The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 629
But I’m glad that Bryce did this because this may be the single best example of
the advances that have been made in ethanol production.
The premise is this: Ethanol requires water, not just in the actual distillation
process, but in the growing of the crops that are used to make the mash that
gets fermented and then distilled. It’s true; water is required for these tasks.
Bryce cites various studies that reveal the enormous amount of water required.
He then uses various voodoo equations to paint a picture that would show the
Earth turning into the desert planet Arrakis from Frank Herbert’s “Dune Saga.”
As expected, Bryce foresees absolutely no circumstances in which the “Dune
Saga” scenario wouldn’t happen. He doesn’t consider that desalination plants
could mitigate the problem, he doesn’t consider any wild-eyed ideas like towing
giant icebergs from the Arctic or Antarctic regions and using them as water
sources, and since he doesn’t believe in man-made global warming he would
never see the iceberg solution as being something that could mitigate the issue
of the rising seas. Of course, as I stated earlier, I don’t believe in man-made
global warming either, but at least I have vision – remember I was able to visualize having Internet connectivity faster than 28.8k even though some expert in
the industry told me it was impossible.
Be that as it may, let me simply respond to Bryce’s water problem with the following information from POET ETHANOL, the largest producer of ethanol in
America:
“The first plant that POET purchased took in 17 gallons of water per gallon
of ethanol in 1987. Today, POET averages less than 3 gallons of water,
an 80 percent reduction from where it started. But we're not done yet.
“POET believes that water is a precious resource and is committed to
using as little of it as possible in our ethanol production process. So we
have set a goal, to be attained by 2014, of decreasing the overall annual
water intake at our plants 22% by targeting an average usage rate of 2.33
gallons of water taken in per gallon of ethanol produced. This will reduce
our total annual water use by one billion gallons based on POET's 2009
production capacity of 1.5 billion gallons of ethanol.
“POET engineers have invented a new way for its facilities to use water
which results in a decreased intake with a reasonable economic payback.
Named Total Water Recovery, it ensures that our facilities don't have to
choose between profit and planet. As of December 2011, 18 POET plants
had installed Total Water Recovery.
