A Few Minutes with ‘The Father of Ethanol’
Two dear friends: Merle Anderson with Shirley Ball, EPAC
“I thought it would take one-and-a-half years to get things done but now its been 22 years for me,” said Merle Anderson during our conversation at the 22nd Ethanol Conference & Trade Show. Merle is often known as ‘the father of ethanol,’ and with good reason. He helped to start the American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE) in 1977. As a farmer, he was involved in all the commodity groups and this gave him the idea to start an organization to promote agriculture.
“When you look back at it, I think we’ve done well. We’ve done some really good things,” said Anderson. “I think we’ve helped farmers an awful lot. I think we’ve done what’s right for America. When you talk about the transfer of wealth, I think we’ve helped a little bit –could of and should have done more. And I always have an interest in supporting our troops.”
Wealth distribution, our money going to terrorist countries, is one of the biggest reasons why we need to get off of oil. That has to change says Anderson, and he even has a way to do it, and quickly. “Have the auto industry stand up and admit that their vehicles will operate successfully on higher blends.”
Speaking of higher blends, it’s the answer to the problem of too much production and not enough demand. “We’ve been successful in creating production. We haven’t worried enough about selling the product, and we have got to solve this if the industry is going to move forward.”
That’s why ACE, in conjunction with the Renewable Fuels Association, and the National Corn Growers Association has announced a program to install 5,000 blender pumps in the next three years. The program is called BYOethanol. Anderson helped to get the first blender pumps installed in his region in Climax, Minn. and he knows that “higher blends is the answer to our problems.”
You can see photos from the conference in our Flicker photo album. In addition, you can listen to my full interview with Merle Anderson here.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (8.6MB)
4 Comments »
Andrzej
While ethanol from corn offers some advantages – such as less pollution – it’s production is simply not sustainable. The life cycle analysis (LCA) of ethanol corn, as you can find on e.g., http://envimpact.org/node/141 (Ethanol, from corn) shows that it requires way too much water, land, and other resources to be viable alternative energy source.
flee
Your a tad late Andrzej, corn ethanol is an alternative fuel or maybe it should be called a blended fuel. Kudos to Minnesota, they sure on top of it. Wish Michigan would give them more competition. We need the jobs.
I especially like the clean burn qualities and high octane. My engine runs better. I do check fuel mileage carefully and do my own extensive auto repair. No complaints here, other than availability and hassle of splash blending E-85 for non flex fuel autos. I would prefer 30% ethanol for my vehicles including mowers and chain saws.
It’s interesting to stay on top of ethanol technology. So much going on with IC engines, biology, and processes. Corn a very capable ethanol feed stock. I used to think like Andrzej, until realized how GM engineered seed have improved yields. Also, the co-products of the ethanol process very valuable. They waste nothing. DDGs is gaining reputation of fine animal feed. The water utilized can be waste grey water sewage and recycled back to crops.
A huge advantage of gain for ethanol (most forget), the grain can be stored and processed at later time. Many energy crops must be processed quickly upon harvest or quickly deteriorate quality. You could store a fully years supply of corn. Also, some of these ethanol plants have ability to run different grains or starch feed stocks. Some are co-producing some cellulose ethanol i.e. corn cobs. I expect in near future most ethanol processing plants will be relatively small, located close to feed stocks and be flexible to run ethanol and co-products from a variety of process during the harvest cycle.
Auto manufacturers are putting more flex fuel cars in lineup. Engine technology continues to exploit and improve performance of high ethanol blends. Fuel mileage will improve substancially. A convergence of technology for hybrids, ethanol, and IC engine efficiency along with small lighter cars will push up fleet average mileage. Ethanol production will continue to increase, battery technology will supplant some fuels. So, would guess in not to distant future 30% of our fuel supply from ethanol. If you throw natural gas in mix….very easy to project 30%.
Jetty
Projected corn yields are 300 bpa by 2030 so corn is a viable feedstock for significant production of ethanol. Water usage has gone under 3 gallons per gallon of ethanol. Many studies use irrigation numbers added to the water usage, however only about 5% of corn produced is irrigated. Cellolosic is right around the corner, but I think people are underestimating the American farmer. Corn ethanol will produce 30+billion gallon a year in the future and still feed the world.
Andrzej
Flee, I beg to differ. Just read your post: “is gaining”, “can be [utilized]“, “I expect in near future”, “will improve”, “will supplant” etc. I guess the cold fusion also continues to improve and can be expected to be useful in near future. But you are talking about projections and wishes for the future, whereas I am talking cold, hard numbers for today. Once the corn yield grows to 300 bpa and ethanol producers will be using 3 gallons of water (as Jetty wrote), I will modify my numbers accordingly. Right now the average yield is 155 bpa, and water usage adds to whopping 126 gallons per gallon of ethanol.
Please, note that I am an ardent supporter of non-fossil fuels. Even the corn ethanol has a net negative carbon dioxide emission, and that is just great. However, corn ethanol (and I am not talking sugar cane ethanol, algae ethanol, cellulosic, etc, but just corn ethanol produced in US right now) has a long way to go.
Comments RSS feed — TrackBack URI
Leave a Comment