Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[I am Christian]

This is a my website about bioethanol: http://www.anzwers.org/free/energy1/bioethanol/index.html


Brazilian bioethanol now costs around 0.25-0.35 $/litre.
Industrial gasoline now costs around 0.7 $/litre.
USA tax on brazilian bioethanol is 0.54 $/gallon(3.8 litres).

Can bioethanol be a valid alternative?
Why USA taxes brazilian bioethanol?

[erick_apuy]

usa taxes bioetanol because them have a lot of oil so they have to protect them industry.............. where are you from?

[String]

[marti]

I agree with String that the main problem of the use of bioethanol is that it competes with natural resources and it can be a serious problem. Nowadays some countries have problems because a field that had been used to grow food is used to grow vegetable for bioethanol.

For this reason I want to introduce the fuel cell technology. I have read something about it and I hope it will be a good solution for the energetic world problem. This system is very new and nowadays only exist some prototypes, but some companies from California and other places are trying to make it cheapest and more efficient.
This technology is based in the use of cells as a generator to produce electricity. The way it works is an exchange of electrons between oxygen and hydrogen separated for a membrane.
Manufacturers are confident they can build vehicles using this technology, but the main problem is that hydrogen is a flammable gas and it is dispensed in a high pressure conditions.

As you can see it could be a good way to produce cheap an efficient energy and may be the future. What do you thing about it?.
I would like to know opinions about this kind of energy and I propose you some interesting web sites where you can see some information about this sort of energy and others that use microbes (this kind of technology is less advanced, but it is very interesting).
I hope you enjoy it,

Mart�

Online resources:
Web site about the fuel cell technology: http://www.howstuffworks.com/fuel-cell.htm/printable

Web site about microbial fuel cells: http://www.microbialfuelcell.org/www/