ethanol use...

You demand distillation by heat alone, when a combination of less heat plus vacuum and other chemical water removal techniques may be applied.

Try the links I've mentioned below to see what the profits really are.

Gerald J.

For a ture playing field, let's cut every govr subsidy to petrolium companies, and every tax incentive to ethanol plants. See who comes out with a cheaper fuel.

I'm game.

The current tax incentives are needed to build & mature a new industry. Govt does that all the time - railroads, autos, iron production, petrolium too all had their share of govt subsidies to get the industry started.

--->Paul

Mark

By the way, I'm a phone repairman and don't mind going down into the tunnels or up on the stacks. And as long as the other guys don't like getting dirty and are afraid of heights, well keeps me working. No complaints, work is work and pays my bills.

Mark

Ethanol has about 1/4 less btu per gallon, but it has somewhat better burn characteristics, so you lose perhaps 1/6 mpg on ethanol. That is a far cry from 1/2 as your friend claims.

His numbers would be right for methanol, but that is not the product being used these days.

There is a world of difference beween mthanol & ethanol, seems Big Oil has done a good job confusing people. Funny thing is, they are the one's who produce methanol & pollutied west cost groundwater with that stuff!

The Indy racing series had burned methanol for decades, but are switching to 10% ethanol this year, & 100% ethanol next year.

--->Paul

However, it is generally not advisable to use more than a 10% mixture with gas without some modifications to the fuel delivery system. High concentrations of ethanol will cause corrosion problems, and do require some sort of atomization adjustments to the carb. I do not know much more about it.

I do hear that there are places in Minnesota that are offering gas with up to 85% ethanol. Claim that it works without problem, but I have yet to confirm that.

I think that ethanol is just one of about a half dozen things that could be further developed to reduce our dependance on foreign oil.

Mike

Ethanol in pure form is corrosive, and cannot be transported in a pipeline for that reason. When we had that price spike around the Chicago area back in 2000. They claimed it was because they could not reformulate the new gas here in the midwest, but had to do the blending at the refinery.

Like I said, don't know if it is true, but my understanding is that blended ethanol is ok, but pure stuff is corrosive.

Not true.

You are confusing Methanol (wood alcohol mad from petrolium) with ethanol (made from grain starch).

--->Paul

All of the gasoline sold in some areas like St. Louis has 10% ethanol. Reduces pollution. In some states, like Iowa, the road tax on ethanol is lower so that 10% ethanol blends cost less and so sell well.

In Missouri and Iowa and other states, many state owned vehicles run on 85% ethanol, E85. These are available from the major makers as Flexible Fuel Vehicles. At least in the Ford Taurus, the FFV option is a no cost option. There seems to be a few hundred thousand FFV on the roads in the US now.

In some states, e85 is hard to find, though there are many pumps for it in Minnesota and Iowa and Northern Missouri.

I spent part of last evening researching the conversion issue. For a fuel injected engine it seems to boil down to replacing the injectors with injectors having 30% greater maximum volume and adding better flash back protection at the gas tank filler. That's to make a vehicle run on E85. For a carburetor engine it gets more complex. First there's generally no computer to monitor the oxygen in the exhaust and adjust the mixture for various fuels, and ethanol hasn't the multitude of low temperature vaporizable fractions (its all the same chemical compound) for low temperature starting. E85 helps the low temperature starting by having 15% gasoline, but some reports indicate that it may take adding a separate gasoline fuel system for cold weather starts. The fuel pressure of fuel injected systems gets ethanol vaporized at low temperature, but even then some hint it helps to warm the fuel before a cold start.

My gas 4020 runs rough on E10. That may be because it has a cold intake manifold that tends to run the end cylinders more on condensed liquid. It has provisions for heat and the manual calls for heat running gasoline on light loads up to 90F but there's a big crack in the heat part and I don't want to listen to raw exhaust out that crack. I may need to fix that with another manifold. Some of the literature says that good manifold heat is necessary for running high percentages of ethanol fuel.

EPA and CARB are opposed to after market conversions afraid that they will cause excess pollution and so require massive tests that can't be achieved by a company smaller than Ford or GMC and both of those prefer to sell a new vehicle than update an old vehicle.

There are at least 4 E85 pumps in my county, possibly 5 right now. And there are probably 100 E10 pumps. At least one third of the gas pumps around here pump E10.

So WE DO burn ethanol. We could burn more.

Gerald J.

As for where to buy it directly, not sure. Was an ethanol plant in Goshen on Pike St, was a farm coop that was booming in the 70's. Think the plant's still there - not sure. There's a massive plant somewhere west of Southbend, can see it from the Interstate. Will they sell to you directly? Don't know. I'm assuming that you're not going to try to run that stuff straight in your engines, so why not get it premixed from the supplier? After 911, if you go walking up to a plant asking questions, innocent ones at that, might have to answer a few too.

Mark

As for where to buy it directly, not sure. Was an ethanol plant in Goshen on Pike St, was a farm coop that was booming in the 70's. Think the plant's still there - not sure. There's a massive plant somewhere west of Southbend, can see it from the Interstate. Will they sell to you directly? Don't know. I'm assuming that you're not going to try to run that stuff straight in your engines, so why not get it premixed from the supplier? After 911, if you go walking up to a plant asking questions, innocent ones at that, might have to answer a few too.

Mark

I went to a one day seminar on producing your own & converting gas tractors back in the 80's. In our cold temps, you need to start them on gasoline, get a little heat into it in winter, then switch to ethanol in winter. In summer no big deal. They were producing E95 perhaps on the farm in a big LP tank - the other 5% was water.

You build a small water jacket plate for the carb to mount on and use coolant to heat the carb area, or a simple tin shroud over the muffler and connect the air intake to this. Got your heat for winter use.

The ports need to be opened a bit, and some plastic/rubber parts may need to be swapped to different plastic/rubber parts. As mentioned, fuel filters will plug on old machines as the ethanol loosens all the crude in your tank.

That's about it.

E85 can be had at one in 5 fuel pumps here in rural Minnesota, shouldn't have to travel more than 20 miles to find it. Get your state government on the ball to get up to speed on this.

Minnesota is about to kick in the bio-diesel now, starting with 2% soybean oil in all diesel fuel sold. That will ramp up to 5% over the next couple of years.

Legislation is in the govt this week to boost the mandated E10 to be E20 for gasoline starting next year. Not sure if it will pass, but would require all road gasoline to be 20% ethanol.

Those states that lage behind are going to be left out on the energy front. We have windmills popping up all over the sw corner of the state as well.

All of these projects are long-term investments, cost a lot up front, look like they won't pay off - but then bam, price of gasoline goes up 60%, and suddenly it looks pretty good. We have some of the cheapest electricity in the nation from coal-fired plants; yet the stae mandates some re-investment into wind & other bio-electric plants just to get the ball rolling.

Many other states, oddly California among them, are opposed to such things. I think those states might find themselves on the outside looking in. There are ethanal plants, owned by farmers, all over the state of Minnesota. Couple of soybean crushing plants are being built, more being thought about.

Where will your state's crops be used, where will your fuel come from in the future? Where will the jobs be located?

--->Paul

As I said above, converting an injected engine appears to be far simpler than converting a carbureted engine for 85% ethanol.

Using E10 (gasohol) in a vintage engine may mean no more than making sure the ethanol doesn't dissolve fuel lines, float varnish, gaskets and o-rings. There is chance that the ethanol content may loosen crud in tanks and lines, but modern gasolines often have detergents that should have already cleaned the lines. If gasohol does loosen crud the fuel filter will catch most of it.

Running E85 through a carburetor is more difficult. Takes effective manifold heat, larger jets (27% in diameter according to some research reports I found on the internet yesterday), and provisions for some other fuel or warming the E85 for cold starts. Also those documented projects I've found mention working at better fuel tank filler fire flashback prevention.

EPA and CARB are against E85 conversions not done by factories and require a regimen of tests impractical for individuals.

Gerald J.

• National ethanol fuel

Five years ago, they were getting 2.5 plus gallons of ethanol from a bushel of corn. I don"t know how much energy they used to distill it. And I don"t know the energy used to grow corn exactly.

Now in 2005, they get 2.7- 2.9 gallons of ethanol from a bushel of corn. They have refined their process & use less energy now per gallon than they did 5 years ago. As well, there is more notill corn, and yields have gone up, so it takes less fuel to make a bu of corn today than it did 5 years ago.

Put all together, any data from 2-3 years ago is already outdated. What I read these days is about the 1.6 btu produced for every 1 btu used in the manufature of corn. This is accounting for the feed produced, and the bubbly air made as well. Since they are sold, they have value, & should be accounted for somehow. Like you say, there seem to be several different ways of proving one"s point. :)

Five years from now, the equasion will be even better.

I don"t believe ethanol will ever replace our petrolium needs.

But, it can help. Just the anti-pollution effects of a 10% blend of it are worth looking at. I"m not sure it would be practical to convert all our cars to E85 machines & try to produce that much. But perhaps getting 10-15% of all road fuels to be ethanol would be about right? That amount would help air quality, would let us get more out of the crude we use (ethanol raises octane, allowing it to be mixed with lower grade gasoline....) and heck, decreasing our gasoline consumption by 10% would have to help with international affairs & production & enviornmental drilling issues....

Biodiesel is a little more exciting. I believe it takes less energy to produce, and packs more energy in a gallon. Oil seeds use no N fertlizer, so we don"t put as much petrolium into it"s production.

There is ethanol in straw & corn stalks as well, just very costly to try to pull it out. It will be interesting if a use for this biomass ever comes about.

Will be interesting.

If Minnesota can make the ethanol & biodiesel blends work out, everone else should. Winter is a tough time up here. :)

My fuel coop has discussed biodiesel several times. It will jell in winter moreso. Many farmers are ordering a barrel of bio & blending their own, using it already up to 5%. It is working, and it is available now. It offers some lubricating qualities that the low sulfur standards are removing, so might end up being a good mix.

Regurdless, petro-based liquid fuels will be our staple for mny years to come, I"m not figuring there will be any mad rush to a different fuel. Just pecking away at it, a few % here & there.

--->Paul