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Hybrid Vehicles Ethanol - E85 FlexFuel The Inconvenient Truth About Ethanol
921 messages, Last post on Oct 07, 2009 at 10:53 AM
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Replying to: tfb27 (Jun 14, 2008 5:17 am) Henry Ford desinged his first cars to run on alcohol. This is hardly a new industry. When someone comes up with a better plan than ethanol I might listen. To destroy our country from within just to keep from giving OPEC money is counter productive. And now with weather and flooding in the mid-west, how reliable is that ethanol crop going to be? And at what cost to other food crops are we going to grow corn? The list goes on and on.
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Replying to: tfb27 (Jun 14, 2008 5:17 am) That may be the ONLY benefit to Corn ethanol. However if you are a student of recent history you know what happened the last time we had the same government manipulation of the ethanol business. It was decided in the late 1970s that producing ethanol with corn would be a good way to wean ourselves off of Saudi oil. We the people financed the building of about 110 ethanol stills in the Midwest. Today 90 of those stills are gone or in stages of rusting away. Corn Ethanol as a fuel is impractical now just as it was then. The same fate befell Brazil with sugar cane ethanol. The sugar became more valuable than the ethanol and they abandoned the stuff. It was even worse in Brazil as they had sold 1000s of cars that would ONLY run on ethanol. Those people were out of luck when they could not get the stuff. Back to today. We are mandated by Congress to have a minimum of 2.9% ethanol in our gas across the country. No problem in the Midwest where it is processed. CA the largest user of gas has a real problem. We have to ship every gallon of that crap from the Midwest by truck. Trucks that cannot run on ethanol. Our gas prices jumped immediately so you could have a job in the Midwest. It was Politics as usual. The only real money being made is by ADM and Verasun. They have a guaranteed profit with no risk. We are backing all the loans to build those stills. So when the Congress comes to the realization that we cannot continue in this corn ethanol madness. Guess who gets stuck with those loans. The Tax payers, you and I. When they finally come up with a way to make ethanol from waste or switchgrass or whatever. We will be subsidizing that also and the corn stills will be worthless. If your town was one of the ones that benefited from this scam, save your money because it is NOT long to be. Your corn still will be rusting away like so many others, and the workers will be scrambling for the few jobs at WalMart. And CORN is NOT a good diet for cattle. I am sure they are coming up with some new antibiotic to kill whatever problem that arises from feeding them distillers grain. |
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Replying to: jkinzel (Jun 14, 2008 5:53 am) At around 1900 there was enough moonshine to run the few cars being built. With 235 million cars on the road it would take more land than we have to grow our own fuel. Worst part is with us using every bit of land we have for corn ethanol it will not be enough to reach the mandate. Cut the tariffs on Brazilian ethanol and drop the subsidy on corn ethanol and let the market decide if they want the stuff. Save the Gulf of Mexico from the Iowa Corn farmers fertilizer. Oh I forgot. Their crop will be going down the river to the Gulf this year. Maybe it is a sign???
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Replying to: tfb27 (Jun 14, 2008 5:13 am) EPA has a F150 4WD FFV getting 10 mpg with E85 and 15 mpg with RUG. The 2WD F150 is 11mpg. Where did you get 12.5? What is also interesting is that EPA has adjusted the price of gasoline up to near the current level, but they did not adjust the E85. AAA is reporting E85 at $3.562 with an adjusted price of $4.688. While EPA still lists $2.51. From the EPA web site. "Based on 45% highway, 55% city driving, 15000 annual miles and a fuel price of $ 4.04 per gallon of gasoline and $2.51 per gallon of E85 . Use Your Gas Prices & Annual Miles" That little piece of disinformation wouldn't be because the government wants to push ethanol, would it? http://www.ethanolmarket.com/fuelethanol.html Look at the rack prices! They are higher than EPA $2.51 lists for retail. What about the 45 cent a gallon subsidy? It should be phased out. And why are we putting an import tax on ethanol from Brazil? "It means that a 3.5L gas engine made to run on gas can get the same torque with a 3.0L E85 engine to close the gap." You cannot ignore that ethanol does not have the same energy in a gallon as RUG or diesel. Prices being equal, diesel will kick booty. That is especially true in the torque department. I am with gagrice on this one. Producing about 5 billion gallons a year of corn ethanol was OK. But, allowing 15 billion gallons a year of corn subsidized ethanol was stupid. And you may want to go ask the chicken and turkey farmers what they think of the price of corn. Chicken feed is about 70 percent corn. And while the ethanol may help the price of RUG, it does nothing for diesel. You use a lot of diesel to transport ethanol either by truck or train.
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Replying to: avalon02wh (Jun 14, 2008 7:43 am) BINGO I think the market would have done fine without the Feds getting involved. If it is a good alternative, people will produce and sell it. If it has to be subsidized it is questionable. I still don't understand why the tariff on ethanol from Brazil and no tariff on oil from Saudi Arabia or Venezuela or???? That amounts to about $23 per barrel of oil. I thought Brazil was a good neighbor. We treat the enemy better than our neighbor it would seem. |
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Replying to: avalon02wh (Jun 14, 2008 7:43 am) Now corn isn't going to solve the coutries problems. I never said that. What does it do? It gets the ball rolling in this country as far as making vehicles capable, adjusting the infrastructure of fuel and awareness. The mandate is only for 15 billion gal per year from corn, another billion gal per year from cellulose ans an undisclosed 5 bgy (I think this from Brazil when the tariff goes away).
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Replying to: gagrice (Jun 14, 2008 6:05 am) |
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Replying to: tfb27 (Jun 14, 2008 10:59 am) I mostly drive my 99 Ford Ranger FFV PU truck. I would try E85 except the closest station is 35 miles away. Last I checked it was the ONLY station in CA selling E85. That may have changed since then. All I can tell you about Ethanol laced regular is I lose about 2 MPG with E10 that we get forced on us in CA. Let's say we get to 15 billion gallons per year. The very best ratio for Corn Ethanol that I have seen is 1.2 gallons for every gallon of fossil fuel to distill the stuff. So at the very best we will be replacing 2.5 billion gallons of gas. Now take into consideration the less MPG you will gain and it don't leave much to brag about. Unless you are one of the fat cats that are running ADM. In the mean time the price of corn has doubled and the price of tortillas doubles. We have more illegals coming to the USA because they cannot afford the price of corn in Mexico. The Agave farmers have plowed under their crop to grow corn and that leaves us with NO TEQUILA. All to satisfy the greed of a few people in the Midwest. You like a lot of Americans have been mislead into thinking that Ethanol will save us from OPEC. It is just a big LIE.
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Replying to: tfb27 (Jun 14, 2008 10:59 am) Theoretically, you're correct. Practically, can't happen, because the engines must still be able to run regular gas, and couldn't with a 12.5:1 ratio. This is an oft-repeated, false arguement for E85. Even CU mentioned it in their article condemning E85. Can't imagine why. |
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Replying to: tfb27 (Jun 14, 2008 10:59 am) Cooking rice, I guess that is a feature I'm not familiar with. Let me check the owners manual........ No, there is nothing in the owners manual about cooking rice.  Maybe the people that built the car in Georgetown, Kentucky, USA forgot to put it in.  "And I need E85 to 20% less costly than gas and it is a wash." It is not going to be that cheap if corn gets to $7.25 a bushel. http://redtrailenergyllc.com/index.php/commodity_bids/ "Record corn prices pushed up by flooding in the Midwest have forced five small to mid-sized U.S. ethanol plants to shut and output of the biofuel could be slowed for months, a Citi research note said on Friday. " http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080613/bs_nm/ethanol_profits_closures_dc Ethanol plants were built when corn was a lot cheaper. They are not going to last long at $7 a bushel. Historic Average Monthly North Dakota Corn Prices ($/Bushel) Per Data Supplied by the National Agricultural Statistics Service January February March April May June July August September October November December 2005 $1.91 $1.64 $1.79 $1.85 $1.86 $1.87 $1.87 $1.82 $1.77 $1.73 $1.67 $1.73 2006 $1.72 $1.80 $1.84 $1.90 $1.95 $1.89 $1.88 $1.89 $1.99 $2.23 $2.42 $2.63 2007 $2.92 $3.07 $3.11 $2.92 $3.04 $3.33 $3.27 $3.16 $3.19 $2.97 $3.08 $3.47 2008 $3.66 $4.40 $4.57 Future forecast 2009 $10.00 September, 2009 - 75 % of all the ethanol plants close. 2010 $3.75 |
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