Re: ETHANOL OR METHANOL?

On May 30, 2:44 pm, Eeyore <rabbitsfriendsandrelati...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Uncle Ben wrote:
Eeyore wrote:
Uncle Ben wrote:
Eeyore wrote:
...
Biofuels will be a useful adjunct but will never replace petroleum.. At best I hear
estimates of them eventually providing maybe 10% of energy currently provided by oil.

Zubrin ("Energy Victory") argues persuasively to the contrary. I
recommend buying and reading that book.

Sounds too populist for me to take it that seriously at present. Let's see some reviews
from scientists.

Zubrin is a nuclear engineer. I am a physicist.  My review is
"excellent."

About butanol:  I found a review by Robert Rapier, a butanol engineer
with much experience.  He says that, yes, butanol would be nice, but
the only available method at this time for making butanol from biomass
yields a very dilute aqueous solution.  It is prohibitively expensive
to distill it out of the water.  More research is needed.

It sounds to me like he's misinformed.

http://www2.dupont.com/Biofuels/en_US/http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_asse...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=ena&rls=en&hs=RDU&q=%22dupont%22+bp+b...

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/07/07/bp-sugar-british-and-dupont-u...

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/06/bp_and_dupont_t.html

Maybe DuPont and BP are wrong ?

Interesting. One of the links you so graciously provide confirms
Robert Rapier (RR) in his statement that virtually all of the butanol
now being produced is made from petrochemical stocks. They (DuPont
and BP) say they are working on other means of production and plan to
build a plant next year. Maybe they have found a way to overcome the
poisoning problem that limits concentrations of butanol and don't want
to reveal their solution. Or maybe they are over-confident. Let's
stay tuned.

Doesn't sound like a resounding plus for that book though.

"That book". Energy Victory, is not about butanol. It's about ethanol
and methanol and it's written by Robert Zubrin, not Robert Rapier.
Sorry to confuse you by mentioning two topics in the same post.

Whether you read the Zubrin book matters not to me except that we need
everyone's thoughts as to how to avoid the pending disaster faced by
western civilization in Peak Oil.

.