Alcohol Can Be a Gas!: Fueling an Ethanol Revolution for the 21st Century (Paperback)

by David Blume (Author), Michael Winks (Editor), R. Buckminster (FWS) Fuller (Foreword)
Key Phrases: using alcohol, various feedstocks, peak oil, Understanding Alcohol, Feed Plant, Designing Your Fuel (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
David Blume's Alcohol Can Be a Gas1 is the most comprehensive and understandable book on renewable fuels ever compiled. Over a quarter century in the making, the book explains the history, technology, and even the sociology of renewable fuels in a fashion that can be appreciated by the most accomplished in the ethanol and biodiesel fields, as well as the novice and young students of the issues.

Blume summarizes the history of ethanol from the Whiskey Rebellion to the 2007 Energy Bill now pending before the U.S. Congress. His history also includes the century-old struggle between ethanol advocates, such as Henry Ford (who preferred ethanol to petroleum and produced the first Flex-Fuel Vehicle) and his arch nemesis, John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil (who actually funded the temperance movement to enact Prohibition in order to eliminate his competition for motor fuel). He also exposes the great myths about ethanol, telling who conceived them and why they did.

Blume's step-by-step instructions can help anyone build an ethanol plant (from a few hundred gallons to a hundred million gallons per year) or convert your car into an alternative fuel vehicle. Blume explains that ethanol does not need to be a corn-only, Midwestern industry and that there are hundreds of crops in every state of the Union from which we can make renewable fuels.

The book has hundreds of illustrations, charts, and diagrams to make his points, including some of the most humorous, entertaining and provocative cartoons likely to be found anywhere. The extensive two-dozen page glossary provides an excellent reference on all energy-related subjects.

I have personally worked in the renewable energy sector in one form or another for close to four decades, and I can recommend Alcohol Can Be a Gas! as the best book I have ever read on the subject. You will laugh out loud at his sharp wit and the dozens of cartoons. But when you finish reading Dave's book, you will have a much better understanding of how our nation's energy policy evolved, why it is what it is today, and what needs to be done for the future.

The petroleum age is only about one hundred years old, a tiny blip on the history of mankind, and, according to many experts, it is over half over. It is time to review the [alternative] energy systems of the past, biomass, ethanol, wind, solar, if we are to understand our future energy independence. David Blume's Alcohol Can Be a Gas is a must-read to prepare anyone for this critical endeavor. --Larry Mitchell, CEO, American Corn Growers Association

David Blume's Alcohol Can Be a Gas1 is the most comprehensive and understandable book on renewable fuels ever compiled. Over a quarter century in the making, the book explains the history, technology, and even the sociology of renewable fuels in a fashion that can be appreciated by the most accomplished in the ethanol and biodiesel fields, as well as the novice and young students of the issues.

Blume summarizes the history of ethanol from the Whiskey Rebellion to the 2007 Energy Bill now pending before the U.S. Congress. His history also includes the century-old struggle between ethanol advocates, such as Henry Ford (who preferred ethanol to petroleum and produced the first Flex-Fuel Vehicle) and his arch nemesis, John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil (who actually funded the temperance movement to enact Prohibition in order to eliminate his competition for motor fuel). He also exposes the great myths about ethanol, telling who conceived them and why they did.

Blume's step-by-step instructions can help anyone build an ethanol plant (from a few hundred gallons to a hundred million gallons per year) or convert your car into an alternative fuel vehicle. Blume explains that ethanol does not need to be a corn-only, Midwestern industry and that there are hundreds of crops in every state of the Union from which we can make renewable fuels.

The book has hundreds of illustrations, charts, and diagrams to make his points, including some of the most humorous, entertaining and provocative cartoons likely to be found anywhere. The extensive two-dozen page glossary provides an excellent reference on all energy-related subjects.

I have personally worked in the renewable energy sector in one form or another for close to four decades, and I can recommend Alcohol Can Be a Gas! as the best book I have ever read on the subject. You will laugh out loud at his sharp wit and the dozens of cartoons. But when you finish reading Dave's book, you will have a much better understanding of how our nation's energy policy evolved, why it is what it is today, and what needs to be done for the future.

The petroleum age is only about one hundred years old, a tiny blip on the history of mankind, and, according to many experts, it is over half over. It is time to review the [alternative] energy systems of the past, biomass, ethanol, wind, solar, if we are to understand our future energy independence. David Blume's Alcohol Can Be a Gas is a must-read to prepare anyone for this critical endeavor. --Larry Mitchell, CEO, American Corn Growers Association<br /><br />Everything you wanted to know about alcohol-fuel production but were afraid to ask. More than 20 years ago, veteran biofuel guru Blume (Alcohol Can Be a Gas!, 1983) beat the drum for alcohol-based alternative fuels. Blume's latest book is a well researched and expanded update to his original work, incorporating 21st-century concerns over global warming, domestic-energy policy, grassroots biofuel solutions, and the challenges of going green in a world dominated by the fossil fuel "oiligarchy."

Blume systematically and entertainingly builds his case for individual responsibility and activism in dealing with the nation's domestic-energy challenges, and he excludes no one in preaching his gospel of alcohol-fuel independence. For the novice, Blume tells the story of alcohol production's rich history in America, from the Civil War to today, and effectively demystifies the thorny pros and cons of the current national energy-policy debate regarding ethanol. This education alone is worth the cover price.

Make no mistake, the book is more than a bully pulpit for championing sociopolitical opinions on global-energy woes; it is a technical how-to book. Written with enterprising do-it-yourselfers in mind, Blume offers countless hands-on technical soluti --Ernest Callenbach, Author of Ecotopia

The overarching importance of this delightful book is that it demonstrates how beside the point is the current pseudo-debate about the net energy from corn ethanol. As Blume demonstrates, fuel alcohol must be an important component of our solar-based future. It can be made from a huge variety of feedstocks, including sugar beets and cane, nuts, mesquite, Jerusalem artichokes, algae, even coffee-bean pulp; there is no real scarcity of land to grow fuel. There is a scarcity of independent, original thinking, and Blume's book provides plenty of it, along with ample doses of amazing, startling, and sometimes scary information, ecological, technological, and political-economic.

This is a vast, detailed compendium drawn from decades of experience by an alert, smart, and skeptical hands-on thinker. Blume has given us his biofuels bible, and we can learn from him and survive quite nicely, or follow what he calls MegaOilron into oblivion. --Ernest Callenbach, Author of Ecotopia

Product Description
Alcohol Can Be a Gas! is the only comprehensive book ever written on alcohol fuel production and use for home and farm. Until now, it has been very difficult for farmers, contractors, alternative energy aficionados, those concerned about Peak Oil, and small-scale entrepreneurs to obtain good, accurate information on producing alcohol, or on converting vehicles to run on alcohol fuel. And with all the conflicting news stories about ethanol, the public finds it difficult to sort fact from fiction. This text, which has been reviewed by scientists around the world, is the definitive reference work on alcohol fuel.

Alcohol Can Be A Gas! contains 640 8-1/2 by 11 pages, with 514 charts, photos, and illustrations to reinforce the information-dense text. The book is geared for the nonscientific reader, but its 473 endnotes provide the technical foundation behind the accessible prose. A 700-word glossary and a 6300-entry index extend the book's usefulness.

This book is the distilled essence of the most pertinent information ever assembled in one place on alcohol fuel, the technology that can help us finally become producers of almost limitless energy, instead of extractors of finite resources. How we produce our energy from here on out will determine how we govern ourselves and how we relate to nature and the environment; it will also create a sea change in where wealth concentrates. It will determine if the future is ruled by a small number of armed dictatorships backed by military and industrial interests (a cabal author David Blume likes to refer to as MegaOilron or the Oilygarchy), or if energy, and therefore power, is held by a diffusion of democratic entities, based on their ingenuity and ability to gather a portion of their daily solar income.

As Blume writes in the Introduction to Alcohol Can Be a Gas!: "Various prospective publishers argued that putting all of this material into one large volume might scare off readers who just want a recipe book of how to make alcohol. They said, 'All this history and politics is fascinating, but aren't you afraid that including it in your how-to book would scare away some buyers?' 'Put it in a separate publication,' their marketing experts said. But in the final analysis, I decided that this book should be a complete tool kit to revolutionize our transportation energy system, combining a broad, sweeping vision with intricate detail.

"I spent four years working on this book with a small team of researchers. I traveled all over the United States in search of the most up-to-date information. In frozen South Dakota, I talked to Orrie Swayze and his farmer and VFW buddies who are taking on the oil companies, and to alcohol combustion engineer and alcohol aviation expert, Jim Behnken. I went to Decatur, Illinois, to see the largest alcohol plant in the U.S., Archer Daniels Midland's 200-million-gallon-per-year plant. My travels also took me to Brazil to document the world's largest alcohol fuel program.

"It took over 25 years to finally get this book to you. It represents the confidence of almost 30 people who collectively loaned more than $250,000 to see this project through. It's the most comprehensive book ever written about alcohol fuel. Its production has been a massive effort that has depended on the cooperation of hundreds of people who contributed both their knowledge and, more importantly, their experiences."

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Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: International Institute for Ecological Agriculture; 1 edition (November 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0979043778
• ISBN-13: 978-0979043772
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #80,498 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Matthew Stein, Author of When Technology Fails, BSME MIT, November 17, 2007

By	Matthew I. Stein "Practical Realist" (Truckee, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am an MIT engineer (BSME MIT, 1978) and Author of When Technology Fails, and I highly recommend this book. David Blume's opus, Alcohol Can Be a Gas, is the definitive guide to weaning America from the oil habit via biofuels. In great detail, it thoroughly debunks the myth that ethanol production takes nearly as much energy to run the process as it produces (corn does, but there are other alternatives to corn based ethanol), and shows how America can thrive by sustainably growing both an abundant food supply and biofuels at the same time (they can actually feed each other synergistically!). Blume shows us the pathway to personal and national energy independence!

David Blume has been an alcohol pioneer since Buckminster Fuller, one of America's foremost visionary geniuses, coached and coaxed Blume in the 70's to continue to pursue their united dream of energy independence through biofuels. Blume is a hands-on kind of guy, having been an organic farmer, inventor, permaculture teacher and alcohol pioneer over the past thirty years. This book is encyclopedic in scope, and is for everyone from policy makers to consumers to the back yard tinker who wishes to make his own ethanol and convert his existing gasoline powered car to run on ethanol fuel Highly recommended!

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterpiece, July 21, 2008

By	Albert Bates "peaksurfer" (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am an environmental educator at the Ecovillage Training Center at The Farm community in Summertown,Tennessee and author of Shutdown: Nuclear Power on Trial (1979); Climate in Crisis: The Greenhouse Effect and What We Can Do (1990), and most recently, The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times, from New Society Publishers and Amazon.

Arriving in Sao Paulo, Brazil for the International Permaculture Conference in 2007, I checked the online schedule and saw that the organizers had set me down for a morning session on "making money from tree planting." Caught by surprise, I had to scramble to prepare a powerpoint and one of the ideas I thought to explore was biofuels. Conventional wisdom has it that "agrifuels" are in competition with food production and climate remediation. I dashed off an email to David Blume asking for an example of "permaculture fuels."

He replied, "Well to take a page from the book. In semiarid areas where the temperature goes no lower than 0 degrees F you can plant an overstory of mesquite to provide both 340 gallons of alcohol per acre from the pods and fuel the plant with coppiced branches from the tree. In the understory you plant perennial Opuntia (nopales) thornless cactus, and between there and the dripline and beyond you plant the starchy root crop, Buffalo Gourd, for a total yield of far over 1000 gallons per acre without irrigation."

There you have it, a polyculture for food and fuel. But what about climate change? I wrote him back, "Would you say the guild above is a net carbon sink?"

He responded, "It is absolutely a massive carbon sink. Pretty much all arid country crops put the majority of their growth underground and have a robust mycorhyzzal feeding regime. Perhaps 80+% of carbon produced in the top growth is exuded for rhizosphere associates. Mesquite is unique in that a large portion of its root burrows deep to support it with water extracted from far below. There have been recorded instances of mesquite going down 160 feet for water."

And that, in a nutshell, is Farmer Dave's permafuel thesis. That he takes several hundred pages to flesh it out, in Alcohol Can Be a Gas! Fueling an Ethanol Revolution for the 21st Century, is an enduring blessing for permaculturists everywhere. This six-volume set, bound into one thick paperback, is both required reading and a standard reference on a par with A Pattern Language and David Jacke's Edible Forest Gardens.

The six books contained in one are, in order, Understanding Alcohol: Visions and Solutions (including "busting the myths," polyculture and photosaturation, and Brazil's national program dissected), Making Alcohol: How to Do It (including 30 odd feedstocks from algae to whey, the sugar method, the starch method, fungal and bacterial enzymes, fuels, and distiller construction), Co-Products from Making Alcohol (animals, aquaculture, mariculture, mushrooms, methane, etc.), Using Alcohol as Fuel (carburetion, injection, small engines, flex-fuel conversions and cogeneration of heating, lighting and cooling, and typical conversions), The Business of Alcohol: Hands-On Advice (legal and economic considerations and case studies); and A Vision for the Nation (state and federal incentives, Community Supported Energy and permaculture).

Just exactly what is the appropriate role for alcohol fuels is an old, but ongoing discussion, and it has been known to get heated at times. The Tortilla Rebellion in Mexico, catastrophic overplanting of maize and soya, gene splicing by multinationals for cellulosic substrate alchemy, forest clearing worldwide -- these are serious concerns.

Recently, the U.S. Senate passed legislation to increase ethanol production by giving generous subsidies to the U.S. farm belt. The Act mandates the use of 15 billion gallons of biofuels annually by 2015 and 36 billion gallons by 2022 (up from 8.5 billion subsidized gallons now). Nearly all of this would be corn ethanol, taken from grain stocks, with the stover burned or plowed in. Beginning in 2016, the government would ask farmers to add the corn stover, along with switch grass or wood chips, to make annual increases of 3 billion gallons in "cellulosic" ethanol. This legislation passed over the opposition from Big Oil and food manufacturers, but is just the kind of massively soil-destroying, economically bankrupting, petro-addicted type of legislation that was ideal for harvesting votes in the Iowa caucuses.

By showing how ethanol can be ethically produced in combination with food, soil, carbon sequestration and other objectives for healthy system design, Blume provides a rescue remedy for our planet at a time when it could scarcely be needed more.

Loek Boonkamp, who studies agricultural trade and markets for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, estimates replacing just 10 percent of the world's current petroleum use with biofuels would consume about 30 percent of all the grain, oilseed and sugar produced in the U.S., Canada, the European Union and Brazil, not to mention a huge volume of water. Blume takes Boonkamp's argument head-on.

The US has 1500 million acres of agricultural land and uses 70 million -- about 5 percent -- for corn. Mesquite covers 70 million acres of desert land. Harvesting mesquite pods would yield more alcohol than corn without any inputs of soil, fertilizer or water. The US could achieve similar yields from the lawn clippings coming off suburbia on any given Saturday (30 million acres at last count). There are dozens of these examples in the book. Moreover, one has to consider how much of that corn produced in the US is actually used as a food, and how much is used in floor wax, plywood, crayons and other products.

But then, why use farmland at all? Why not harvest ethanol from cattails or dried seaweed? Willows and bamboo planted on berms separating long canals of cattails, with greywater, spent mash and fermentation carbon dioxide returned to the roots could yield 10,000 gallons of ethanol per acre.

The Chinese are getting 4.8 dry tons per acre off seaweed from coastal waters, and the Vietnamese, who farm shrimp from April to September, harvest algae from the same shallow lagoons and estuaries the rest of the year. Kelp grown on nets can cover hundreds of acres of ocean and provide bread flours, carrageenan, agar and other ethanol co-products while also restoring health to over-nitrified "dead zones." Blume estimates the energy return on marine ethanol is on the order of 15 to 1, significantly better than current returns on petroleum exploration and production.

Alcohol Can Be A Gas! goes beyond helping the mechanically adept convert their internal combustion engines to ethical fuels. It provides clear operating manuals for the farmers who will grow those fuels, the fermenters who will build and operate the stills, and the artisans who will create and trade myriad co-products.

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE Book to D.I.Y. or Smarten Up., November 28, 2007

By	I. Crawford - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

NOTE: I wrote this review in 2007, just after getting the book. I said I didn't work for the author, etc., and that was quite true...until recently. Now, in 2009, I've recently gotten a job with the author's company, helping people put ethanol conversion kits in their vehicles.
It would not be honest to fail to note that fact, so there's your update. Here is the original review. I have not edited anything from its original wording.

This book showed me EXACTLY WHAT TO DO.
Let me start by saying that I don't work for the author, he doesn't work for me, he doesn't owe me any money, and I haven't invested in any of his companies.
Onward: this book shows you exactly how to produce your own ethanol or buy it at the pump and switch your vehicles from OIL..also known as gasoline.
After reading the book, I know how to make ethanol on a farm...and NOT FROM CORN... but I learned how to make ethanol right in the city.
I found that the book shows you how ethanol can make you money in a business or save you money when you just put it in your tank.
I guess if you just want to read about the topic, this is the definitive reference book on the subject. The book has, uh, let's see: history, politics, business models, business strategies, agricultural analysis, agricultural advice and techniques, engineering, design, strategies for succeeding with zoning and permits, environmental analyses galore, and everything you could possibly want to know on the topic.
I mainly stuck to the D.I.Y. stuff, but his documentation is superb and overwhelming on all those other topics.
As to the vehicle conversions, I speak as an ASE-Certified mechanic and one who has a college education IN Auto Repair, and I can say that the instruction in this book is superb. For example, it's a thousand times easier to understand than "Auto Repair For Dummies".
This book could save our once-proud but ever-weakening country. I urge you to get the book, read the book, and use the knowledge it will give you.
Remember, the day may soon come when ethanol fuel is the only choice you have. What will you do if the book is out of print? You can make things better for yourself with this book immediately, but I also recommend that everyone should have this book on the shelf and at the ready, in case that day comes.