like that would only go down over time, if that's the case (sell it off quickly and get the most $ possible).

Hybrids are smart ways to use existing infrastructure to get the most mileage with the least trade offs, but they use two power trains (expensive, heavy). The nice thing about developing hybrids is that future energy production methods can be easily adopted to them (fuel cell, battery, or other), once those are ready for prime time.

Diesel is useful (high torque from small displacement, good emissions with latest technology, high mileage), but their engines are heavy, and there is less diesel per barrel of oil than gasoline, so its price will naturally be higher when the usage in the market (and taxes) is equal.

SAAB, sadly, had an issue with high depreciation all the way back into the late '80s.

Switch grass and other plants being proposed for cellulostic alcohol production are also fast growing, invasive weed species. Growing them in bulk may have terrible consequences for farmers living next door.

Alcohol from corn is causing frightening damage to Brazil's ecosystem (and their rain forests are an important part of ALL of our ecosystem). The money to be made from tearing down the rain forests and growing corn is so great that the Brazilian government is unable to control it.

Any process to make fuels (alcohol, gasoline, you name it) from any converted carbon based stuff, other than cracking crude oil, uses more calories going in than you get out. That's physics (the crude oil had the energy put into it by the earth's processes over the last several million years, so we get that part "free"). So, synthetic fuels are a really neat idea (make gasoline from your garbage), and technically very doable, but always at a net loss of energy, so crude oil will have to get much more expensive before any of them become economically viable in large scale.

I am gratified to see that high fuel prices are causing such deep soul searching by so many, because our culture has needed this sort of a jolt for a long time. I am also saddened by the proportionally larger effect that it has on the lower classes ("the rich never starve during a famine").

"SUV hatred" is never intended to be towards real workers who need to own a truck to do their job. It is all the other people who own them "just because" who the animosity is meant for. Too bad that rubs off on the legitimate users.

Norm

If by this you mean using less petroleum or petroleum-like products (biofuel, etc) then I don't dsagree.

But if you mean using less energy (and that's the context in which you seemed to write it) then that's a pipe dream. At the rate the economy (and the US population) is expanding, even if we were able to conserve substantially per capita, the net energy usage will increase every year. Add in the staggering growth of the world's developing economies and any potential conservation the US could do won't even make a dent. 

Take all privately owned US cars off the road altogether and you might notice a bump in the worldwide energy usage chart... one that would be erased quickly by other factors.

Conservation should be a factor of any reasonable energy policy, but it objectively makes no sense for it to be a major portion of the plan.

Bill

In terms of the Saab side, I own a 2005 9-3 which I bought new which gives me 28 mpg local and over 31 mpg highway, love the car, great fit/finish/service... all that said, I don't see much of a future for it here given the poor (read that LOUSY) resale value of the car due to it's earlier history of poor electronics and performance. The 9-3 and the Malibu share the same platform & drive train, with the Saab being more upscale... yet the resale is lower... my 2005, with only 14,000 miles on it is only worth about 15k$ US! I also own the 2007 9-7x (actually 2 year lease) which is built on the Trailblazer platform. It only gets 16 to 17 mpg... nice vehicle (leather, etc) but for the size I would have expected better mileage. The 9-3 will be a long term keeper, while the 9-7x will be given back to the dealer ASAP...

[quote]IMHO the folks pushing ethanol fuel in this country are smoking bad crack. To take food and consume vast amounts of energy to convert it into a fuel that is less efficient than gasoline doesn't make sense. Only in America could people be excited about paying the same amount of money as for gasoline only to see a reduction in fuel mileage. Don't get me wrong - I'm all for replacing foreign fossil fuel with something better but ethanol is NOT the panacea folks would have us think.[/quote]

Most of the current ethanol hype, I'd agree with you. But look into cellulosic production of ethanol. It does not consume foodstock(well it could, but it doesn't need to and shouldn't). It does reduce mileage and power in most current engines, but this is NOT necessarily true. Higher compression ratios can take advantage of the significantly higher octane and cooler burning to give you as much(possibly more) power and fuel economy. Don't give ethanol a bad name because our government is stupid about it.

[quote]We need at least 6 things. First, increased refining capacity in north America. We aren't just importing oil folks we're importing already refined gasoline too. Second, we need to be actively drilling for our own oil.[/quote] I almost agree with you here, except there are better alternatives today. Look up biobutanol. It also doesn't require foodstock, it's renewable, and has fewer drawbacks than ethanol(like it runs just as well in current engines). Any biofuel has one major problem and that is the large amount of land required to grow the raw materials. The solution there, and to any of our energy concerns is USING LESS FUEL.

[quote]I love the birdies and the bunnies as much as anyone but let's get real.[/quote] Yes, it is time to get real... ...and realize that manifest destiny, imminent domain, all those "we are humans and we MUST populate and exploit the entire world and then the galaxy" ideas are inherently flawed. I believe this came up a bit early and someone had a very good point. If we start to really damage the planet, the planet will wipe us out. The problem is, I don't want to be wiped out. I'd like to halt that process if at all possible.

[quote]Third, we need to be expanding our nuclear power capability.[/quote] *nod*

[quote]Fourth, if we're going to go further down the ethanol road we need to stop making it out of food.[/quote] Easy, if we can get people to stop badmouthing ethanol because 6000 year old technology isn't a good fit for problems created in the last 200 years....

[quote]Fifth, we need to expand our use of automobile diesel engines. The Europeans have that part right.[/quote] The Europeans are moving away from diesel in a big way... I think that's a mistake, but I'm not arrogant enough to presume I know more about the economy than a large portion of the world I don't live in. Diesel might be a good stepping stone, but as I said before, fully electric vehicles seem more and more likely every day.

[quote]Sixth, we need to get soccer moms to stop driving gas hogs to the store and back. I drive an SUV myself (19.8 MPG average. 21 mpg on the highway) but it is not a status thing it's because I need the load and towing capacity for my work. We seem to be getting the message across that driving Hummers, Expeditions, Suburbans et al to the grocery store and for single occupant commuter vehicles is not cool. That's good[/quote] If you truely need an SUV to do your job, then I can find little fault. Just make sure what you think you "need" is what you really "need" and not just a little "need" with alot of "want", which is what it comes down to for alot of people.

DO NOT TOUCH MY HORNS OF DOOM!

Nuclear fusion.

Until that's harnessed use the buses & trains (and Minis).

Martin.

My mind's made up - don't bother me with facts!