Ethanol 85

[gasolara2002]

And 1 mo' thing: the conspiracy theorist in me can't help but notice how gas prices are falling as we come closer to election time.

I agree with you. I hope it will last a while but i doubt it will.

[Sentinel]

I really meant the comment to be about E85, and I'm more upset about the way Ethanol credits are calculated and what manufacturers are able to do with them.

> Think about what most of the world pays for gasoline! <yikes>

[lilm]

Consumer Reports had a very interesting article on E85.
The main things that I remember are:

1: Performance is about the same, yet mileage goes down. (E85 has less energy per unit volume than gasoline)

2: E85 production is still in its infancy. there is not a lot of advantage to using it currently because of all the energy it takes to produce.
IMO: this will become better as more people use it and as more of it is made (economies of scale)

3: GM is using the "credits" they get from all their vehicles running on E85 so they can continue to sell guzzler SUVs.
The net effect is MORE carbon in the environment, not less.

Personally: I think hybrid / electric is a better path to go down, although I think we should be burning corn liquor for fuel as well.

And 1 mo' thing: the conspiracy theorist in me can't help but notice how gas prices are falling as we come closer to election time.

yeo this is what i was thinking of......e85=BAD

[Hefty]

And 1 mo' thing: the conspiracy theorist in me can't help but notice how gas prices are falling as we come closer to election time.

I suppose a little thing like the principles of supply and demand has nothing to do with the price of gas. I think I saw a glimmer of common sense in your thread when you mentioned something about economies of scale. It's okay to include one tenant of economic reasoning where convenient I guess but not one of the most basic premises of economics when it comes to another for some odd reason.

In regards to E85 I think it is a red herring. It takes more energy to put into it then what you get out. It just changes the point at which pollution occurs. It severaly reduces the mileage per tank that you get out of your car.

If there was ever anything to scream conspiracy over it would be this sudden push for ethanol. It is just another subsidy that can push upon the already over subsidized corn industry. We already grow to much corn and some farmers are even paid not to grow anything at all out of fear of destabilizing an already bloated market. For Corn growers E85 is the perfect "killer app" they need to fill out their under utilized resource. In fact we ship alot of corn over seas to poor famine ridden countries. If e85 catches on then that surplus corn would be fed into the ethanol market and diverted from hungry countries that actually use the stuff to feed people.

If we were serious about looking for an alternative fuel source then we'd get rid of our stupid bias against the hemp industry and start to grow that for the purposes of producing methanol. Methanol has higher energy density then ethanol does. The crops can be grown closer together giving more crop per acre farmed. The time to reach plant maturity is faster for hemp then for corn. The benefits of hemp over corn go on and on. In fact Henry Ford believed dearly that hemp methanol would power America's motor cars through the future. He patented a device that stips the hemp plant down at high speed for mass production of methanol. Jack Diesel the developer of the diesel engine originally designed his engine to run off of vegetable oil and hemp seed oil. The fact that people make such a big deal about diesel running on vegetable oil now days just blows my mind. Of course it runs on vegetable oil!!

In the long I think we need to start mining platinum like crazy. Why? Because if you have enough platinum then we can start to make Methane Fuel Cells. Fuel Cells are an awesome technology with tons of potential but their biggest draw back is that they currently use Hydrogen mixed with oxygen to produce electricity. Hydrogen doesn't just float around for free you have to extract it from other hydrocarbon fuels which goes back to the dilemma of putting more energy into a fuel then what you get out. However, if you make a Methane fuel cell, which takes a lot more platinum then a conventional hydrogen fuel cell then you don't need to extract the hydrogen. Just mix the oxygen with the methane and you get electricity, water, and a little carbon dioxide as the byproduct.

[TMMK Toy]

Reading all of these posts makes me feel like I'm watching the Lone Gunmen. Anyway, E85 is likely to feasible to ease our foreign oil dependence over time. Of course it's not going to be beneficial right away but look at how Brazil is now. It took them nearly two decades to reach their state and I think the US level of sophistication could do it in half the time once it's embraced. I'm not saying E85 is the sole alternative, but it's easy to make and dont listen to the crackpots at Car and Driver who say it takes more energy to make energy. They're just nut huggers to big oil. If a vehicle is optimized for E85 the mpg decrease wont be as drastic, like maybe 5% I think I recall reading. Also, E85 is the octane equilvalent of 100, so it has good performance advantages as well. Can you say lofty compression ratios on pump gas people?

[Sentinel]

Gasoline has somwhere around 110k-120k BTU per gallon, ethanol has slightly less than 80k. Therefore a car will need ~1.25 times the volume of ethanol to have the same energy in a gallon of gasoline. That is why there is less efficiency. Thermo 101.

Farm subsidies have screwed up world food markets, and is another topic of discussion.

Economics? I know a bit, but my comment was a crack about certain world leaders. There is more to do with the price of gasoline than supply and demand. Supply is artificially controlled thru entities like OPEC, and even if we had all the crude we wanted, we still suffer from a lack of refining capacity. Demand is also fairly inelastic in that if gasoline was $6 a gallon we would still demand it : we have to have it to go to work, get groceries etc...

And you know why we can't ever use hemp.

[hskrsolara]

All you guys that think you know so much about farm subsidies are crazy and have probably never set foot on a production ag. farm. You're just regurgitating all that info that your high-rise city living economics professors are shooting at you. I love how people that know nothing about the industry of production ag can claim to be so knowledgable of how we market our crops.

Guess who pays most of your property taxes, school bonds, etc...Property owners...Who are the property owners...big business and Farmers! There are a lot of new schools nowadays that have relied on the tax dollars of America's farmers and rural land owners for construction, did you ever think of this?

It costs roughly $2.50/bu to produce corn today...what are current cash prices...$1.80! Corn will always be grown. Ethanol production is another market that farmers have to sell their corn, why not promote the hell out of it? Plus, it will eventually decrease the dependence of foreign oil...it just takes time.

I really got a chuckle out of the guy that posted...

"If e85 catches on then that surplus corn would be fed into the ethanol market and diverted from hungry countries that actually use the stuff to feed people."

You think they are paying $2.50/bu for our corn? No, they are not. Although it is not huge, corn growers get a small premium for delivering to ethanol plants, which barely covers the increase in diesel prices anyways. Why should we feel sorry for them and be willing to sell our product for a loss? No, we will take any means necessary to obtain a better price...we are always going to get the most $ possible.

With existing and planned ethanol production plants in the midwest (mainly NE, IA), we are expecting to see a corn deficit within 5 years. This is tremendous news for farmers as prices should in turn rise up again and farmers will be edging closer to proper compensation for their commodities.

We would rather not export a single bushel, most is done so just for market expansion and the demand of corn worldwide. There is plenty of rice and wheat grown across the globe, and enough uses for it, to support "starving" third world countries. Keep as much corn inside the borders as possible and make it profitable for the people producing it.

and on a conservation sidenote...
Your farmers that are paid to "not produce" corn are participating in soil conservation programs meant to retain the integrity of the soil by taking it out of commercial crop production and allowing native vegetative growth to occur. Conservation is a huge concern for farmers as we need to sustain soil quality for our purposes and for the future. Do not confuse economics with soil conservation for land taken out of crop production.

Sorry for the rant guys, just a little tired and frustrated from the weekend.

[Jai_Jai_Binks]

Dr. Economedies (one of the best energy analyst in n.america) himself has stated that Ethanol development is the wrong type of development out country is investing in...He's also a Univ of Houston professors....You all should watch his comments in CNBC (s/box 6am-8am) when he comes in as a guest. He's totally against E85, To him....we should be investing the money into hydrogen development. To him hybrid-synergy system is currently the dominant leade, but he did state that eventully hybrid will die out if we invest in hydrogen.

[hskrsolara]

^^Who is investing into Ethanol plants? Who is buying up shares of these companies? Corn producers/farmers are. Our country as a whole is investing very little into these plants, the major investors are the producers themselves. Why wouldn't they invest in a steady market and demand for their corn? Who is going to drop the money for hydrogen research? Certainly not the ethanol supporters, so it will probably fall back on the govt or the private sector.

[Jai_Jai_Binks]

^^ Dude, I'm just agreeing with this analyst. I see him on CNBC. Who will invest in hydrogen...I don't know..but who ever does..will own patent rights IMO. So its just a matter of someone options for the brave maveric leap to see if this is worth exploting.

[hskrsolara]

Its all good, I wasn't going after you, sorry if it sounded that way. I was just making a statement.

[Hefty]

I love how people that know nothing about the industry of production ag can claim to be so knowledgable of how we market our crops.

No where in my post was I attempting to explain the "production ag" industry or how we market crops. I believe the discussion was about corn and its use as a fuel and how it will turn out to be a net loss in the end if we attempt to pursue it. In fact you then continued on to assert my position for me by stating that in order to even make a dent in our oil dependance that it would consume the surplus of corn production. One of the challenges of meeting that production level would come from the environmental soil conservationist. As well the coahilitions that provide aid to 3rd world countries would pull hard on their congressional lobbying to see to it that their corn subsidy/donations would continue. I don't necessarily agree with the tree huggers and the humanitarians but I state this points in this discussion as hurdles that would have to be overcome in order for e85 to be viable as a middle east oil replacement.

Brazil has been somewhat successful with ethanol in their country because they can grow sugar cane which is more efficient at converting to ethanol. We make a lot of sugar here in America from sugar beets but unfortunately the slight chemical variations between beets and cane is enough to diminish the ethanol production efficiency that Brazil enjoys.

If politicians have so much control over the price of oil then why would they allow the price to go so high in the first place? The moment the presidents polls numbers started to dip they say, 'oh the gig is up lets make it go down again." The fact of the matter is that no one person, group, or organization has enough control over the entire oil market to dictate the price. In reality its the investors that dictate the price through trading futures contracts. When consumption slowed and the fears of hurricanes disrupting supply went away then the high prices being brokered on barrels of oil at the beginning of the summer went back down. I know its not sexy and conspiratorial enough sounding for ya but its honesty what drives the price of oil.

[hskrsolara]

If politicians have so much control over the price of oil then why would they allow the price to go so high in the first place? The moment the presidents polls numbers started to dip they say, 'oh the gig is up lets make it go down again." The fact of the matter is that no one person, group, or organization has enough control over the entire oil market to dictate the price. In reality its the investors that dictate the price through trading futures contracts. When consumption slowed and the fears of hurricanes disrupting supply went away then the high prices being brokered on barrels of oil at the beginning of the summer went back down. I know its not sexy and conspiratorial enough sounding for ya but its honesty what drives the price of oil.

Alright, so now you are admitting that the conspiracy theory is false? You have taken both positions in this statement but now admit that the president can not control falling gas prices.