Rudolph Diesel

Diesel Patent 1892

Fuel: Peanut Oil

Model TFuel: Ethanol

“The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumac out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust -- almost anything. There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There’s enough alcohol in one year’s yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years.” Henry Ford, 1925

Studebaker

Charles “Boss Ket” Kettering with 1912 Cadillac Starter

January 10,1901 Spindletop,TexasBefore Spindletop, a big producer flowed 50 barrels (8 cubic meters )per day. The Lucas well produced 1,600 times that amount. It showed that buried layers of rock could contain tremendous amounts of oil. What is more, it proved that rotary drilling was an effective way to obtain it. Spindletop marked the beginning of the modern petroleum industry.

Boiler Avenue

In the early 1920’s, while Kettering and GM struggled with the death of 17 workers in a tetraethyl lead facility, American farmers faced a host of challenges. Supported by Henry Ford, the Farm Chemurgy movement was born.

George Washington Carver; Chemurgist

Carver worked on improving soils, growing crops with low inputs, and using species that fixed nitrogen (hence, the work on the cowpea and the peanut).   Carver wrote in The Need of Scientific Agriculture in the South: "The virgin fertility of our soils and the vast amount of unskilled labor have been more of a curse than a blessing to agriculture.  This exhaustive system for cultivation, the destruction of forest, the rapid and almost constant decomposition of organic matter, have made our agricultural problem one requiring more brains than of the North, East or West."

“As the Depression intensified and grain surplusesmounted in the Midwest, chemurgy’s initialfocal point became the power alcohol (bioethanol)movement. Alcohol fuels had alreadybecome somewhat commonplace in other industrialnations, although their development in theUnited States lagged behind. That began tochange even before Franklin Roosevelt assumedthe presidency, as influential farm journal editorsand manufacturers all lobbied for grain alcohol.2Several Midwestern states offered tax incentivesto encourage alcohol-gasoline blended fuels, or“agrol”; in 1933, Iowa legislators passed a lawthat required fuels to include a 10% blend ofgrain alcohol.”

“Also, the chemurgists’ nationalist agendathreatened the political interests of farmers whoproduced goods for international trade and markets.And although some of the original enthusiastspresumed that chemurgy could benefitsmall family farmers by providing markets fortheir waste products, many others focused on theefficiency of large, agribusiness operations as suppliersof the raw materials that industrialists demanded.For good reason, chemurgy never receivedmuch real support from practicingfarmers; many rightly suspected that industrialistswould be the true beneficiaries.” 

Grapes of Wrath

End of Vehicle Life Requirements

Figure 1 Photo of Henry Fordswinging an axe, in November1940, at a Ford automobile’ssoybean-plastic truck lid to

demonstrate its dent resistance.From the collections of The

Henry Ford Museum.

A network of salvage and shredder facilities processes approximately 94 percent of these vehicles, removing usable components and

separating metals for recycling. Approximately 25 percent of the vehicles by weight, or nearly

75 percent by volume, remains as waste. Called "auto shredder residue" (ASR) or "fluff," this waste material is a massive resource-consumption and

waste-management problem

Each year in the United States, 10 to 11 million vehicles reach the end of their useful lives and are taken out of service.

Well-to-Wheels Thermal Efficiency When referring to the fuel efficiency of

automobiles and trucks(mpg), we are really only measuring “ Tank to Wheel” efficiency. It is important to include the

cost of making and delivering that fuel in the equation.

.88 Well-to-Tank Efficiency

Transesterification requires relatively low energy inputWhen Ethyl Alcohol is used, result is Ethyl Ester

Fossil Energy Input of 1 BTU Yields 3.2 – 4.1

BTU’s of Biodiesel

Well-to-Wheels Thermal Efficiency is still not the whole story. As a “Gas and Go” culture, we tend to only see the “price” per gallon displayed on the pump. When the costs of military intervention, health care, living conditions of people near refineries, trade deficits, spills and other external costs are included in an economic model, fuel is more expensive per gallon than coffee to go.

Military Cost of Oil