Talk:Ethanol fuel

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Neutrality Bias

I have reviewed the article, and removed some of the perhaps less - objective content.

Spice detail is that the DOE agrees with the sceptics: the net emission of CO2 is about the same for bioethanol as it is for petrolem. Sikkema 20:03, 6 July 2007 (UTC) Originally too much against ethanol now the article is too much in favor of ethanol. 71.163.29.45 16:00, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree to an extent. I think the individual parts of the article are neutral, but the overall article fails to emphasize the major problems with producing Ethanol. I would suggest adding a section that specifically covers the controvery involved with the production and use of the fuel (probably just above where the environment section is now). SarcasticDwarf 16:08, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I read this article couple months ago and it literaly went from wall to wall. Currently there is absolutely no mention of the economics of E85 (price vs mpg) or anything that deals with the large corn subsidies and subsequent maize inflation due to ethanol.

The thing is, the creation of ethanol from corn seems to be mostly an American idea, based on the subsidies that are in America, and seems problematic on very many fronts. Likewise the E85 standard is an American standard fuel mix, and further more has its own article anyway. The wikipedia is supposed to be not a US-centric project per se.WolfKeeper 19:50, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Should the article have a subarticle on Ethanol in the United States? SarcasticDwarf 14:39, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

There are quite a few references in this article dedicated to the Energy Balance in the production of ethanol fuel. Is there room in this article for a Cost Balance? Hydronics 06:28, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I will attempt to start rewriting the article over the next week or so. It will mostly involve re-arranging the sections and creating continuity between sections. I might also drop a few of the sections. SarcasticDwarf 14:39, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

The part people ignore about Brazilian Ethanol

Indeed, it must be understood that the barrels of oil imported are used to produce the ethanol. The energy needs to come from somewhere.Sikkema 20:06, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Brazil is "energy independant".
Some politicians use this to imply that Brazil does not use oil. That couldn't be farther from the truth.
All it means is that they do not IMPORT Oil.

Brazil still uses Oil for over 85% of their fuel.
Brazil is the second largest Oil producing nation in Latin America, right behind Venezuela.
Brazil produces roughly 302,000 barrels of ethanol per day, but this pales in comparison to the 2,100,000+ barrels of Oil produced every day

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Brazil/Oil.html

So what? AFAIK they can increase production and export ethanol just fine, it's just that (for example) America is refusing to buy it, because they have a large corn lobby that demand subsidies.WolfKeeper 12:32, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Brazil Leads production?

RFA shows the U.S. passing Brazil in 2005 [1]

Numbers may vary. :-) --hdante 16:21, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Unlikely. Brazilian ethanol production based on sugarcane is more efficient and 50% cheaper, according to the brazilian finance minister, who based his statements on Brazil's 30 years of research.

“Our costs are 50 per cent lower and the quality of the energy source is higher than the ethanol made from corn in America,” Brazil’s finance minister Guido Mantega said. “So we can have more co-operation with America if they open the possibility for more imports from Brazil of ethanol and other agricultural products.” read it here

--Pinnecco 09:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Good article candidate 2007-07-12

Although this article has covered quite a lot of ground, I cannot pass it due to the many issues evident. The most obvious would be the cleanup and neutrality tags, but also there are many unsourced statements and one or two sentence paragraphs. Secondly, many of the citations are just URLs lying within the text, and should be fixed up to comply with standards. Lists should be converted into prose where possible, and the external links and see also sections need some serious slimming down in size. I would usually put articles on hold with pending issues, but there are far too many here to bother, so I feel that I have no choice but to fail this article. OSX (talk • contributions) 07:54, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I haven't read the "good article" guidelines yet, but I do know that Ethanol Fuel production is a pivotal issue in the past, present, and future. As such, it seems to me that simply rejecting the entire article as "not good" for whatever reason is counter-productive to informational aims, whether they be "breaking news" or "historical". I'll read the "guidelines". Meanwhile, I think it's a mistake to arbitrarily delete this very important article because of any sort of "policy" or marginal breach of such policy.

It is not that the article is going to be deleted, it is saying that it is not a good article. The biggest issue with the article right now is that there is no clearly defined structure for the content. It tends to jump around and overlap too much. That is what I am working on fixing this weekend. SarcasticDwarf 13:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Ahhh... I understand, and agree. I look forward to reading your rewrite, as I realize it is no small undertaking and I'm always looking for "good" examples of how these articles should be written. If you are interested, I have found at least one external article that provides a "good" summary of the inherent problems with ethanol fuel production. I can either provide you with the URL now, or I can try to present the data in this article after your rewrite. The latter approach seems counter-productive to the "clean-up" issues at hand. So I would prefer to let you review the data for yourself, and then include it as you wish. But it's up to you. Let me know if you want the URL, and thanks so much for responding. David Kendall 01:57, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Replacement of petroleum change

I changed Bioethanol to ethanol. Bioethanol specifically refers to cellulosic ethanol. This section, however, was refering to corn. Justin Velez 16:57, 18 July 2007

(comment)

Bio ethanol should refer to any ethanol produced from biological sources, cellulositic ethanol is of biological origin as it converts biomass to ethanol by chemical means. There is also synthetic ethanol produced by catalytic reaction from petroleum base stocks, and synthetic ethanol produced from catalytic reaction of producer gas generated from gassified biomass. In the latter case there is a question which type it should be considered. The distinction in my mind, should be if the carbon source is fossile based (coal, petroleum, natural gas, tar sands etc) or from recent biological fixing of carbon such as straw grass or wood waste. If that definition was used, synthetic ethanol (not using yeast fermentation etc.) from bio mass would be properly classed as a bio-ethanol fuel. The proper distinction above between cellulosic ethanol and what you refer to as bio-ethanol should be Microbial Ethanol, vs chemical methods of ethanol from biomass such as acid hydrolysis , and enzymatic hydrolysis which convert the larger polysaccharides to fermentable sugars .— Preceding unsigned comment added by 32.97.110.142 (talk • contribs) 07:05, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

An article update

I've made some updates to the article, but have refrained from any further work awaiting further discussion. In particular, what I've done is:

- cutting the lead which was too long, it should be one paragraph only. Moved rest to Overview section

- adding short History section

- the bit about energy balance/efficiency is about Economics, not about the environment. Moved this to Economics

- air pollution and greenhouse gases are two different things

- hydrated ethanol and anhydrous ethanol are two different things, only the latter was mentioned

- updating some info and adding a number of cites, foremost the recent UN report, which wasn't even mentioned.

- removing a few sentences appearing twice in the article, leaving them in one place only

However, this article suffers from a number of things. The text sometimes leaves the impression of a discussion between two persons, one pro one con. The cites are particularly bad, many have no titles, and there are partisan sites and blog sites. Partisan sites should be avoided and blog cites are not WP:RS. There are many studies and journals to choose from instead. Lastly, this article is missing information about (a) suggested environmental impact, such as water requirements and increased soil erosion compared to 'traditional' farming (b) what infrastructure is needed to bring biofuel to the consumer, and (c) important policy issues which may have an impact on the future of biofuels, such as EU's biofuel target for 2010. -- Steve Hart 00:05, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Steve, I appreciate your attempt to improve the article but gather that you are quite an inexperienced editor. Who said the lead section should only be one paragraph long? Please see WP:LEAD. The new history section contains no references -- please see WP:REF. I could go on addressing the inadequacy of many of the changes you have made, but there are too many... so I am reverting what you have done. As for the recent UN report mentioned just add this new info where you can... -- Johnfos 02:47, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

WP:LEAD is a style guideline. Granted, the length of the lead is related to the article. But that is not important. What I take issue with is you one-click reverting edits and citations I used hours to put in. You are required to review each change on its own. Edits you agreed with should have been left in place instead of asking me to do those edits all over again. I did a save between each edit so that each change could be easily reverted with the undo feature. You are free to disagree with my text edits, but you have also reintroduced dead links which was updated and paragraphs which appears twice in the article. As for you comments about my experience, I'll just say WP:AGF. Based on your presumption I could say WP:BITE, but I won't. -- Steve Hart 22:18, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

The section that deals with fuel milage is also incorrect. Miles per gallon does not track directly with the energy content of the fuel on a per gallon basis. The most glaring example of this is that although E85 has 71% of the fuel energy of gasoline on a volume basis, typical fuel milage reductions are not the 34% you would expect but typically near 15%. In a more optimized engine for ethanol fuel mileage per gallon can actually exceed the fuel milage per gallon on gasoline, as is the case with the flex fuel Saab.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 32.97.110.142 (talk • contribs) 07:09, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

the lead

I invite editors to review the lead which I wrote (was reverted), which I think, while not the greatest, at least is more concise than the current one:

Ethanol fuel is ethanol (ethyl alcohol), the same type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages. It is mainly used as a biofuel alternative to gasoline, and is, as of 2007, most widely used in cars in Brazil. Because it is cheap, easy to manufacture and process, and can be made from common biomaterials, it is seen as a promising alternative to fossil fuel consumption. At the same time concerns have been raised about the possible negative impact on soil erosion, deforestation, air pollution, food prices and freshwater availability.

My opinion: the current lead goes on at length about car fuel, refers to US issues instead of taking the worldview, and without citation calls it "highly respected" which I believe is a statement quite a few will disagree with (I have no opinion). I think 'promising' is a less loaded word. I welcome other editor's comments on this matter. -- Steve Hart 22:29, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I have made a couple of changes to the lead which may alleviate some of your concerns. Most important of these is the removal of the last paragraph. -- Johnfos 01:40, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Better. You should also redo the dead links++ that were fixed, which, as I mentioned above, was lost in your revert. You could also add the UN cite since this assessment would likely have wide ramifications, I won't bother putting it somewhere where you don't want it. -- Steve Hart 22:04, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Common Crops Associated with Ethanol Production

Why did Ghetsmith tag this section as unsourced on July 8th 2007? The information in the table, except for the sweet sorghum data, is from Nature 444 (Dec. 7, 2006): 670-654, as stated below the table. Several references are given for the sweet sorghum data. Should this be formatted differently? Mbomford 16:16, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I also wonder why Ghetsmith removed the metric column from the table. Was this due to concern that the same data were presented in both metric and US measurements (liters per hectare and gallons per acre)? If duplication was the concern I think that the metric column should be restored and the column using the US system of measurement should be deleted to reflect Wikipedia's international audience.Mbomford 16:44, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Crop yields are generally presented as an amount per unit area (i.e. bushels per acre, or kg/ha), with the time factor assumed to be a year or a growing season. Perhaps it is more correct, as Ghetsmith has done, to present ethanol yield as gallons per acre per year, but it is not standard practice. Comments? Mbomford 16:44, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Other problems

Producing Ethanol from corn encourages larger farms to meet demand; the farms use chemical fertilizers that create run-off that contains nitrates that polute our rivers. The larger farms cause deforestation in third world countries.

There might also be concerns about the corporatization of agricultural land and the effect on farmers of dealing with commodity pricing changes. Derek Andrews 15:07, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

The article currently cites "Support for biofuels could keep petroleum prices high in the USA" as a problem. Many might argue that high gas prices are a good thing Derek Andrews 15:07, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

recent edits by Johnfos

I disagree with Johnfos that the following two paragraphs were confused. There appears to be good information in there. maybe we can work to make it clearer. The first appears clear and has a reference for the contentious point:

Only about 5% of the fossil energy required to produce ethanol from corn in the United States is obtained from non-US petroleum. Current (2006) United States production methods obtain the rest of the fossil energy from domestic coal and natural gas. Even if the energy balance were negative, US production involves mostly domestic fuels such as natural gas and coal so the need for non-US petroleum would be reduced. Developed regions like the United States and Europe, and increasingly the developing nations of Asia, mainly India and China, consume much more petroleum and natural gas than they extract from their territory, becoming dependent upon foreign suppliers as a result.

The second, I agree, could use a reference but appears apropos to me:

Similar to the research done on biodiesel, making ethanol from algae has the higher potential production efficiency, and unlike more complex organisms, the time it takes to improve energy output for algae is much shorter.

Any thoughts? Pdbailey 00:09, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

First up: the link for the citation apparently moved, and the name of the article and such isn't given. Here's a suggested replacement:

Farrell, Alexander E., Richard J. Plevin, Brian T. Turner, Andrew D. Jones, Michael O’Hare, and Daniel M. Kammen. "Ethanol Can Contribute to Energy and Environmental Goals", Science, Vol. 311, pp. 506-508, January 27 2006, via ethanol.org. See also: the article's supporting online material, via sciencemag.org. Retrieved on August 16 2007.

The first paragraph removed in the wiki article focuses on what I'd call a domestic U.S. "energy security" issue, not an environmental issue, and is thus misplaced in the wiki article's "Environment" section. I understand what the paragraph is trying to communicate, and I think its general premise is not among the many ethanol controversies: ethanol production uses much more energy from non-petrol inputs than petrol inputs, and in the U.S., the majority of the non-petrol inputs are domestically supplied. (Science says "All studies indicated that current corn ethanol technologies are much less petroleum-intensive than gasoline but have greenhouse gas emissions similar to those of gasoline.") But the wording is somewhat inaccurate (maybe "confused"), and the figure slightly misstated from the study. Mainly though, I think it's a US political/energy security issue, not an environmental issue.

To give specific problems, the Science article does not distinguish between countries of origin for energy inputs; characterizing petroleum as from outside the US, and natural gas and coal as from the US, isn't supported or entirely accurate. (E.g., maybe 1/6th of US natural gas is from Canada?) The wording in the wiki article misstated the analysis from Science: the 5% refers to 5% of the energy contained in the final ethanol product, not 5% of the energy from fossil fuels used as inputs, so more like 7%. Also, data were used with several caveats in the supplemental materials; I'd call it "An estimated approximate 7% of..." or something. It could be bolstered with "from a six-study meta-analysis in the journal Science so it doesn't sound dubious.

The second paragraph that was removed needs a source. I don't clearly understand its meaning, but without a source, its clarity isn't important. -Agyle 07:48, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

This article recently failed as a Good Article candidate, and I'm not surprised. There are quite a few problems in the second half relating to POV and poor quality, and the tags at the start of the article reflect this. Some material there is confused, unreferenced, repetitious, poorly structured, or off topic. If there is intransigence to making gradual improvements then I guess the article will stay as it is. -- Johnfos 11:21, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Johnfos, I think gradual improvements can be made by improving rather than cutting in most cases. However, after some additional consideration, I propose that the whole section on alge based production be deleted because it's largely speculative and as such, uninteresting. As for the first paragraph Johnfos removed, I suggest that it be changed to the following:

A frequent rationale for shifting to ethanol is improved energy security, a topic which often regards the ability to produce energy within the country so as to prevent a loss of energy supply either during a time of war or due to arbitrary actions of foreign powers[2]. Because ethanol fuel reduces petroleum use by about 95% , it succeeds in reducing dependence on foreign powers for energy supply, this is because most of the energy used in production is from domestically available coal, natural gas, and solar energy.

Comments? Pdbailey 23:00, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Pdbailey, that applies from a US view, and should mention that; the reasoning may not apply to an oil-rich or coal-poor nation. Also, a statement like "a frequent rationale," should supply a source that says it's a frequent rationale. Here's how I'd change it, with more background to support the shift from foreign to domestic use, and less explanation of energy security (readers can read about that elsewhere if needed):

One rationale given for extensive ethanol production in the U.S. is its benefit to energy security, by shifting the need for some foreign-produced oil to domestically-produced energy sources.[3] Production of ethanol requires significant energy, but current U.S. production derives most of that energy from coal and natural gas, rather than oil.[4] Because 60% of oil consumed in the U.S. is imported, compared to a net surplus of coal and just 16% of natural gas (2006 figures),[5], the displacement of oil-based fuels to ethanol produces a net shift from foreign to domestic U.S. energy sources.

(Note that the references are just links, not full-fledged citations with authors etc.) -Agyle 09:33, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Agyle, I agree your version has the benefits that you mentioned and prefer it to the previous one that I wrote for the same reasons. Pdbailey 16:18, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

What 2006 USDA study?

The article contains this in the sentence, without citation: "A 2006 report by the U.S. Department Agriculture compared the methodologies used by a number of researchers on this subject and found that the majority of research showed that the energy balance for ethanol is positive." Does anyone know about or have a link to the report/study? this page lists a few usda ethanol studies, including a 2006 study on sugar-based ethanol, but is not like the one described. -Agyle 08:08, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Replacement of petroleum

The energy gain when making ethanol from corn is so low that it would be uneconomic to make fuel ethanol if only ethanol could be used as the energy source. Thus an important motivation for making fuel ethanol in the US (and many other countries) is reduction of imported petroleum. This is pointed out in the discussion above and should be added in some form to the article. I suggest slight modification as follows (the electrical energy could come from wind, nuclear, etc.)and insert just before the algae entry under the heading 'Replacement of petroleum'.

One rationale given for extensive ethanol production in the U.S. is its benefit to energy security, by shifting the need for some foreign-produced oil to domestically-produced energy sources.[6] Production of ethanol requires significant energy, but current U.S. production derives most of that energy from coal, natural gas and other sources, rather than oil.[7] Because 60% of oil consumed in the U.S. is imported, compared to a net surplus of coal and just 16% of natural gas (2006 figures),[8], the displacement of oil-based fuels to ethanol produces a net shift from foreign to domestic U.S. energy sources.

Dan Pangburn 11:25, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

production process

Repeated distillation does not work to dehydrate because of the formation of the azeotrope. The starch in corn or wheat needs to be converted to sugar before it can be fermented. This is done by enzymes the specifics being proprietary with the various companies because of economic competition. The non starch parts of corn and wheat remain after the starch has fermented and are extracted and used for other purposes. References to research on ethanol production specifics is more appropriately in the ethanol article. Dan Pangburn 12:53, 17 September 2007 (UTC)