Re: battery pulsing gizmo

Pete M wrote:
"John Johnson" <null@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:null-947C13.21144609042007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In article <lkh1t61h.fsf@xxxxxxxxxx>,
Gene Cash <gcash@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


John Johnson <null@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
<snip>
Ahh.. ethanol.

I read an article recently where they estimated the petroleum cost of fertilizers, transport, distillation etc to make 10 gal of ethanol from corn was I think about 8 gal.

I haven't read those reports because I believe it is junk research it would waste an hour of my life I would never get back. My career was as a chemist but my youth was spent as a farmer. You<not you personally but the syphilitic imbeciles that wrote this tripe> have to be pretty bad for me not to waste time reading you to even make fun of the stupid estimates. We used to produce up to 1,000 tons of fruit, apricots, prunes, cherries, walnuts, on a 160 acre ranch. Figure something like 15% sugar content that will convert to alcohol at about a 70% rate => 210,000 lbs or ~30,000 gals of alcohol!!! Do this freaking idiots expect us to believe we needed 24,000 gals of gas to bring those crops in? They ought to throw these lying bull*** artist in jail. Damn newspapers don't know jack. ibid

Aside from that, you can eat corn or feed it to cattle or something.... why would you swap 8 gal of petroleum for 10 gal of ethanol...and petroleum probably has a significantly higher energy density. Seems the pain in the ass factor alone would make it not worth the effort, aside from wasting.....an awful lot of hard earned corn.

It has been a while since I checked prices but white lightning was/is produced at very competitive prices using hog or cattle feed for the feed stock. It gets a bit complicated and I am a Yankee so I would suggest you look up a southern gentleman to give you cost break downs but it goes something like: Other then just avoiding the taxes and drinking it straight, white lightning is used in a lot of bars. The bars are regularily checked by federal agents with hydrometers for alcohol content. What the bartenders/owners do is cut there expensive aged spirits with white lightning and water to keep the alcohol content at label levels.

Corn is so cheap there are currently corn burning furnaces being manufactured. I believe one was even installed in the White House. The initial price of the furnace is MO high, but the operating costs are about the same as wood, fuel oil, natural gas, and cheaper then electricity.


The bottom line seemed to be that if we could make ethanol from corn STALKs instead of corn, we could be ahead.


One of my favorite quotes from a feed lot/meat packer we used to deliver hay to was "We sell everything but the moo." likewise there essentially isn't any agricultural waste to speak of that can be used. It could be redirected, like instead of making feeds out of the stuff we could eat less meat and get use the resulting surplus of things like corn stalks for a feed stock. I don't think people are willing to give up their Jumbo Jack with cheese just yet.

Just as an example of how far this let nothing go to waste is carried, the whole Mad Cow crisis came about because we use left over parts of butchered cattle in cattle feed! All we would have to do to eliminate it is stop turning cattle into canibals.

I've wondered, whats wrong with putting Methanol in gas? I tried this once, to blend gas with methanol to make a cheap Coleman fuel for camping... seemed it will mix in some proportions one way but not the other way 'round... didn't wind up with cheap Coleman fuel but killed an afternoon and got a feeling I'd learned somethun.... ie didn't seem to work.

I experimented a bit with this. I was fooling around with waste methanol as a fuel back in the 70's and wanted to see if how much and what if... A car can handle around 10-20% methanol in the fuel before the carb need to be rejetted. Something that kind of shocked me at the time, because I thought some fuel line 'driers' used methanol, is the *SLIGHTEST* contamination with water causes the fuel to separate into a gas phase on top and water/methanol phase on the bottom. It's pretty dramatic.

(I tried this out of principle, a $4.50 gallon of Coleman fuel turned into $7.50 by the time I'd paid all the taxes and an environmental "paints and solvents levy", despite the fact that it was being used as a fuel and I had argued the point...)

IMO: Just go to a sailing supply store and buy an alcohol stove. A backpacking/sporting goods store may have them too. They are made anyway but are expen$ive. You want more then cheap, you want to be able to burn whatever is at hand.
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