E85 Ethanol fuel-an alternative to war with Iraq by Greg Vanderlaan Grown in America by Americans... READ MORE: A NEWSPAPER ARTICLE i WROTE FOR THE LUMBERJACK AT HUMBOLDT STATE UNIVERSITY...

E85 Ethanol fuel-an alternative to war with Iraq
by Greg Vanderlaan
Grown in America by Americans, E85 reduces our dependence on foreign oil. It's designed to be a fuel for automobiles and trucks. E85 is 85% Ethanol and 15% gasoline and is made from corn but it can be made from rice, potatoes, wheat, sugar cane or even prunes. It's currently sold in the midwestern United States at prices equivalent to those for mid-grade unleaded gasoline. 
Automobiles using E85 fuel are available from Ford, Chrysler, Gm and many foreign car makers. Called flexible fuel vehicles, they can run on any mixture of ethanol/gasoline. They cost the same as gasoline only vehicles. E85 is not yet available in California but it will be soon. The National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition. www.e85fuel.com announced on Feb 13, 2003 that it has issued a grant award of $46,300 to the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) and InterState Oil Company to develop an E85 fueling facility in the Sacramento, California area.  The fueling facility, owned and operated by InterState, will be used to fuel 113 CDFA fleet vehicles capable of using this alternative fuel.
Here in Eureka and Arcata the stations sell gasohol which is a mixture of 10% ethanol and 90% gasoline. Standard automobiles may be modified to run on E85. The main modification is to the computer system that runs the car. No modifications to the actual engine are needed. 
E85 is nontoxic. In the event of a traffic accident during the transport of the fuel from the refinery to the gas station, no elaborate cleanup is needed. Since the fuel is grown here in the continental United States, the transportation requirements are minimal. There would be no need to use oil tankers like the EXXON-VALDEZ. Boats would be eliminated entirely from the delivery system. The www.iowacorn.org website has maps showing exactly where to go to get a tankfull. Most of the stations are in Minnesota (60). There are 150 stations nationwide. The closest one is in Provo, Utah. 
Auto manufacturers have been making ethanol using vehicles for a very long time. In the 1880s, Henry Ford built the quadricycle which ran on ethanol. Model Ts had a carburetor adjustment to switch between Gasoline and Ethanol. Air pollution would be reduced by switching to ethanol. Emissions of hydrocarbons and benzene are less than gasoline. Carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere but is reabsorbed by the plants that grow the fuel. One of the reasons ethanol is so popular in the midwest is its use in farm machinery. The machines that are used to make the fuel use the fuel. A byproduct of fuel manufacturing is distillers dried grain which is used for hog and cattle feed.
The country of Brazil has more than 4 million ethanol vehicles on the road. The Brazilians make their fuel from sugar cane. The government of Brazil put a lot of effort into converting their cars because they could not afford to have a lot of money leaving their country.
The US Army has been studying the use of alternate fuel vehicles and has concluded that the main problem is lack of availability of the fuel. The Vehicles themselves are available from the GSA at no extra cost, but there are very few stations that pump E85 near Army bases. The performance in Army vehicles is good. Soldiers need no extra training to use the fuel. Storage and cleanup costs are better than gasoline. The U.S. Postal service has been running its vehicles on ethanol since 1998 in Illinois.
Iraq's economy is based on the oil business. 95% of the money they get from other countries is from the sale of oil. They are having difficulty paying for the wars they had with Iran and the USA during the 1990s. Using ethanol would keep the money we spend for fuel in America. Iraq would simply not have money to spend on weapons if we stopped buying oil.
Not everyone feels that E85 is a viable solution to our fuel problems. During a speech at Humboldt State University, Dr. Michael Moore expressed the opinion that there is simply not enough corn to fuel all of our cars. It would take cutting down half of the Amazon rainforest to have enough biomass to solve our need for energy. He is a former California government official working in energy policy and currently the chief economist of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He also said that of all the alternative energy sources, biomass is the most attractive. Biomass is a term that refers to all energy sources that come from growing plants. Burning wood in a fireplace, biodiesel fuel from hemp, methanol from wasted sawdust and fermenting grain are all examples of biomass energy. A film of his speech is available at Instructional Media Services.

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BIODIESEL Roadshow Bus to Umpqua Hotsprings

by Greg Vanderlaan
Mergemedia staff
03.06.03

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Take a trip on the biobus March 20th to 24th. They will be visiting the Umpqua hotsprings to celebrate the spring equinox. The bus will be leaving the Redwood Peace Center 1040 10th Street, Arcata on thursday morning.

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When Rudolf Diesel invented his engine, he ran it on peanut oil. A return to using biodiesel would reduce our need to import oil from foreign countries. Biodiesel is a fuel that can be used in any standard diesel engine without modification. It is made from renewable plants like soybeans, hemp, canola oil, cottonseed, sunflower seeds or animal fats. Hemp, a source of biofuel, is currently illegal in the United States. The technology required to manufacture biodiesel is a simple, time tested procedure. A chemical process called transesterification separates glycerin from the fat or vegetable oil. This produces two products -- methyl esters (biodiesel) and glycerin (used in soap).
Biodiesel contains no petroleum based products. There is a limited quantity of fossil fuel on the planet. According to Dr. Michael Moore, chief economist of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory says that finding oil will become increasingly difficult after the year 2020. Four countries control the majority of oil today. (Saudi Arabia-26%, Iraq-11%, Kuait-10% and Iran-9%). The United States controls 2% of the world's oil reserves. In the future, the need for renewable energy sources will become extreme. We will no longer have the option of drilling for more oil. Soybeans, on the other hand, can be grown forever. American farmers would benefit from the increased business. Since this fuel is made locally, transportation of the fuel to the consumer is easier than fossil fuel. Recently, there was a large oil spill off the coast of Spain. A world-wide switch to biodiesel would prevent ecological disasters like this. No oil tankers are needed at all for distribution of biodiesel fuel.
At the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology here at Humboldt State University they have a working biodiesel production system. They use vegetable oil from local restaurants as their raw material. The students convert this waste into a usable fuel for their Mercedes Benz. The fellow at the center says that fuel can be made for as little as 50 cents a gallon. Commercial production of fuel is more expensive. Biodiesel costs about $1.33 to $1.70 cents a gallon depending on many factors including the price of soybeans, labor costs and transportation. Private organizations and individuals are free to manufacture their own fuel for their own use. The CCAT website has step by step instruction for making your own.
Biodiesel is just one of many solutions to our energy needs. While talking to Adrian Nichols of the Redwood Peace Center he brought up some concerns that I had not considered before. "Are the soybeans grown organically?" Could a crop cause more damage thru the use of pesticides than it is worth? "If we use the land for growing fuel, will that interfere with using the land for growing food or not using the land at all?" A deeper solution to our problems would be to use mass transit, ride bicycles or walk to get where we are going. He also felt that we should put more effort into getting power from solar and wind sources.
In Iowa, a hybrid electricity generator is being run. It is a windmill with a biodiesel backup generator for use on days when there is no wind. One of the problems with wind power is reliability. Consumers of electricity demand a constant source of current. It is not practical to depend on wind power alone to satisfy our requirements for electricity. Computers can actually be damaged by fluctuation of the power source. With the hybrid wind/biodiesel system, the diesel generator would kick in when the wind power fell below an acceptable level.
The Union of Concerned Scientists is sponsoring a petition drive to clean up the air pollution from school busses. They are concerned about the health problems due to breathing the smoke from the tailpipe. "From school buses in our neighborhoods to eighteen-wheelers on the highway, diesel rigs are a serious cancer and clean air threat." -Jason Mark, Union of Concerned Scientists.
Research conducted at the University of California-Davis has shown that the cancer-causing potential of biodiesel particulate matter is 80% less than that of petroleum diesel. Biodiesel also significantly reduces most EPA targeted emissions, such as carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons and particulate matter. Biodiesel is the only alternative fuel in the US to complete EPA Tier I Health Effects Testing under section 211(b) of the Clean Air Act. A copy of their petition can be found at www.ucsusa.org
In Canada, the use of biodiesel is gaining speed with the launch of the Montreal Biodiesel project in the spring of 2002, the largest municipal biodiesel project in North America.   More than 140 buses, running on different blends of biodiesel derived from animal rendering and U.S. soybeans will be studied over the next year. The project is expected to consume more than 500,000 liters of biodiesel this year.