Would it be possible to make ethanol from grass clippings?
492990
You could make ethanol from grass clippings, though as others have pointed out you are more likely to end up with methanol. Not that this is a major problem, methanol is a perfectly effective fuel in its own right.\n\n\nThe real problem is one of efficiency. Grass clippings are very dispersed, in the sense that you can't harvest hundreds of tonnes of them every hour as you can with maize or cane. Because of that any ethanol production will be small scale, which is inherently inefficient. You would almost certainly end up using more fuel in the process than you would actually produce.\n\nRemember even cane or maize ethanol production doesn't actually produce fuel. We currently use more fossil fuels producing ethanol then the ethanol actually replaces. Ethanol is an economic and political exercise, it has no environmental benefits.
347626
Renewable fuels association (ethanolrfa.org)
395165
Thats really vague, there are millions of methods. But one that fascinates me is synthesizing natural resources. We have all thought at one time or another that gas could only come from oil but thats false. In WWII the germans got their gas using carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and some other chemicals. Since the 80's New Zealand and South Africa have been using ethanol and the zeolite (porous rock) ZSM-5 to make their gas.\n\nOther good methods involve recycling, but doing it in an energy conserving manner. Which some say ours are not. \n\nThe ultimate goal would be to "use our waste as our resouces". A good example being using the carbon monoxide that comes from car exahaust to synthesize gas. Imagine, being able to do that kind of chemistry with every one of our resources. Thats the ultimate preservation and conservation around!
563674
the pros are that it is a renewable resource, the downside is that the mileage is lower than using gas. i have no idea why it isn't in larger use now, even though the mpg is lower, it would result in energy independence if there was widespread use of ethanol.
303534
To explain that you have to know the motive of the fermenting organism.It produces ethanol only during oxygen deprivation.Ethanol is not a product, it is a by-product for the regeneration of a very important compound NAD from NADH. Without formation of ethanol, NAD would not have been regenerated in anaerobic condition. Without NAD glycolysis would not have proceeded. Without glycolysis, ATP ,that is energy,would not have been produced, and without energy the organism would have died. From the viewpoint of the fermenting organism, ethanol is an end product (waste product) at the same time a very necessary product.
273020
i don't see why not.it is just not to be used for crops.
198629
Ethanol is a renewable resource and can be produce by many plants. It also burn clean.
1124319
Market it to intellectuals. Some student at my school (chemists, I think) proposed that we use the excess grease from the dining halls to be converted to ethanol on campus in a lab they built and now all of the facilities vehicles are running partially on ethanol (I think it's a mix of ethanol and gasoline, but I could be wrong). \n\nThe layperson isn't going to be interested in ethanol until it becomes mainstream. The best bet is to start getting Universities and Hosiptals to run their vehicles (ambulances, security vehicles, construction vehicles). \n\nAlso, it would be sweet if the government supported ethanol usage by providing tax incentives for these companies (like you get if you buy a hybrid car). It's really very frustrating because ethanol production is so inexpensive. I feel your pain.
68202
No, it is quite easy to make your own biodiesel. You do not need any special equipment. \n\nHere is a procedure:\nThe process is quite simple. Alchohol and vegetable oil or some other similar fat are mixed with the catalyst. It can be used animal fats or vegetable oils. The alchohol can be methanol or ethanol. Methanol is generally cheaper since it is made in industrial quantities from petroleum. Sodium hydroxide (aka lye or caustic soda) or potassium hydroxide are mixed in as the catalyst.\n\n1. Methanol and sodium hydroxide are combined making sodium methoxide.\n2. Sodium methoxide is mixed and stirred with vegetable oil (trigycerides). The oil molecules break apart and this produces methylesters and glycerol. The glycerol and catalyst will settle to the bottom as they are both denser than the methylesters. The methylester is drained off after the reaction is complete, about 8 hours.\n3. The methylester (biodiesel) is washed by mixing it with water. The water dissolves any traces of the catalyst and the alchohol. After settling for a few days the water can be drained from the bottom of the tank.\nThe glycerol can be filtered and purified as well. It can be burnt as fuel, or it makes a powerful degreaser (it is already almost soap) and can be made into high quality soap.
1178788
The best plant for ethanol are sugar producing plants such as sugar cane. However sugar cane doesn't produce enough volume. In the US there are only a handful of states that can grow it. \n\nThe best volume types are cellulose. That is the material that surrounds a plant cell. Except for wood, all plants are extremely high in cellulose. \n\nThe problem is breaking cellulose into sugar. The best known way to treat it with heat and chemicals. Scientists are working on bacteria that will consume cellulose and output sugar as waste. Another dozen years this will be ready to implement. \n\nThe current technology on this is far more efficient than corn to ethanol converstion a dozen years ago. Today, even without the special bateria, cellulose ethanol is very good.
119793
Short answer: Not important; it will not even benefit farmers in the long run. \n\nUntil the US begins making ethanol from something other than corn, it is wasting more oil than it is saving, and only benefiting us by reducing URBAN air pollution. Since farmers use diesel and fertilizer made from natural gas, and ethanol plants use large quantities of natural gas in refining ethanol, there is a net loss of energy in US produced ethanol.  This is what a geoengineering professor at UC Berkeley found:\n"The fossil energy expended during production alone, he concluded, easily outweighs the consumable energy in the end product....."People tend to think of ethanol and see an endless cycle: corn is used to produce ethanol, ethanol is burned and gives off carbon dioxide, and corn uses the carbon dioxide as it grows," he said. "But that isn't the case. Fossil fuel actually drives the whole cycle.... "We are grasping at the solution that is by far the least efficient."\n\nAs long as we keep making it the way we do, it will not be a suitable alternative to gasoline, nor will it result in lower imports of oil for the US. \n\nThe other part of that problem is that if we turned the  ENTIRE annual US corn crop into ethanol to burn for automotive fuel, it would not last more than a few months of the year  based on our current fuel consumption.  We cannot grow enough corn to use ethanol as a complete substitute for gasoline. \n\nThe Brazilians have been much more efficient and use ethanol for a large percentage of their automotive fuel. They grow sugar cane and refine it using eucalyptus wood-fired refineries. Brazil's primary reason for this effort has been to improve their balance of trade by exporting oil rather than consuming it internally. In an interesting twist, Brazil may be able to export ethanol for less money than American farmers can produce it, and so the American farmers may soon find themselves with even more extra corn (and thus lower corn prices) due to adoption of ethanol. \nhttp://www.crystalsugar.com/media/news.archives/cargill.asp\nhttp://www.greencarcongress.com/2004/07/when_is_ethanol.html\n\nIt appears that making ethanol from corn not only will not solve our oil problems, it probably won't even be competitive without huge taxpayer subsidies to make it cheaper than imported sources of ethanol. It will continue to be added to gasoline in order to comply with EPA emissions rules, but that is the only real benefit. Everything else is just a waste of your tax dollars in my opinion.
400004
corn based ethanol is going bye bye. cellulose based ethanol will replace it over the next 10 years. \n\nWhy? well cellulose convertions are said to be more efficeint than corn based. Corn produces 2.5 tons per acre per season. Cellulose producing crops like Industrial Hemp(legal in canada but not US) produce upwards of 10 tons an acre and is grown without subsidies required to hold down the price of corn. \n\nAlso cotton is more profitable than corn, so is industrial hemp produced for the textile industry. Industrial hemp is also more profitable going to all other uses besides ethanol.\n\nThe food and clothing is already more expensive than ethanol is, so that is an additional shield.
179236
By heating it, you can change the physical property of sugar. Sugar is from the sugar cane, Have you ever try making alcohol? I think then sugar serves as a catalyst. \n\nYou are not trying to make moonshine, are you?\nShame on you.
654418
How about a friggin car you can run on food waste?  I'm tired of paying rich bastards who play price fixing games making money off me.  Ethanol or Methanol sound like a better alternative if we can all start making our own fuel without blowing up a few city blocks.\n\nSaw a news bit about a water-fueled motor the other day...\n\nJust read that answer above.  170 miles on a cell?!?  Are you freakin' kidding me?!?  My 113hp/69ft. lb motorcycle with a 4.5 gal tank does over 200 miles!  AND, it does wheelies!
381081
I live in Nebraska & of the several ethanol plants already in production, 13 more are going to be built in the next 2 years. Ethanol will begin using more corn than feed for animals.\n\nThe price keeps going up because of Federal guidelines regarding cleaner automotive gas.  MTBE was outlawed a few years ago & states must use cleaner alternatives in fuel or they lose their federal highway funding. It's known as Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether if I remember correctly and when it leaks from tanks one drop can contaminate 10,000 gallons of water and it's nearly impossible to clean up (my bro's a chemist).\n\nThe demand continually goes up for these alternative fuel additives which drives up the price.\n\nI can tell you that as of the last 3 months we haven't even had fuel at gas stations WITH ethanol. Ethanol gas here was usually 3 cents cheaper, but now it's all being exported, so we're building more plants to meet demand.
335283
Yes it is possible.  If you are real good at this kind of thing you can power a small house out of methane you make in your own back yard.  Methane is basically a big fart.  Now to make one.  Take a garbage can and put in a bunch of rotting stuff. Leaves, food scraps, dead animals, you name it.  Wet it down a little, put a lid on it and wait.  What you begin to smell is methane gas.  Now the trick is to capture it, burn it and charge batteries with it, then you have something.  Do some web searching.  The answers are out there.
1168126
Ethanol can be made from anything that contains carbon, oxygen & hydrogen. (Which means any plant).\n\nThe simplest way to make it is by allowing yeast to digest sugars (which is how beer & wine are made) and then using the distillation process to separate the ethanol from everything else, but this is by no means the only way.\n\nThe race is on to identify which process produces the most ethanol at the least cost, because ethanol is an unlimited-availability alternative to gasoline, but cost is always an issue.  Current engine designs also demand that they burn gasoline/ethanol mixtures that don't exceed a certain percentage of ethanol, because it burns hotter and would melt regular engines if used pure.\n\nBut I believe we'll figure it out soon enough.