Posted on 01/04/2024 10:36:02 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
It takes 9 to 10 gallons of water to make one gallon of beer*. This is a well known industry fact that is not widely publicized. That is just in the manufacturing process. This article talks about the water needed for the growing process, etc. Question is how much water is needed to manufacture ethanol.
* This includes water needed to clean vats, etc.
Ethanol mandates for gasoline are now a third rail subject. No politician from either side of the isle is going to touch them for fear of retribution from the Corn Growers associations.
approximately 40% will be processed into ethanol to meet subsidized mandates in Americans’ fuel blends.
= = =
I suggest:
Put two nozzles at the ‘gas station’.
One with gasoline and
The other with ethanol.
I’ll bet the users pump some ethanol, take it home for consumption, and do not drive much more at all, thus decreasing ‘gasoline pollution’.
Uncle Earl was quite proficient in producing ethanol.
bkmk
**Corn and soy require chemical applications that erode soils and contribute to water pollution.**
While I am not a fan of using chemicals on cropland, the fact that herbicides have greatly reduced tillage practices (thereby leaving crop residue on the surface to help prevent erosion), soil erosion is much less than, say, 30 years ago and before.
Hogs raised in confinement buildings may seem unethical to some folk, but if one goes to vintage aerial photo sites, and look at midwest farmsteads of the 1960s, one can see the dirt (or mud) hog lots were commonplace.
Almonds are killing California rivers.
90 % exported outside the US.
Yep, and ethanol eats up my Quadrajet Pontiac carburator.
Not really.
Gas is cheap enough (inflation adjusted) that ethanol is not the new hotness anymore. EV’s are.
What is left are the smaller plants that are making it for feed lots (DDG is good cow feed), and the wet mills that are using it to control byproducts.
And for the “Grow food”, grow what? I see a lot of city people rail against corn, and no one really understands why corn is grown. It is the most carbs per input cost out there. That and the demand for say, carrots is many factors smaller.
Yep
That and the new genetics for hogs have them so lean, they would die outside.
The hogs I raised growing up are what you see on TV now as “feral” hogs, not what you buy at the store. They loved being outside.
It's no longer about cheaper gas, or cleaner air. It's about a de facto subsidy to grow corn to sell to the distillers.
No more ethanol mandate in the gasoline motor fuel blend, no more need to create ethanol, no more demand for the corn that makes ethanol, more p.o.ed farmers with tons of grain on their hands with no market.
I've seen it before when a candidate suggests removing the ethanol requirement, and the Iowans revolt.
Read the article. It burns hotter in small engines. That includes motorcycles, lawn mowers, marine outboard engines.
Iowa is ONE state of 50. It's wrong to screw the other 49 to make the Iowa corn farmers happy. There are food shortages on the horizon. There will be plenty of market for corn.
I agree. But who holds the very first caucuses in the nation every Presidential Primary season.
“It takes 9 to 10 gallons of water to make one gallon of beer”
Where does this water go? It just doesn’t disappear. H²O even at the atomic level is retained. Just like carbon is.
The Model T engine had lever on the carburetor that allowed the burning of either gasoline (benzene) or alcohol. Why? So farmers could produce their own fuel. Which they did.
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