I Was Up Above It, Now I'm Down In It

Today I'm actually putting some substance into my post. Could this be the beginning of something beautiful? I highly doubt, please bare with me.

I had to read a couple articles for one of my classes that deal with alternative fuels, mostly the ethanol rich E85. For those who have heard of it an unsure of what it means, ethanol is an alcohol that is added to gasoline to add oxygen content, helping the gas burn better and cleaner in engines. The oxygen content is referenced by the number of gasoline you select, for instance, Regular 87 means 13% ethanol. The math isn’t too hard here…

As part of a government mandate some years back, oil companies were required to add more oxygen and they did this initially with a chemical MTBE. Problem is this stuff is a possible carcinogen, and when leaked into the groundwater, can become poisonous.

Enter ethanol. The sugar based alcohol is currently derived from corn kernels, and as oil is become somewhat a pain in America’s ass, specifically the cheek the wallet is kept near, everyone is turning to a higher ethanol content replacement.

But here’s the problem with E85. While it is mostly ethanol, the corn required to make enough for just the Nation doesn’t quite exist. The nation’s supply would currently only turn out 7% of the fuel needed for the next year (insert frowny face). Not to mention, as I read deeper into the articles, that just making the fuel (including everything from fertilizing and harvesting to converting the sugar to alcohol and everything inbetween) almost costs the same amount of fossil fuels, so the payoffs, if any, are marginal at best (double frowny face).

The big savior? Possibly cellulose based fuel. It can be made from the biowaste of corn, the stalk, certain grass that grows quick and with little fertilizer, and other nonessential biomasses. Sounds great, right? Cellulose based fuel requires little crop to be removed from our dinner places, is in total abundance, completely renewable, the energy required to harvest is the same as harvesting our food so there is little addition, it is made cleaner, burns cleaner, and is very very cheap to make! Sounds real great, right?

Well to convert this biomass to fuel, a special enzyme found in places such as the middle of a jungle or the stomach of a termite isn’t quite as adaptable as yeast, and is very hard to synthesize. Bummer.

Millions of dollars worth of research is being poured into alternative fuels, so hopefully someday soon, the answer will come. Let’s just hope we haven’t already destroyed Earth and are newly happy Martians by then.

Strange things are afoot. Could they be the endgame of my enemy? Would I care if they were? We’ll see.