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From cask to car, could red wine be Australia's next fuel? (www.abc.net.au)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/environment@aussie.zone
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What do you think of this idea? I had this image of people going to the petrol pump and taking a swig, but if the boffins can do something useful with all the warehoused unsellable wine it might help in various ways.

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[–] 7 points 5 months ago (7 children)

if the boffins can do something useful with all the warehoused unsellable wine it might help in various ways.

Don't need to be too much of a boffin to know how to distill wine into straight ethanol, we've been doing it for about 3000 years as a species.

The question is not "how" we turn red wine into pure ethanol that a petrol car can run, the question is "is it cost effective".

Given even the cheapest red wine is currently going for a similar price to petrol, undistilled, they're going to need to take a massive haircut on the cost if there is going to be ethanol produced that is cheaper than petrol per litre when you're only going to get about 10% ethanol per litre.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    That's why they're asking for govt help.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Fair point but it is still a cost benefit equation. The govt spends $X hundred million on subsidising farmers vs other things they could have spent it on.

    Personally I'd prefer the however many millions be spent where it reduces our carbon footprint - solar, wind, batteries.

    Burning ethanol has the same carbon cost as burning petroleum, probably better to assist low income earners into EVs for that carbon cost than burning it in ICE

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    Agree though you'd be surprised (or not) that many farmers don't think they get enough help.

    And , like I say to shirro there’s a lot of wine that is taking up space and its use to make ethanol would not be permanent. Perhaps the other option of converting it into pharmaceutical-grade alcohol is a better one. The wine industry needs some solution to recover some of the costs.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago

    Yeah that sounds like a wine industry problem not a govt. problem to me.

    I grew up on a cattle station then moved to wheat country as a teenager, I know exactly how entitled they are. The only reason I'd support this is if it was carefully engineered to ensure the multi-national agribusinesses don't get a red cent.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    Burning ethanol does not have the same carbon costs as petroleum.

    Petroleum is taking millions of years of carbon stores and releasing. Ethanol is carbon cycle, and carbon released was recently fixed by plant growth.

    It only comes down to how energy is made to distill the ethanol.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    https://cleantechnica.com/2022/09/13/ethanol-burns-clean-but-creates-more-emissions-than-gasoline/

    "When used as a motor fuel, ethanol burns cleaner than gasoline. There is no dispute about that. But there is a dispute about the carbon emissions created in the manufacturing process that makes ethanol from corn. According to recent research by Reuters, ethanol plants in the US produce more than double the harmful emissions, per gallon of fuel production capacity, than the nation’s oil refineries."

    It's the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere that counts, not whether it was converted from sun last week or 400MYA

    Burning fuel bad.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 months ago*

    According to recent research by Reuters, ethanol plants in the US produce more than double the harmful emissions, per gallon of fuel production capacity, than the nation’s oil refineries

    Oil and gas have been paying for this anti-ethanol propaganda for over 100 years.

    Reuters is a news service, not researchers.

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