E85 Ethanol

[Cheesehead]

What is good or bad about E85 ethanol? I hear alot of bad, is there any good points?

Cheese

[kevthebassman]

I hear tell that it's no kind of real solution to our energy problem, not efficient enough to produce or use for it to replace gasoline.  'Course I'm no expert in thermodynamics.

[Mikey]

Cheese - I think the E85 is 85% ethanol and that stuff can only be burned in multi-fuel engines designed to effectively burn it.  The E100 that will be coming out will be safe to use in all cars, and motorcycles too, I'm sure. 

As to whether it is an cost effective alternative to fossil fuels - maybe not the most cost effective but I think it is a good start to help us wean away from foreign oil.  There are more cost effective bio-fuel products than corn; beets are one and so is sugar cane.  Any food product high in natural sugar (fructose, I believe) is good for fuel.  I guess that means that anything you can make 'shine' from is good to burn. 

One of my neighbors makes his own shine and the last time he went somewhere for,ummm, either parts or somethin', he learned that commercial corn and produce growers can make their own bio-fuels and that they are advised to add a coloring agent to any fuels they use or mix with leaded fuels to prevent, ummmm, accidental ingestion...

Ya know, it is interesting.  We hear, and usually rail against, the incredible amounts of money oil company execs get paid, especially when we have to pay $3.50 or better for a gallon of gas.  Yeah, they make a lot but the government makes more.  For every gallon I buy I pay about $1.50 in taxes - that's about $2.00 per gallon without all those taxes.  About $1.00 is federal tax and the rest is state based.  Somethings gotta change, even if it means smellin' like a distillery drivin' down the road........... Mikey.

[Moss88hunter]

E-85 is recommended for only flex fuel vehicles. It is like 103 octane where as the others are 87, 89 , and 93. You can run it occasionally in your vehicle without any problems. It will actually clean out your engine like a fuel additive. The problem is it actually burns too clean, from what I understand it will rot out rubber hoses with excessive use. You can spend a small amount to replace the hoses and can run E-85 with no problem. With E-85 even though it is cheaper it gets worse gas mileage due to the high octane. The question is would you rather pay the middle east or American farmers. Even as expensive as the gas is today 46% of the gas is mixed with ethanol (E-10). I you want to look more into this look at www.EthanolFacts.com.

Evan

[kevthebassman]

I think that the real problem lies in the production process.  I'm told that producing ethanol fuel is incredibly inefficient.  You have to run farm equipment to plant and harvest the corn, fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides to make it grow, then you have to use fresh, clean water (a very scarce thing in some locales) to ferment it, and natural gas to distill it.  On top of that it has to be transported around in tankers the same as regular gasoline.

Also, let's not forget that we would have to produce enough of it to satisfy our massive thirst, and that it is not any more "green" than gasoline.

No, I don't think that ethanol is how we're going to get our energy in the future.  We need to get more nuclear power plants online and use that energy to power electrolysis plants to produce hydrogen fuel.  If we can get the hydrogen fuel working, it will be far superior than ethanol.

[clodbuster]

Moss88 nailed it.  Would you rather spend your hard earned dollar for american produced fuel or a-rab gas?  Alcohol fuels burn very clean or high oxygenate as they say.  After distilling the leftover stuff called distillers grains is marvy feed for cattle so not that much is lost in the process.  soybeans produce diesel fuel that most farmers around here burn in their tractors.  It does smell like they are baking cookies when you stand beside their idling tractors.  The deal is, this is a stop-gap until totally new fuel sources are developed.
France seems to have it going on with their nuke plants providing a majority of their electricity.  If the frogs tolerate it why can't we?

[kevthebassman]

We need to do something to get off the Arab oil.  Then we could leave them the hell alone and quit spending trillions of dollars of taxpayer money building their nations for them.

[billy_56081]

The question needs to be would you rather drive or starve? I live in Southern MN in the middle of the farm belt. Ethanol production is just at a beginning. The prices of commodities are rising to all time highs. Many many livestock farmers are not refilling their barns because of feed prices soaring making it unprofitable to raise their livestock. Watch those meat prices n the future. Another downside to ethanol is the huge quantities of water needed to make it. If you do not need to eat or drink to survive by all means support ethanol.

[Moss88hunter]

Here is a couple more facts:

1.Ethanol production results in a net energy gain—producing 67 percent more energy than it takes to grow and process the corn into ethanol.

2.Ethanol production in the U.S. hit a record 4.86 billion gallons in 2006—nearly double the amount produced in 2000.

3.One bushel of corn yields about 2.8 gallons of ethanol.

4.A typical 40 million gallon ethanol plant creates 32 full-time jobs and generates an additional $1.2 million in tax revenue for a community.

Evan

[Cheesehead]

I understand ethanol is also made from "switch grass".

Cheese


Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) is a warm season grass and is one of the dominant species of the central North American tallgrass prairie. It can be found in remnant prairies, along roadsides, pastures and as an ornamental plant in gardens. Other common names for it include tall panic grass, Wobsqua grass, lowland switchgrass, blackbent, tall prairiegrass, wild redtop and thatchgrass. In his 2006 State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush touted switchgrass as an efficient and environmentally friendly biofuel that could reduce the USA's dependence on oil.

[torpedoman]

bad idea. When the pollution of growing the corn (fertlizer and its production) harvesting it  converting it to alcohol the pollution factor is greater than oil- bad idea- alochol has less energy per gallon than gasoiline., your going to have to use more to get were your going.- bad idea-your burning FOOD crop prices will go up this will drive up your grocery bill. it is a feel good idea from your leaders that are too stupid to let wander around by themself.

[kevthebassman]

I think that 67% figure is high.  The ones I've seen have been 25-45%. 

The problem, as I see it, is going to be water.  Corn needs to be irrigated, and it needs a LOT of water to be distilled into ethanol.  If we were to switch over to all ethanol, we would be using a whole lot more water than we already do, and we're depleting the aquifers already.  The Ogallala Aquifer under Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, etc is going to be gone in 30 years at the current pace.

3.One bushel of corn yields about 2.8 gallons of ethanol.

Here's the problem though.  In 2006, we grew 11.1 Billion bushels of corn, total.   11.1 X 2.8 = 31 billion gallons of ethanol fuel if we turned 100% of our corn crop into ethanol. 

In 2005 we used 385 million US liquid gallons of gasoline each day.  385,000,000 X 365 = 140,525,000,000  That's 140 billion gallons of gasoline.

140 billion gallons minus 31 billion gallons still leaves us with a 109 billion (with a B) gallon shortfall.  Ethanol isn't going to solve our problems.  It isn't even going to come close if we plan on eating any of our corn or feeding any of it to our livestock.  Lets also remember that with more of our potential food being put into our gas tanks, food prices are going to climb.

http://www.grains.org/page.ww?section=Barley%2C+Corn+%26+Sorghum&name=Corn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_usage_and_pricing

[Badnews Bob]

It'll cost alot more in the long run, Look at how many things are made out of corn, your house is full of it, cereals, pop bottles, sweeteners in just about everything,and lots more. If we start makeing alot of E85 all of those things will increase in price, You will be paying for it at the grocery.

 Also it takes twice as much of it to get the same power as gasoline, A lot of guys I race with run ethanol in their race cars, they are very powerful and run well but they use twice as much fuel as a gas car running about the same times, they also require special hoses and seals in the fuel system and more frequent oil changes because the fuel gets by the rings and into the crankcase.  It work but it will not save us anything.  Same as electric cars, they work but seeing as most of the power plants are coal fired and the batteries are toxic waste when they wear out... You don't save anything.

[billy_56081]

I'm not sure about the energy in/ energy out figure you are touting. Stanford university did a study one it and it was pretty much a push and that the pollution cased by ethanol is worse than the pollution caused by running gasoline.

 http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/april18/ethanol-041807.html

Now whether these studies are flawed or basically tuned the way whomever paid the bill for the study wanted them to, I can't say but if it is only half as bad as these studies say it is a worry. And if nothing else ethanol production is going to impact your pocket book through your food bill in a huge way in the near future. Livestock producers are already cutting back production because of high feed prices and low meat prices. Simple supply and demand economics will rule the day.