Re: battery pulsing gizmo


"Rick Cortese" <ricortes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Pete M wrote:
"John Johnson" <null@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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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.

You have a very good point about eating less meat.

Have to be careful here... but what I've heard is that the ratio is about
10:1 for protein conversion for each step in the food chain.

If this theory is true... if we ate soy protein and not soy fed beef
protein, we'd be that much more ahead of the game.

This is also supposed to be significant deal with the fish farming thing,
something which can be a hot issue where I live. The feed pellets they give
the salmon are made from sea stuff we won't eat, and from stuff higher in
the food chain than a wild salmon normally diets on.

This does two things, it means a lb of farmed salmon sucks more lb of ....
biostuff.... from the earth than a lb of wild salmon. It also means that
there is a higher biological concentration of heavy metals etc in farmed
salmon.

But I'm willing to risk the future of the world by consuming steak instead
of ... what's the white yuky stuff that makes you wanna puke... oh yeh,
Tofu! And I buy farmed salmon because the wild stuff is much more expensive,
less available, and doesn't taste that much better if you don't have a real
one to compare it to..

(I guess I owe you a source for my ethanol article comments, I believe it
was Jan '07 Scientific American).

Motorcycle content.... if I ate better and lost weight my bike would go
faster with me on it. :o)

P.


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