Acidity contributes to the development of dental cavities. The source of this acidity is often attributed to sugar fermentation by endogenous bacteria in the mouth, or to acidic foods and drinks, which lower salivary pH. Paradoxically, oral health mouthwashes may also cause dental cavities, largely due to the inclusion of ethanol (EtOH/”alcohol”) as an antiseptic agent, which can be oxidized to acetic acid. However, the potential deleterious effect of these mouthwashes has not been adequately assessed, nor have the chemical changes in pH and total ethanol been
evaluated over time. Here we present data demonstrating changes to pH, total acid, and total ethanol in several popular mouthwashes over time. These changes increase acidity and thus demonstrate an increased risk of dental cavities.  Finally, we evaluate the chemical mechanism of these changes, and propose preventable solutions.

Full article is available here:  Determination of pH, total acid, and total ethanol in oral health products: oxidation of ethanol and recommendations to mitigate its association with dental caries 
Compliments of:  Chunhye Kim Lee and Brian C. Schmitz

Test your own mouthwash using a Cole-Parmer PH/Ion Meter .

The organizers of the IndyCar Series has announced that the Brazilian city of São Paulo will stage the opening round of the 2010 season. “Scheduled for March 14, the event represents the return of Indy-style racing to Brazil thanks to the partnership between the São Paulo municipality, the Indy Racing League and TV Bandeirantes and BandSports,” says the press release. “São Paulo is already home to the Brazil Formula 1 Grand Prix staged at the Interlagos racetrack. Now the city concentrates two of the most important motorsports events worldwide.” Of course, the big difference from Formula 1 will be that the Indy cars run clean, since they use ethanol, from sugar cane, as opposed to fossil-based gasoline.

Packaging giant Tetra Pak has announced that it will undertake a trial of a green plastic made from sugarcane.  Today’s news release said Tetra Pak will purchase limited volumes of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) derived from sugarcane feedstock. The companies say this is “the first move toward using green polyethylene in the carton packaging industry.”

Braskem, one of the world’s leading petrochemical companies, will be producing green polyethylene at a commercial-scale plant in the second half of 2010. The announcement indicated Braskem would “begin supplying Tetra Pak with 5 Ktons per year of green HDPE from 2011, for use in the production of plastic caps and closures.” Earlier this year, Braskem announced that it would be supplying Johnson & Johnson with its green plastics for its Sundown brand of comestic products.

Braskem’s green plastic factory will use ethanol derived from sugarcane to produce ethylene, which will then be converted into polyethylene, the world’s most commonly used plastic. According to Braskem, this new polymer, while made 100% renewable raw materials, “has the same appearance and properties of traditional plastics in the final product, the difference is that it can capture CO2 from the atmosphere, i.e. one ton of green resin captures 2.5 tons of CO2.”

The ethanol industry is stepping up its advocacy seeking a change in the U.S. tax code that will give gasoline retailers a substantially larger incentive to install ethanol blender pumps, a change that the gasoline retailers are also supporting. For more, see EnergyWashington.com (subscription required).

Dow Jones reports that “a surprise announcement Tuesday night to extend a tax break for Brazilian auto makers likely means greater-than-expected car sales in the first quarter of 2010.” Brazil’s government plans to keep the Industrial Production Tax (known as IPI) down at 3% for flex-fuel vehicles with small 1.0 liter engines for another three months. “The ostensible reason for the continued tax break is the environmentally friendly nature of the flex-fuel vehicles, which can run on either gasoline or ethanol.”

The report goes on to say, “’the decision covers literally about half of Brazil’s car fleet, as the majority of new car sales are small-engine flex-fuel vehicles. Larger engine flex-fuel cars will not benefit” anymore from the lower tax rates or gasoline cars of any engine size. The Brazilian government also said that it will extend the IPI exemptions for new truck sales to stimulate swapping of older, more polluting vehicles by new, less polluting ones.

The Brazilian ethanol producers did not miss a chance to praise the announcement, noting in a press release that since the advent of flex fuel cars in 2003, the country has avoided 75 million tons of CO2.

Today’s Wall Street Journal VentureWire says, “Anyone who’s been putting their green into the green stuff that grows in ponds — i.e., algae — may be set to hit the jackpot. Dow Jones Newswires reports that Capitol Hill is currently considering legislation which would boost the industry by expanding the definition of biofuels under the Renewable Fuels Standard to include algae-based fuels, and may grant companies algal biofuel tax credits as well.”

Enthusiasm for cellulosic ethanol has overshadowed the need for a close scrutiny of the product, and output for the biofuel has fallen short of targets, writes Dave Juday in the conservative magazine Weekly Standard. Then-President George W. Bush said a “pile of wood chips” would eventually power cars, but in reality, it can take as much as 90 years of tree growth to produce one 15-minute full-up of the renewable fuel, Juday adds. “It is time to wipe the slate clean, eliminate the cellulosic fuel mandate, and re-think U.S. biofuels policy,” he recommends

The CME Group, the parent company of the Chicago Board of Trade, announced it will not push through with a plan to limit vomitoxin levels on corn-futures contracts after extensive studies and “consultations with our customers,” spokeswoman Mary Haffenberg is quoted in Reuters. The reversal came in the wake of an Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) statement that isolated cases of vomitoxin from this year’s crop were “not a big deal.” The main concern appears to be related to dangerous concentrations of vomitoxin in distiller dried grains (DDG), a by-product of corn ethanol production.

Obama keeps talking about “fixing what ails America,” by building alternative power projects.

To seemingly prove it…

On April 11, 2009 DOE announced a whopping $38.5 Billion dollars in loan guarantees to “encourages the development of new energy technologies and is an important step in paving the way for clean energy projects.” All a start-up company has to do is fill out reams of paperwork and submit it along with their justification of why they need the money and their $75,000 non-refundable application fee.

Let me repeat that last part: “… and their $75,000 non-refundable application fee.”

These projects include solar, wind, hydro, ethanol, and even algae fueled remedies. And, there are a lot of them out there. Some of them even make sense, but…

At the NSF (National Science Foundation) bio-energy research projects are being declined and disqualified right and left,  by Government-backed reviewers who throw crap on the progress, by using “verbal vinegar”  like this:

“To base the proposal on the theory that there will be a variety of low-value feed stocks available is, in the opinion of this reviewer and many other industry observers, a faulty premise. Biomass is cheap right now because no one wants it.

However, as demand increases, it will become more expensive. Further the laws of supply and demand mean that replacing a significant amount of gasoline with biofuels would drastically lower the demand for gas. This would, in turn, cause the price of gas to plunge, making biofuels less competitive.”

Bull! I could use that very same argument to reject the use of margarine, or ammunition, or even car tires. The same argument could be made to reject solar and wind energy research — or any alternative energy, for that matter — by trying to make the case that an overwhelming  public adoption of solar power or wind energy products would cause the price of coal to plunge… well… because that might make solar and wind energy less competitive!

Would too! I know it’s true, because I’ve even heard politicians say it!

And we all know that politicians NEVER lie.

“Margarine is baaaad! We Must Stop This!”… before it makes COWS obsolete.

And heaven knows, the increase in American Horse Breeding may adversely impact the price of cars! It must be stopped! I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna start shooting horses, before civilization as we know it comes to an end…

Oh wait, the American Government already does that. It’s cheaper to manage “wild horse assets roaming the plains” in America, if you kill them first…

You think I’m kidding? I’m not. Say goodbye to the Majestic Wild Mustang, kids… They only place you’re gonna see them regularly is on Disney Cartoons. BLM actually kills wild horses, rather than provide for them. Don’t even get me started…

So why do reviewers say things like I just quoted?

Because they are paid to DISQUALIFY projects. First, that $75,000 dollar application fee is non-refundable, remember? Second, that way, those jug-headed politicians in Washington DC can claim that they’ve put help in the pipe, even if NOBODY can possibly qualify for it.

Oh, I almost forgot; It takes 15 months to find out that you’ve been cheated out of your $75 grand…

… if the half-wits in the “processing department” at the DOE can get the process streamlined down to 15 months, as “promised”.

BTW:

Here’s what independent reviewers with credentials in their field, said about that bio-energy project request;

Reviewer #A: “This is a well thought out proposal supported by a well qualified team.”

Reviewer#B: “This is a well written proposal with good technical foundation to carry out the project. Project team collectively has good qualification and sound experience to advance the scientific work in a professional manner.”

Reviewer #C: “The proposed plan is sound and improved results are likely with further research.”

So…

Stop buying margarine! Stop riding horses!  Stop building windmills! Stop shooting your firearms! Stop buying car tires! You’re killing America! You whiny un-patriotic, self-serving, greedy, capitalistic bastards!

Stay Tuned.

Okay, you all know what’s going on with my family, so I’m not going  to beat you up with that…

If this blog has helped you, educated you, amused you, or even just made you shake your head and wonder why I’m not locked up in some room clad with rubber tiles…

Please know that this site has required a great deal of money, time and effort to develop & maintain. If it’s been useful to you at all, and you can afford to…  you can help my family and support this site by making a small donation by hitting that Paypal button up there on the right. Paypal is the BEST “secure” way to donate to any cause… like ours. This will help keep us alive while we try to remedy our own situation, and empower me to carry on writing, maintaining, providing countless hours of hard work, and including any updates or topics that you might suggest.

And… No anatomical impossibilities, huh? I’m not as young as I used to be…

]]> http://sugarcaneblog.com/2009/11/24/ethanol-production-high-enough-for-e25-blends/ Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:08:52 +0000 sugarcaneblog http://sugarcaneblog.com/2009/11/24/ethanol-production-high-enough-for-e25-blends/

Despite lower levels of crushed sugarcane, enough ethanol is still being produced in Brazil to guarantee the country’s 25% gasoline admixture, Brazil’s Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA) said in a statement. In Brazil, anhydrous ethanol is blended at 25% in gasoline, while hydrous ethanol is sold in neat form to be used in the growing fleet of flex fuel cars. Brazil consumes more ethanol than gasoline today, UNICA says.

According to the release, the sales of ethanol totaled 651 million literes in the first two weeks of November, down 14.5% compared to the same period last year. An unusually rainy harvest season has affected the crop, lowering its sucrose content and complicating the harvest. On top of this, India — a traditional sugar exporter — has become the world’s largest importer, driving up the price of raw sugar and discouraging ethanol production.

Ethanol Producer’s Kris Bevill reports that “Purdue University has been awarded a $900,000 U.S. Department of Energy grant to conduct analysis of the global impacts of second-generation biofuels. According to Tom Hertel, ag economics professor at Purdue University and project co-investigator, the team’s research will be a continuation of previous work conducted policy alternatives and global land use impacts of first-generation biofuels.” Purdue’s Hertel was the author of the controversial land use analysis that the California’s Air Resources Board used in the Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

According to a post by Cindy Zimmerman in DomesticFuels.com, Sorghum use in ethanol on the rise and corn ethanol better watch out. “According to a survey by the United Sorghum Checkoff Program (USCP), 29 percent of the grain sorghum grown in the United States this year will be used to produce ethanol – a total of nearly 137 million bushels.” USCP Board Chairman, Bill Greving says this is very exciting news for the sorghum industry. “This study shows what we have always known, that sorghum ethanol yields are comparable to corn. In the past year, the price differential has greatly benefited the bottom line of ethanol plants using sorghum as a feedstock,” said Greving.

According to a report from Jamaica, the Caribbean island “is steadfast in its thrust to develop the local biofuels industry, producing ethanol from local feedstock and boosting exports of this highly valued fuel, under the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI).”

Jamaica’s Minister of Energy told local press that the Caribbean countries only met 71% of the total 2008 U.S. ethanol import quota of 452 million gallons. Jamaica exported 80 million gallons of Brazilian-made sugarcane ethanol to the United States and another 110 million gallons in 2008. According to Jamaica’s Energy Minister, the countries have never reached the capacity of the CBI ethanol quota, partly due to insufficient capacity, but production has been increasing over the past few years.

As expected, California regulators proposed new rules requiring petroleum-fuel sellers and other companies to comply with state greenhouse-gas emission-reduction rules starting in 2012 — three years earlier than initially proposed — and on top of the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) policy. The California Air Resources Board (CARB)’s proposed rules are to be finalized by December 2010 in order to implement a 2006 state law that requires industries to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, or about 25%. The state’s LCFS targeted a GHG reduction of at least 10% by 2020 in the state’s transportation fuels.

The “Washington Insider” section of DTN (link requires subscription) reported yesterday that, “The Environmental Protection Agency continues to work against a Dec. 1 deadline for making a decision about whether to increase the maximum ethanol blend rate for non-flex-fuel vehicles from the current 10 percent level to as much as 15 percent, as requested by Growth Energy. EPA over the past few months has indicated that it would like additional time for studies to be completed regarding this issue, notably how a blend increase would affect cars with over 120,000 miles on their odometers.

According to the report, “some sources report that EPA is considering allowing up to a 15 percent maximum blend beginning with 2001 model cars. If so, that would equate to around 80 percent of all cars on the road today. It also is possible EPA could make its decision contingent on final results from ongoing studies due to be released next spring into early summer, meaning the agency would miss next week’s deadline. [While] other sources are saying if EPA chooses to announce the blend level will remain at 10 percent, Growth Energy or someone else likely would resubmit the request for an increase, thus starting the process all over. That, in turn, would allow enough time for some of the pending studies to be completed for EPA to use in its decision-making.”

The U.S. ethanol industry could be entering a consolidation period wherein a few big companies dominate the field, writes Kris Bevill in this analysis for Ethanol Producer magazine. Two-thirds of the country’s 184 ethanol facilities are operated by major businesses and/or publicly traded companies instead of by farmer cooperatives, Bevill notes. Companies have the advantage of liquidity and can secure capital via the public markets to acquire small producers, said Todd Becker, CEO and director of Green Plains Renewable Energy. The industry, however, will still have room for the co-op model, in which the main goal is not “to make a fortune and get out,” said Randall Doyal, president of Guardian Energy.

According to a Dow Jones, agribusiness giant Bunge has signed an agreement to buy Brazilian privately held sugarcane company Moema for well over US$1 billion. Dow Jones‘ source is a local Brazilian newswire, Estado. Bunge’s press and investor relations office in the U.S.was unavailable for immediate comment on a deal Estado cited unnamed sources as saying was close to $1.35 billion. Moema is a mid-sized sugar and ethanol milling company.

If Bunge acquired Moema, it would be one more step in further consolidation in Brazil’s sugarcane and ethanol producer industry. In 2007, Bunge acquired a smaller sugarcane mill Santa Juliana and is building two green field projects elsewhere in country. If this latest deal deal goes through, Bunge would have the capacity to mill 13.5 million metric tons of sugarcane annually, resulting in 850 million tons of sugar and 637 million liters (170 million gallons) of fuel ethanol. That would put Bunge within the top five sugar and ethanol players in Brazil, the world’s leading.

An international team of researchers reports in the journal Nature Geoscience that CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels increased by 2% from 2007 to 2008, by 29% between 2008 and 2000, and by 41% between 2008 and 1990 — the reference year of the Kyoto Protocol. The lead author, Prof Corinne Le Quéré of the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the British Antarctic Survey, said “the only way to control climate change is through a drastic reduction in global CO2 emissions. The Earth’s carbon sinks are complex and there are some gaps in our understanding, particularly in our ability to link human-induced CO2 emissions to atmospheric CO2 concentrations on a year-to-year basis.” The report also notes that emissions from land use change have remained almost constant since 2000, but now account for a significantly smaller proportion of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions (20% in 2000 to 12% in 2008).

According to the New York Times,  trio of Italian and British entrepreneurs are advancing a $114 million plan to turn the waste from Brazilian sugarcane production into energy. The company intends to build several plants that would process bagasse, a byproduct of sugarcane production, into small, dense pellets that can be burned for fuel. Brazilian sugarcane mills burn most of their own bagasse to create energy in cogeneration plants, and increasingly have been selling the excess power to the national grid. But 20 percent of the excess bagasse, or about 25 million tons, is left to waste at this point.

According to Carbon Control News (subscription required), “Industry officials say alternative jet fuels could play a central role in reducing aviation’s carbon footprint, but a new study commissioned by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) finds many of those fuels are actually worse for the climate than conventional petroleum, and that those which do produce fewer lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions “are costly and could potentially be counterproductive.”

Carbon Dioxide emissions in the states are down.  The government estimates that between 2007 and 2009, carbon emissions will be down by a whopping nine percent.  This is the equivalent of shutting down 400 coal plants for a year.  This is good news and it’s real.  Now the bad news.  The reason for the decline is our economic slump.  Carbon emissions basically track the rise or fall in gross domestic product (GDP).

How can we get GDP and jobs going again without CO2 following?  Are greenhouse gases irrevocably tied to economic growth?  Must we stop growth and employment in order to stop coastal, island and wetland flooding by rising oceans, stop regional desertification, rivers running dry and plant and animal extinctions?

Demand for electricity was down 4% in the first half of 2009, including a decline at FPL.  Does this conform to the need for a new nuclear plant and a cost recovery charge on customers’ bills?  Utility representatives say the decline is only temporary and that demand will increase again with economic recovery but there is uncertainty now about that future demand.

Industrial demand is down to use levels during the 1990s.  Is this due to recession or are industries taking actions to increase operating efficiencies?  Is the increasing production and use of energy efficient appliances in homes slowing electric consumption?  Some states are providing incentives for such appliances.  In fact, even the US government has stepped in to phase out incandescent light bulbs beginning in 2012.

Last April, John Wellinghoff, chairman of the FERC, said the combination of renewable energy and energy conservation could avert the need to build any coal or nuclear plants to meet base-load capacity.  We may not need any ever, he said.  The gears of fossil fuel consumption are turning more slowly.  The nuclear industry can’t find private investors and must indenture their own ratepayers.  Consumers understand the carbon footprint idea and are paying more attention to their own.

Conservation; Energy Efficiency; Renewable Requirements for Utilities; Solar, Biomass, Ocean and Wind Generated Electricity; Liquid Biofuels; Fuel Cells; Electric Transportation; Organic Food production.  These are the attitudes and industries that will permanently cut our link to carbon emissions.  Instead of GDP, we’ll measure growth by the amount of CO2 that doesn’t enter the atmosphere.  The new, jobs-supporting growth economy climbing out of this recession is non-carbon, non-radioactive, non-polluting, sustainable and safe.

Sam Kendall

Sources: NYT 11/18/09 A Surplus of Energy That Might Even Last,  NPR 11/20/09 Financial Crisis is Green For the Environment, WSJ 4/23/09 FERC Chairman: We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Nukes

According to the Christian Science Monitor, a new report by the National Research Council says the “hidden” costs of “energy production with fossil fuels in the United States amounted to $120 billion,” which includes “negative impact of air pollution on health, but doesn’t include the effects of mercury emitted by coal- fired plants on wildlife and people, harm done to ecosystems by air pollution, or the climate-warming effects of carbon emissions.” According to CSM, however, “climate considerations aside, damages wrought by ethanol made from corn were usually similar to, or even slightly worse, than damages from gasoline. That’s because of the extra energy needed to convert corn to biofuel.”

One of the most vocal groups representing the corn ethanol industry is calling on California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) to reopen the  on the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) after what it calls “undisclosed documents” recently uncovered related to the rulemaking process. Here’s Growth Energy’s press release:

Growth Energy calls on ARB to allow public comment on undisclosed LCFS documents

Growth Energy, the coalition of U.S. ethanol supporters, called on the California Air Resources Board (ARB) to allow the public to comment on documents pertaining to their low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) rulemaking that were not disclosed and should influence the final rule. Through a public records request, Growth Energy uncovered numerous previously undisclosed documents and comments from ARB consultants that cast doubt on ARB conclusions and others that appeared to influence ARB’s assumptions.

Following the discovery, Growth Energy issued a letter to ARB, calling on them to reopen the public comment period and allow comment on all documents received by ARB in connection with the LCFS as mandated by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). These include documents commenting on detailed environmental analyses of the LCFS developed by other corn ethanol stakeholders, including the Renewable Fuels Association and the New Fuels Alliance. The letter to ARB also included eight questions to which Growth Energy is seeking answers.

“The public records request confirmed what we suspected: that significant portions of the ARB staff’s environmental and economic analyses appeared to be based on assumptions, rather than technical analyses available to the public,” said Tom Buis, CEO of Growth Energy. “Even more disturbing are the omitted comments from ARB consultants that contradict the conclusions reached by ARB staff regarding the carbon intensity of ethanol.”

In the letter, Growth Energy notes that Dr. Thomas Hertel, professor at Purdue University and the senior member of ARB’s advisory team for GTAP, called ARB’s use of the GTAP results in the regulation “rather arbitrary,” and “much less defensible” than an alternative he supported

Also omitted from the public rulemaking file was a PowerPoint presentation from Dr. Hertel to ARB stating that the GTAP model “is better suited to generating insights and ranges of results than to generating specific numbers,” yet ARB used GTAP to generate a specific ILUC number for ethanol.

“We are only one-third of the way through our public records request and have discovered scores of comments and documents not disclosed to the public that prejudiced the final LCFS rule,” Buis said. “Selective disclosure is not an option in something this important. To not allow public review and comment on these would be a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and a perversion of the democratic process.”

Wow, what a blog post title, “Synthetic Biology: Why Not Pursuing Crazy Biotech Is Dangerous.” The the crew at Gizmodo who came up with that title talks with Michael Spector who covers science for the New Yorker and is the author of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives.

The Gizmodo crew says about their discussion with Specter,

“For our discussion—fitting the theme of This Cyborg Life—we singled out synthetic biology, a pursuit, as Specter describes it, that “by combining elements of engineering, chemistry, computer science and molecular biology, seeks nothing less than to assemble the biological tools necessary to redesign the living world.”

To find out what Specter had to say about synthetic biology read the blog.

Next, Xconomy of San Diego, writes a post, Big Energy Collaborations Seen to Jump-Start Emerging Biofuels Technologies .

Xconomy attended presentations organized by Biocom, San Diego’s life sciences industry group. Xconomy says according to industry experts at the conference,

“As startups developing next-generation biofuels emerge in San Diego, Boston, and elsewhere, a business model for rapidly expanding to commercial-scale operations already can be found in the biotech industry”

“The premise of presentations organized by Biocom, San Diego’s life sciences industry group, is that collaborations being formed between biofuel startups and big energy are comparable to the partnerships formed between biotech startups and big pharmaceutical companies.”

Slice of MIT writes about, Synthetic Biology Rodeo: Designing Living Materials at iGEM where they mention a story on the iGEM competiton in WIRED UK.

Slice of MIT says,

“The Wired story, written as a first-person account by a friend of the winning team, describes arriving at MIT with the crew from the UK: “seven rainbow-haired undergraduates who spent their summer engineering a new kind of E.coli that secretes a palette of seven colors, christened E. chromi after a tense online vote.”

To find out more about iGEM, check out the slice of MIT.

Growth Energy, a new corn ethanol lobby group, put our a press release today calling on Congress to ease the installation of pumps that dispense mid- and high-level ethanol blends. According to a letter written to the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees, the organization says the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property Credit, which should allow fuel vendors to recapture up to $50,000, or 50 percent, of the total cost of installing alternative fuel dispensing systems is being undermined by an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) interpretation that retailers are only allowed to take credit for a portion of the new pump – instead of the entire pump.