Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 640 pages
- Published by: International Institute for Ecological Agriculture
- Edition: 1st Edition November 1, 2007
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0979043778
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0979043772
-
Book Dimensions:
10.8 x 8.2 x 1.5 inches
- Weighs: 3.4 pounds
Product Review
Everything you wanted to know about alcohol-fuel production but were afraid to ask. More than twenty 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 solutions ranging from home stills to for-profit manufacturing strategies, and builds chapters on detailed charts, graphs, and step-by-step building instructions, giving activist-minded readers the data and resources they need to implement personal and individualized energy solutions. A well-executed, socially conscious, proactive, and rigorous call to action. --Kirkus Discoveries
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 great 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 requirements 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
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 enyclopedia 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 thirty 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."
Reader ReviewsI 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!
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