Not all alcohol is the same.
You see two main types.
Methanol - Made from natural Gas.
Ethanol - Around here know as "Moon-Shine"
So since Methanol is made from natural gas, it is a fossil fuel and a product mainly of the oil industry.
Ethanol is much less corrosive than Methanol and a denser hydrocarbon.
Methanol eats rubber, steel, aluminum, and many plastics. Cars running pure methanol need stainless Steel fuel tanks and chrome plated carbs ect.
Unless I get a big price difference, I will not run either one. Less energy for the same price is not a good deal.
I am not sure that ethanol is a good idea either. You grow corn with petro-chemical fertilizer and hall it to the Ethanol plant with diesel trucks and trains. Heat and process it to get Ethanol, more energy put in the process. Haul it by truck to service stations.
At the end of this process you may have used more oil to produce the ethanol than the energy that you will get from burning it. Bad idea, lose lose, situation.
There is no real alternative to what we are doing now.
Something really scary was a stat that I read one time about food production. They stated that we expend 3 calories (A measure of heat) of fossil fuel for every calorie of food that we eat.
Real simple, we will starve without oil. Not a good situation.
I don't have a solution, but these ideas that people are hanging their hopes on are pretty worthless, the truth of the matter is that it is alot worse than people think.
I don't like our boys dieing in Iraq, but that oil is very important.
Z28
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