A Change in Your Pump Means Change in Your Pocket

Ethanol another form of carbon dioxide(plant sugars)adds to the ozone leves with oxides (VOC) adds to the lung disease costs.

How about much more efficient diesel vehicles like in Europe, for example 5.5L/100km (40MPG) and biodiesel?

an EV would put more change in your pocket
i get $364 cost in electricity for the the same $4115 in gasoline
$3751 more in your pocket

I thought I heard ethanol took more energy to produce than it yields as a fuel...

Yes, Mike, we have all heard plenty of bad press about ethanol, and yes, it has emissions. There is a lot of propaganda issued as news by those supported by oil companies that do not want competition. The question is what are the facts, not what are the rumors. Fact is, ethanol is competitive and is not responsible for the speculation driven increases in food prices. While ethanol does have emissions, they are less than petroleum, so that indicates improvement over the use of petroleum. Ethanol can be made domestically, so our imports of petroleum can be reduced. The manufacture of ethanol provides jobs for US farmers and refiners, drivers and technicians. Ethanol does not have to be perfect, it just has to be better than the present situation.

Flex fuel vehicles can run on either gasoline, or E85(85% ethanol)or any combination in between. Flex fuel vehicles come with the same standard equipment, options, warranties and cost the same as conventional gasoline only vehicles. Flex fuel vehicles have been in manufacture for over 20 years.

According to Ford---a vehicle running on E85 produces 70% less pollution than the same vehicle running on gasoline.

Ethanol can be made from a wide range of sources. Besides corn, it can be made from sugarcane, sugar beets, sorghum, any kind of grain, even wood. We've been able to make ethanol from wood for over 100 years. We can even make ethanol from agave, a native species succulent desert plant, naturally evolved and adapted to harsh conditions and poor soils. We've been doing it for centuries. It is called tequila.

It takes .7 MBTU to produce 1 MBTU of energy with ethanol---most of which comes from sunlight.

It takes 1.23 MBTU to produce 1 MBTU of energy as crude oil. And the oil still needs to be refined before it can be used. How much energy is needed to refine the crude oil into usable product depends heavily on the type of crude oil. Light, sweet oils like Brent or WTI require the least refining and yield the most product but are becoming increasing scarce and expensive. Heavy, sour crude(like from Canadian tar sands) are more difficult to refine, cause much more pollution, and yield less product. Heavy, sour(high in sulphur)crude is becoming much more common.

Oil is finite---there is only a limited amount of oil. Oil is running out. We are seeing that start to happen right now. Oil is becoming harder and harder to get to, to get out, and to refine.

Ethanol is renewable. We can make as much as we need. And we can keep on making it for as long as we need it.

-----" If that's true, why don't they make all gasoline cars flex fuel?"--------

They should.

Fred writes in comment #6: "It takes .7 MBTU to produce 1 MBTU of energy with ethanol---most of which comes from sunlight."

Sadly Fred, who is much enamored of the notion of ethanol fuels, often resorts to making up claims in support of his arguments. For those interested in facts I recommend this widely read study from a group at Argonne National Laboratory:
http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/AF/265.pdf
The conclusion in this article is that ethanol production is about 30% net positive from an energy balance perspective, i.e., that the needed fossil fuel energy inputs are exceeded by a modest 30% in the output provided that one considers both the fuel value and the residual food value. A key advantage of ethanol is that the energy inputs are mainly coal and methane, whereas the output is a liquid fuel useful in transportation and commanding a price premium compared to the inputs.

Fred also writes: "Ethanol is renewable. We can make as much as we need."

Well, ethanol as it is now manufactured is far from a "green" fuel; it is slightly less polluting than oil but its production uses lots of fossil fuels. Furthermore, the land needed to produce ethanol is in short supply and there are major limitations on how much we can produce. If we converted the entire US corn production to ethanol it still would not displace our need for imported oil. This would, however, have a huge impact on world food prices. Even at current production levels ethanol use has impacted corn prices and farmers are choosing to grow more corn instead of other crops, thus impacting yields of other crops as well.
Continued

Continuation of comment #9:

Corn costs >$6 a bushel now, whereas the article Stephanie cites above was written several years ago and modeled corn prices as being closer to $4 a bushel and possibly as low as $3.50; many factors have contributed to higher corn prices, including increasing prices of fossil fuels, but the decision to use corn to make transportation fuels is a significant one. Using ethanol as a transportation fuel involves significant opportunity costs and the notion that we can "make as much as we need" ignores these costs.
Steven

----' The conclusion in this article is that ethanol production is about 30% net positive from an energy balance perspective,'----

1 - .7 = .3 = 30% What I said. And that is the source from which it was taken.

1 - (-1.23) = -.23 = -23% [ ethanol is 53% net energy balance compared to petroleum ]


------' Well, ethanol as it is now manufactured is far from a 'green' fuel; it is slightly less polluting than oil but its production uses lots of fossil fuels'-------

Then don't use fossil fuels. Most farm machinery is diesel. Diesels can run on biodiesel or any combination of biodiesel/petroleum. ULSD(ultra low sulphur diesel)---the only kind of diesel you can buy now is B5 biodiesel. Take the sulphur out petroleum diesel and it does not have enough lubrication to be used as a motor fuel.

According to University of Iowa, it takes 6.85 gallons of diesel to grow one acre of corn. The average yield for corn is now 160+ bu./acre. 2.85 gallons of ethanol can be produced from one bushel of corn. 160 X 2.85 = 456 gallons per acre. 6.85 (gal/diesel) / 456 = .01502 gallons of diesel to produce one gallon of ethanol. Less than 2 oz/gallon of ethanol---not exactly what I'd call 'lots of fossil fuels'

------" A key advantage of ethanol is that the energy inputs are mainly coal and methane, whereas the output is a liquid fuel useful in transportation and commanding a price premium compared to the inputs."------

Not necessarily. The only necessary input for distillation is heat. It doesn't matter where the heat comes from. Wind and solar power can supply heat. You can even use the corn stover to produce heat. In Brazil, ethanol is made from sugar cane---the cane after it is crushed to remove the sugar is dried and burned to produce electricity to process the sugar into ethanol. This produces about 30% excess after the mill load requirements are met which is fed into the grid.

----" Furthermore, the land needed to produce ethanol is in short supply and there are major limitations on how much we can produce. If we converted the entire US corn production to ethanol it still would not displace our need for imported oil."-----

Land is not in short supply---we have more land than we need or can use. There is no limit on what we can produce.

About 10% of our gasoline usage right now is ethanol. Mostly produced from corn because corn also produces DDG as the final product---high protein, nutrient dense animal feed. Humans can not eat dent corn from which ethanol is produced. It is grown for animal feed. Field corn contains about 2-4% protein, the rest is starch. Twinkies and Ding-Dongs for cattle. To promote lean meat weight gain, you need protein. DDG contains 25-30% protein and replaces soy meal. Corn is 3X as productive per acre as soy. To produce the same amount of protein using corn fermented to ethanol---you'd have to double the amount of acreage under cultivation, and it would cost twice as much per unit of protein produced. We produce more high nutritional value foods(meat, fowl, fish, dairy products) at lower prices using DDG than we could with soy.

We can also make ethanol from sugarcane, which grows well in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, California, Arizona and Hawaii.

(cont.)

Sugar beets offer similar yields to sugar cane and can be grown anywhere in the US that there is adequate soil and moisture, including Alaska.

Agave is a native species succulent desert plant that grows in Sonoran and Chihuahuan desert biomes, requires no irrigation, and very little cultivaton--is naturally adapted to be drought, disease and pest resistant, provides natural cover and food for many other species and grows best in arid, rocky, and rugged hilly terrain unsuitable to other uses. Agave stores its energy reserves as nectar, which looks and tastes very similar to honey----and is easily fermented into ethanol. Agave's extensive root system is vital to stabilizing and preventing erosion in dry, sandy, desert soil conditions. Yields are similar to, or better than sugarcane or beets, and we have been making ethanol from agave for centuries. It is called tequila.

In comment #11 Fred writes: "----'The conclusion in this article is that ethanol production is about 30% net positive from an energy balance perspective,'----

1 - .7 = .3 = 30% What I said. And that is the source from which it was taken."

This isn't what Fred wrote. He claimed most of the energy from corn ethanol came from the sun, which isn't true, the main energy inputs are coal and methane.

Fred also writes:
"According to University of Iowa, it takes 6.85 gallons of diesel to grow one acre of corn...."

This is a straw man argument. No one claims it takes a lot of diesel to grow corn. The main energy inputs are from coal and methane; corn ethanol production relies very heavily on fossil fuels.

Fred also writes:
"Then don't use fossil fuels...."
Well, the economic analysis Stephanie cited assumed a model in which corn was produced profitably in the US and this involves using fossil fuels. It you want to grow corn in an entirely renewable fashion prices would increase greatly and you would need even more land. Arable land is in short supply and if we use it to produce fuels we will have less for food.

Fred claims (in comment 6): "We can even make ethanol from agave, a native species succulent desert plant, naturally evolved and adapted to harsh conditions and poor soils."

One can make ethanol from agave and the plant does survive in harsh conditions. However, the plant does not thrive in such conditions so you cannot get decent yields that would compete economically with other sources.

It would be great if we could just grow everything we need but there are serious constraints imposed by limits on arable land. Fred likes to pretend such constraints don't exist because that illusion makes energy policy decisions easier. Alas, economic realities do not go away merely because one ignores them.
Steven

-------" Using ethanol as a transportation fuel involves significant opportunity costs and the notion that we can "make as much as we need" ignores these costs.
Steven"------

We can make as much as we need. There is no law that says all of our ethanol has to come from one source.

If all of our vehicles ran on E85---we would eliminate our need to import oil which is causing a trade deficit of $600-$800 billion per year, and our current domestic production would reserves would stretch out from about 8-12 years to about 40 years. And roughly 1/2 of our current domestic production of petroleum would be freed up to export.

Due to ethanol's comparative octane rating of ~115, diesel engines can run on ethanol as well with the addition of ignition enhancers, ED95. Scania, the Swedish heavy duty industrial diesel manufacturer, has been running a fleet of over 1,000 buses in Sweden and UK for years on ED95.

Steven-----" One can make ethanol from agave and the plant does survive in harsh conditions. However, the plant does not thrive in such conditions so you cannot get decent yields that would compete economically with other sources."-------

They aren't having any trouble in Mexico producing far more agave sugar than they can handle. There is a surplus. And that is from relatively small acreages.

The conditions you refer to are the same conditions that agave has evolved over millions of years to survive and thrive in.

When you play well, follow the rules and respect Mother Nature you will have more than you ever need.

If you don't play well, follow the rules and respect Mother Nature----Mother Nature will get pissed off.

If Mother Nature gets pissed off, and has to come back to teach everyone a lesson----try your best not to be standing right next to Steven when she gets there.

Fred writes: "They aren't having any trouble in Mexico producing far more agave sugar than they can handle. There is a surplus. And that is from relatively small acreages."

Products that are in surplus are typically products that have poor price performance. That's just one of the inconvenient truths that Fred is in denial about.
Steven

Clee wrote:

'If that's true, why don't they make all gasoline cars flex fuel? Why can't I buy a fuel efficient flex fuel vehicle in the US? None of the 2012 flex fuel vehicles get better than 26 mpg combined on gasoline and 18 mpg combined on E85.
If Ford will sell me a flex fuel Fusion, why won't they sell me a flex fuel Focus?'

Ford probably thinks there isn't a big enough market for them. If you Google 'flex fuel conversion kits', you will notice there are several companies in the business. For a few hundred dollars, you can convert your new Focus to flex fuel. There are also plug-in conversion kits for the Prius. Nice to have if there is a war involving the straits of hormuz.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible-fuel_vehicle

-----" The Ford Model T was the first commercial flex-fuel vehicle. The engine was capable of running on gasoline or ethanol, or a mix of both."-----------

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flexible-fuel_vehicles_by_car_manufacturer#Ford.2C_GM.2C_.26_Chrysler

Then don't buy a flex fuel Fusion, and limit yourself to using only gasoline the next time that gasoline makes a 50% price jump in a few weeks.

Let's look at the facts. 1)Ethanol has 1/2 the energy content per gallon of gasoline. This cuts mpg and power in 1/2 also, which most American drivers won't tolerate. 2)The modest reduction in pollution is not sufficient to justify the investment in ethanol systems. We would use twice as much fuel for the same miles driven, so the improvement is slight. 3)We really can't afford a second-best fuel solution anymore. We have backed ourselves into a corner on this issue. 4) Hydrogen is really the only option to maintain power and mpg, while having truly clean combustion. Its production is not dependent on land area, and it can be made from multiple sources, so it can be customized for the most suitable local means of production. Fuel cells last longer than batteries, and have higher power density. We really must dedicate ourselves to making hydrogen the new normal, as gasoline is today.

Matt writes in comment #24:
"Let's look at the facts. 1)Ethanol has 1/2 the energy content per gallon of gasoline...."

Ethanol has a LOWER energy content than gasoline, but not "1/2". The juxtaposition of a call to "look at the facts" followed directly by a careless misstatement makes the remainder of one's arguments weaker. Matt claims in his profile to be an energy analyst, but I begin to have doubts about the quality of his work.
Steven

matt karber---" Let's look at the facts. 1)Ethanol has 1/2 the energy content per gallon of gasoline."------

Wrong.

------" This cuts mpg and power in 1/2 also, which most American drivers won't tolerate."------

Wrong.

-----" 2)The modest reduction in pollution is not sufficient to justify the investment in ethanol systems."--------

Wrong.

-------" We would use twice as much fuel for the same miles driven, so the improvement is slight."-----

Wrong.

-------" 4) Hydrogen is really the only option to maintain power and mpg, while having truly clean combustion."-----

Wrong.

Perfect score. Grade = F

You are basing your entire calculation on gasoline prices that are the lowest they have been in over a year.

The price of gasoline will go back up again, and when it does it will go up like a skyrocket.

Come back at the end of next summer and give me your calculations about how much ethanol costs.

I would be interested to see how your calculations for how cheap and plentiful oil is if hostilities should break out with Iran in the Persian Gulf.

OK. You want to use gasoline. Fine. Then use gasoline. With a flex fuel vehicle, you can. You can use either fuel you want to. Nothing says you have to use E85. You can if you want to---but you don't have to. You don't even have to use E85---there are blender pumps available that can mix ethanol blends in any proportion right from the pump.

There are even vehicles that can use gasoline, gasoline and ethanol mixtures, pure hydrous ethanol, and/or compressed natural gas. They even have on board computers to preferentially use the cheapest fuel. All the driver does is key in the fuel prices when filling up---the computer does the rest, adjusting fuel consumption to cost and road conditions.

The key to thermal efficiency with internal combustion engines is compression ratio. Comparative Octane Rating measures the resistance to preignition among various fuels. Preignition(knock) is the tendency of a fuel to ignite at the wrong time in the engine cycle, and can damage or destroy the engine.

The COR of gasoline is 85-87--which limits the compression ratio to 9.5:1. The COR of ethanol is ~115, which translates into a compression ratio of 24:1. In order to be able to produce a flex fuel engine, capable of using gasoline, it is necessary to keep the compression ratio low. This gives a thermal efficiency rating of about 20%. Using ethanol, that compression ratio, and the resulting power and efficiency of the engine can be more than doubled----but you can't use gasoline.

That is why, the fastest, most advanced race cars in the world, the Indy League Racing Circuit, all use 100% ethanol fuel. And they have used alcohol base fuels exclusively for almost 50 years. Indy racers achieve about 50% thermal efficiency.

If you could buy E85 at any station----cars could be built that would more than double thermal efficiency using all off the shelf technology that we have now and have been using for over 50 years.

We could build SUVs and trucks with 4 cylinder engines engines that would have as much horsepower as conventional gasoline powered V8s with twice the displacement and get double mileage per BTU fuel input.

The only reason it can't be done now is that ethanol is not widely available enough----so we are stuck with vehicles that get poor weight to power ratio, poor mileage, and high pollution numbers in order to be able to use petroleum.

-------" I don't want the fastest car, I want an efficient car, and there is no street legal consumer car that I can buy in the US that uses ethanol and gives me above average efficiency."-----------

That is correct. I agree with you there.

------" For some reason the car companies won't offer them. "-----

It is because ethanol is not widely available enough yet---when ethanol is widely available enough that there is no need to keep the engine tuned low enough to use gasoline, that will be the case.

------" So all that about Indy cars is irrelevant for today's US consumers."--------

Perhaps so, but that was meant to show you that it can and is being done right now, and has been done for over 50 years.

Buy whatever car you want to buy.

The only reason that you can't get the ethanol vehicle that does what you want is the monopoly of petroleum in the marketplace----not because ethanol can not do what you want done.