CORN COBS AND ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

Yes, corn cobs, not corn, meaning the rip-off scam of ethanol perpetrated upon us by Archer Daniels Midland and the corn farmer lobby.

The latest exposé of the ethanol scam is that in the current (3/19/07) issue of Business Week, Ethanol's Growing List of Enemies.

Energy independence is the key to solving one of our gravest economic problems, the trade deficit – of which oil imports account for over 40% — and the key to defeating Islamofascism. 

What if we just didn't care anymore about Saudi oil?

And corn cobs – corn cobs – may be the key to energy independence.  To understand why, we must revisit our discussions last year about natural gas in The Natural Gas Solution, and What Bush Can Do To Get Cheaper Gas.

In quick sum, most any car on the road today can be easily converted to duel-fuel, using either gasoline or natural gas.  We have gigantic reserves of natural gas off our continental shelves.  The solution proposed last year involved Congress removing restrictions on drilling for it, and providing tax credits for the cost of converting cars to duel-fuel.

The major part of that conversion expense is a CNG (compressed natural gas) tank, which can cost thousands of dollars.  It is also bulky, taking up most of the room in a car's trunk.  In addition, it also requires an expensive unit like Phill in your garage that fills your CNG tank off the natural gas line in your home.

Note the beauty of this, however:  you drive your car, with a range of 200-300 miles per tankful, with the same natural gas that heats your home and cooks your food – at a cost of a few pennies per mile, much cheaper than gasoline.  Plus the natural gas is from US reserves.

The bottleneck is the initial cost of the CNG tank and the unit to fill it.

The corn cobs get rid of the bottleneck.

Scientists at Missouri University and the Midwest Research Institute in Kansas City, Missouri, have created "carbon briquettes" from corn cobs left over from kernel harvesting that are riddled with "nanopores," tiny complex holes capable of storing natural gas at a density of 180 times normal, yet at the same pressure as natural gas pipelines (3,450 kilopascals vs. the 24,800 kPa of the bulky expensive CNG tanks).

Say goodbye to those big expensive CNG tanks and the expensive fill unit.  Say hello to cheap, flat, compact corn cob carbon briquette tanks that can fit under the floor of your car along with your regular gas tank.

Corn cobs from corn grown in Missouri alone can provide the material for natural gas tanks for 10 million cars a year.  Kansas City government pickups have been fitted with the tanks and are being tested now.  Commercialization of the tanks could start later this year.

I encourage you to read the MU-MRI news announcement: Natural Gas: New Automotive Tank Holds Promise for Future (scroll down a bit), and the "Natural Gas Vehicle Facts" appended to it.

This removes one of the two bottlenecks to the natural gas solution to energy independence.  The other is the bizarre prohibition of our government for extracting the resource off our shores.

Congress and President Bush made a start in removing the prohibition on December 20 last year, when the opening of 8.2 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for offshore oil and gas drilling was signed into law.  But that was only for 125 miles offshore – a long ways away.

A better effort is being made by Senators Larry Craig (R-ID) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) sponsoring the SAFE (Security and Fuel  Efficiency) Energy Act of 2007.  It will allow drilling within 45 miles offshore.

Why 45?  Because that's half the distance between the US and Cuba – and in cooperation with Red China, Communist Cuba will be drilling for oil and gas to within 45 miles of Cuba's shore, meaning 45 miles away from ours.

There are few more necessary conditions to defeating Moslem terrorism than our economy being free of Moslem oil.  Energy independence has got to be seen as an absolutely vital component of our national security.  Energy independence not years away with futuristic not-here-now technologies, but via producing more oil, natural gas, and coal right here in the US.

We discussed coal last January in Arabia in America.

Now, with Russia on the verge of creating a cartel to control world production and manipulate world prices of natural gas – a Natural Gas OPEC – it is more critical than ever that we focus again on using natural gas to achieve American energy independence.

Thanks to corn cobs and Missouri scientists, the technological and economic barriers to do so are removed.  Only the political barrier remains – and that, as always, is the most unmovable.