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southern MN | I haven’t read all the replies, but this is such an opinionated topic I would be wary of any AI thoughts on it, which is just distilled from the oroiganda on the internet, both pro and con but which does your AI give more weight to…..
Gasoline is a distillate of many different hydrocarbons and can be distilled into different grades or levels or recipes or what you want to call it.
Adding an oxygenate can help make a poorer grade of gasoline work well in an ice engine as well as produce a lot less of some pollution but a tad bit more of other types of pollution. Over all the ethanol lowers pollution but in hot dry climates it does create some vapors that haven’t been a big issue in the past,
The current grades of gasoline produced all need some type of oxygenate added to make them work well. Ethanol is cheaper and has less pollution issues than other forms of oxygenates at this time. Most of the ones we used to use were really bad. If we distilled gasoline to not need an oxygenate we would get less gallons from a barrel of crude.
To get started the ethanol industry had a small per gallon subsidy. That program ended a long time ago. Ethanol costs what it costs now.
The big energy companies want to control their world, and do not like using ethanol. It takes away from their control. They like to revert to their own oxygenates if allowed to, even if they might cost more or pollute more. It’s all about owning the whole pie instead of owning 5 of the 6 pieces of pie.
So there is a mandate to use ethanol in gas, or buy credits to not use it.
There are a few cases where this credit system hurts small refiners which often happen to make special blends of gas. So there are waivers for these special cases.
The big refiners look for and use loopholes to sneak their bigger production through many of these waivers as well.
EPA has not been very friendly to locally produced ethanol, and has favored handing out more waivers than allowed, as well as using less ethanol than mandated by congress.
In the big picture, serious studies have shown that a 25% blend of ethanol gives the lowest cost per mile of any of the fuel blends in modern auto engines made in this century.
Ethanol has less btu per gallon, but it lights up with a more even flame front when the spark hits it, while pure gasoline explodes more haphazard. This allows the 25% ethanol mix to burn more efficiently with a cleaner more even flame front. We get more miles per dollar if we get near 25% ethanol.
Ethanol uses a fair amount of natural gas to turn corn into fuel and livestock feed and CO gasses. And other small products, some plants are even capturing crop oil from the corn. So natural gas is not a transportation friendly fuel. It takes a lot of energy and weight to set up a compressed ng fuel system on a vehicle. It will produce less power per cubic inch, and has that very high pressure fuel tank that creates its own dangers. While ng can be used as transportation fuel directly, it is much easier and efficient to use it in an ethanol plant as generic heat and create the ethanol and livestock feed. The ethanol is much higher concentration of btu in a fairly safe and stable form that we can use in individual vehicles. Some folk complain we use a fuel to create ethanol fuel, but ng just isn’t comparable to gasoline, diesel, or ethanol as a mobile fuel source.
I don’t understand farmers and rural folk so anti ethanol. It’s a product produced here. It offered cheaper fuel. It offers jobs in the farming areas. It turns low value natural gas into high value mobile fuel source.
There are mandates to use it so it doesn’t get sidelined by big oil, but it ends up being the cheapest option we have to use in our current ice engines.
It’s clearly the best option and cheapest option we have it intigrate into the national fleet of vehicles.
We should be moving towards 25% blend sooner than later. The 15% blend is a no brainer that has been argued for several years now.
Now the 85% blend that was popular for a few years, and is popular in Brazil, is a bigger question. That gets into the lower btu per gallon, doesn’t fit into our corn supply and feed needs in this country so well. I don’t see us getting or needing or wanting more than a 25% blend at this time for most folk and for what makes overall sense.
But jeez, we should be on board for 25% today, should have had 15% yesterday already.
Paul | |
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Educate me on ethanol
