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The research, which was funded in part by the National Wildlife Federation and U.S. Department of Energy, found that ethanol is likely at least 24 percent more carbon-intensive than gasoline because of emissions resulting from land use changes to grow corn, along with processing and combustion.
Is corn ethanol environmentally friendly?
“Corn ethanol is not a climate-friendly fuel,” said Dr. Tyler Lark, assistant scientist at University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment and lead author of the study. Feb 14, 2022 U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline ...
Gassification of organic material to provide ch4/h2 as a renewable fuel source is cheap and easy to do. It uses materials ordinarily considered waste and doesn't waste the nutrition-dense seeds of corn & beans as fuel. https://science.howstuffworks.com/en...sification.htm
It works by basically allowing organic material smolder under hypoxic conditons, so instead of rapid oxidation of the c-h-o fuel + o2 --> co2 + h20, you just break down the c-h & c-c bonds with heat and without o2 to get ch4 + h2 (no need for fancy, expensive enzyme systems). Collect that and use it for conventional burning with 02 when & where you need it.
A couple problems with H-based fuel cells-- oxidation (in the more general sense of electron addition/subtraction) of H-rich compounds is endergonic-- It takes more energy to affect the lysis of the chemical bonds than you'll get back when you burn the H2 + O --> H2O, so it's ineffficient.....With wood gas generation, the process is self sustaining because you do use a llittle O making it exergonic in the end....
Then there's the practical problems that H2 is highly corrosive to the tank, and must be kept under very high, dangerous pressures ("Oh, the humanity!") because H2 is light and not very energy dense.
No need to isolate the H2 from the wood gas generated if you just burn the wood gas. Syngas is commercially produced this way now, and ICEs are easily converted to run on it-- The first collaboration between Ferrari and Fiat back in the 60s gave us the Dino Fiat-- equipped with a toggle switch that allowed one to run either gasoline or propane at will.
The engineering difficulty of storing & shipping H2 aside, it would take 15-30x more energy production via solar panels to produce the energy storable as Hydrogen.
^^^ If you read that whole article, projects have been shut down because they induced small earthquakes....To get enough heat from the earth to be practical. you have to drill down to near the molten core...meaning a little extra pressure in that core and you've produced an artifical volcano...and you've seen what an erupting volcano can do.
I'm not sure sure this is a good idea.
Some builders offer "geothermal heating and cooling" by digging extensive trenches and lining them with elaborate plumbing systems and ventilation fans. That makes the 55degF permanent temp at deths of 6ft+ depths avaialble for your HVAC system to work with-- a slight savings in energy, but at a cost of $10s of 1000s for constuction and ongoing electricity usage for the fans. I'm not sure that's the way to do it either.
I built my house into the side of a hill so only the front is exposed to the air. I need no AC in summer and use only $1000 worth of wood to heat in Zone 4 winters. Passive geothermal is great if your local topography will allow it.
In general biofuels are a bad idea I believe because habitat preservation is more important than fossil fuel reserves or CO2 emissions. Eventually this century the worlds population will begin to drop, on top of the efficiency gains and electrification we're able to get at.
While we're sitting at peak population right now though for the upcoming decades, it's imperative that we save every bit of habitat that we can now, then when the population declines, habitat pressure will diminish and we can resolve future energy situations.
Biofuels were a 1970s response to the oil crisis and a grasping at straws of energy independence. Almost everyone agrees now that they are inefficient, especially in a growing world that needs food and water.
^^^ To put a little sharper edge on it-- Natural populations live on the razor's edge, right at the carrying capacity (birth rate = death rate). Population growth is curtailed because the population is limited by inter- and intra- species competition for the necessary resources needed to sustain life. Populations other than H.sapiens have almost no ability to appreciably alter their resource supply or habitat....
H.sapiens, OTOH, can and does significantly alter the habitat. We pave over natural habitat and extirpate most species in our immediate living areas....and more importantly, our population has been allowed to grow well above where it would have been had we remained merely hunter/gathers. We can maintain our current 8 B and even grow to 12B+ as long as we can continue to use fossil fuels to make fertilizer, plow and harvest and transport our ag products.
Populations in NAm & Europe would have stabilized over the last few decades had immigration not been allowed so freely. Growth in those two areas has occurred only due to immigration, and that immigration has been the "safety valve" for populations growing in the MidEast & C/SAm to levels not sustainable there.
Liberal immigration has allowed further pressure on natural habitat and resources. Which is more inhumane-- curtailing immigration or allowing our population to grow until the whole world is at the carrying capacity and there is maximum competition for resources? Minimum competition is The Garden of Eden. Maximum competion is The Jungle. Where do you want to live?
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