Posted on 07/23/2008 7:25:11 PM PDT by neverdem
The ethanol industry, until recently a golden child that got favorable treatment from Washington, is facing a critical decision on its future.
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is asking the Environmental Protection Agency to temporarily waive regulations requiring the oil industry to blend ever-increasing amounts of ethanol into gasoline. A decision is expected in the next few weeks.
Mr. Perry says the billions of bushels of corn being used to produce all that mandated ethanol would be better suited as livestock feed than as fuel.
Feed prices have soared in the last two years as fuel has begun competing with food for cropland.
“When you find yourself in a hole, you have to quit digging,” Mr. Perry said in an interview. “And we are in a hole.”
His request for an emergency waiver cutting the ethanol mandate to 4.5 billion gallons, from the 9 billion gallons required this year and the 10.5 billion required in 2009, is backed by a coalition of food, livestock and environmental groups.
Farmers and ethanol and other biofuel producers are lobbying to keep the existing mandates.
“This is a critically important decision that will determine the future of biofuels in this country,” said Brent Erickson, a lobbyist at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, which supports the ethanol mandates. “There will be a dramatic reaction from whoever loses.”
The E.P.A. received 15,000 public comments on the Texas proposal, roughly split between those in favor and those against...
--snip--
Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, accused the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the group leading the public relations fight against ethanol, of “treasonous” acts...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The first link is especially enlightening about the food to fuel/starvation myth.
When people start using the class warfare arguement about the poor and hungry vs prosperity and capitalistic profiteering, it uncovers their true motives. Socialist utopia is the driving force behind the exploration and use of any energy form. Controlling people is the underlaying motive behind the global warming/ energy use link. Anyone who profits from energy production of any form is evil and damages the environment, or causes people to sacrifice food for fuel blah blah blah.....
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!!! FALSE !!!
by MORE than a factor of ten. When you're that far off in one of your points, one you highlight, why bother with even addressing the others?
>>This is true, but we can’t burn coal in our cars.
We all the time have commentators equating transportation energy with electrical generation energy, when the two are but loosely coupled.
It’s a major problem in the public energy debate, and it has been going on for a long time, at least back to the Carter era.
“Also, ethanol contains oxygen, which lowers the demand for oxygen during combustion...”
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You’re thinking is backwards. Since oxygen is ALREADY in combination, there is less energy available in the EtOH since it is partially oxidized already. The oxygen in EtOH is a liability, not an asset.
Whether it should be used SHOULD be left entirely to the marketplace. The multi-billions and the regulations now being used to encourage its development should never have come into being, and ought to be dropped immeiately.
Prohibition didn't start until 1920. We had quite a few refineries and gasoline stations providing the fuel for cars then. Ethanol "refineries" were not producing much of anything beyond medicinal and drinking.
OIL PRODUCTION IN 1920.; 2,500,000 More Gallons of Gasoline Were Produced Daily Than in 1919.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B01E7DA113FE432A25750C1A9659C946095D6CF
It would be interesting to know if the sequence was:
1) Alcohol-run Model T built.
2) Prohibition.
3) Model T forced to switch to gasoline.
That was the writer’s contention. I’m not familiar enough with early 20th century history to confirm, or refute that.
If that was the sequence, it is interesting.
It was not.
Model T: 'Universal Car' Sparked Gasoline Demand
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92216092
What is the history of gasoline?
http://stason.org/TULARC/vehicles/gasoline-faq/4-3-What-is-the-history-of-gasoline.html
Energy Kid's Page, What is the History of Gasoline?
http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/non-renewable/gasoline.html#gasoline%20history
Thanks! There’s a good amount of it on FR as well, either due to folks not thinking it through, or laziness, or knee-jerk reflex, or DU troll activity.
“When you’re that far off in one of your points, one you highlight, why bother with even addressing the others?”
Why Bother??
Because A lot of people have DIED so you can drive your Escalade and that cost alone is incalculable when added to the cost of imported oil vs domestic oil, ethanol or whatever the alternative of the day is.
Because you know that ALL COSTS HAVE TO BE FACTORED IN when comparing imported oil to domestic oil or the alternatives.
Burying your head into the oil sands of denial is non productive. Chronic complainers like to diss the solutions in favor of finger pointing. Since we now import 70% of our oil compared to 30%, 35 years ago I see your contribution to energy independence has worked flawlessly /sarc
Too funny.
Racers use methanol, not ethanol. But even methanol is superior to gasoline. Otherwise, why would a racer use it?
They don’t use it to handicap themselves.
It’s common knowledge that the old time moonshiners used to burn moonshine in their modified cars to make them go faster.
Indy has used ethanol for 3 years.
Well, I was thinking about drag racing. They’ve used methanol for decades.
nope.
My thinking is just fine and nearly flawless. Your thinking is confused, however. Look up the word “oxygenate”. Here, I’ll even help you...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygenate
Congress should repeal the Corn Laws. If all the farmland in the US was used to grow corn, and all that corn was converted to ethanol, it would only meet about 10% of our fuel needs. Food prices would be sent into orbit around Jupiter, causing a political revolution.
The Corn Laws are already inflating food prices, and the energy needed to convert corn to ethanol makes the entire process counterproductive.
I’d be careful about running more than 15% ethanol in a non-flex fuel car. The differences between a standard car and a flex fuel car is that a flex fuel car...
Has no rubber in contact with the fuel
has no uncoated aluminum in contact with the fuel(liquid form)
has no uncoated magnesium in contact with the fuel
has no uncoated steel in contact with the fuel, unless it’s stainless.
Also, the fuel pump is different, but I don’t remember the special characteristics required for ethanol.
Traditionally, fuel lines are a combination of rubber hoses and uncoated steel lines. Carburetors are aluminum. If you are going to run high concentrations of ethanol, the rubber fuel lines must have a plastic or nylon liner in them. The steel lines must be stainless. The gas tanks must be lined with something or be made of stainless or some kind of plastic.
Ethanol causes corrosion and it somehow causes rubber to deteriorate.
It’s illegal to sell ethanol straight and the only difference in methanol is that one is poisonous and the other isn’t.
It’s also expensive, in 1954 when we were paying 65 cents/ gallon to Shell Chemical by the drum for alcohol, gas at the gas station was 14 cents/gal.
As far as racing you have to burn large quantities to get the HP compared to gas and even then the difference between straight alcohol and gas isn’t that much, that’s why we always ran 90% nitromethane when drag racing or at the lakes/Bonneville..
They tried gas in the champ cars but when they crashed the black smoke was so thick that no one could negotiate the wreckage so Cart outlawed it and they went back to slcohol.
Cost per mile alcoholis extremely expensive compared to gas and to run alcohol straight you would have to have a gas tanl 1/3 larger to go the same distance.
Ethanol and methanol are not even close. Scroll down to the chart that shows energy content and octane ratings for various fuels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol
The chart shows regualar gasoline having a minimum octane rating of 91. THat is a very misleading number. 91 is the octane rating of gasoline at the pump AFTER octane boosting additives are added. Pure gasoline, aka white gas, aka coleman lantern fuel, aka campstove gas, is actually more like 80 to 85 octane, and can be even lower.
As you can see, pure ethanol is 129 octane WITHOUT any octane boosting additives.
Surely you know the significance of octane ratings and the effect it has on potential power output of an engine, don’t you?
You are making the mistake of guaging efficiency of an IC engine in terms of miles per gallon of fuel consumed. That is VERY unscientific and totally incorrect. Efficiency of an IC engine is correctly measured by counting the BTU content of the fuel input and measuring the work extracted from the ouput shaft of the engine. The ratio of energy out/energy in is the efficiency. MPG only works when comparing two engines that are burning IDENTICAL fuel.
Measure the efficiency the correct way and you will see that an engine optimized for ethanol is superior to an engine optimized for gasoline.
The is an alcohol class in drag racing and there is a top fuel class(or nitro) THey are not the same thing. The alcohol class does not use nitro. iirc.
It is not illegal to sell ethanol straight. It is illegal to sell drinkable ethanol without a beverage stamp and tax to the BATF.
The BATF does issue distillation permits to people that wish to burn pure drinkable ethanol in vehicles without needing to pay the beverage tax.
There are ways.
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