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I have mixed feelings concerning alternative fuels and renewable fulel systems. Something needs to happen however.
One of the problems I see with using ethanol on a wide basis is that it will place a massive strain on the ethanol production companies. It takes a lot of corn or other vegetable product to produce a substantial amount of ethanol. The US farming communities are operating at a surplus and we ship a lot of grain product to other parts of the world, but we cannot produce enough corn or wheat to supply even our road vehicles with enough ethanol. Also, ethanol does not burn with near the energy of gasoline and thus takes more to do the same job and is less efficient. The same goes for most other alcohol based fuels, they do have have enough volatility. If vegetable stocks are supplemented with cellulose products (wood, paper, etc.) then how long until trees are being harvested strictly for the use in making fuel. Already too many trees are being harvested in the name of paper products.
In a lot of rural America natural gas is used for trucks and farm equipment but it also generates its own set of problems with cold weather. The fuel will condense a lot of water and freeze up carburettor and injection systems and it too has less volatile energy than gasoline, but it gets used because it is fairly cheap in the central states of America.
I think that we need a couple of things for another fuel to oust pertoleum as the mainstay. We need a good and cheap fuel cell system, and we need a high temperature superconductor to improve efficiency in electrical components. These two things together can make electrical storage and transmission happen with minimal loss and lower frictional losses in mechanical components.
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