Franken-Stat
It’s the monster stat that will never die: 1,700 gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol.
It was bandied most recently on the CNBC show “Fast Money” earlier this week.
The source, of course, is Cornell University entomologist David Pimentel, the fountainhead of quasi-scholarship for the anti-ethanol movement. He gets the number by adding in the water needed to grow corn — never mind the fact that as little as 4 percent of the corn used for ethanol production in the United States requires irrigation.
Rainfall is enough for the other 96 percent. Is rain a bad thing? Perhaps it would be better if it fell on a parking lot?
The actual ethanol production process takes less than four gallons of water per gallon of ethanol. In fact, water use in dry mill ethanol plants dropped more than 26 percent between 2001 and 2006, according to Argonne National Laboratory.
By comparison, it takes 1,851 gallons of water to refine a barrel of crude oil. That’s 44 gallons of water per gallon of crude.
Have a look at the EPA link below for more fun facts on water.
(Special note to Pimentel: See fact number 10. One acre of corn gives off 4,000 gallons of water per day in evaporation.)
Sources:
Argonne National Laboratory. “Analysis of the Efficiency of the U.S. Ethanol Industry 2007.” March 27, 2008.
EPA. “Water Trivia Facts.” April 1995.
