  The Perfect Fuel |
Fuel is what we use to cook our food, heat our homes, power our vehicles, light the darkness, manufacture our goods, and just about everything else that separates us from the lesser animals.From the beginning of time mankind has learned the value of fuels. First Mother Nature showed us the value of burning wood, as she set fire to the forests. From that example we improved upon the utility of fire. Like a bunch of mad pyromaniacs, we tried to set fire to almost everything we could get our hands on. Over the eons we discovered that plant, animal oils and fats, and even some special rocks "coal" could be burnt to keep us warm and drive away the monsters of the night. Only in the last few decades of mankind's life here on earth, did we discover an even better source of energy right under our feet. We have exploited each new fuel for it's efficiently, ease of use, and portability, with little regard for the damage it's use may cause to the environment, or whether it can be replaced or not.
Regardless of the sources, nearly all of our energy comes from turning hydrogen into water. Be it coal, oil, wood, or anything else we burn for heat and light, the chemical reaction of combining oxygen and hydrogen is the basis for the energy we receive. Hydrogen is a very reactive material and is not found alone here on earth. The vast majority of hydrogen has already been "burnt" and water, its ashes, are all that's left. What little usable hydrogen that's left is bound with carbon and other atoms. Wood, coal, oil, animal fats, and everything else we burn has a high content of hydrogen and carbon, "HydroCarbon, by the application of a little heat, the hydrogen is released and allowed to combine with the oxygen in the air, to produce the heat and light we desire. The problem with this is that the other elements, in the fuel, such as carbon, sulfur, and more, react with the environment to produce a bunch of undesirable products. Its All Hydrogen
In a perfect world we would use pure hydrogen as our energy source. But the world is anything but perfect, and pure hydrogen is very difficult to acquire, and even tougher to store and transport, so we make do with an easy to acquire and transport form of hydrogen called oil.
Over time mankind has learned how to refine oil to minimize some of its undesirable components. This produces a fuel that is less harmful to the environment, and more useful to us, but each stage of the refinement process costs more energy. There comes a point where the cost to produce a better fuel exceeds its energy value. And, of course, oil is a non-renewable resource. When it's gone - It's gone!
Well... Maybe not absolutely perfect, but way ahead of what ever is in second place. Something that mankind has been making for over five thousand years. Alcohol! The Perfect Fuel
Ethel Alcohol, the fun component in beer, wine, and spirits, is a near perfect way to store and transport hydrogen. Easily made and transported, nearly pollution free in both production and use, and renewable, makes this stuff a near perfect fuel.
Why do we import over half of our motor fuel from other countries? Politics!Over thirty years ago, during our first energy crises, I started thinking about how we got into this mess, and what we could do to remedy it. I came to the conclusion that our dependence on oil, domestic and foreign, could be eliminated in just a few short years. Not only would we solve our energy problem, but also this cheap and easy solution would automatically reduce our air pollution problem, and help millions of our starving farmers.Why can't we have a clean, cheap, and renewable fuel? Politics!
Why are we paying our farmers not to grow crops? Politics!
Currently, the United States grows enough corn each year to power every car and truck in this country. Corn yields about 200 gallons of alcohol per acre, per year. Almost anything that grows can be converted into alcohol, but some plants are better than others. Jerusalem Artichokes which are neither artichokes, nor from Jerusalem, can yield about 1,200 gallons of alcohol per acre, per year. The energy required to produce that much alcohol is from 100 to 200 gallons of alcohol, so each acre will net at least 1,000 gallons of fuel.
The average car consumes about 700 gallons of gasoline each year. It requires about 15% more alcohol to make the same energy as gasoline. The average automobile will consume about 800 gallons of alcohol per year in order to travel the same distance.
Alcohol is many times cleaner than gasoline, will make an automobile engine last longer, and can be much cheaper to produce than gasoline. And best of all, most modern automobile engines can run on alcohol with little or no modifications.
There are about 150 million automobiles and trucks in the United States, and about 3-billion unused or under-used acres of land. Many farmers are paid by the federal government, with your money, not to grow anything. By using only a tiny fraction of our land, we could give the American farmer a decent living, clean up the environment, and tell the Arabs to put their oil back where the sun don't shine.
My uncle, like thousands of other small farmers, had a dairy farm. He raised a few dozen cows that were milked, by automatic milking machines, each day. The milk was stored in a large stainless steel tank for the tanker-truck that picked it up each day. My uncle was paid, by the gallon, for the milk the bottling company used to make their products. This gave him an OK living, but was more work than any sane person would voluntarily submit to. The Dairy Farm
A quick look at the economy of a dairy farm makes one wonder why anyone would elect to produce milk; Expensive milking machinery, animals that must be cared for with drugs & vets, breeding costs, and dawn to dusk back-breaking work, summer & winter, good weather or bad, are just a few of the things that must be addressed to make a living in that business.
For less than the cost of just the milking equipment, a farmer could install a fully automatic alcohol production system. Say he can get 50-cents a gallon for his alcohol, and each acre of land will produce 100-galons of alcohol per month, that's $50 per acre, per month. A good income is around 60-thousand dollars per year, or about $5,000 per month. Our farmer needs only 100-acres to make a nice income. A hundred acres is a miniscule farm. I don't know if we should tell the dairy farmers about this idea, or we may no longer be able to buy a gallon of milk anywhere. [Grin]
Back to those questions that all share the same answer: Politics
Why do we import over half of our motor fuel from other countries?
As much as we would like to believe otherwise, money, not logic, common sense, or even the democratic process, runs the world. And there is nothing that involves more money than the production and use of energy. Ninety-seven percent of all vehicles on earth run on oil-derived fuels. Government regulations, and just the massive scale of oil production, dictate that only the largest and richest of companies are able to compete in the oil business. Just after World War Two, American and British oil companies developed the extremely rich oil fields of the Middle East. Oil made a bunch of primitive tribes into some of the richest people on earth. In just a few short years these people went from living in tents and riding camels, to living in mansions and driving around in Cadillacs and Rolls-Royce automobiles. A big hunk of Middle East sand previously called Arabia was broken up into several smaller countries, the biggest of which was controlled by one family, with the name of Saudi. They even named their new country after themselves. For decades the country of Saudi Arabia gave each of their citizens about twenty five thousand dollars, just for being a citizen. And we thought America's streets were paved with gold!As the Arab countries got richer, they acted no different than anyone and wanted even more money. This lead them to band together and create OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. This allows them to hold us hostage for even higher oil prices. And our government embraces them and their organization. Why? Because we need the oil!
Each and every day over 17-million barrels of oil (Over 700-million gallons) are used throughout the United States, principally as vehicle fuel. Over half of that oil comes from the Middle East. At around 30 to 40-dollars per barrel, how do we pay this huge bill? Unlike you and I, countries don't pay each other with cash, credit cards, or even gold. They use trade in food and merchandise to balance their debt. Our trading partners, in the Middle East, can only eat so much food, so we must find something else to trade them for their oil. This thing we trade must be very expensive, to offset the high cost of oil, it must be wanted or needed, by those that we trade with, and most of all, it must be consumable, so they will always need more. There is only one commodity that meets these requirements. Military Hardware! Its expensive, Its rapidly used-up or blown-up, it becomes obsolete in a short period of time, and most importantly, they really want it!
These people of the Middle East have been at war with one-another for thousands of years, and we hand them some of the most modern and lethal weapons on earth. As I said before, "The world runs on money, not logic!"
The leaders of many of these oil-rich countries are walking a very narrow line. The gap between their rich and poor is gigantic. The prominent religious superstition in those countries is completely incompatible with the modern world. It doesn't take a genius to see that there will come a time of great death and destruction in many of those places. Then what do we do for our oil needs?
Due, in part, to the oil companies wanting the cheapest raw materials, as any good business would, and the excessive drilling regulations placed on them by our government, foreign oil is more attractive than our own. If you had a high-profit product that was needed by everyone, would you embrace a competing product like alcohol?
Why can't we have a clean, cheap, and renewable fuel?
The short answer is: We can have a clean, cheap, and renewable fuel! After all, the Brazilians have done just this for decades. Over half of all the cars in Brazil run on alcohol that is locally made from their abundant sugarcane crop. These Brazilians drive Fords, Chevy's, Toyota's and all the same cars we do, but the car companies make small changes to these models to make them better utilize alcohol.Many would argue that we don't have the infrastructure in place to deliver alcohol to the cars. This is false! Every gas station has three gas pumps. The third pump was put in years ago as we transitioned from leaded gasoline to all unleaded. After the transition, the oil companies simply offered a third grade of gasoline, so they didn't have to remove the extra pump. We need three grades of gasoline like we need another hole in our head! The third pump could easily be used for alcohol fuel. If we started changing over to alcohol, just as we did for unleaded gasoline, we could be completely free from foreign oil in a few short years.
So what's the hold up? The oil companies and their cronies in our government! With somewhere around 1.5-million workers in the oil industry, and billions-upon-billions of dollars involved, its little wonder that alternative fuels have been given short shrift.
If we ever expect to see any changes in this system, now is the time! After the rude awakening of September 11th and our economic downturn, now is the time to push everyone for an alcohol-fueled future. Individual politicians find it hard to avoid the big oil money, but we in our millions can hammer away at them to make the needed changes. We need to get the government off the backs of the small alcohol producers. The ATF "the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms" has all manner of artificial hurtles for the small producer to jump. Individual states have many odd alcohol laws still in place from the days of prohibition, and of course the oil companies will try to block the development of alterative fuels anyway they can.
A valid argument can be made that we will leave about 1.5-million oil workers unemployed when we move to alcohol. This has an easy solution. Pay them not to work! For the rest of their careers, or until they find other work, simply pay them their normal salary. Many oil workers may find work in the factories that will be needed to make the alcohol production equipment for the farms. Others may chose to start their own fuel-farms. Regardless, even if no displaced oil worker elects to do anything but sit on his rear, paying all 1.5-million of them will still be cheaper than paying the Arabs for their oil. And we will sure make a million and half new friends.
What about the millions of Americans that have stock in oil companies? Most oil companies, if they are smart, will find other profitable ventures to get involved in. (Most already have.) The transition won't happen overnight so there will be time for folks to move their investments from oil to something else. Investors already know that the stock market is a risky place for their money, and have long ago diversified their investments, so this shouldn't be a big problem.
What about the relatively small number of high-paid oil executives? It would probably be cheaper just to pay them off like the workers. After all, if we can keep the people that will make the biggest stink about the transition happy, we will have an easier time of it. Maybe we can play on their patriotism to forgo compensation.
As always we will have a fight with the nutty fringe. A few will see alcohol-fuel as some strange conspiracy, others, like the "Church Ladies", will wring their hands about all that nasty alcohol now available to the masses. Common sense and a little denaturing should satisfy them. The few of the nuttiest, that can't be reasoned with, will be insignificant.
What about the huge money that OPEC will throw at the lobbyists, and Madison Avenue to try and dissuade politicians and the general public form this path down alcohol lane? As much as I am against the making of laws, maybe this is an area where we should consider passing some laws that would prohibit OPEC and their buddies from any interference.
Why are we paying our farmers not to grow crops?
The simple law of supply and demand controls the price of food. Like everything else on earth, if you have too much of something, its not worth anything, if you have too little, the price goes up. If there is too little food, or its price is too high, the consumer suffers. If there is too much food, the producer suffers.Usually the free enterprise system does a wonderful, and completely automatic, job of controlling supply, quality, and the price of a thing. Without any government or industry controls, most businesses will, by the competitive pressures of their peers, make the best product at the lowest price. If they don't the guy down the street will see an opportunity to do them one-better, and put them out of business. The business of agriculture is a little different. Variables like weather and disease often times throws a monkey wrench into the machinery of free enterprise.
A year or two with an insufficient quantity of toasters, automobiles, or heaven forbid, computers, will do little more than run the price up, and inconvenience a few folks. A few years with too little food, will cause a revolt, or at least cause a lot of politicians to seek other work.
Our government, to save their own butts, and keep our society stable, tampers with the delicate machinery of the free enterprise system. When there is a surplus of foodstuffs, the government guarantees what the farmer gets for his crops, buys and stores grains, and pays others not to raise some products. When there is a shortage, the government will release their stores back into the system and will pay premiums to entice farmers to increase their output. At best, this is a difficult system to manage, and very costly in our tax dollars.
Buying and storing surplus foods will, and probably should, continue as a buffer against bad times. But paying farmers not to grow crops is just plain nuts! American farmers are rightly proud of the work they do to produce the finest foods on earth. Pride and self worth go right out the window when you pay someone not to work. Our farmers want to work and especially want to know their work is vital to our country. There is no more patriotic American than a farmer. What would be more patriotic than knowing your work is freeing all of America from the whims of another country?
In the 1800s over eighty percent of our population worked in the agriculture business. Today it's less than two percent. Over the last hundred years or so, people were drawn off the land and attracted to the cities with the promise of more money, more free time, better entertainment, and host of other reasons. Over the last few decades the lure of the big city has been greatly tarnished by high crime rates, lousy traffic, and the crush of humanity. With satellite TV, telephone, and the Internet, quality entertainment can be had from any remote place in the land. Modern transportation makes access to all the fine products, formally only found in the cities, available to anyone anywhere. Medical helicopters can now whisk us off the farm and into the hands of the finest doctors faster than driving in some of the big cities. Most city folks, especially those with children, know that the country would be a better place to raise kids than any city, but the need to make a living keeps them from returning to the land of their grandparents. From the Farm to the City
and back again!For less than the cost of many middleclass suburban houses, city slickers could own a fuel-farm. Clean air, little crime, no traffic, and a healthy lifestyle, is found on the farm. The freedom of having and controlling a few hundred acres of your own land, and the pride of helping yourself and all of America, is simply indescribable!
Get out of that city and start creating a dynasty that will make yourself and family better Americans, now and for generations to come.
The Industry
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