“Using corn for fuel is just to buy farm votes in the midwest.”
– E.M. Smith
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There is no shortage of fuel and there never will be
E.M. Smith
It is very easy to turn one carbon source into another. Much of this runs through Synthesis Gas, but there are other pathways too.
Making motor fuel from biomass and even garbage is a solved problem as is making methanol from coal. We have a few hundred years of coal, and methanol is great motor fuel (ask your local drag racer why they run it). There’s even a company already turning trash to gasoline. I doubt we will ever run short of trash.
If desired, methanol is easily turned into gasoline (Mobile process used in New Zealand employing zeolite catalyst) as can methane (natural gas). In the 80s California had a trial program with flex-fuel cars that ran on any mix of gasoline, ethanol, and methanol. It cost about $400 more per car, so you don’t need a dedicated methanol car to start the market.
In the 1970s, VW did a study of methanol using nuclear process heat. The result was fuel at about $2.75 / gallon of gas equivalent. Yes, you can put nuclear energy in your fuel tank, via carbon synthesis fuel. We have over 10, 000 years of nuclear fuel before we need to extract it from the ocean (another proven working process).
There is no shortage of fuel and there never will be. We just don’t use $3 / gallon tech (that we already have proven) when oil gives $1.25 or so wholesale gasoline prices; and we don’t use $100/ kg. uranium when mined on land is $75. Though it looks like current prices have collapsed to $50/ lb long term and $25 /lb spot:
https://www.cameco.com/invest/markets/uranium-price
Note that I’ve avoided addressing the fantasy of 50 years reserves. The very short form is that we always have 50 years of reserves. It costs a lot of money to find reserves, so once you have 40 to 50 years, you stop looking.
It was 50 years in my 1919 published date book on petroleum. It was 50 years in the ‘ 70s when the Oil Embargo hit. It was 50 years in the 1990s as shale oil became economical and suddenly became reserves. There’s roughly a Trillion barrels of oil THAT WE KNOW OF that presently are not reserves in shale deposits, but will become reserves at a slightly higher price. Twenty years from now, we will have 50 years of reserves too. But at a little higher price and using more advanced methods to recover.
Using corn for fuel is just to buy farm votes in the midwest.
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December 17, 2019 at 04:12PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 