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You are right on the falsehood of ethanol being useful for emissions control in automobiles. If anyone asks me “how to get farmers to get ethanol out of our gas tanks” I tell them the real culprit here isn’t the farmers, it is the EPA and the environmentalists.

The whole sorry episode of how we arrived at ethanol in our tanks is thus:

1. EPA decides that smog is caused (in part) by unburnt fuel in open-cycle or carbureted auto engines. To this end, they decide that adding an “oxygenate” to the fuel (a substance that has an abundance of oxygen molecules in excess of the carbon and hydrogen molecules that could eat up all the oxygen on their own, leaving the surplus of O’s for use in the combustion of gasoline) is desired.

2. The first oxygenate is MTBE, what was effectively a waste by-product the refiners had laying about in oil production.

3. ChemE’s and hydrologists tell the EPA to NOT go down this road, as MTBE is highly volatile and VERY mobile in soil. If you have a tank leak of (eg, diesel), the diesel tends to reach an equilibrium in the soil and stay relatively immobile. Pour some MTBE on top of that spill from 30 years ago and *straight* down it goes, into the water table. The ChemE’s and hydrologists told the EPA and environmentalists this in the early 90’s, to no avail. MTBE starts getting blended into fuels in urban areas, starting in the home of all envirowhacko nonsense, California.

4. Over the years, the predictions of ground water contamination come true - in spades. Google (or otherwise search) for “MTBE” and “ground water.” Prepare to be shocked.

5. So the EPA starts casting about for a oxygenate that has less (not “no” but “less”) mobility in the soil. American farmers, who at that time were suffering under crushing low commodity prices, step forward and say “How about ethanol? We have this HUGE surplus of corn (and in the mid-90’s, they were not lying - we had huge carry-outs, crushing low prices, etc) and we can turn this into ethanol pretty cheaply, add this to the gasoline and there you go. Oxygenate.

BTW - ever wonder why methanol and ethanol burn with a pale blue flame, even if all you’re doing it lighting up a puddle? You can get oil products to burn with a pale blue flame if you force-feed the fire more air or O2, but you don’t need to do anything other than light up a puddle of alcohols and the burn with a blue flame. Why is that? Because the combustion throws off an excess of oxygen for the combustion’s requirements, that’s why. When you’re casting about for an oxygenate, start with anything that, in a puddle, burns with a pure blue flame.

5. This works for awhile, first getting rammed down the throats of urban gasoline markets. Yes, ethanol is hygroscopic and therefore will add water to your infrequently used tanks of gasoline (eg, boats, small engines) and yes, it varnishes up faster than pure gasoline. I’ll grant people ALL those complaints about ethanol in gasoline. They’re all true. So are the issues with seals and rubber.

But...

6. Detroit, never failing to exhibit their crass stupidity and ignorance of fundamental engineering, just wants to shove ethanol into cars as tho it is gasoline. Detroit takes no effort to use ethanol as what it could have been - a huge booster of engine efficiency.

Let me bore people for a sec with some engine engineering: One of the limiting factors of gasoline engine efficiency is the low compression ratio. At higher compression ratios, gasoline engines with spark ignition go into “pre-detonation” (which many people mistakenly call “pinging”). In the old days, you used to pay mucho dinero for higher octane gasoline to solve this pre-det problem. High octane fuel also, like ethanol in gasoline, has a lower amount of BTU’s per gallon - ie, you’ll get lower MPG in an engine that does not require high-octane gasoline by using it. You get more “power per gallon” in lower octane fuel.

But in the old days, we used to increase octane by adding TEL - Tetra Ethyl Lead. Us old farts here will remember leaded fuel. In aviation fuel, they used to add toluene and other aromatic hydrocarbons to increase the octane. Those old WWII fighters had terrific effective compression ratios - way the heck up there once you put in the high-boost setting on the blower or closed the gate on the turbo. WWII avgas was up near 130 octane. Even today, avgas is 100 octane “low lead” fuel - just for Cessna or Piper bug-mashers. Toluene, however, is toxic like benzene, just not as bad as benzene, so the addition of toluene for Mom, Dad and Junior going to the shore or mowing the law is right out.

Enter ethanol, which has a test octane of 129. IF (and that’s a huge if) Detroit had their head somewhere other than their nether regions, they could have used the oxygenate mandate of ethanol to boost the efficiency of gasoline engines. Ferrari has done this with one of their fire-breathing engine of about 500HP - on E-85, they get more MPG and more HP with E-85 than normal gasoline. How? Boosting the compression ratio, probably by changing the pistons or cylinder heads. Detroit, however, makes no such attempts.

7. But do we even NEED ethanol in our gasoline any more? No. With “closed cycle” electronic fuel injection now the overwhelming majority of the US auto fleet, no, we no longer need ethanol or MTBE in our gasoline. At all.

Really, we don’t. The only cars that really benefit from additional O2 in the fuel are the open-cycle (eg, throttle body injection) systems or cars with carburetors. OK, so your classic 50’s Chevy will smoke a little bit. So what? How often do you pull that beauty out of the garage? Four, five times a year? This is not a frequency, nor is the ownership rate of such old cars, sufficient to justify the policy of adding oxygenate to fuel any more.

8. So now corn *and* oil prices are zooming upwards, thanks in part to China, thanks in part to Ben and his Magic Federal Reserve Helicopter, which looks a little like a CH-47 “Chinook,” only about the size of the Queen Mary. If you ever look up and see something that you think is a UFO with rotors, scattering little bits of confetti on the wind? That’s Ben. He’ll be the little bald guy on the jump ramp on the rear, flinging paper out of a big burlap sack.

Now we’re in the worst of all possible worlds: We have crappy gasoline which many people hate for the increased maint expense, but which adds nothing other lower mileage than we otherwise would get on modern cars (because Detroit has their head up their buttocks), we have a bizarre economic policy of effectively paying oil companies to do this to us, and farmers no longer need this subsidy, yet they get blamed for it, even tho with the prices in the commodity markets, no one needs the blenders’s credit to create an ethanol market.

Oh, and we have supposed “free market supporting” pols who stump based on this insanity.

For me, someone who has traced out the full map of this insanity, it is maddening. I really don’t like farmers getting the bad rap, when it really isn’t their money people are talking about with the blending credit per gallon, even tho I am in favor of eliminating ag subsidies (provided we have sound trade policies to go with it, and that does not mean “free trade” as we now have it). I’m resigned to the fact that Detroit is staffed with morons and retards for engineers (and I say that as a retired engineer) and there’s nothing we can do about that, either.

What can we do?

Want to eliminate ethanol people? Get rid of the mandate for oxygenate. I think this is possible, when coupled with a push on the issue of food prices. Show that ethanol has little efficacy any more in terms of clean air, while adding somewhat to food prices. Get rid of the oxygenate mandate and the issue goes away as soon as oil prices come down and corn prices are still high. Poof, the ethanol plants will close up or mothball quickly.

Everything you report in #159 is accurate. I need to add a few details.

I was worried you missed the most serious cause until I read the last paragraph. True the oxygenate mandate is worthless and needs to go, because it is a government mandate, issued by fiat from a group of administrative law morons that make those Detroit schleps look bright. IT'S ALL THE GOVERNMENT MANDATES, not just one.

Also, ethanol was in gasoline before MTBE (by an earlier mandate), and leftist shills created MTBE to redirect subsidy money to themselves.

From an earlier post by me: " Additionally, ethanol is grossly more expensive to produce than gasoline, and the subsidy revenue pursuit causes disasters such as the MTBE pollution scandal which purpose was to shift subsidy income from Archer Daniels Midland to more leftist politically connected chemical companies (many foreign) that manufactured MTBE from their waste products."

I do not denigrate Archer Daniels Midland, or farmers by this comment, as they were the standard source of ethanol in the US at the time the government mandated ethanol. ADM simply filled a need.

CARB and Cal EPA, on the other hand tried to create a need for MTBE by using the force of law to lock ADM out of the market and seize the subsidies. That they would create from scratch the unnatural and most dangerous pollutant in history was just fine for the purpose: personal enrichment.

Yeah, I'm familiar with the horsepower an efficiency engineering, but I prefer nitromethane over toluene. I love the smell of nitro in the morning,... and Wagner.

Now THAT is a great post, and one of the main reasons I like visiting FR! There’s a lot of info. to be found here, some wrong, of course, some better than other, and some great. I have a friend in automotive technology (better than most Detroit Engrs. for sure) and he tried to explain to me the tech part of what you posted, but even though I’m an engr. too (electronics), it’s hard to absorb that much info. while we are also working on my car! So I only really picked up about 1/2 of it.

I can only think of a few things to add or question:

1) I think an additional effective “leg” to the argument could be added if people truly realized how much ethanol can add to the maintenance / repair costs and UN-reliability of their vehicles. I would guess (someone correct me if I’m wrong) that unless someone drives a LOT, the increased maintenance costs exceed the cost of poorer mileage achieved with ethanol type fuels. (For starters, go ask your local mechanic working at a shop rate of $80/hour what it’ll cost to pull your car’s gummed up fuel in-tank filter, and the inline fuel filter, and replace them. Since I’ve learned the hard way* I do that work myself every couple years, or before most any really long trip, on my wife’s minivan in particular.)

2) Problem is, unless we get someone like a Palin in charge, what are the odds that oil prices are going to decline and stay there for a protracted period? Especially with consumption ramping up in China and elsewhere.

3) I infer from your info. that ethanol based fuel still has some “extra” mobility in soil, correct? That might be another effective argument - people really don’t like the idea of their water being contaminated - for good reason.

4) Who the heck is going to explain this to the mass of citizens / on a national level? I think a Palin, with her known background in energy issues, could do it, perhaps enlisting the aid of some really well-known “car” or racing personality who knows the tech end forward and backward, and using visual aids much like Reagan used to do. (FWIW, I still believe Reagan’s promise allow speed limits on Interstate highways to go back up to 65 mph was worth a couple % points on election day, 1980.)

*You **REALLY** don’t want to be pulling your in-tank fuel filter out, to clean it, with your wife looking on, because you’ve suddenly coughed to a stop at dusk on the (gets very low traffic & at that time/location there was no cell phone service there) Cherohala Skyway. (Sheepish mea culpa!)