The Behind-the-Scenes Struggle Over Ethanol

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Having recently completed a road trip where I could accurately compare fuel economy with different fuel, I'm enraged to see that the garbage E10 that has been quietly foisted on us doesn't drop my fuel economy some piddling 3% like the agrigiants claim -- it reduces it between 10 and 13 percent in real world driving.
If you want to make E10 available, fine. But it should be available as a CHOICE, not quietly snuck in as the only option available anywhere. Ironically, in the corn belt, I found that every station offered *both* varieties of fuel. If you wanted real gas, you just paid a little more and you got it.
I guess where they produce this garbage, they know full well the real cost of using it.

Jared K. of LA 1:02AM June 12, 2009

All the politics, enviro-hype and petro-propaganda aside:
I lost 2 mpg with the addition of 10% ethanol to my local fuel supply. It now takes 22.8 gallons of fuel to cover the same distance as 20.0 gallons of 100% gasoline used to cover, this is a 13% reduction in the efficiency of my engine to displace 10% of the fuel.
With ethanol I have to purchase 2.8 additional gallons of fuel for the same distance traveled and I now burn .5 more gallons of 100% gasoline to do it.
Really great for both the environment and my pocket book. Way to go Washington Idiocracy!

C Smith of TX 6:30PM December 27, 2008

can food waste be used as a feedstock ?

bill mizrahi of CA 4:30PM December 26, 2008

The biggest problem in our discourse of alternative energy solutions is that many are asking the wrong question. The question is not "what is THE solution?" The question is "what ARE the solutionS?"
Ethanol is, and will be, part of the larger solution. We have the resources, the technology, and the latter is getting better every day.
A common misPERCEPTION is that ETHANOL = CORN. People hear ethanol, they see corn, and then they think high food prices and the end of the world... a distorted reality delivered through mass media and further diffused by the misinformed themselves.
So, the question is not whether or not ethanol is the solution. The question is, what else can we do to improve ethanol technologies, and what other renewable energy innovations can we use as well?

Ryan of AR 2:59AM December 13, 2008

I may not be a professor of engineering at a famous university...but i am a perosn. A person wants to live on this earth. The governments are not doing as much as they can to battle this problem. But then again dont you drive to work?...cant u ride a bike or take public transport?...we as people of this planet MUST act to save it, not just leave it and say "oh...cant be bothered"
LETS DO SOMETHING

of 6:10AM December 02, 2008

Gentlemen:
Hexane, pentane, and propylbenzene made from non-food biomass sources are the products of choice, not ethanol. Wood, grass, and high-biomass cane consist of cellulose(glucose), hemicellulose(pentose), lignin(phenylpropane), and chlorophyll(diesel fuel). With the use of a catalyst and the hydrogen produced as a by-product of the SUCRON Process, the cellulose(glucose) is converted into hexane, which is then isomerized into 2,2-dimethylbutane, an 89 octane gasoline at a cost of $1.20 per gallon; the hemicellulose(pentose) is converted into pentane, which is then isomerized into 2-methylbutane, a 99 octane gasoline, and 2,2-dimethylpropane, a 100 octane gasoline at a cost of $1.20 per gallon; the lignin(phenylpropane) is converted into propylbenzene, a 127 octane gasoline additive and chemical feedstock; and the chlorophyll is converted into diesel fuel.
The tremendous amount of biomass available in the southeast United States is sufficient for energy independence and national security. Had this process been extant for the last 15 years, the current social and financial chaos now visiting the world would not be happening.
Jon F. Freeman
President
SUCRON
www.yataheyella@aol.com

Jon F. Freeman of LA 1:48PM November 13, 2008

This year, exports of corn increased by 20% after being flat for years. Corn farmers would export more if they could. There is no shortage of corn. Recently, the cost of a bushel of corn doubled, rising along with numerous other commodities being bought and sold by speculators, including rice, wheat, sugar and soybeans. The escalating cost of transportation fuels to ship corn was a much bigger factor in food prices than the 5 cents per pound that was added to the corn itself. Ship a ton of corn from Iowa to China and see what happens to the price. Now the price of corn is back down to where it was a year ago, but did food prices drop? No, because the raw materials in processed foods represent only a small fraction of the huge overhead cost of the finished products sold in supermarkets.
Almost all the corn we export is Not for human consumption. It is feed corn. Used to produce meat, dairy, and animal products in foreign countries gaining affluence, like China and India. This year, the value of dry distillers grains, a byproduct of corn ethanol, increased dramatically, as foreign demand increased and exports doubled. Again, high protein distillers grains, produced by ethanol refineries, is a feed product that goes toward the production of food. Ten to fifteen percent distillers grains added to the feed of dairy cows increases their milk production by 10 lbs per cow per week. It also puts 10% to 12% more meat on livestock. We produce all the corn suitable for human consumption that the world can stand, and we could produce much more, if the demand was there.
The ethanol industry removes the starch from 25% of the feed corn crop to make ethanol. That’s no great loss in the realm of feeding livestock, because cows are designed to eat grass and do not digest the starch very well anyway. So the industry is taking low value corn starch and converting it into a high value fuel product. And what we have leftover is the more digestible portion of the corn kernel, as animal feed, in the form of high protein distillers grains. Corn oil is another byproduct of ethanol refineries, extracted into food grade or fuel grade value added products.
Ignorant corn ethanol critics make the false assumption that people are starving, because starch is being extracted from feed corn to make ethanol. When in reality, the corn ethanol industry makes a superior feed product that produces more meat, dairy, poultry, fish, and pork, in addition to corn oil and a renewable domestic fuel.

Jeff Baker of AZ 7:33PM November 12, 2008

As a retired engineering professor, I'm very concerned about efficiency. It requires more energy to produce corn ethanol than can be gotten out of it. On the other hand, sugar cane ethanol is very efficient. Brazil makes us look like a third wororld country with their sugar cane ethanol. They produce so much ethanol that they are able to export both ethanol and oil. We don't have enough dugsr cane so our feedstock would have to be sweet sorghum, sugar beets and switch grass. Also, are cars would have to be converted to run on E85.

Don Miles of NM 6:56PM November 12, 2008

Every objection to Ethanol is an objection to industrial farming, not ethanol. Sustainable ethanol can be produced by small companies for $60 a barrel with NO increase in food costs, NO increase in fuel costs, NO nuclear waste questions, NO nitrogen runoff, NO increase in carbon emissions, NO use of farmland for growing feedstocks. Stop spreading oil industry propaganda.

PAblo of IL 9:50AM November 12, 2008

This is Government's solution to the energy crisis. It does not solve the problem but replaces the problem with high fuel costs and high food costs. Typical government solution!
Fix it. Get government out of the way. We have the know how to fix the problem. But our want to has been replaced by anti-energy government telling us oil, gas, nuclear, coal, wind, and solar are bad! The government would rather export American jobs and buy oil from OPEC who support terrorists than produce domestic energy by Americans. Replace those anti-energy politicians with pro-energy legislators immediately. That means Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid must go!

whs806 of TX 6:59AM November 12, 2008