Debate question... No, not THAT debate!

Here's an interesting perspective that will surely send many noggins jogging.. I'm sure you've all heard of E85.. but why haven't you taken the E100 pill yet? 

• Alcohol is a viable alternative energy for ICE that is carbon neutral
  • Exhaust emissions are counterbalanced with photosynthesis
  • Combustion releases CO2, Photosynthesis pulls it back in.. (net neutral) 
• Alcohol is effectively liquid solar energy
  • Derived from photosynthesis, enzymes/yeast 1:2 punch cellulose->glucose->alcohol
  • Chemically the alcohol product is energy from the sun
  • All carbon products return to the soil which prevents mineral/electrolyte depletion of the soil
• Alcohol is easily derived from enzymes/yeast/heat/time
  • Clearly, humanity is pretty good at making alcohol
• Alcohol has a higher energy density than battery technology (comparable to gasoline)
• Alcohol burns cooler, cleaner, and leaves no soot or carbon buildup
• The majority of cars already are capable of running on alcohol (E100)
• Some countries (Brazil) mandate that cars run on E100, and have E100 pumps everywhere
• Our nation's early car manufactures were bi-fuel and could run on alcohol, for instance, the Ford Model-T (with carb air/fuel ratio knob in the cockpit)
• Henry Ford considered ethanol the fuel of the future, and lamented about how anything fermentable could be used as fuel. 
• Corn is a poor way to create ethanol, other crops (sorghum cane) have a much greater yield
  • Arguments related to requiring too much water focus on corn as the crop, which in a system designed for alcohol production, would not be the crop selected 

I highly recommend David Blume's "Alcohol can be a Gas!", save for the political crap he spews out on occasion. It also gets a bit repetitive and dry, but there is a lot of good information there.  

Keith Tanner said:

03Panther said:

Also, although it is true that a large power plant can be more efficient (per unit of energy) than a small ICE in a car, that does not address all of the significant looses in getting that energy from the huge power plant to the point of use.

Energy transmission and distribution losses for electricity are about 5%, according to the US Energy Information Administration.  Meanwhile, about 20% of the fuel's energy - once it's been extracted and refined and put in a truck and delivered to a station and the car has gone to get some - 20% gets turned into work. Seriously, if we were having this conversation in a world where the BEV was the incumbent, it would be ridiculous. 

I agree about the conversation, and the advantages listed for ev early on are huge( I think by Patrick?)

and I haven’t taken any electrical classes since the 70’s   What little I do remember  from then tell me that 5% losses, written in a document, is somebody blowing smoke up somones butt... if you make a supercounductor by cooling a wire in a lab only inviroment, the losses were almost that much!