Canada's largest ethanol plant now up and running
The Suncor Energy ethanol plant in Sarnia, Ontario – Canada's largest – is now producing ethanol and employing 38 full-time employees, Suncor announced yesterday. The plant should be able to make 200 million liters (53 million gallons) of ethanol a year from 20 million bushels of corn. While the plant is now in operation, there won't be a grand opening ceremony until later this summer. Maybe that's because Suncor is busy with other green energy projects. The company is developing its third and fourth wind farms in Canada and, as we mentioned in May, Suncor will also provide biodiesel to buses in Toronto.
[Source: Suncor Energy Inc.]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Howard Lee Harkness 9:21AM (7/12/2006)
Ethanol is a lousy fuel. It's hydrophilic, it eats rubber tubing, and it requires higher compression than gasoline to burn efficiently (which, BTW, increases NOx emmissions). Not to mention that the producers of ethanol burn dinofuel in the production process, because it's CHEAPER (DOH!).
Corn is a lousy source for ethanol. There are other sources that have higher yields at less cost. The only saving economic factor would be if the waste products of the corn have some other use (maybe the oil could be converted to biodiesel?).
What we have here is a Canadian vote-buying scheme. Without massive public tax subsidies (either of corn or of the ethanol, or both), this plant would not exist.
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S.M.Mehdi Hassan 11:05AM (7/12/2006)
Howard, you may be right. I am not an energy expert but I live in Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries of the world. Here the price of fuel is very high. So now it is very much necessary for us to have an alternative source of energy.
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jeffinToronto 11:59AM (7/12/2006)
Howard: Very short sighted thinking on your part to suggest the best fuel at any given moment is the cheapest of the day. Technologies have to be in place for a period of time to get the best out of anything, including new fuel technologies. So they have to start somewhere at some point in time. You have also forgotten the non-economic benefits of new fuels like reducing dependency on the middle east oil supplies. The world would be a vastly (and I would suggest better) different place if it were not so dependent on middle east oil.
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