The Problem with Biofuels 

@@krazyivan9733 Yeah, but nuke is bad. Well that's the mantra. Imagine how much better it would be if we had promoted nuclear energy and didn't rely on coal and natural gas.

@@caferace8418 nuclear energy is such an easy target for negative PR 😔

@@krazyivan9733 Or fusion. But also renewables.

@@krazyivan9733 Uhhh no... human waste is rarely required in the ecosystem. Human waste is in excess, not in demand. Eliminating some of that waste would help the ecosystem, not hurt it.

@@krazyivan9733 ?? Ecosystem that relied on human waste?? You see that mountain of trash in mexico or trash island in the middle of pacific and call that ecosystem???

The reason it didn't get mentioned is that's not a consequence of biofuel. The reason prices are driven up to a price where farmers are required to take loans is scale economics where big corporations owning a lot of farmland can get better loans than farmers. This means they can afford inputs better but farmers can't so they are forced to take loans. So regardless of biofuel or any production, farmers simply can't compete with corporations and would end up doing that anyways. This generally leads farmers to sell their land to the corporations. But it's not related to biofuels at all. Biofuels requiring more inputs just make it go faster if anything.

​@@jarielrotta135 Yeh but like I said, it's absolutely unrelated to biofuels. It looks like this: Food: low imput amount, low output reward Biofuel: high input amount, high output reward So if a small farmer does food, he'll have to buy a small amount of input at an uncompetitive price and he won't have much of a margin of profit due to low output reward. He'll need loans to operate because otherwise he barely makes money so he needs to do things in mass. And if a small farmer does biofuel, he buys high amount of input at an uncompetitive price but his margin of profit is better. He'll need a loan to buy his inputs because it's expensive. Basically, regardless of if you do food or biofuel, a small farmer ends up taking loan, it's just a loan related to input or a loan related to output. And it's due to farmers not being able to compete with a corporation. In the long term, it means they end up unsuccesful. It's like a normal restaurant next to a McDonald's... It's rough competing with a massive corporation that can lower its prices that low.

@@jarielrotta135 Basically, farmers have to take loans regardless of what they produce. Corporations either don't need loans or have access to better loans due to their sheer worth (lower interests).

@@dzello How exactly is that *not* due to biofuels? The demand for them is changing how farmers operate.

@@Joesolo13 I kinda just explained it. It's unrelated to biofuels because regardless if farmers do FOOD or BIOFUEL, they'll have to take a loan of the exact same size if they want to make the same money. Biofuel is not changing how farmers operate whatsoever, what's happening is simply CORPORATIONS being too efficient which drives the price of inputs TOO HIGH for single farmers. Basically, even if biofuels literally didn't exist, farmers would experience the same situation.

This should be renamed "I'm shilling on Pimental even though every single other researcher disagrees with him, and I'm just gonna regurgitate his output uncritically".

There is no external energy input for producing gasoline. Meaning that as a direct source of energy from the ground as crude oil, the math is just some reduction of energy in the final products of distillation. Distillation is conceptually simple, in that you heat up crude oil and siphon off different densities of resulting components from a tower. Gas at top, gasoline somewhere in the middle and tars at the bottom. There isn't a substance on earth as convenient and energy dense for creating heat as fossil fuels.. It often even extracts itself due to underground pressure. Nuclear fissile material has more potential energy but is very complicated to extract that energy, as nuclear plants tend to be.

They are quite low, actually. Huge refineries are amazingly efficient.

@@SianaGearz The other calculations are still pretty dire. Just not negative.

@@toomanymarys7355 "dire" is not how i would put it. "a little borderline", perhaps. It does highlight a related issue - meat consumption, but as long as it's sufficiently high, this is what basically absorbs the environmental impact of bioethanol and makes it sensible for the time being in the volume used. Lots of interdependent eco issues that need a systemic solution rather than debating one thing at a time in isolation.

Is this the first time we've seen him??

@@blaircox1589 first time for me.

Ok thank you! I was beginning to think my Google Home speaker is retarded but now I know Alexa and Siri have the same problems.

@@Teekles you seriously base your judgement of science on who gets "Nobel prizes for chemistry"? Do understand that it's easy to totally politicize a public relations gimmick like that? That's unbelievably naive thinking.

@@blaircox1589 I think he appeared at the end of 1 or 2 videos in the past.

That same kid :- they called me a madman

I knew I wasn't alone!

@@alexsolosm ayyy high five internet stranger

When I was a kid I put four 9volt batteries in series and touched the leads to my tounge... I had zero scientific understanding of what I was doing but I sure did learned something

At least 15 kids have died from eating batteries

Advanced biofuels are promoted because of properties that overcome the many disadvantages of ethanol (high hygroscopicity, low energy density, and costly purification) and plant-based biodiesel (high cloud point, tropical deforestation).

Seaweed biofuels is only solution

And E100 in flex fuel vehicles.

That kind of means this needs to be nipped in the bud now before it grows to a level where there won't be the political will to get rid of it. That is if we aren't already at that point.

The kicker is? Corn is hella terrible for making biofuel compared to other sources. But lobbyist fucked it up

Also a great way to deprive your farmland of nutrients over some time due to monoculture farming

@@goldenhate6649 don't blame lobbyists, as we all wanted it to happen including you mr. The fact is we tax gasoline and subsidize ethanol, making it artificially cheaper to use high ethanol fuel.

@@asylumking3642 that not all that fair since two crops a year does the same thing. Getting lots of good crops involve a copious amount of fertilizer.

Good point. Soy is being mostly consumed by animals. Which we in then as humans eat them. Why not eat the soy directly and skip the inefficient process of converting thay to meat..!

It is not the soybeans, but the cattle. The Amazon soil is not fertile to farm anything, really.

@@TheAhmedvienna because soy is terrible for your health. Specially if you're a man.

@@orodrigodemoraes compared to the McDonald's?

Either way, subsistence farmers who previously had a healthy diet are now growing on one, unhealthy crop: their earnings are not enough to pay for the food that have also increased with the diminishing edible crops.

I can tell you that Biodiesel is problematic, in that it clogs fuel filters. Nothing worse than driving & suddenly you have a filter clog you lose speed and can't get it back up to speed.

Once these were calculated into the equation the numbers became positive but we still need to find better ways because the environmental (not co2 or energy) impacts of such massive corn production is not factored in.

So Carbon Dioxide along with Alcohol are now considered toxic byproducts, wow, so disappointing.

It's a stupid Imperial measurement which, by the sound of his accent, originated in a nation adjacent to his.

Yeah, but he still used acre-feet when speaking about water usage.

@@winstonsmith478 Bushel is a very useful measurement, it's only stupid to city dwellers who have never needed it. A bushel provides a convenient bridge between weight and volume. Farmers measure their grain by volume, they know how many bushels their bin will hold. But when they go to sell it, it is measured by weight at the grain elevator. Bushels are useful because it is a weight figure that is based off volume, thus the farmer can know how many bushels he has by measuring the volume in his bins. Of course, this all seems very silly to the people who think food magically appears on their grocery shelves.

five dozen, 60 ears

@@TheOwenMajor I feel your pain. To bad these young folks were not around agricultural and see what has happened during the past one hundred years. Someone other than the American farmer started the destroying the Amazon rainforest and other places to raise food. That broke the U.S. markets and ran thousands off of farms to cities for jobs. Farming destroying all the habitat? How about urban sprawl? People are moving to live in wildlife habitat, as well as prime farmland. You must remember farm ground has to have certain qualities, or it will end up like the grounds of the rainforests that are now abandoned because it is not the right type of ground to support agriculture over time. Who gets so much of the federal moneys? Usually urban land owners and multinational food companies. And nevermind small things such as alcohol fuels burn cleaner and doesn't possess some of the cancerous problems of other fuels. More care was taken of the land and the farm animals when the family living on and farming the land depended on that farm being successful. More and more ground is owned by people not on the land. Bill Gates is one of the largest private agricultural land owners in the U.S. Many livestock production operations, especially the large ones, are corporation owned and ran. There are many family farm operations yet. But they do not hold the real power. But if the markets are ruined again, corporate America will be in even a bigger strangle hold of this nation's food supply. It will be coming fairly soon as the electric vehicles take over for the i.c.e. vehicles. More family owned operations will fold unless more diverse crops are found. I grew up in a family farm operation. And I remained in ag-business till fifty years old. But us that loved that life are being pushed out for those who will only operate it as strictly a dollars and cents business. Not as an operation of life that it is.

This injun only consumes ethanol. (this comment might get deleted by youtube)

one for you, one for me! heh heh heh heh heh -Homer Simpson on the ethanol-powered car

Russia has a lot of "cars"...

Rofl!!

actually, cars use methanol, ethanol and buthanol mixed.

Hemp isn't energy dense when it comes to sugars. It's mostly leaf and stem

Hemp would actually be less efficient than corn for ethnol. Technically you you can produce ethanol from any biomass. the most efficient is sugercane. It requires half as much production time and cost. Unlike corn you don't have to turn starch into suger then into ethnol. Produces twice as much than corn per hectare.

Its evolving but backwards

It's about job creation nothing more.

@@RichRich1955 Better for the environment and the economy to pay them to stay home in that case.

@@MatthewStinar Better for the environment, sure. The economy... not so much.

@@dirtypure2023 They are spending resources and labor to turn a given amount of energy into less energy. What they do is an economic loss. I'm estimating that the cost of paying them to stay home is less than the economic losses they cause by wasting energy. Those same resources could be spent producing something rather than wasting energy, which should more than cover the cost of paying those people to stay home. More realistically though, we should eliminate their jobs so they can become productive members of society instead of freeloading like they're doing now.

Most sugar cane producing areas now were once rain forest that was cleared for ranching, that essentially destroyed soil quality to the point of it no longer being useful for other crops. That there is virtually no rain forest left near large urban centers is proof of just how much has been destroyed. The opposite of 'proof' sugar cane production has no relation to the destruction of the Amazon. It is intrinsically linked to the cycle of environmental destruction that is the backbone of the the Brazilian economy

@@AppleSauceGamingChannel backbone of the brazilian economy? the agriculture industry represents only 6% of brazil's gdp. surely, there is a catastrophy happening due to amazonia's deforestation, but those farmers do not represent the sector as a whole. this cycle you mention does not describe what happens in brazil accurately, the dynamics of deforestation are much more subtle than that. sugarcane farmers are not the same group of people as the ones in the amazon. are they liberals who lobby for green policy? hell no. both would benefit from relaxed environmental policy, but not for the same changes in the law. my only point here is to "unlink" sugarcane to the amazon, these are two different matters and should be treated as such if we want less carbon emission and more carbon abosrption.

@Daniel Meyers Wherever land is used to make biofuels, it forces farmers to take more land from elsewhere (the Amazon) to make food.

@@evannibbe9375 only about 10% of brazil's farmland is used for sugarcane, and about half of that is used to make all types of ethanol. there is no shortage of food in brazil, at least not in the production side. for every 3 liters of pure gasoline sold in brazil, it is sold 2 of pure ethanol, roughly speaking. if you think poor farmers are being displaced due to biofuels and that is why the amazon is being deforested, you do not know the problem at all. if tomorrow, all sugarcane land was made available to be used as food land, the amount of trees being cut in amazon would not change one bit. people take land in the amazonia because it pays off, no other reason. it's not because of the price of the soy or maize or whatever. the math is simple: i have X area of land, if i burn down some trees on no man's land (amazon), my area is now 1.5X. the problem is the lack of punishment for those who don't obey the law, they get away with murder. we don't even have a good record of what part of the land belongs to whom (the areas that are already farmland), some people simply say that the part they burned down was legally bought and it often sticks!!!!!!!!!!! what i'm trying to say here is that we use a lot of ethanol in mobility and it represents only a tiny fraction of our land use. also that this dynamic of displacement of crops being the reason for amazonia's deforestation isn't accurate. land is expensive, if some farmer has the opportunity to take it for free (with no repercussions), one probably will.

The references in this video are terrible and extremely out of date. The article by David Pimentel is from 2005 and is based off information from the 1980s. Agriculture and the ethanol industry has made extraordinary advancements since those times. This video makes me question everything written by Brian McManus. I really like this channel so I am absolutely shocked how bad this video is. On average, without subsidies, it costs a farmer about $3 to produce and transport a bushel of corn. This price includes the costs of all the energy and other inputs required to produce a bushel. In 2021, one bushel yields over 11 litres of ethanol plus 7kg of animal feed plus 0.4kg of corn oil. The energy contained in just the ethanol is 60,000kcal. Even if you use the out of date figure from this video of 6600kcal to produce a bushel that's a pretty good return on investment. But don't take my word for it, do your own research, but do a better job than Brian did.

yea thats where most of the field is going. when you grow crops like tomato, how much of the plant do we eat? even in the "easy" biofuel production from corn, the parts not uses to make fuel are fed to animals, its basically never just "this is grown to make only fuel" .

the resource it takes to feed one person can be used to create electricity for a lot of people

Its because electricity is more closer to pure energy We eat food, but because of our shitty digestive systems we get very little energy especially from plants All our energy comes from sunlight, so the plants needs to eat the sunlight, then we need to eat the plants (From video plants absorb like 1% of the solar energy) If we could eat pure electricity (imagine we took out our brains and put them into robot bodies like in alita) A couple of solar panels could feed a human Right now it takes 4 acres of fully farmed land to feed a single person for a year, if you want healthy diet with meat and eggs

@@xblade11230 and the indigestion complications!! It's as gross as chemical fuels

1 liter of gasoline has 8,325,818 calories

@@xblade11230 Plants don't eat sunlight, plants eat carbon dioxide!

People still believe the dinosaur juice theory?

@@xypleth I think it's just more fun to think about. The idea of dinosaurs powering our world is way cooler than algae and other plant matter

@@priatalat That would be fine, as long as it's not covering up the true abundance of the natural resource and facts about it. Which probably is the exact reason for these "theories".

@@priatalat With that said: *Algae and Plant Matter:* Congratulations, you played yourself

Well you haven’t seen all the videos then😁

First time for me too. Found his channel after the Spitfire video.

He shows his face on Twitter and Instagram a fair amount, check them out! Even got Sam from Wendover in there too.

Cool

@@thelegend-e7919 don't do none of those.

And any law of thermodynamics would favor more consumption of effective products over more effective consumption, so that max entropy is reached quicker, and the end of the world comes faster

all fuels are inefficient, the question is whether we can continuously make it

Yet we are making more and more biofuels now, more than ever. Just look what Biden pushed for this year, its insane and unscientific.

@@dongster529 Lots of insane and unscientific notions in American politics these days.

@@acasccseea4434 Well there's no technical reason why any of this would break the laws of thermodynamics - there's an immense energy input available that we only barely touch currently (ie: the sun). If photosynthesis was more effective at converting solar energy into sugars, this process could easily net several times more energy than we put in. Unfortunately that's not how things work. Maybe it would be possible to bioengineer photosynthesis to be more efficient (hence playing around with algae and whatnot) but natural plants like corn just don't cut it. Its the same problem with the idiots who say we should just "plant more trees" to fix climate change. Natural trees and plants just aren't anywhere near sufficient to do the job (never mind the fact that we're burning more trees than we could possibly re-plant thanks to the continual and accelerating destruction of the Amazon, and I'm sure the same thing happens in many lesser forests around the world as well that we just never hear about due to the Amazon taking up all the headlines).

I wouldn't cite Brazil for good farming practices. But that's surprising, i didn't know sugarcane was that... Potentially alcoholic.

@@crackedemerald4930 yeah I won't praise the land management of Brazil but sugar cane itself is much more efficient than corn if you're going to do that.

@@crackedemerald4930 sugar cane by itself has much more energy, more sugar, to be converted in Energy

Oil production is failing. Fossil Fuels will be mostly gone by 2080. Think fast. The Wall humans are about to run into is a near extinction level event.

@@ForzaJersey No need for food, light, heat... that's for boomers.

What was the the original title?

Its just gotten more naive. Of course its not perfect, nothing is. But its certainly better than burning coal or oil, which has none of the CO2 recaptured, if you go by these numbers. This video is really poor, it doesnt really answer any conclusive questions about bio fuels.

@@Joe-- same as the thumbnail: the truth about biofuels.

@@termitreter6545 it says fund renewable instead of biofuels, that will lead to a greater return on investment

@@vighneshkannan7896 The thing is, you want a healthy mix of energy sources, not just rely on one or two things. So even if bio fuel is an inferior source, it might still have a place. And frankly, how is wind and solar power gonna help your cars with their combustion engines?

America is run by corporations, not people. And yet every 4 years we get the propaganda that voting is important shoved down our throats. It doesn't matter who we vote for, corporate lobbyists are in charge.

@@mjc0961 honestly this is why I found the people literally crying that trump got elected so funny, do you not understand what’s going on here?

Capitalism

@@spacetacos7574 if only things were that easy. Capitalism is bad, but every other socioeconomic organization is worse so we work with what we have

@@Supreme_Lobster Those real-life iterations of capitalism that are closest to traditional socialism (i. e. those that empower their workers most within the economy) have a lot less of these problems to deal with.

Okay

@@RealEngineering just wanted to make a point about your video since you brought up solar, solar is mostly bad(because it takes up space and destroys undergrowth), wind kills birds and cost of running wind farms is higher over all that you get from energy output, electric cars are retarded because of what goes into making their batteries, ahem massive toxic lake in choyna, hydro, yea i agree with use of hydroelectric, and ofcourse nuclear is the best we have but people have had fear propaganda against it propounded into them for decades now, edit, also carbon neutrality is a retarded concept because the earth has been getting greener with rising carbon levels, whilst the temp has remained stable, so people taking fear porn of "we're all gonna die in ten years" which has been going on for decades is just silly, seriously more carbon in the air is a good thing, plastic however and toxic chemical dumps really are a legitimate problem, but including carbon in there is a form of well poisoning about actual legitimate discussions on environmental problems.

Just what?

@@TS-jm7jm Solar panels could be put into existing building, it would reduce power consumption and wouldn't take extra space. Such a thing would be most efficient in small towns and villages (because when there are a lot of skyscrapers there is not much light and area for them).

@@TS-jm7jm Fossil fuel pollution is estimated to kill 10 times as many birds, bats and vulnerable species as wind turbines. Wind farms tend to turn a profit after about 5 to 10 years of operation. And the larger the turbine is the more efficient it is, the slower it turns and less dangerous it is for birds. Compared to the toxic waste produced by coal mining, fracking, and petroleum drilling at least the batteries aren't burned every time and can be reused. For the fossil fuels you will just keep producing more toxic byproducts after burning everything you dug up over and over again. Hydroelectric cannot be expanded into new areas much anymore without destroying the land behind the dams, much like you complain of solar taking up space.

In addition, think of all the military jets around the world... They won't be going electric any time soon, and when using afterburner most of those bad boys can go through about 10 litres of fuel per second... Fossil fuels are still very relevant imo.

That is because people will always attack the low hanging fruit that they can see and not the root of the problem that is always out of sight. The core of the fossil fuel problem isn't it's use in vehicles or in industrial processes, it's in energy generation. Electricity isn't just there to power up a house or recharge an electric car. It makes everything and literally has a knock down effect on every facet of our existence. A cheaper and more reliable energy generation leads to more capacity and lower prices. Lower prices means that not only does everything get cheaper (manufacturing, storage and soon transport become less expensive) but it also unlock new ways of recycling or generating resources locally from waste in ways that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive. This makes me think of the spaceX construction at Boca chica, where they intend to create a solar powered carbon capture system, which would then collect ambient CO2 and water and produce oxygen and methane form literally thin air to use in the starship test facilities. Same goes for Tesla's battery reprocessing facilities within the gigafactories, which are an energy intensive process but will allow to reduce or downright eliminate the need for new resource intake. All of which depends on having access to cheap, stable energy. Whenever possible solar power should be used. It's the most reliable renewable energy that is accessible everywhere. However this can only be relied on as a baseload in countries with basically zero cloud cover and a lot of sunlight. Solar and batteries there should be enough to stabilize the grid. Nuclear reactors (especially SMRs or thorium ones) should be used in countries where solar energy is too unreliable. The cost of energy would go down, and with it our entire need for fossil fuels, only leaving active domains where the compact and energy dense nature of internal combustion and fuel engines can be exploited

This is seriously the most legit and interesting RU-vid comment I’ve ever read. Love your theory on how fossil fuels will become like the horse!

You can make oil from any biological or plastic waste if you have enough heat. It's not rocket science. If people weren't idiots about nuclear, it¨'d be fairly straightforward.

@@IvanTre So ... how would you generate such heat?

All the politicians be like : "ooo scary word, nuclear scary"

Not even, the general public is uneducated and only associates nuclear with weaponry and destruction. Can't run a good campaign saying you're for nuclear

I don't wanna debate about long term ramification of nuclear waste, just that at the end of the day is just like oil: eventually you run out of fissable materials. Also bombs.

He already made a video about this topic - nuclear is too expensive

@@ef3675 Nope. Nuclear power produces hardly any waste relative to the amount of energy produced. The waste is easy to deal with, and a lot of what's in "nuclear waste" is valuable in its own right (like xenon, for example). There is enough easily obtainable uranium and thorium to supply all of humanity's energy needs for hundreds of thousands of years, and if we run out, there's plenty more on the moon.

listening to lobbyists

Buying jobs and having cars. Maybe we don't like those answers, but that is the answers

Not all biofuels. This video is a steep drop in quality of this channel. Biodiesel's are 20% the CO2 release of petroleum diesel. This is still positive impact..it means my Biodiesel car has an eMPG rating of 180mpg. And who cares how inefficient photosynthesis is. Photovoltaic is 0% efficient at capturing carbon. Deforestation is a problem, but it's not a problem because of biofuel, it's a problem because humans are shit at managing public resources.

@@coreyfro We need to be gasifying crop residue, Miscanthus grass (farmed biomass), municipal solid waste, and sewage sludge to pass through the Fischer-Tropsch process to make liquid fuels in the gasoline and diesel fuel ranges.

​@@coreyfro Exactly, the video is misleading, all the problems mentioned in this video don't really matter much. On one hand he advocates moving away from fossil fuels, but on the other hand he is concerned with insignificant things like the fact that its energy negative, where is this extra energy coming and what is the carbon footprint of the process is what should matter, also, water is a renewable resource. It doesnt matter at all that the process is energy negative if the extra energy is coming from food, you cant use food as fuel. The inefficiency of plants is also misleading, ok, they capture just 1% of the solar energy, but cost almost nothing to plant, and emit less CO2 than photovoltaic cells, its frankly an idiotic point to compare efficiency of plants to photovoltaic cells in this context. The video covers an interesting topic, but the conclusion doesnt make much sense.

That was the first video i have seen on that topic. It was definitely a good reuse of the left over oil. The exhaust was smelling like fried chicken however. lol.

Wastewater treatment plants use sludge to make methane. It's not very efficient and they only make enough to help heat the buildings on the plant.

You can turn it into fertilizers, producing that from scratch is energy intensive.

@@leerman22 Interestingly, compost isn't a fertilizer . It's a "soil amendment". No, it doesn't give dirt more rights, Lol. It makes more soil and that is really very important as agriculture depletes the soil not just of nutrients but actually destroys soil.

biofuels by themselves are not horrible, they do work. video means you just should use the biowaste product of industries for it, like cooking oil, grease, and such into biodiesel or renewable diesel. not raise eatable things for it. waste animal fats, oils, and grease can clog pipes and pumps both in the public sewer lines as well as in wastewater treatment facilities. you can even produce aircraft kerosene from such waste.

It is entirely & completely related. The scale of products derived from palm oil is on another level vs corn. Concentrating on ethanol (and corn-derived ethanol in the North American region specifically) is just too narrow a subset to lump up this video as “biofuels”, the title should have been “ethanol in NA” instead. The thermodynamics, environmental factors, economics and politics involved for the other elephants in the room are 1) biofuels derived from palm - not ethanol but methanol 2) the mandated blending of FAME / biodiesel in nations across the world (not just derived from palm but rapeseed too) 3) economics of competing against food crop.

I just finished reading Ch.6 of Bill Gate's 'How To Avoid a Climate Disaster" in which he says that THE primary cause of Indonesian deforestation is for, of ALL things, palm tree farms...(!) the extraction of exportable palm oil. There has just gotta be...there MUST be a better (non-carbon emitting, non-deforestation) way of doing things but not even Bill Gates had any suggestions.

@@hpifwkak I just finished reading Ch.6 of Bill Gate's 'How To Avoid a Climate Disaster" in which he says that THE primary cause of Indonesian deforestation is for, of ALL things, palm tree farms...(!) the extraction of exportable palm oil. There has just gotta be...there MUST be a better (non-carbon emitting, non-deforestation) way of doing things but not even Bill Gates had any suggestions.

Use palm oil for bio fuel use corn to feed the hunger of world

@@scottwarthin1528 the thing is, there are just not many plants that could beat palm trees in productivity. Compare the output of palm trees and other oil producing plants, it is a big difference. And with most of the palm plantation being in underdeveloped areas. It is really hard to switch to other industry.

I remember reading a paper showing that pyrolysis of hardwood had a positive NEV, but I don't think anyone should be growing trees just to harvest them, considering they generally take a long time to mature. Realistically, pyrolysis would be better suited on waste from crops already grown

I agree 100%. For biofuel to work we need to use crops that don't grow in highly fertile farmland that NEEDS to remain food growing land. Switchgrass can be grown in rocky dry soil, clay soil, sand, and even gravel. It also grows wonderfully in floodlands. All areas that don't grow corn or wheat. It's good for the environment and good for fuel production. Twice as much yield per acre as corn and 700% more yield per unit of fuel required for production. Mesquite would open up desert land as well. Potentially increasing rainfall in those areas and thus increasing plant life and providing better soil and habitats for wildlife. Lastly, he does mention in the video, algae, this can be grown in contaminated runoff water and it cleans the water of much of the contamination. Thus giving a useful side affect. I think looking to a -Single-source for biofuel is always going to have downsides. But the benefits of biofuel outweigh most of those drawbacks. But looking to multiple sources is where the benefits come from. In America we have millions of acres of nearly dead land. Huge swathes of desert or gravelly soil that is not growing anything other than a few weeds. We know of crops that can not only use that wasted space, but also improve the soil and even increase rainfall in those areas. Providing a benefit to both mankind and nature. Algae can be grown almost anywhere, in almost any water. Algae makes around 1000 gallons of biofuel per acre. Switchgrass makes around 80 gallons per acre. I don't know about mesquite, but the total production per acre is still higher than desert sand growing rocks. lol. Even just 20 gallons per acre would be useful and profitable. Although I'd assume it probably produces more like 40-50 gallons per acre. Between mesquite in the desert and switchgrass in the mountains, the soil will benefit as farming with non-chemical fertilizers and avoiding the use of liquid nitrogen, will enable the soil to build a layer of top soil so that production will increase over time. My dad started farming on sand with just 2 inches of top soil and after 9 years we had over 12 inches of dark top soil and our alfalfa was more than twice as tall and much greener than our neighbor's alfalfa.

Love Real Engineering, but I feel like this episode should have been titled "The Problem with Ethanol", not the problem with biofuels. Many of the objections to other biofuels raised at the end of the video either do not apply to all potential sources or represent cost/production inefficiencies that might be addressed with improved manufacturing techniques, advances in enzymatic processed or refinements in the plant stock used to start.

@@christopherleblanc160 I think that too often alternative energy is focused in the wrong places. Electric cars are a good idea and Tesla has proven it. There's still a ways to go, but it's a good way into it's development. As for industrial or commercial vehicles, hybrid diesel-electric systems seem to be completely being overlooked. Instead we see a focus on pure electric trucks. Diesel-electric is a system that could likely be retrofitted to existing trucks and heavy equipment. Combine that with continuing development of biofuels and the vehicles that actually produce the majority of pollutants might get cleaner without adding even more exhaust filtration that reduces fuel economy. Now I'm rambling. Sorry.

@@christopherleblanc160 100%

let us not forget the potential of alge biofuel. im not against biofuel but corn is not the best way to do it

And the fuel/energy wasted on mowing them constantly.

Sure but the alternatives aren’t much better

You don’t eat your lawn?!

@@ben5056 I am converting my lawn to prairie. After the first year, it does better if you don't water it (not how it evolved to grow) and with careful planning it will be a drift of native flowers all summer, which is great for pollinators. It protects itself against native bugs it also evolved to coexist with.

That’s just disgusting I’ve always hate lawns

Dedicated biomass probably isn't going anywhere. Algae definitely isn't going anywhere. Because the area of the collectors may as well be replaced with solar panels with 20% or higher efficiency compared to 1 or 2% for photosynthesis. Then use the electricity to run an amine carbon dioxide scrubber, an electrolyzer, a water gas shift reactor, and a Fischer-Tropsch reactor to produce liquid hydrocarbons in the gasoline and diesel fuel ranges. The truth is that we can use solar panels, electricity, and industrial chemical processes to fix carbon with higher efficiencies than nature has ever been able to. I also am interested in gasifying crop residue, biomass, municipal solid waste, and sewage sludge to make synthesis gas and putting it through the Fischer-Tropsch process to make liquid fuels. I'm a big supporter of nuclear energy for our electricity too.

@@gregorymalchuk272 So u think u can do better in a couple of years, taking into account all the possible and unimaginable consequences and effects, than nature has been perfecting it in 100s of millions of years?

@@Turbo_TechnoLogic while I get what you are saying I do have to add that nature does what is best for THAT species only. It does not take into account any other effects a change might have to any other species or the environment. What I'm trying to say is that sure nature does have ways of tackling problems, but those solutions are not always the best for us, cause there are many other variables that affect it. A plant might have low solar energy efficiency because it grows slowly so it doesn't need to evolve more efficiently photosynthesis

It’s a bit dumb, because if they hadn’t noticed plants survive when the sun goes in unlike solar power. It’s the stores of chemical power that bio fuel uses and it’s the fact that it is a store that makes it so much more useful as an energy supply. Much more efficient to cart around plants or oils to burn for power then electricity, which notoriously losses a huge chunk of its power in transmission.

@@alexxans1154 what do u mean by That species? Somehow in the end millions of species managed to form here and live together in a conpl3x system, relying on each other. While this and the balances change over time, it stood the test of time. Also, there must be a reason why things go at that pace or efficiency as they do, even if slower than some people want it to be.

Yes, in the map shown it places nearly 0% of sugarcane crops on Amazon biome. Most of the cane crops are shown in São Paulo, which is at least about 1000km from the closest little bit of Amazon forest. It's like saying that corn crops in Iowa are responsible for deforestation in Oregon. I'm not saying that deforestation and preservation of natural biomes isn't an issue. But most people talking about it internationally don't even bother to look at a map.

@@marcouno8850 mostly because their disingenuous. If they cared about the environment they would use the 1000’s of other arguments that would help the environment (for example, we should go green to remove our oil dependence on the Middle East which would allow us to have our men and women in the military to come home)

@@marcouno8850 That also includes both Seeker and Just Have A Think.

Yes, the Amazon is being deforested mainly to raise cattle and grow soybeans.

@@Zuaquim1 Soybeans?

I'd like to see the same calculations done for Bio AvTur jet fuel. I think it could actually be worse.

Stfu

Mostly by people who are not even able to calculate this kind of stuff by themself I assume? Those people who feel woke but just repeat that something is good because someone said it's green are basically the bane of my existence....

I think you'll find that "bio" means good

@@therabbithat bio weapons

Check out LanzaTech

They will not do that as it SAVESthe planet. They want to TAX is to death so they manufactured fake catastrophes to get you to buy their fake solutions

Indeed, mechanical engines(Diesel engines) run off of cooking oil or plant oil by product is a good backup incase of a solar flare. Last one hit as recently as the 1800's, taking down the telegraph communications in the U.S. at the time. If we had a solar flare that powerful today it would cripple or even destroy some countries.

You should not waste food. There goes your susteinability.

@@cleitonfelipe2092 Im talking about biodegradable waste, from peals of vegetables and all sorts of stuff. Of course it is true that you shouldnt throw out food, but it is a sad fact that people do it anyways and even if you ate all the food you ever bought, you are still going to have biowaste. Its better to make it into something useful than just let it decompose at a landfill. Nothing is perfect in this world. You really expect humanity to reach a point where there is no more biowaste in any form? I dont think so.

@@cleitonfelipe2092 😥 estou decepcionado!

The references in this video are terrible and extremely out of date. The article by David Pimentel is from 2005 and is based off information from the 1980s. Agriculture and the ethanol industry has made extraordinary advancements since those times. This video makes me question everything written by Brian McManus. I really like this channel so I am absolutely shocked how bad this video is. On average, without subsidies, it costs a farmer about $3 to produce and transport a bushel of corn. This price includes the costs of all the energy and other inputs required to produce a bushel. In 2021, one bushel yields over 11 litres of ethanol plus 7kg of animal feed plus 0.4kg of corn oil. The energy contained in just the ethanol is 60,000kcal. Even if you use the out of date figure from this video of 6600kcal to produce a bushel that's a pretty good return on investment. But don't take my word for it, do your own research, but do a better job than Brian did.

Right i was also waiting for new video of real engineering

Yes it js

When it's global event, real engineering uploads

The soothing sounds of logic and discourse, with a mellow accent!

Shit gets real

Flawed or naive studies negative on ethanol naively or on purpose assign all the fertilizer, CO2, and energy to ethanol and none to feed. It should be the exact opposite since we will grow the same amount of corn with or without ethanol. Cattle feeders who use distillers grain would need a protein replacement if ethanol ended and that would be feeding the corn straight like those who don’t use it do. This video even naively called the leftovers from ethanol production "waste" but since it is triple protein, mineral, and other things concentrated it is more valuable per pound than the straight corn. To go to E20, no new acres of corn would be needed, we can just over double current production from this source. Beyond the protein requirements of the cattle herd on feed, corn ethanol becomes uneconomical to produce. No corn is grown just for ethanol, rather it is value-added from existing feed production and leaves 100% of the protein (& other things) still available for feed in a healthier, more digestible/efficient, and more concentrated form called distillers grains. This is why ethanol is so cheap ($2.08/gal spot cash) despite the current high price of corn, they are making a lot up with high price of distilers grains. Cattle cannot digest starch very well and lose it as methane gas flatulence and carb rich manure which turns into methane to off-gas later. 100% of the fertilizer and things from the soil are still fed to the livestock, ethanol is only made of things of the air: solar energy, CO2, and water with the latter two recycled once burnt. The US used 11,160,933 tons total fertilizer on corn in 1980, before ethanol. In 2018, the year of most ethanol production ever, the US used 10,521,850 tons total fertilizer on corn.

​@@danafletcher2341 I don't think you understand the problem. All that ethanol subsidies do is make sure the price of corn stays high, since government subsidies will buy that corn to use for ethanol. It doesn't matter if you "double" corn production for it or expand production, ethanol still has less potential energy which offsets it's cheaper price (a price only maintained by said subsidies). It's a worse fuel source than gasoline and very wasteful with the energy required for production, especially with the end product in mind, so why you would doggedly promote it is beyond me.

​@@bakerboat4572 There are no Federal ethanol subsidies, those (i.e. the VEETC/"blenders credit") ended back in 2011. The long-standing stated goal of the G7 Nations to end petroleum subsidies? Not so much. Here is what happened to the prices of grains since the 2007 energy act was enacted: 2007 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$4.20 WITH 4 .7B GAL MANDATE 2008 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$4.06 WITH 9B GAL MANDATE 2009 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE=$3.55 WITH 10.5B GAL MANDATE 2016 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$3.36 WITH 15B GAL MADATE MAXED OUT 2017 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$3.36 WITH 15B GAL MANDATE MAXED OUT 2018 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$3.61 WITH SAME 15B GAL MANDATE MAXED OUT + MOST ETHANOL EVER PRODUCED Wheat 2007...............$6.48/bu 2008...............$6.78/bu 2009...………$4.87/bu 2016...………$3.89/bu 2017...............$4.72/bu 2018...............$5.15/bu Soybeans 2007..............$10.10/bu 2008..............$ 9.97/bu 2009...……...$9.59/bu 2016..............$9.47/bu 2017..............$9.33/bu 2018..............$8.48/bu Ethanol producers are somewhat insulated from the price of corn, for if corn is low in price, then so too are the prices of their distillers grains and byproducts. If the price of corn becomes high, like it was earlier this year when I made that earlier post, ethanol producers can keep ethanol low by offsetting with high prices of those same distillers grains/byproducts. All the energy it takes to produce and deliver a product to the consumer is reflected in its price. The spot cash price of ethanol on the NYMEX is $1.85/gal. The price of an unusable sub-grade of gasoline (RBOB) is $2.12/gal, It takes more energy to make unusable gasoline than ethanol. To turn RBOB into usable E0 fuel costs even more much like premium gasoline costs more. Unfortunately for humanity, it also becomes much more toxic, carcinogenic, and dirty. Or simply splash in >10% ethanol to RBOB and the resultant usable fuel becomes less toxic, less carcinogenic, vastly cleaner burning, and cheaper/cheaper per mile to drive with. Who can be against that? Or, and you gain in horsepower with ethanol. For example a Chevy 5.3L gets a clean 380 horsepower on E85 vs a dirty 355 horsepower on E0. In an ethanol optimized engine you have both more horsepower and more mileage than gasoline engines and even more than diesel. It is near pollution free to boot. Ricardo built an ethanol optimized engine for GM and it ran in a pickup. Here is an excerpt of an article describing it: FROM RICARDO: The new federal CAFE standards are calling for a doubling of fuel mileage performance, which, Vint says, is going to send OEM’s looking for high octane numbers to improve efficiency and ethanol is the best source. Ricardo, an engineering firm with over 100 years in the business of engine design, has developed an extreme boosted direct injection engine (EBDI) to optimize ethanol blends. The 3.2 V6 gasoline engine rivals the power and torque of a much larger GMC Sierra 6.6 diesel, he said, and it delivers 3.5 percent better fuel economy than the diesel.

@@bakerboat4572 They censored my last post so I'll try to split them up: There are no Federal ethanol subsidies, those (i.e. the VEETC/"blenders credit") ended back in 2011. The long-standing stated goal of the G7 Nations to end petroleum subsidies? Not so much. Here is what happened to the prices of grains since the 2007 energy act was enacted: 2007 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$4.20 WITH 4 .7B GAL MANDATE 2008 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$4.06 WITH 9B GAL MANDATE 2009 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE=$3.55 WITH 10.5B GAL MANDATE 2016 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$3.36 WITH 15B GAL MADATE MAXED OUT 2017 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$3.36 WITH 15B GAL MANDATE MAXED OUT 2018 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$3.61 WITH SAME 15B GAL MANDATE MAXED OUT + MOST ETHANOL EVER PRODUCED Wheat 2007...............$6.48/bu 2008...............$6.78/bu 2009...………$4.87/bu 2016...………$3.89/bu 2017...............$4.72/bu 2018...............$5.15/bu Soybeans 2007..............$10.10/bu 2008..............$ 9.97/bu 2009...……...$9.59/bu 2016..............$9.47/bu 2017..............$9.33/bu 2018..............$8.48/bu

@@bakerboat4572 I'm sorry but the censors here are removing my reply to you. Perhaps you can see them under your bell notification icon. There were two, with the second one being a small part of the first one. I hate censorship in the worst way.

What the hell is a Hectare?

Followed closely by "if humans could eat electricity we would".

@@loklan1 If humans could eat electricity they would! Especially in the US, they'd put hot sauce on it and they'd be Obese.

The references in this video are terrible and extremely out of date. The article by David Pimentel is from 2005 and is based off information from the 1980s. Agriculture and the ethanol industry has made extraordinary advancements since those times. This video makes me question everything written by Brian McManus. I really like this channel so I am absolutely shocked how bad this video is. On average, without subsidies, it costs a farmer about $3 to produce and transport a bushel of corn. This price includes the costs of all the energy and other inputs required to produce a bushel. In 2021, one bushel yields over 11 litres of ethanol plus 7kg of animal feed plus 0.4kg of corn oil. The energy contained in just the ethanol is 60,000kcal. Even if you use the out of date figure from this video of 6600kcal to produce a bushel that's a pretty good return on investment. But don't take my word for it, do your own research, but do a better job than Brian did.

@@tomcorwine3091 h = 100, area of 100mx100m = 100 m^2

Matrix was worse in that there was no mention of where the inputs came from. Apparently not from solar, if cutting off the sun were actually possible. Nuclear? Hydro? Dragon piss? The movie ran as though humans were the primary energy source, which we aren’t, which no life ever is. Biofuels are an atrocious idea but at least it honestly harvests from solar energy as the primary energy source. What Real Engineering fails to mention is all the fossil fuel inputs that go into growing the biofuels: pumping water, tractors, fertilizers, harvesters, transport. On net I suspect it takes more fossil fuels than the energy contained in the resulting biofuels. A negative return on energy investment. *edit: thanks everyone who pointed out that at 7:00 Real Engineering does point out the negative energy return.

I had almost forgotten that particular bit of stupidity... Damn you for reminding me ;) While that metaphor isn't really wrong, it isn't quite right. Biofuels are *fuels*. You always lose some energy converting it into a fuel. The question is wether the benefits, like ease of storage, transport, and conversation into the sort of energy you want, are worth that loss. If an organic (as in chemistry) fuel has desirable properties, biology is likely going to be a good way of making it. There's also the whole "stuff we are producing anyway which would otherwise go to waste" angle. Remember gasoline used to be the trash fraction left over after making kerosene. Finally, biofuels can be made from some energy we just wouldn't capture otherwise. Related to the waste point I suppose. Anyways, sort of like how meat production on rangeland which isn't suitable for agriculture ends up adding total available food despite the fact that animals only turn a small fraction of the calories they consume into meat. We wouldn't be able to consume the calories they use. Well, we can't efficiently consume a lot of the energy used by the plants which we can turn into usable biofuels. Of course, a lot of the current implementation of biofuels isn't so sensible. But there are sensible implementations.

Or farming low energy-dense, intermittent sources like wind or sun.

Except it doesn't work. Waste heat is wasted, unless you are the Matrix.

@@CarFreeSegnitz Most definitely not. What's happening is that you need to input 20% from external sources. You could look at like this: You're amplifying the energy 5 fold - give 1 watt, get out 5 watts. You still need to provide 1 watt to get 5 watts, so it's not energy neutral. But you don't enter 5.5 watts to get 5 watt.

Future of sustainable Aviation is really efficient and fast trains

​@NishantSoniTV i don't think you can take a train across an ocean 😂

I too was wanting to know his thought on Biodiesel. Any feedstock for fuel that is already used once is a good thing, but making a feedstock just for use as a fuel and that’s it? No.

Just imagine when the US realize dat

Or waste production from cooking oil refinery or high ffa cooking oil

@@joncalon7508 dont forget, that we allready throw away massive sums of our plant production from all areas, but wont mix it in the corn to produce biofuels, because thats a different technology with less profit margin, but better CO2 statistics.

IKR? The main source would be fast food chains, culinary schools, restaurants, etc...

United Mitochondrion of Cell

-emia, meaning presence in blood.

Me: of war crimes and crimes against humanity

Downstream01 YES

If you say Mitochondria and your girl does not say "the powerhouse of the cell" . She aint your girl

that's the first answer. But really, the corn lobby only matters because the electoral college effectively gives rural areas more political power.

Just Call it "Big Corn"

@@chaklee435 And especially the senate. The way states were drawn up is basically a nationwide gerrymander in favor of people who won't live near other people.

@@chaklee435 That's the reason they get federal money, but even without the electoral college they would get (tons of) state money.

It's more that the presidential primary elections have their first contests in Iowa, so candidates are susceptible to pressure from the corn lobby when they campaign there. "Big Corn" can run ads against them in a relatively cheap media market and derail entire candidacies just for a realistic take on Ethanol.

POTATOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Having fun destroying the rainforest? Hows that 20 year breakeven doing?

Yeah sugarcane ethanol is better I guess, anyway it's byproduct of sugar production, why make ppl drunk when we can drive cars from it.

@@suprithAnCom It is not a byproduct, it is either/or.

@Daniel Oliveira EU QUERO É CACHAÇA CACHAÇA CARAI

Guess he does not know it feed corn and it takes 4 peck to make a bushel. Look up palm oil biodiesel that is what they use in the EU. That is really messed up.

@@schristy3637 I think The U.S. is the only country that doesn't call it maize anyhow. Yes, monoculture palm plantations are horrible for the rainforests and all that ecosystem. Pressing it into oil and shipping it across the globe, to convert it into bio-diesel and burn it in an ICE is a horrific waste. A lot of people talk about Bio-diesel, but no one talks about converting the glycerol created to butanol. This is a pretty good stand-in for petroleum gasoline in warmer climates. But our focus should be to eliminate inefficient internal combustion engines entirely.

Yes it's crime.

also the "waste" is fairly high in protein about 30% and used in animal feed and actually works better than regular feed corn as it is more easily digested.

@@jimurrata6785 I don't understand why there isn't more interest in using crop residue, Miscanthus grass (farmed biomass), municipal solid waste, and sewage sludge to be gassified to make synthesis gas and passed through the Fischer-Tropsch process to make liquid fuels in the gasoline and diesel fuel ranges.

Never was about saving the planet. It was a scam to get more money for a cheap ridiculous vegetable that my 3 year old helps me grow every year lmfao. Corn Is cheapest. Veggie in the store , corn for gas not so cheap. Let's just used fossil fuels until they get fusion thing down to consumer level id drive a truck with fusion power lol probably have a shitload kf horsepower and get 30000 miles on the reactor before needing a switch arooo

The references in this video are terrible and extremely out of date. The article by David Pimentel is from 2005 and is based off information from the 1980s. Agriculture and the ethanol industry has made extraordinary advancements since those times. This video makes me question everything written by Brian McManus. I really like this channel so I am absolutely shocked how bad this video is. On average, without subsidies, it costs a farmer about $3 to produce and transport a bushel of corn. This price includes the costs of all the energy and other inputs required to produce a bushel. In 2021, one bushel yields over 11 litres of ethanol plus 7kg of animal feed plus 0.4kg of corn oil. The energy contained in just the ethanol is 60,000kcal. Even if you use the out of date figure from this video of 6600kcal to produce a bushel that's a pretty good return on investment. But don't take my word for it, do your own research, but do a better job than Brian did.

It's a game of tradeoffs with other renewables being vastly more useful to our social order. Be careful to not fall into the "But sometimes" trap.

@@crazycolbster What about nuclear?

@@hstapes My personal opinion on nuclear is that the new construction takes far too long to solve climate problems on its own. We don't have 10 years for new plants without doing something now. Existing plants, however, should never be taken offline. Shutting down a functional nuclear reactor is climate malpractice

To replace the amount of energy just the US gets from oil products we'd have build 1400 new gigawatt level nuclear power plants and double or triple the electric grid. Never mind the resources needed to build power storage or batteries. Renewables will NEVER do that. The entire green movement is a fever dream designed to force us back to how we lived in 1850. I can only wait to see how this new algae ruins the environment once it gets out.

Most ethanol in comes from sugarcane, corn, or beets; either way, It's a plant. You bury it where it's exposed to rain and it just grows from dirt, air, water, and sunlight. It's actually nuclear energy from nuclear fusion in the sun, albeit chemically stored as fructose. The vegetable matter that's left stores a lot of CO2 and could be used in biocrete, or be burned for heat(like for distilling the sugarcane-cachaça into ethanol) composted to fertilize crops, fed to cattle/farm animals... Ethanol is more than carbon 0, it's carbon negative and then much more! The worse problem is by far overwhelmingly huge fields under monoculture practices and distribution of it through diesel fueled trucks (there's e100 trucks and trains, ideally the infrastructure for the latter would be built and used for that), but small local farms could supply most of the local needs of a city, whilst bigger farms produce a reserve to be used if there's increased demand somewhere. Ethanol is truly green, more than it could be asked for. Using it means actively fighting climate change. Especially if we store the CO2 and stop using gasoline to use ethanol(the engine mod is faaaaaaar cheaper than a hydrogen car or a Tesla, which aren't even truly green alternatives) in its place. Sunlight has fed all energy on earth at some point somehow. It is the one true energy source we have. Ethanol is about harvesting it and storing it as a liquid by consuming excessive atmospheric CO2.

Exxon Mobil?

@@williamwalsh4912 Yup

I've seen studies of algae biofuel, and the biggest problem is the energy efficiency of water extraction.

OK, but algae is not produced on farmland, it is made of sh*t. So I think it should be calculated differently. Like the producion cost should be reduced by the cost of waste water treatment. Even if it is not cost effective, it is still beneficial.

Biofuel are useless from a energy point of view. Economically is total out of question. The 10% ethanol mandante is criminal at best. If it gets reduce to zero, the cars will run more per litter of gasoline. That's what really reduces emissions. Another crime is the federal government giving 7 Billion a year to corn farmers directly. That's makes no sense at all. Plus, diverting roughly 50% corn crops to ethanol productions incrises the price of food.

You’re making the assumption that industrialized cattle production is an efficient use of resources too and a sensible means of generating human fuel (ie calories). It isn’t.

I stopped watching when he called an electric vehicle electronic. Calling himself engineering expert and doesn‘t know the difference between electric and electronic. Idk man seems sus.

@@oldnick6709 It's both though???

@@oldnick6709 well, he is just a human, he can make mistakes, if this is the first video of RE that you watch, I suggest you watch another video of his first

@@oldnick6709 not important

😹

Forreal I didn't realize the narrator was such a stud 🤣

Wtf is a peck

@@wovasteengova one quarter bushel

@@wovasteengova ... a peck is 2 gallons (dry measure) or 4 baskets (field measure) or 15 minutes (mosquito swarming hot afternoon sun pea picking measure) ... or 1 cheek (affection measure) or 5 Academy Awards nominations with 1 win/Dead Mockingbird (Gregory measure) ... a standard peck holds 8 kittens, but due to the laws kittycatodynamics a bushel holds only 1 cat

:p

@@CharlesNauck ... a gallon is a standard unit of measurement. For example, a gallon of milk is a liquid measure. There is also a dry measure called gallon, which by volume equals one half peck. ... Dry gallons are not directly measured by kitten units as they get confused and wander off looking for the milk.

Correct. It is the cattle farming industry that is seeing the destruction of the rainforest increase, as far as I am aware. From what I know, the ground cleared from rainforests isnt even fertile enough to grow continual crops of sugarcane. Slash and burn sees a few crops of grass grow then it dies off and everything moves along.

@@booradley6832 I agree with both you and OP. Deforestation for cattle is a real situation. To exacerbate the concern, as more forrest is cleared for cattle grazing, more Forrest has to be cleared for... wait for it... CORN, for cattle consumption. It's a self licking ice cream cone.

Someone needs to tell Brazil that since they say otherwise

Sugarcane also makes ethanol many times more efficiently than corn. Fun fact, the corn lobby got the production of ethanol from sugarcane banned in the US to make sure we're locked into ethanol from corn, which consumes more high-sulfur off-road diesel fuel cultivating and harvesting the corn than the ethanol we get out of the process.

A wise comment! congrats!!!

And in cold climates, ethanol is used as fuel anti-freeze to absorb moisture so it doesn't freeze inside the fuel system or cause random engine performance issues when the fuel pump sucks in a blob of water condensate from the tank's bottom. If 10% wasn't required by law for normal gasoline, you'd have to add 2-5% yourself at a significantly higher cost.

I can't find a source for that claim, can you link me one? Also, virtually zero cars run on lead fuel these days so if that's why they use ethanol, they can stop. Except maybe vintage cars, and there's other lead replacements that are used for these.

@@teardowndan5364 do you have a source in the price thing? I'd like to know more about that.

@@bofty www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-a-brief-history-of-octane "In the early 20th century, automotive manufacturers were searching for a chemical that would reduce engine knock. In 1921, automotive engineers working for General Motors discovered that tetraethyl lead (better known as lead) provided octane to gasoline, preventing engine knock. While aromatic hydrocarbons (such as benzene) and alcohols (such as ethanol) were also known octane providers at the time, lead was the preferred choice due to its lower production cost. Leaded gasoline was the predominant fuel type in the United States until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began phasing it out in the mid-1970s because of proven serious health impacts." Also, you misunderstand the reason why cars don't need leaded gas these days. Cars don't need leaded gas because we use another octane booster. If you get rid of the ethanol, you have to either bring back the lead or start using benzene, which has it's own suite of serious health effects.

@@teardowndan5364 ethanol absorbs moisture out of the air, from any vented fuel system. Ethanol is the enemy of engines, carburetors, small engines. I don’t run ethanol fuel in anything I own. Junk!

He conveniently brushed over the fact that the spent grain has the missing calories and then some (from the fermentation process)

Deforestation is a political issue not related to biofuels. The rainforests were being cutdown long before the rise of the biofuel industry. Ethanol is a clean burning carbon neutral fuel. Videos like this just give corrupt governments a scapegoat issue to cover up their negligence in protecting forests.

Exactly! This video is a lie! Rainforest destruction has nothing to do with ethanol! Also, second generation ethanol are a lot better then what's said. Yes, algae fuel is still on RESEARCH, yet, some papers see future on algae biorefinery!

Yeah but people get really angry when you tell them that eating meat is not sustainable

@@VitorFM the video isn't a lie..one part of it was wrong. There's a difference between getting a part wrong and the entire 15 minutes being a lie. Also, if you watched the video, he said the whole algae process is inefficient now but could be efficient in the future. Please watch the entire video before commenting next time

@@thmadeym4556 no, 85% of the video is a lie. Some points are wrigh, this doesn't turn the rest ok.

People starve so you can drive your gas burning vehicle.

@@johnhannonHanno people die because you use internet and create co2 emissions

Been having to correct and educate people who aren't biologists (and even some uneducated biologists) for years. It was great to finally see someone with pretty large reach set the record straight.

@@hj2479 The references in this video are terrible and extremely out of date. The article by David Pimentel is from 2005 and is based off information from the 1980s. Agriculture and the ethanol industry has made extraordinary advancements since those times. This video makes me question everything written by Brian McManus. I really like this channel so I am absolutely shocked how bad this video is. On average, without subsidies, it costs a farmer about $3 to produce and transport a bushel of corn. This price includes the costs of all the energy and other inputs required to produce a bushel. In 2021, one bushel yields over 11 litres of ethanol plus 7kg of animal feed plus 0.4kg of corn oil. The energy contained in just the ethanol is 60,000kcal. Even if you use the out of date figure from this video of 6600kcal to produce a bushel that's a pretty good return on investment. But don't take my word for it, do your own research, but do a better job than Brian did.

corn syrup

Corn pop

Corn man

corn flour

Corn corn

@pinned by Real Engineering dont trust him its spam probably a bot trying to scam you

Bourbon is made from corn

@@xxxBradTxxx damn, it is! Just looked it up. so, we better not waste corn on biofuel!

Isnt that potatoes ?

That is made from potatoes junior