Posted on 09/02/2016 5:02:02 AM PDT by Kaslin
Since it's been seven months since the Iowa caucuses and it'll be another three-plus years until that hell is fresh again, this is the best time to talk about ethanol.
Just in case you didn't know, ethanol is very popular in Iowa and other corn states, which is why most presidential candidates swear once every four years that they love ethanol so much they'd marry a jug of it if they could. If only for a moment, loyalty to this government moonshine becomes as fraught with political symbolism as a gay wedding in which both grooms refuse to wear American flag pins while declining to stand for the national anthem in support of our troops.
Thankfully, we don't have to worry about that for a little while, so let's tell the truth: Ethanol is stupid, wasteful and bad for cars (because it's corrosive and inefficient), the economy and the environment.
The main case for biofeuels is twofold. It's supposed to be better for the environment, particularly global warming, and lessen our dependence on foreign oil. The assumption was that converting plants into fuel was "carbon neutral," and since we can do that at home, every gallon of oil we replace with corn is one less we have to buy from overseas. The fact that it also lines the pockets of agribusinesses and the politicians who love them is supposed to be a total coincidence and irrelevant to this good and noble policy.
Nope.
A new study from the University of Michigan confirms what pretty much everyone knew all along. Researchers found that biofuels actually create more greenhouse gases than simply using petroleum, because plants only absorb a fraction of the carbon dioxide released by burning the fuels in the first place. Moreover, ethanol production and distribution is energy-intensive, throwing off even more greenhouse gases.
"When you look at what's actually happening on the land, you find that not enough carbon is being removed from the atmosphere to balance what's coming out of the tailpipe," University of Michigan professor John DeCicco said. "When it comes to the emissions that cause global warming, it turns out that biofuels are worse than gasoline."
A study last year by the University of Tennessee found that in the decade since the U.S. imposed the Renewable Fuel Standard -- and after $50 billion in subsidies -- corn-based ethanol "created more problems than solutions" and hampered research on other kinds of biofuels.
But even if you think, as I do, that caring for the environment means more than climate change, ethanol is a horror. Growing corn for inefficient fuel takes up farmland, raising food prices and encouraging deforestation. Science writer Matt Ridley has estimated that if all of our transport fuel came from biofuel, we would need 30 percent more land than all of the existing food-growing farmland we have today.
All of the corn we grow requires vast amounts of fertilizer, which runs into our waterways and out to the Gulf of Mexico. Every year that runoff creates a massive -- and growing -- dead zone that kills sea life in one of our most valuable fisheries. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization, "Habitats that would normally be teeming with life become, essentially, biological deserts." This year's dead zone will be the size of Connecticut, researchers say.
Meanwhile, in places such as Brazil, CO2-absorbing rainforests (among the biggest sources of biodiversity) are being clear-cut to make room for biofuel crops. The Nature Conservancy's Joseph Fargione estimated a few years ago that converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas or grasslands for biofuels releases 17 to 420 times more CO2 than it offsets by displacing petroleum or coal.
One hears a lot about the great jobs that ethanol creates here at home, but this is broken-window thinking. Frederic Bastiat famously explained in his essay on the broken window that it's silly to talk about the jobs created by a broken window -- you've got to hire people to replace it, right? -- unless you also take into account that the money spent on a new window could have been spent on something more productive.
Thanks to the shale oil revolution, America now has greater oil reserves than Saudi Arabia and Russia. Domestic oil production produces far more -- and far better paying -- jobs than ethanol production. Cheaper oil also cascades through the economy, creating more jobs. And we're better at producing oil in an environmentally safe way than most other countries. When we take production offline, we are in effect subsidizing foreign production.
But hey, the Iowa caucuses are important too.
There is a detailed report on it at the website in pdf form I believe. It actually cooled combustion temps of ethanol treated gasoline due to ethanol’s higher burn temps.
Mileage and efficiency I’m not up on. Though I have noticed longer run times by a small margin. I’ve used it for 3 years now in my JD lawn tractor and in every other small engine of I have and problems have been nil for years.
Their Mechanic in a Bottle product allowed me to save a new generator that I had stored for 10 months with Sta-Bil that had failed to preserve the gas.
I drained the gas and added new with MIB. 5 pulls with ignition off and let set overnight. Unit ran perfectly in the morning. Those EPA carbs are throwaways so it saved me some money. I figured it had a partially blocked jet that Sea Foam and Chemtool wouldn’t touch after many tries.
Also try the MIB in a lousy running chainsaw or other two cycle. More often than not it will run a hell of a lot better after treatment. Home Defect has them all.
Running unleaded in those old engines can also crater the valve seats and guides.
Also had a friend’s outboard that routinely ran lousy and the MIB cleared it up immensely. It actually idles now where it would stall regularly.
Its all worth a try and give it an honest chance.
I just tried a tank of no-ethenol unleaded and got +3 MPG over my usual gas.
I recnetly travelled through Iowa and stopped to get gas. After I filled up I realized it was the 15% Ethanol stuff. It was cheaper that the 10% stuff. My milage dropped 2 MPGs!
I think I’d try it on a small engine. Not sure about a car/truck with a big gas tank. Thank you for the link, however.
I’ve used the MIB in my truck. I wait until I have roughly 5 gallons left in tank and then nuke it with a couple bottles once a year.
I am sure it has been a great boom for the producers of fuel stabilizer products. Stabil, Seafoam, etc I am sure have had huge increases in sales in the last few years.
FIRST RULE OF CIVILIZATION:
DON’T BURN YOUR FOOD!.................
it is sold as Jack Daniels black label
I've seen those warehouses. It's like a "strategic ethanol reserve".
A gallon of ethanol has 60% of the BTUs of a gallon of gasoline, meaning you will get 40% less mileage from a gallon of ethanol compared to a gallon of gasoline.
That means you will get 4% less mileage from a 10% blend, and 6% less mileage from a 15% blend.
Theoretically.
Cellulosic ethanol has advantages:
Production of ethanol from lignocellulose has the advantage of abundant and diverse raw material compared to sources such as corn and cane sugars, but requires a greater amount of processing to make the sugar monomers available to the microorganisms typically used to produce ethanol by fermentation. Switchgrass and Miscanthus are the major biomass materials being studied today, due to their high productivity per acre. Cellulose, however, is contained in nearly every natural, free-growing plant, tree, and bush, in meadows, forests, and fields all over the world without agricultural effort or cost needed to make it grow.One of the benefits of cellulosic ethanol is it reduces greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 85% over reformulated gasoline. By contrast, starch ethanol (e.g., from corn), which most frequently uses natural gas to provide energy for the process, may not reduce GHG emissions at all depending on how the starch-based feedstock is produced.
But:
According to the National Academy of Sciences in 2011, there is no commercially viable bio-refinery in existence to convert lignocellulosic biomass to fuel. [...] These issues, along with many other difficult production challenges, led George Washington University policy researchers to state that "in the short term, [cellulosic] ethanol cannot meet the energy security and environmental goals of a gasoline alternative."
Gaffer, Av-Gas is ethanol free. Guys with Auto Fuel STC’s and homebuilders with fibreglass fuel tanks found out the effects real quick. It ate away at o-rings and they had to go to VITON seals and the fuel tanks decomposed, which lead too clogged fuel lines etc. & emergency landings.
“To me, food resource planting should have nothing to do with energy sources other than human/animal sustenance.”
Yes, but in this instance corn is both.
So scratch it off the energy source list and there will be openings in the food resource sustenance list.
Farmers do have to make a living.
It isn’t up to me to subsidize that living
Yep - and even though you can find carburetor rebuild kits that now contain materials that are more tolerant of ethanol, and even the Gates "green stripe" fuel line that won't quickly go rigid and crumbly - there are still fuel system parts that are vulnerable. The flexible diaphragms in mechanical fuel pumps are a good example of "gotchas" where E-10+ can strike.
so grow your own food or stop eating
Inane justification for ethanol
I understand that is what farmers tend to do, which makes sense.
But it makes me wonder why corn yields are consistently high enough to offset population growth and conversion into ethanol. Hopefully it’s not do to genetically modified farming and all that.
Or maybe people are not eating corn the way they used to?
I did a major paper in college on ethanol, when it was in its infancy (known as gasohol).It was awarded tax relief to give it a chance to overcome it’s deficiencies, develop it and make it economically viable. Imagine my surprise almost 25 years later when it had not overcome its deficiencies and had not proven to be economically viable, yet the federal government MANDATED its use!
I am not in favor of ethanol.
All crops have been modified.
No, I am not eating as much corn this summer as it is around $5/doz.
Forget the damage ethanol laced gasoline does to internal combustion engines, the economy, food stocks, food prices and the climate!
At a more practical level, why would any sentinent person pour perfectly good corn whiskey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_whiskey) into a gas tank?
That alone is reason not to grow corn for any purposes other than for human and animal food and for humans to drink!
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