Voting people helping people

Making Gas in Salmon for Salmon

Salmon’s solution to the energy crisis lies right before our eyes: make gas in Salmon for Salmon.

By substituting sugarcane alcohol for gasoline, Brazil responded to soaring auto fuel costs with a home-grown solution. 

After the OPEC oil shock of 1973, when the U.S. intensified its search for oil, reduced speed limits to 55 mph, and levied a Gas Guzzler tax, the Brazilian government gave cut-rate loans to sugar companies to build ethanol plants and guaranteed prices for the refined product. 

Brazil makes all their fuel.  We spend $50 billion each year just protecting the 20% of our oil that we import from the Persian Gulf.  In June of 2008 we got 23% of our crude oil imports from the Persian Gulf.  We imported 280,000 bpd of crude from Brazil during June 2008.

In 1973, Brazilian society changed direction and took action to build a part of a grand movement toward a stronger Brazil, while American consumers were standing in gas lines with no alternative in sight. We still have no alternative.

The U.S. government used direct price intervention (gas guzzler tax) to change consumer behavior while the Brazilian government focused on catalyzing a movement of aggregate consumer consensus by developing a whole new supply side of ethanol.  Today our government subsidizes corn growers ($8.9 billion in 2005) and subsidizes ethanol producers to make ethanol that oil companies buy. At the same time, we impose a $.52 per gallon tax on imported Brazilian ethanol. If this continues, we still have oil companies selling us gasoline.

What does this have to do with Salmon?  We can grow sugar beets or other crop and ferment them into ethanol in Salmon and burn the ethanol in vehicles in Salmon.  We don’t need to ship anything and we don’t need oil companies.  I can bore out the fuel jet in my 1967 GMC van and make it run on alcohol.  I have a $300 ethanol gadget for our fuel-injected 1988 Toyota motor home to make it burn 100% ethanol or any combination of gasoline and ethanol and still get 22 mpg.

Henry Ford’s first working automobile was capable of running on ethanol, the substance that in 1925 Ford deemed the fuel of the future. The question a Salmon motorist might ask is: When will the future come to Salmon?

Can we all work together to help ourselves?  Is ethanol a potential solution to high fuel costs?  I would like to work with interested citizens to find the answers.

Calvin Leman
305 Washington Street
Salmon, ID 83467
208-756-4104

Ethanol Still Analysis

 

Agriculture Now Forestry Later

We were using ethanol.

Farmers near Salmon can grow sugar beets to ferment into ethanol right now.  When cellulosic ethanol is developed, then forestry products can be made into ethanol too. Cellulosic ethanol plants in the USA on March 2009 are still unable to compete with grains like corn and plants like sugar beets and sorghum.  Verenium announced its first commercial ethanol plant in January 2009.  Mascoma has a plant operating in March that makes 200,000 gpy ethanol, about the right size for Salmon.   Another plant is in Oregon. Click here for cellulosic ethanol developments.

When we fill up in Salmon, that money goes to farmers and other people in Salmon and not to oil companies, as it does now.  The people at the Salmon Vision  meeting found Salmon folks are self-reliant; have churches, schools, and service clubs; and want to build things to last.  That is what producing ethanol in Salmon for Salmon is about.

Sugar beet production for ethanol is sustainable agriculture, economically feasible, could be run by a coop, and be of the right size for Salmon.  The Midwest has been making ethanol since 1978 in towns like Central City, Nebraska, which has 3000 people.  They are using corn, but  Barley and sugar beets can be a feedstock too.

Presidential Directive establishing a Biofuels Interagency Working Group announced May 5, 2009. "Expanding our biofuels infrastructure provides a unique opportunity to spur rural economic development while reducing our dependence on foreign oil – one of the great challenges of the 21st century," said Secretary Vilsack

Equipment for small scale ethanol production can be modular and farm-size.  USDA did research on small-scale ethanol in 1995.  A continuous system is here.  You can build a still from a water heater: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Ethanol Converter kits allow newer cars (fuel injection) to burn ethanol or gasoline or any combination.  Older vehicles (standard carburetor) burn alcohol when the fuel jet is bored out.  David Blume's book, Alcohol Can Be a Gas, explains both conversions in detail and everything else about ethanol.  In the Midwest, they have been making and using ethanol from corn in old and new cars for a long time.

To look at the big picture, we can examine the work of Chris Somerville (Energy Biosciences Institute) who discussed the big picture in March 25, 2009. Last year Chris Somerville discussed the big picture. On Feb 26, 2009, Chris was here, with others.

A 2007 study of the Economic Impacts on the Farm Community of Cooperative Ownership of ethanol production assumes a 50 mgy plant costs $100 million to build and can produce ethanol for $2.00 gallon.  Add $1.00/gallon to transport that ethanol to market and the price is $3.00 / gallon. 

We calculate that a plant for Salmon that makes 500,000 gallons of ethanol (factor of 100 less) a year can make ethanol for $2.36/gallon.  Because no transport of the ethanol is needed, our cost of $2.36/gallon is less than the big plant in the study, $3.00/gallon. 

The plant in the study will add nearly $50 million more to the local economy and generate an additional $29 million in household income for a total of $79 million. Scale that down by 100 (Salmon size) and we get $790,000 added to the Salmon community by the ethanol plant.

A Federal Reserve Bank research study shows the economic benefits of ethanol production on rural communities may not be as high as the industry says.

I have David Blume's Alcohol Can Be A Gas book.  You can borrow it.  David Blume on NPR is here. A still you build or buy is here, here, this one on ebay, this one  is a complete automated system for $9,995.00 and will make 60 gallons per day.  The user manual for the boiler for this Allard Research and Development distiller is here.

This report shows ethanol produced from sugar beets is $2.35 per gallon and corn is $1.05.  The report does not show that it takes another $1.00 per gallon to get the corn ethanol to market or that they get a subsidy of $1.45 per gallon from the government.  Of this 2.5 billion, we paid .9 billion in income tax and another 3.6 billion at the pump, about $15 per person.  That's quite a bit when you figure it only made us 1.1% more energy independent and only reduced US greenhouse gases by 1/19 of 1%.  They also don't show the soil breakdown caused by corn.  The high price sugar beets get where sugar companies operate is another example of government subsidies, this time to the sugar producers and not to the fuel energy producers.  This should not affect the price of growing sugar beets in Salmon.

The miles per gallon of a vehicle running on gasoline compared to that vehicle running on ethanol depends on which fuel the engine was designed to run.  Flex fuel vehicles, ethanol-gasoline adapters, and changing the fuel jet on engines designed to run gasoline may show fewer miles per gallon with ethanol.  The better value depends on the cost of gasoline and the cost of ethanol.  Just calculate the miles per dollar to find which fuel is the best deal.  EPA and others show ethanol to be cleaner and more efficient than gasoline in engines designed to run ethanol.. Engine optimized for ethanol get the same miles per gallon as gasoline-optimized engines.  Some back-yard mechanics like ethanol too.