Death comes to us all. Life's but a walking shadow | But I will be interested in the answer myself. And the reason is this: This past year I ran an experiment here on my farm. Since I make biodiesel and have a small supply of hydrous ethanol available nearby as well I blended and ran various blends of hydrous ethanol with biodiesel up to 20%. This was based on advice from a former JD engine designer. It worked "really" well. I don't have a dynamometer but I could tell I was getting better performance with the blends than I get from either regular diesel or biodiesel.
The trick is that unlike regular diesel, biodiesel is miscible and completely stable with 95% ethanol in all proportions. This means that the 4.65% water is not a major concern for separation, in fact the water actually may reduce the potential "corrosive" concerns from the ethanol.
As for your 20 cents, I would suspect that it is low. Remember the whole ethanol stream needs to go through the molecular sieve dehydrators just to remove that last 4.65% water. They are a major component of the equipment cost and cost of operation. Just the entropy considerations alone suggest a major energy cost. After all it is a lot harder to remove the last 5% of the water molecules than the first 87%. |
Hydrous/Wet Ethanol - anyone have a real world price estimate?
