21 ms·
Gasoline unlocks carbon that was buried underground. If we can avoid that surely its better?
by rr888 4y ago
Gasoline unlocks carbon that was buried underground. If we can avoid that surely its better?
- hammock 4y agoMore energy in the form of diesel and fossil fuel derived fertilizer went into corn ethanol than you get out in usable fuel
- kccqzy 4y agoOn a first approximation, food production (including corn) is just channeling natural gas into fertilizers through Haber–Bosch. If the produced food isn't actually being eaten, it's just a highly inefficient energy conversion Rube Goldberg machine. Now to answer your question, food production unlocks plenty of carbon underground through natural gas.
- ch4s3 4y agoNot to mention all of the fuel used to move around the fertilizer, tractors, finished corn, the energy used to grid/heat/ferment/distill into ethanol, and then to truck around the ethanol. It's actually almost hilariously indirect and inefficient when you think about it.
- mdp2021 4y agoWell all the final products (contextually, material fuels or just energy) have a production history: to call one of them inefficient you need to compare production processes. Diesel fuel does not come ready from "diesel springs".
- ch4s3 4y agoWhat I mean is that to turn fuel into fuel with corn as an intermediary is inherently inefficient vs using the original diesel or gasoline directly.
- ttyprintk 4y agoI’d like to see a comparison where the quantity of natural gas burned to fix nitrogen is instead converted to ethanol, using the Saudis process. The bone of contention among researchers seems to be: whether the inclusion of biomass in its production has any discernible benefit.
- frankreyes 4y agoBut it doesn't. It's carbon positive, because it takes more fuel to produce fuel than to just use that initial fuel as fuel.