The Ethanol Disaster

What ever happened to all the hype of using switchgrass as the fuel's feedstock, rather than food needed just to keep people alive ... not that I'd ever begrudge a fat person the right to jump into the suburban to go ½ mile on corn fuel, for that all-important donut fix. I'd hate to wrongly presume it's the corn lobby killing switchgrass in the woumb.
.

 

The price of ethanol is not the same on the gulf coast or california. It needs to get to those places, and it can't be transporated as cheaply as oil, as its corrosive and collects water. Then if the E85 stations don't sell much we have transportaion, again special, and less volume on the more expensive tank that needs to be installed. That should mean the spread between normal whole sale and retail e85 should be the least at high volume midwestern stations, which is exactly what we see.

The anti-competition part is all about the mandate, which increases the wholesale price of ethanol at the mixers, and the profits of large corporations like ADM that put the mandate in place. The most harm will be done in bad weather years when the world wide corn crop is lower. We had lots of ranchers slaughter extra animals because they couldn't afford to feed them.

well another way to look at this is that in the midwest where station volume is highest, and transporation cost lowest E85 will be priced the best. If e85 doesn't even sell well in the midwest either corn prices are too high, or too few people have cars that can burn it.

 

Corn lobby and hydrogen lobby worked hard and continue to work hard to prevent the pickens plan (liquid natural gas of long hauling) and methanol.

Cellulistic ethanol seems to have hit some technological hurdles to get cost competitive (costs much more than corn ethanol). methane and methanol from renewable sources don't have any technological problems, its simply cheaper to make them from natural gas, but in some scarce corn years renewable methanol could compete in price.

 

Well it does look like ethanol production is up:


Although gasoline recently increased, it doesn't look proportional to the ethanol production increase:


Note: the "zero" reference is not on these charts. Still the trend lines suggests ethanol continues an upward trend relative to gasoline. Meanwhile, I've found a map of relative E85 prices:
E85 Prices

So apparently the upper midwest has the best E85 prices. Meanwhile, our local Alabama prices are much worse at 3% or less spread. But one interesting thought . . . I suspect ethanol distilleries have a lower regulation threshold than an oil refinery. Ethanol plants apparently have and continue to significantly improved their efficiencies.

So maybe the solution for local E85 prices is an Alabama based, ethanol plant. We have the climate and resources to grow a lot corn.

Bob Wilson

ps. By accident, I drove by the Ohio, Fostoria, ethanol plant . . . an impressive facility without the typical odour I remember growing up in Oklahoma downwind of any refinery.

 

Yes, if you put the ethanol plant, the fuel mixers, and volume of customers in Alabama you will drop the price of E85 down to what it is in midwestern states that do this. In order to really get enough volume then you need people with flex fuel cars.

But my question is this a good goal for Alabama? Either you are going to chop down trees and move more marginal land into ethanol production, or you will grow fewer of other crops. That marginal land takes a lot of fertilizer, pesticides, and water to grow corn. Add it up and the fossil fuel (natural gas, electricity, and diesel mainly) and you are only getting about 20% more energy than fossil fuels used to produce it (solar is the main other input). When you include land use and water pollution its not a great environmental plan.

Alabama's main agriculture product is chicken, and one thing we know about chickens is they produce a lot of waste. Instead of disposing of it, you could create digesters that produce methane, which you can convert to methanol and voila use in a flex fuel car. It seems with an open fuel standard, (methanol/ethanol blends fueling cars) alabama could produce a much more environmentally sound fuel than corn based ethanol.
how to build a methane digester? | The Public School

 

The U.S. government believes that Ethanol is the wonder fuel of the future. Lets do the math, 3 gallons of oil to make 1.5 gallons of Ethanol. Ethanol only has 2/3 the energy of gasoline and even less than that with diesel. Maybe its because I went to public school I just can not figure this one out...

If Ethanol is so great why, why, why, does the EPA not conduct their test with gasoline with 10% Ethanol, which is for all intents and purposes 99% of the auto gasoline available in the U.S.?

 

The energy balance was never that bad.

To control variables in the test.
"Although there is no consensus on the total number of gasoline blends used in the United States, GAO found 11 distinct special blends in use during the summer of 2004. Further, when different octane grades and other factors are considered, there were at least 45 different kinds of gasoline produced in the United States during all of 2004."
- U.S. GAO - Gasoline Markets: Special Gasoline Blends Reduce Emissions and Improve Air Quality, but Complicate Supply and Contribute to Higher Prices

Some of those blends were formulated years after the EPA started testing car emissions. The conventional gasoline blend may not be the same as it was back then. So which one do we use for testing? Which brand do we go with, since the companies might use different detergents and additives?

To avoid the hassle those questions bring up, the EPA dictated the use of a unique test blend. It is 93 octane to allow it to be used in all engines to be tested. Using an E10 blend might give results closer to what a driver might get in the real world, but the window sticker numbers' primary purpose is to allow comparison of vehicle fuel efficiency between models. Ethanol's hygroscopicity will impede that by altering the volumetric energy density of the fuel in tank or any container with a cracked seal as it absorbs moisture from the air. They could test the water content before every test run, but that adds another step for potential error. The actual test results undergo adjustment before getting on the consumer window sticker. More reliable test results will be had by leaving the ethanol out of the test gas, and then account for its affect in the adjust of the numbers.

 

Thanks Trollbait for your response. Ethanol still is a negative gain when it comes to energy as it takes more
oil to make it than the energy yield from the Ethanol process.

The EPA should have conducted their test with E10 gasoline (87 Octane) and for Premium Required Fuel vehicles.,
E10(91 Octane). The result would have been more realistic than the gasoline used that is basically unobtainable
for the average motorist. Here in Oregon E-10 is mandated by Law, as well as several other states.

 

bah . . . it aint that bad . . . . it could be natural gas or H2o distilled into hydrogen.



.

 

Then the EPA wouldn't be able to piggyback on the CAFE tests, which must still be run to meet other legal requirements. Separating them would add to the regulatory bureaucracy that the car makers must deal with. Many politicians already base their careers on complaints about this regulatory burden.

The E10-Eo difference is quite small compared to the empirical fudge factors rolled into the EPA label calculation.

 

Using premium reduces the costs involved in using a small batched blend. It is already two octanes because California premium is 91 octane v. the 93 in most of the rest of the country. The higher octane has no effect on regular fueled cars' fuel efficiency. Well, there might be a few labeled regular fuel, but with high compression engines.

I pointed out that ethanol's relation with water makes it a poor choice to use in scientific and regulatory tests where you want to control variables. Fuzzy1 pointed out that going to an ethanol blend would not meet the requirements for the CAFE testing, and I'll add the ones for emission testing. Without an act of Congress doing an E10 for the window sticker means running two seperate tests.

Dry E10 only has 3% less energy than gasoline. The rounding error making the published numbers whole is likely larger.

As to EROI of ethanol production, it is a still improving field. It wasn't much of a concern when our ancestors started distilling ethanol for whiskeys and vodkas. Older fuel ethanol plants are energy negative. New ones are energy positive. Why keep the old ones running? Why do we still have old coal power plants running?

 

I estimate the EPA test fuel may have about 10% more energy content compared to the RFG regular that I use. That would be 3% due to the ethanol, and 7% due to more energy in the gasoline fraction of the EPA test fuel. As long as EPA uses a 10% correction factor in their MPG adjustment equations, I guess they are OK. My guess is that my local Southern Region Reformulated Gasoline has less energy content (less MPG) than EPA calculates, and this may explain why Consumer Reports measures lower MPG than EPA.

I agree we are missing any public data from EPA on the effect of ethanol on MPG, as well impact of fuel energy content on MPG.

 

they are not "making" money. they merely changed what crop they were growing to get the largest amount of money in the form of government handouts...

good for the farmer bad for the taxpayer...

 

Family farmers are not big winners in this, its agribusiness, ADM in particular. Family farms see little of the money. Larger farms see a little. Corn requires more pesticides, and fertilizer benefiting those giant corporations as well.
ADM lobbies for ethanol and makes a fortune

Ranchers that need feed are negatively impacted by costs. It is not good for the environment. There are much better things we could do to help the family farmer. It distorts land use.

One thing ethanol does do is reduce imported oil. For every 3 gallons of ethanol produced the US imports about 2 gallon less of oil. Instaed of oil we use more natural gas and electricity, but the ballance can get better with better feed stocks. Some ethanol is good if it reduces imports from opec or oil sands, but this is a balance. The ethanol mandate seems to have shifted the balance too far towards corn. If you acknowledge the benefit is less imported oil, not family farmers, not the environment, then their is no reason to not also use methanol other than politics.

 

[/BEGIN RANT] The EPA is supposed to be protecting the environment not worried about fuel economy or cafe, except when they impact the environment. Emissions, you know the thing the EPA should regulate with their test, is different with different levels of alcohol. It seems like a major problem with the test if E10 is supposed to reduce carbon monoxide versus E0, but increases evaporative emissions, how do you regulate hydrocarbons and CO? Part of the answer is these numbers in new cars are so much lower than they were 30 years ago that the EPA doesn't really bother to check, it just sets out numbers pulled out of the nether regions, lately that has been out of Sacremento. How good does it do? Hey you wouldn't want something called the environmental protection agency measuring that would you?

NHTSA was tasked with cafe. The reason it ended up there is simply a matter of politics. Like all strongly political decisions lots of people did not like how it was managed. The first problem is that had a huge influence from IIHS, UAW, Auto lobby, etc and set standards that not only continues to use an antiquated test.that doesn't at all reflect american drivers gas milage in 2014, but according to many low balled numbers and heavily favored SUVs. Hey it was a great idea in the mid '70s when the Ford administration started it, but times have changed. Well CARB didn't like it, and wanted to regulate, so they sued on obscure measures to get the power to the EPA so the EPA could give the power to sacramento. Yep politics. I can't say I disagree NHTSA was screwing up, but it was because of the presidents and congress (Clinton campaigned on raising cafe, then left it to gore, who decided not to do it, supercar would save us all. Bush didn't really want to do anything, but went along when congress finally did something in 2007). OK now the power is shared by EPA/NHTSA/CARB which means it really is screwed up. Not much hope of using the fuels americans use, the better tests, etc. At least the numbers increased to reasonable levels.
[/end rant]

That is true as far as gas milage goes, but not pollution. Wouldn't it be better to use E10 to get the pollution right, and fudge the cafe for the fuel americans actually have to put in their gas tanks? If pollution is the same, why is EPA mandating oxygenate? Wasn't the oxygenate requirement, the one Gore used to start the ethanol mandate in the first place (tie breaking vote in the senate, that he now regrets, and chalked up with being blinded by presidential politics).

 

Frustrating to see the USA EXPORTING crude... while we import it at the same time.

yes I know its just going across the border north and south to be refined so we can buy it back, but it adds to cost...

Just think if we were able to not export any oil, and refine all we drill It would help with fuel prices. but no one wants a refinery in their back yard or the liability associated with it..

IMO the only good thing about ethanol is the lesser reliance on foreign oil. Everything else is a waste

e85- not as efficient as 87 octane gasoline so you have to buy more to go the same distance
e85 requires 1.75 btu in creation to create 1 BTU at the pump. Gasoline uses 1.23btu
and this doesn't take into account the pollution from fertilizers/pestcide to grow it..

so with e85 you pollute more using, you pollute more refining it, and you pollute more making it and what really hurts, it ends up costing more based on its inefficiency. Heck I'd Pay more for it if it gave me any extra 10% boost in mileage, but did not rot out my rubber fuel lines...

 

I sure see a lot of 'flex fuel' stickers on the pickup trucks and SUVs in my work parking lot.

You've suggested a great solution:

• methane from the chicken, hog, and landfills feed the ethanol plant
• wet brewer's mash feeds the chickens and hogs

Alabama has a rich tradition of ethanol production but usually in unmarked, Mason jars and white plastic bottles. When Redstone and Marshall were developing rockets for the space program, there was a lot of stainless steel scrap . . . that showed up in local ethanol facilities . . . the ones in the woods and used school buses.

Bob Wilson

 

The current exports of crude don't add to the costs, they are tiny. Exports of refined diesel, likely raises the price of diesel and lower the cost of gasoline (less energy needed if you can export diesel), but if we are talking energy security, why not convert heavy trucks to natural gas as per the pickens plan. It would drop oil imports and pollution.

It's the net imports versus exports which are the problem. If they change the law though exports could hurt US in the long term.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303851804579559173078617520

We are refining more than we drill, a lot more. The US is a net exporter of refined products.

completely agree there.

If you design an engine for e85, it should be more efficient on the e85. Many flex fuel engines are designed for E10, but can run e85 less efficiently, but e85 is a better fuel (you can get more power and more efficiency out of an engine designed properely for it). I don't know the energy ballance numbers, but they are about in the ball park of 1btu ethanol:1btu fossil imputs, with disagreements on how you measure.

e85 should pollute the same less when using it if the emissions are properly made for it. Using proper materials that will not corrode is important.. They have the car design stuff down for brazil, but brazil uses sugar cane that requires much less fossil fuel to turn into alcohol.

 

Fortunately, ethanol technology changes faster than those who choose not to keep current:

Source: Five Ethanol Myths, Busted | Autopia | WIRED citing sources including Argonne Labs and peer reviewed papers

Argonne Labs paper: http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/AF/669.PDF

This Wired article is pretty good about citing sources which if necessary we can start a paper search. It certainly has more credibility than warmed over, out-of-date sources that have not followed the technology.

I'm OK with ethanol in our Prius provided it is priced by energy density and not with the mark-up we see in Alabama. Personally, I would have no problem with putting some of my 401K in an ethanol plant if I could buy E85 at prices like they have in the upper Midwest. But I thought I read there are provisions in Alabama law to allow small-scale production of fuel alcohol provided proper records are kept.

Bob Wilson

 

Planning your next project after you are done with the plane there?

Try to use stainless, or maybe copper where you need to use metal. Fuel ethanol is causing stress corrosion cracking in carbon steel tanks and pipe.
API 939-D Stress Corrosion Cracking of Carbon Steel in Fuel Ethanol | Inspectioneering
http://www.forcetechnology.com/NR/rdonlyres/7FF02A1E-A6E6-4A9C-AB87-E7891A591BE7/5955/3ACorrosionandcrackinginethanolandbioethanoltanksb.pdf