On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 1:01 PM, [ Brainiac ] <arebacollins@gmail.com> wrote:
@ashok i would say wrong. Some maybe, but not all. Here is my simple rationale, if mumias were producing ethanol , they would do it at less than ten bob a liter. Petrol engines can run the stuff straight, but it has less energy, by a factor of 0.7, which would leave it costing just over 10, say even 20 per equivalent energy liter. This would automatically make billions for the company, farmers would earn more and net energy is positive.
I seriously doubt whether the numbers add up. 1) land use - if you want to use sugar-cane ethanol on a large scale -- you need to grow a lot of sugarcane on a lot of land. 2) food security - in a country which is not self-sufficient for food production - it means more arable land for food turned over to fuel production.(i.e. it will result in higher food prices ... increase in general costs... food riots .... but you can use the fuel to drive an suv) 3) energy use - general infrastructure (roads , bureaucracy, transport, etc.) is very poor. which means growing, transporting and processing sugarcane to produce ethanol will probably require the same amount (or more) of (petroleum based: fuel, fertilizer) energy that will be output by the end product ethanol. instead, you have an equatorial country where you have sunshine all year round. Ethanol from sugarcane is 'cellulosic' ethanol -- sunshine photosynthesised by the plant -- which you are then again converting back to fuel. Notice the inefficiencies of doing that when you could be harnessing the power at the source (the sun) whose energy production is always constant.