Posted on 03/11/2009 12:45:49 PM PDT by AT7Saluki
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says the government should move quickly to increase the amount of ethanol allowed in gasoline.
Ethanol producers asked the Environmental Protection Agency last week to increase the amount of ethanol that refiners can blend with gasoline from a maximum of 10 percent to 15 percent, which could boost the demand for the renewable fuel additive by as much as 6 billion gallons a year. However, automobile and small engine manufacturers have said there's no certainty yet that such an increase will not harm engines and fuel lines.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
It doesn’t take anywhere NEAR a gallon of diesel to plant, spray and harvest enough corn for one gallon of ethanol.
I have no idea where these nonsensical numbers come from, but they’re all easily refuted with USDA information - that you paid for, with your tax dollars.
Here’s the facts:
You get about 2.5 gallons of ethanol from ONE bushel of corn.
A fairly typical yield for corn is now about 150 bu/acre.
Assuming a 140HP tractor, we’re using about 8 gallons of diesel per hour at rated throttle.
Let’s assume a 8-row corn planter and nominal planting speeds (of about 5MPH). An eight-row planter can do 10+ acres in one hour, so we’re talking about one gallon of diesel per acre of corn planted.
OK, now let’s assume about 50 acres/hour on a sprayer, we’re in there for another 0.16 gallons of diesel to spray the crop (or make a pass with fertilizer over the ground pre-season).
Now come harvest time, we need a combine. Figure we go with a moderately modern combine, about 250 to 275HP. Let’s say we’re in there for 13 gal/hr of diesel and we’re getting about 10 ac/hr again, so we’re in there for 1.3 gal of diesel per acre.
So total diesel to get the crop into the ground, sprayed and harvested it 1+0.16+1.3 = 2.46, call it 2.5 gallons.
From that we get 150 bu/acre (on average), which gets us about 300 gallons of ethanol.
When you’re done fermenting the corn, you can then turn around and still feed the distiller’s grain to cattle and swine. They gain just as well on DG’s as they did on corn, and you get reduced incidents of acidosis.
Now, the hygroscopic effects of ethanol, there you have a rock-solid point. It does do that.
On the flip side, however, you have a benefit that the US auto companies are not using: ethanol has a MUCH higher octane rating than gasoline - like 129. If we could assume all new cars were going to run on a 20% ethanol blend, we could increase the compression ratios in auto engines from about 9.5 (max) to about 11:1, which would give us a 15%+ (or thereabouts) increase in efficiency. Oliver Tractor did research in the 50’s on a farm tractor engine that had a 12.5:1 compression ratio and they found that they reduced fuel consumption by over 25% - but they couldn’t get the oil companies interested in making the required 125 octane fuel past the end of WWII — high octane was used in the blown/turbo’ed piston prop fighters of WWII, but the oil companies wanted to go back to 85 to 95 octane fuel ASAP after the war. Old autos in the US used to have pitifully low compression ratios - and so did ag tractor engines (like 6.5:1).
Ferrari has a test car where they increased the compression ratio - on E85, it generates more HP and better mileage than the same engine with straight gas. The secret to efficiency in a recip piston engine is high compression ratios, which give larger power extraction on the downstroke.
That’s true — and Napier does a good job dissecting the incorrect numbers on ethanol being more efficient in terms of energy extraction costs than gasoline.
That’s what people just can’t get their heads around — that oil is an incredibly convenient, *dense* source of energy. I don’t care whether we’re talking coal liquifaction, ethanol, whatever — NONE of these alternatives are going to be as ‘dense’ or convenient to our economy as light, sweet crude. If there were something that were more dense & convenient than crude oil (and all associated refined products), we’d be using it by now, because the drive for economic efficiency would have led us there by now.
What people need to get through their heads is that all alternatives to oil require higher costs - somewhere in the mix - than crude->gasoline/diesel. ALL of them. We’ve put a lot of money into creating a low-cost fuel in oil, and nowhere near as much investment or research into any other alternative.
Add to this the fact that we keep getting distracted by the agendas of idiots who think that because they have a liberal arts degree and can write/speak well, that we should listen to their ideas on energy production. We’d be much further along if only the government would say “OK, all of you who are not engineers, STFU and sit down. Now, all of you who *are* engineers, please go solve this problem with the following parameters... (list ‘em, 1, 2, 3...) and get back to us at regular intervals to report progress.”
But no, that’s not how it works. Because if it did work that way, we wouldn’t have pissed umpteen hundreds of millions of bucks down the drain by chasing such nonsense as electric cars...
It’s also dissolving rubber components in 2-cycle engines. My neighbor just had to have his chainsaw fixed...the culprit——ethanol——eating away at the gaskets and seals.
When we see a state like California bankrupt themselves out of a perverted set of misguided principles when they could be pumping crude and natural gas, it is beyond comprehension - even immoral.
The high performance MX and sport bikes feature compression ratios of 11:1 to 12:1 and water cooling to squeeze out extra performance. My dad's 1966 Olds Delta 88 had a high compression 455 engine. We had to feed it premium. When the quality of gas dropped, he had to sell it. It would "diesel" with octane levels that were too low. He had to sell the Olds 98 for the same reason.
Bringing back high compression engines will require adding the infrastructure (gas stations) to support them. If it's not there, they will sit on the lot.
My 69 VW Beetle was towed here from Ore-gone around 2003, and has been parked since. It had the heads recut for unleaded, and then CC’d when it was rebuilt a few years previous to that. Didn’t have any problems with the rubber, but I was avoiding alcohol fuels. Here, I can’t find ANY unbastardized fuel.
I hadn’t needed to use it, but plan on a throrough flushing, and a starter/selenoid replacement this coming summer. I kind of miss driving it, and twice the milage of the Expedition for running in to town.
Or 15% ethanol?
I haven't found anyplace to buy gasoline without 10% ethanol around Atlanta. The drop in mileage in my 96 Lincoln Town Car is more than 1 mpg, as best I can determine.
I haven't run any brake specific fuel consumption tests on the engine, but it was getting between 19.7 and 20 mpg without the corn liquor, and now is between 18.5 and 18.7 mpg with gasoline including 10% hiccup inducer.
Of course mileage will be substantially worse with 15% ethyl alcohol, if the engine will even stand up to that percentage.
My guess is that CAFE tests will be performed with a rigidly prescribed gasoline formula having no trace of alcohol. gasoline.
One too many “gasoline”s in that last paragraph.
The NG is used in two steps - heating the mash for the distillation, and drying the mash afterwards to make dried distiller’s grains as a by-product.
The problem with NG as a auto fuel is that you can achieve liquid state only at cryo temps, and you need a cryo tank on your car. You can see that his is a non-starter... so we’re left with highly compressed gas.
Well, the downside here is that CNG (even compressed to some very high pressures —like around 5,000 psi) is a very “fluffy” fuel per unit of work. Here’s an example of what would be an economical auto for urban commuting:
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Drives/FirstDrives/articleId=107568
200 miles and you’re looking for a fuel station. Most gas-powered autos will do 350 miles.
That’s the other thing that needs to be spelled out to the anti-ethanol folks here:
The EPA and the environmental loons WILL demand that some oxygenate agent still be in the fuel. MTBE was the previous oxygenate in gasoline. It was removed because it causes very rapid leaching of oil-based chemicals (gasoline or diesel) through the ground down into the water table.
So along comes ethanol, which was added at the 10% level as an oxygenate, not an octane booster, nor merely as an alternative fuel. Purely as an oxygenate. Above 10% and now we’re talking of using ethanol to displace gasoline (in the eyes of the EPA).
That’s what I was referring to with my remark about the investment we’ve made in gas/diesel/crude as a fuel. Part of that investment is refining capacity, part is your corner gas station, part of it is the tanker cars for rails and trucks, then there is the extensive pipeline network all over North America.
eg, part of what kills ethanol on a cost basis is that you can’t send it through the existing petroleum pipeline networks.
You don’t need any additional infrastructure.
You just add ethanol to the fuel. Octane boost galore. That’s what I was saying - if you could assume 20% ethanol minimum in all gasoline, you’d be able to achieve an octane boost to bring back higher-compression engines.
Once you move into places like Idaho, eastern NV, UT, WY, MT, etc — you notice that the low octane fuel is 85, not 87. Runs great in engines that will run it.
BTW — your complaint about lower mileage is true of high octane fuels with toluene too. In the old days when you could get 100+ octane gasoline, you’d get worse mileage in a low compression engine where you were not getting the benefit of proper operation of a high compression engine.
Alcohol-boy might be the AgSec, but his paycheck comes from ALL the American people. And the percentage of that larger group that wants this to happen is in single digits.
bookmark
Nope; I meant Vilsack. He used to be governor of Iowa.
Your’e right, Vile-Sacka = Sec Ag.
Sybel-aholus is slated for Sec H&HS...but is also pro-Greenie/pro-alchohol, and very corny.
That’s what confuzzoled me.
The Bum Rap on Biofuels
American Thinker | 5-13-08 | Herbert Meyer
Posted on 05/14/2008 3:59:06 AM PDT by Renfield
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2015711/posts
Campaign to vilify ethanol revealed
ethanol producer Magazine | May 16, 2008 | By Kris Bevill
Posted on 05/17/2008 9:22:13 AM PDT by Kevin J waldroup
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2017389/posts
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