Is E85 Dead Now? 556
twdorris writes "With a stoichiometric ratio far lower than that of gasoline (much lower than the price difference), buying the E85 ethanol fuel blend instead of gasoline was already hard to justify. Unless you raced your car on a track where E85 provided a great alternative to race fuel, it really didn't make financial sense. And there are other reasons not to buy E85, too. Like the impact corn-based ethanol is having on food prices or the questionable emissions results (PDF). So, now that the ethanol subsidies provided by the U.S. federal government are scheduled to end this summer, it's going to be even harder to justify E85 (at least in the U.S.). This change will basically make a gallon of E85 cost the same or slightly more than gasoline. With so many things working against it, are the days numbered for readily available E85 at your local gas station? And should it have ever even been made available to begin with? How much did all that government-backed R&D and tax credits cost us for something that was pretty clearly questionable to begin with?"
10% Ethanol (Score:5, Interesting)
Does that mean that we'll go back to having gasoline actually be real, 100% honest-to-God gasoline too?
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:5, Informative)
For the record, I know of only one location that sells E85 in this area. Doesn't mean there aren't others, but if there are, I haven't seen them.
One of the talk shows on our station is a good ol' boy who talks auto repair. He insists -- vehemently -- that ethanol lowers mileage so much that whatever you saved on emissions, you lose because you're burning more fuel as a result. The callers to that show seem to echo that sentiment.
I know in my own car (Nissan Altima, and I LOVE it), I seem to get a bit more mileage when I'm burning pure gasoline -- about 5% more.
YMMV (literally, in this case) and that's hardly scientific, but there you go. :)
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:5, Insightful)
I had a Ford truck that would run on E85, but it said right in the owner's manual that the gas mileage was 15-20% poorer.
Ethanol is a net loss of energy. It takes more energy to produce a gallon than you get by burning it. Combine that with the fact that we could cover the entire country in corn and still not be independent of fossil fuels - it's a complete boondoggle.
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:5, Insightful)
Ethanol is a net loss of energy. It takes more energy to produce a gallon than you get by burning it.
Isn't that true for, well, everything? Gas is just nice because most of the energy has already been deposited so we just have to drill it and refine it so that we can extract the stored energy.
I'm not backing burning ethanol here, just the good old laws of thermodynamics. Essentially: The best you can do as far as energy-in vs energy-out is break even, and you can only do that at absolute zero.
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:5, Informative)
That's just semantics.
It takes less energy to drill a gallon of gasoline out of the ground and deliver it to your fuel tank than you gain by burning that fuel in your engine. It takes more energy to grow corn, turn it into ethanol and deliver it to your fuel tank than you gain from burning that ethanol.
If you were using solar powered tractors to grow the corn, and solar powered trucks to move it around it might make sense (just might, it wouldn't necessarily.) Given that most of the energy to produce the ethanol comes from gasoline or diesel, it makes no sense to use ethanol.
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:5, Informative)
That's just semantics.
It takes less energy to drill a gallon of gasoline out of the ground and deliver it to your fuel tank than you gain by burning that fuel in your engine. It takes more energy to grow corn, turn it into ethanol and deliver it to your fuel tank than you gain from burning that ethanol.
If you were using solar powered tractors to grow the corn, and solar powered trucks to move it around it might make sense (just might, it wouldn't necessarily.) Given that most of the energy to produce the ethanol comes from gasoline or diesel, it makes no sense to use ethanol.
I believe that in most cases, it's more than just semantics. Most (not all) corn is grown using conventional (petroleum-based) fertilizer. According to Michael Pollan [wikipedia.org], producing one calorie of corn uses two calories of petro-fertilizer. This is only counting fertilizer use, not the additional energy used for farm equipment, moving product/raw materials, the distillation process or loss of energy during distillation.
I'm shocked that this is not cited elsewhere when discussing Ethanol as an energy source, especially when used to reduce our dependency on petroleum (foreign or otherwise). Given that we're using more petroleum to make it than it would save, it appears to be a bit of a boondoggle.
...either that or I'm horribly misinformed. (Note: Pollan's book cites a peer reviewed study for this claim - I'm just citing what I read from memory)
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:4, Insightful)
Just for argument's sake: the petro-fertilizer used to grow corn almost certainly does not include the fractions used to make gasoline.
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:4, Insightful)
With modern cracking techniques that doesn't really make a difference. You can produce gasoline from most of the fractions now.
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Unless it also doesn't include the fractions used to make Diesel, kerosene, or jet fuel, it would still make more sense to use it as fuel directly.
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Get some fossil fuel, somehow.
2. Use that fossil fuel as the exclusive energy source to go drill for more fossil fuel, and refine it.
3. Repeat.
4. Profit! You now have lots and lots of fossil fuel (at least until we run of out pockets of it in convenient locations in the Earth's crust).
1. Get some ethanol fuel, somehow.
2. Use that ethanol fuel as the exclusive energy source to farm and process more ethanol fuel.
3. Repeat.
4. Fail! You are now out of fuel, because the process to get more ethanol takes more energy than you get out. Every time you plant and harvest, your crop is smaller. This is despite the fact that the corn is taking on energy in the form of sunlight -- even more energy is poured into the process of tending, harvesting, and processing it. Researchers have been trying to find a plant where the equation works out the other way, and sugar cane in equatorial latitudes might even work out okay (only okay though, not incredible).
So yes, over the very long timescale, counting the energy put into making the crude oil, it all balances out. But the original source of energy (solar or solar + whatever-it-is-that-makes-crude-oil) is not really controlled by humans in the first place, we're just harvesting it in a physical form, and we have to weigh the energy cost of harvesting the various options.
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:4, Interesting)
Researchers have been trying to find a plant where the equation works out the other way, and sugar cane in equatorial latitudes might even work out okay (only okay though, not incredible).
Sorghum in the US and energy cane in the tropics, using the MixAlco process by Terrabon, could deliver energy at a gasoline pump price equivalent of $1-2/gal.
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Re:10% Ethanol (Score:5, Interesting)
Right. But with oil, it has already been produced for us by natural processes, over the eons. So on human timescales it is a huge net win from a thermodynamic standpoint... until it runs out.
Problem with corn-based ethanol is, once you factor in all the chemical fertilizers and the energy required to grow the corn, harvest it, and refine it into ethanol, you've consumed about as much fossil fuel as you're saving by burning the ethanol. So in reality t's just a convoluted way of burning the same oil you would've burned if you'd used normal gasoline to begin with.
If we could produce it from sugarcane instead (the way Brazil does), the story would be different. Unfortunately, unlike Brazil we don't have a lot of land that is suitable for cultivation of sugarcane. (And in Brazil's case, converting large amounts of land to sugarcane production isn't entirely benign either, but that's another story.)
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Ethanol is a net loss of energy. It takes more energy to produce a gallon than you get by burning it.
Just as a neat reminder: As far as we know, the law of thermodynamics apply to all things. You can't create or destroy energy, the process is never fully reversible and you can't extract arbitrary amounts of energy from any limited thing. That means, you can't win the game, you can't cheat at the game and you can't even quit the game (as someone greater than me has so succinctly put).
This applies to E85 just as well as to pure Gasoline. After all, how much energy did you think was converted to allow simple
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:4, Informative)
What you're missing is that the people saying that Ethanol takes more energy to produce are not including the sun's energy that causes the corn to grow, nor are they including the sun's energy that caused the plants and animals to grow that eventually turned into oil. They're talking about the production process itself. If the production process itself takes more energy than it produces, then the system as a whole isn't just a net loss; it's a *huge* net loss.
It would be as though the amount of gasoline your chainsaw took to chop down the tree could produce more heat than burning the tree. That's what happens with ethanol. That just isn't true for gasoline, coal, or wood. I'm not certain about the lab assistants. They generally don't like it if you try to burn them for warmth.
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:4, Insightful)
That really isn't the important question as it is already answered without going to the CO2 abstraction layer. Ethanol requires more fossil fuel to produce than it eventually replaces when mixed into the fuel supply. So try and figure it out.
Idiots buying into the CO2 scare are what allowed politicians to invent the corn subsidies in the first place. They gave away billions to the giant aggro-businesses (and got their kickbacks) while the climate changers could feel good about themselves. The rest of us got the shaft at the pump with crappy ethanol gas that is over priced and then again in taxes that go to the subsidies.
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ethanol is produced, gasoline is extracted.
Gasoline is extracted from the organic goo that is result of organic matter accumulating underground for the past few billion years, all you need is drill for it and out it comes. Ethanol is made by planting corn, fertilize it, water it, wait for it to grow, harvest the corn, extract sugars, ferment, extract and distill ethanol.
Energy used for drilling is much smaller than energy that comes from burning the resulting oil. On the other hand, planting, fertilizing, w
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a boondoggle.
It just wasn't designed to do what you thought it was.
Namely provide back-door subsidies to Big Corn.
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:5, Interesting)
This. I have a friend at the local state university who studies various alternatives to gasoline that come from plant sources. According to him, corn ethanol is practically the worst choice they could have made. The other choices, including using various native grasses, end up with net positives, without using cooked numbers, and are much much higher than ethanol's figures when using realistic numbers. The problem, there is no "grass" industry in the same way there is a "corn" industry.
BigCorn (Score:5, Informative)
ArcherDanielsMidland, and Senators from Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, Dakotas and Minnesota
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Re:10% Ethanol (Score:5, Insightful)
Ethanol from corn has always been a stupid proposition. It's a little above break even at best, is hard on the soil, you'd need a huge amount of acreage to replace any decent fraction of fossil fuels, uses a food crop as a fuel source, and the list goes on and on. The only reason it as done is because of the corn lobby, despite just about every other expert saying it was idiotic to do so.
There are much higher yielding and less destructive ways to produce ethanol. But they can't compete with the massive government subsidies going into to the Midwest's corn hole. Hopefully these subsidies will expire and the true cost of corn based ethanol will quickly kill it so that the more intelligent and productive means can be put into action.
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>>financial investors (the so-called âfinancialization of commoditiesâ) may have been partly responsible for the 2007/08 spike
Note the "partly" bit.
Corn ethanol is absolutely a driver of higher food prices. If you don't believe this, you haven't studied the issue enough.
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:4, Interesting)
My car is relatively newer and I *hate* when gas stations are forced to use E10 (10% ethanol, ie. Winter fuel). My mpg drops by 10% - 15%. I wish I was exaggerating but I'm pretty meticulous in checking this when I fill up every couple weeks. This has occurred each year since I've owned my car and I've made nearly the same drive when comparing my winter and summer driving habits. They say E10 is cleaner but how much cleaner when you add the extra 15% in fuel I'm burning up to do the same work?
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Wouldn't fuel consumption be higher in the winter either way due to the car taking longer to heat up?
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:5, Informative)
"Ethanol in fuel is what CAUSES the condensation..."
Nonsense. Ethanol has been used as an additive to dry gasoline tanks since LONG before it was ever forced upon us for other reasons.
Ethanol forms a permanent bond with water... up until the point where it is actually combusted. That is precisely why you can't distill 100% alcohol... you simply can't separate it from the water that way. It is possible to separate it chemically, but you really don't want to do that to your booze.
You are just plain incorrect. Alcohol works fine in the winter to dry your gas tank. As others have pointed out, though, too much of it is not good for your gas mileage.
another slashdotter who has no idea how cars work (Score:3)
That's bullshit. You're only adding 10% of a *FUEL*. If you added 10% water, and it still ran, you'd expect an approx. 10% loss in efficiency. You could mix in kitchen oil (which will burn) and if you could get it past the injectors, you wouldn't expect a loss anywhere near that.
NO, you're the one full of bullshit. You're operating on the incorrect assumption that the only (or worst) effect a contaminant will have is to not burn. Stoichiometric ratio changes, burn speed (flame front speed) changes, etc
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:4, Informative)
Several years ago I took a few cross-country business trips in a rented "FlexFuel" Chevy HHR- definitely not my vehicle of choice, but it's what they paid for. I obtained a list of E85 stations along my route (turns out they are exceptionally rare in some regions) and did a little cost analysis with the E85 versus the usual 87 octane (10% ethanol) gasoline. Looking back at my mileage logs, I estimated about 34 MPG with regular gas and 25 MPG with E85. However, the price difference between the two fuels wasn't great enough to make up for the reduced fuel economy, and E85 actually ended up being about 5% MORE expensive per mile at the time.
My most interesting E85 experience was back in the summer of 2008, when Georgia and the Carolinas were faced with fuel shortages and price hikes. Regular gasoline- when you could find it- was about $4.60 per gallon and most stations were sold out. I happened to be attending a conference in the region and had ended up with an E85 rental car. I printed out a list of stations and had no trouble finding fuel wherever I went... and it averaged about $2.80-3.00. A number of people actually got stranded at the conference when every station in the county, and every station in the next county, ran out of gas. Some folks resorted to waiting for hours in lines dozens of vehicles deep when delivery trucks finally came through with fuel; however, I found that there was always plenty of E85 to spare even after the regular gasoline sold out.
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Re:10% Ethanol (Score:5, Insightful)
Not likely, since ethanol is still a dogwhistle issue for uninformed voters in important election states, and subsidies are a cheap way to buy votes.
FIFY :)
Farmers against Ethanol Subsidies (Score:5, Interesting)
Most farmers don't like ethanol subsidies. Ethanol subsidies drove up the price of corn, which in turn drove up the price of land to record highs per acre, which in turn drives up the cost to farmers growing anything except corn. And if all you can grow is corn, that really screws up your crop rotation, increasing every other cost.
If you're a farmer not growing corn, you hate ethanol subsidies. At least, that's what I've heard here in the midwest.
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:4, Informative)
Not octane, isooctane! (Score:4, Interesting)
n-octane has an octane rating of about -10. However, 2, 2, 4 - trimethyl pentane (an isomer of n-Octane, sometimes called isooctane) has an octane rating of 100. Generally, the more branches and methyl groups a molecule has, they higher the octane rating. Small molecules of fuel also tend ot have higher octane ratings. Molecules with alcohol groups on them don't usually have octane ratings much different from a similar non-alcohol bearing group, but they tend to be liquids are useful temperatures and pressures. Both Ethane and Ethanol has an octane rating of about 100 (depends on the method used to measure it).
None of this has anything to do with they amount of energy you get out of a gallon or a kilogram of such a fuel. Diesle fuel has a higher energy content that gasoline per gallon (and per kilogram) and has a much lower octane rating (15-25).
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:5, Informative)
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:5, Informative)
Backfiring is often detonation in the exhaust. I've had mild backfiring from having an exhaust leak close to the engine, during part of the cycle there is negative pressure in the exhaust and it sucks in air which mixes with unburnt fuel in the exhaust and detonates with a small bang.
I've also had the engine die while in gear, gas goes into exhaust, engine comes back to life and you get a huge bang when the air + gas mixture in the muffler detonates. The odd time this has happened to me I thought the exhaust was blown totally off my truck.
You can also get backfiring from broken non-sealing valves, same thing, gas and air gets in the exhaust then detonates loudly.
The detonation you get from too low of octane (also too advanced ignition) might be better described as premature detonation or uneven detonation. Instead of a nice explosion starting at the spark plug and expanding evenly through the combustion chamber you get spontaneous detonations in different parts of the combustion chamber, often early detonations as well. This causes stress in the engine especially when the detonation happens too early while the piston is on the upstroke as well as excessive heat buildup.
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't raise octane content, but octane rating, which is a measure of susceptibility to autoignition, indicated as the iso-octane content of a mixture of heptane and iso-octane with the same properties -- but as soon as there's anything other than heptane, the octane rating is nothing to do with octane. Ethanol raises octane rating by being difficult to ignite -- basically because it's an alcohol instead of a hydrocarbon, and they act different.
And E85 will let you get more power, and comparable MPG, from the same block vs. gasoline precisely because of ethanol's awesome octane rating -- the only catch is, you need to increase the compression ratio to make it happen (which will boost your efficiency enough to compensate the decreased energy content of the fuel) -- but turbocharged engines (which can do that on the fly) are sadly unpopular in America, land of the big-block V8.
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:5, Informative)
The octane rating of fuel has less to do with the actual compounds and more to do with how much pressure you can put it under before it detonates (which, of course, does depend on the chemical makeup, but other things, such as ethanol can raise it, not just octane specifically). The higher the octane rating, the less likely it is to spontaneously combust under high pressures. This is why your higher compression engines don't allow the lower octane ratings. They're made to compress the fuel more thna 87 octane fuel can withstand. Of course, by changing the timing and the amount of fuel and air that enters the cylinder, they will work with lower fuel, but less powerfully.
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:5, Informative)
Octane rating is not a measure of octane content. It's a comparison of the autoignition (e.g. knock) resistance of a given fuel blend to a scale defined by the properties of pure iso-octane (100) and heptane (0). A gasoline with an octane rating of 97 has the same autoignition properties as a mix of 97% octane and 3% heptane. Ethanol's octane rating is at or over 100, and E85 typically has a R+M/2 octane rating of around 95, which is a little higher than retail premium gasolines, and much higher than standard 87-octane gasoline.
The high knock resistance of E85 actually enables engine designs that have higher compression ratios, more boost, etc. to improve efficiency (and power output) which can actually make up some of the reduced range in a vehicle if the engine is designed primarily with E85 in mind rather than standard gasoline. Still, with the fuel only having about 2/3 the energy content of gasoline per unit volume, it's a big gap to close.
Ethanol isn't primarily added because of its octane-boosting properties, however (though those are taken advantage of in formulating the base stock to blend with). It's added because the EPA mandates oxygenated fuels to reduce emissions of CO and other pollutants. Fuels can be oxygenated through the addition of either ethers or alcohols, MTBE being an example of the former, and ethanol an example of the latter. Most states have mandated that oxygenates be specifically made up of ethanol, due to the harmful health effects of MTBE, methanol, and other potential chemicals if they leach into ground water, as well as support from the powerful corn-farming lobby.
Re:10% Ethanol (Score:5, Informative)
I think the real problem is that the standards aren't performance-based. Fuel is required to be oxygenated, rather than requiring that it has some level of emissions in some reference test. If the standard were performance-based then the refiner could use a number of different means to accomplish the standard rather than just adding one or two particular substances - both of which are expensive and have certain drawbacks (environmental and otherwise).
However, ethanol in gas is more about agribusiness subsidies and the environment is just a red herring. At work they go on about the environment as well, but I've noticed this tends to be only in situations where environmental interests are strongly correlated with corporate financial interest. Saving on pounds of CO2 on an airline ticket tends to mean lower airline costs which means lower ticket prices. Saving on pounds of CO2 from power use means less power use which means a lower electric bill. No harm in it, but the appeal to the environment sounds disingenuous. If I found some more renewable supplier of paper for an extra $3 per ream it isn't like they'd be tripping over themselves to buy it.
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Not octane content, octane RATING. The two things are only slightly related. Google it if you want more.
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You were misinformed. Cars can use E85 (often referred to as FlexFuel) but do not require it. I have a a car than can take E85, but unless it is about 50 cents a gallon cheaper than gas, I do not bother.
All the E85 sticker on the car means is that the fuel lines are designed not to dissolve with the higher ethanol percentage. If you did not mind replacing the fuel lines and a few other parts when they dissolved away, you could run E85 in a standard car and engine.
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If you did not mind replacing the fuel lines and a few other parts when they dissolved away, you could run E85 in a standard car and engine.
In the 1970s, in the wake of the first gas crisis ('74), Detroit promised us that cars' fuel lines would be modified "in a few years" such that they could burn pure ethanol or pure methanol (a stronger solvent than ethanol) without modification. Fast-forward forty years: Not only will your fuel lines dissolve (I can only imagine how dissolved fuel line will burn in an engine), but your gaskets will as well.
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And I suspect that's why flex fuel vehicles don't get that great mileage with e85. The engines aren't designed for it, they can merely "take" it. They don't take advantage of any of the benefits of
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Deader Than a Doornail (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Deader Than a Doornail (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, that's about the size of it. Congresspeople tipping off their buddies in big business to buy cheap farmland because they were about to legislate a corn bubble, and then making sure to tip them off again that the subsidies would not be renewed, so they could sell the land to unsuspecting farmers at corn bubble prices, only to have it come crashing down.
Typical corruption scam by government.
Re:Deader Than a Doornail (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Deader Than a Doornail (Score:4, Funny)
So who bought the farm?
Ha ha.
Re:Deader Than a Doornail (Score:5, Insightful)
No, corruption does not imply doing something illegal. Corruption implies doing something unethical.
Re:Deader Than a Doornail (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I gathered from folks who have been doing this for many decades: this will be a very painful learning experience for everyone involved and this seems to be the sentiment whether the wind blows right or left.
What was the lesson exactly?
That it's a total douche move to lobby for subsidies to grow corn in order to make a completely unrealistic and net energy/money losing biofuel?
That it's a bigger douche move to switch from growing actual foods to growing this shit and driving up prices of general foodstuffs that would have grown on the same land, as well as the cost of meats from livestock that used to feed off of dent corn?
That it's really fucking annoying when many of the country's engines are being rotted away from the inside-out up by the water-loving ethanol that corn lobbyists demanded be put into gasoline?
Or that it was a completely idiotic idea to then invest "long-term" (but ironically very short-sightedly) in the Land of Oz that they managed to make for themselves?
I live in Wisconsin and go to school with quite a few farmers, and can relate to them and feel bad for them on an individual level, but some of the assholes at the top of this heap, namely the lobbyists for subsidies, can go fuck themselves for how much trouble they've caused in the name of greed.
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What is exactly wrong with water? Before I ran E85 in my overpowered turbo-charged engine, I injected water. The waters cools down the combustion chamber so that I can run at higher pressures which means more power for the same amount of fuel.
I am unsure why water is one of your complaints.
LoL because if you actually did have an "overpowered" (wtf does that even mean?) turbo-charged engine with water injection, then you were either a complete idiot who blindly ordered a water-injection kit online and asked a shop to install it, or are just subtly and cleverly trying to test my knowledge of something that you already know: Water is corrosive regardless of how useful it might be in forced-induction techniques.
http://www.cartuningtips.com/92-water-injection [cartuningtips.com]
search: corrosion
The fact that rubber
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So you mean some farmers (home owners) speculated on the high price of corn (real estate) and are going to get burned?
Suddenly, it feels like history repeating itself...
Re:Deader Than a Doornail (Score:5, Interesting)
We still have our family farms (my dad has a little more than half I have the rest), but we rent them out to other farmers these days. It totals about 600 acres, 450 roughly farmable the rest is woods, in southeast missouri. About 12 years ago we basically spent the cash we inherited when my grandmother died on leveling the land, putting in irrigation, etc. as well as grain bins on the farm. We expected about an 18 year return on the cash investment (on paper the value of the land we made an instant profit of about $300 an acre. Dry land it was worth about $1200 an acre, cost about $850 an acre to level and could be sold as irrigated/leveled land at about $2300 at the time. These days you can easily get $3500 an acre and maybe $4k if you are willing to wait for the right buyer). What we didn't foresee was $10 a bushel soybeans starting to be the "average". The increase in production we've seen from being able to water and switch to rise basically went from $20k a year to $60k a year. Now that's been closer to $80 and even close to $100k a couple years and we recouped the cash investment about 2009.
About 2007, the farmers decided basically go to a three crop rotation of 50% rice, 25% soybean, and 25% corn. That lasted about one season because we put a stop to it. There are a couple 20 acre fields that are still "dry land" and those do get corn placed on them every other year and that's fine, but we saw the bubble that was corn. We decided a few years ago to come up with a rotation and stick to it. Don't try and play roulette with the market. That rotation is rice, then the following year double crop spring wheat and come back with late beans. If for some reason that combination stops yielding the returns we desire, then we'll reevaluate. But there is no sense in getting suckered in with hype (like our farmers were). "Oh Corn is high this year, we better plant more next year". Problem is too many other farmers think that way and guess what: next year there is more supply and the price goes down. As my grand father said: The time to get into the hog market is when the price is low. The time to get out is when it's high."
My father remembered the whole Ethanol debacle from the 70's and 80's. One of our close family friends is a retired sales/marketing head for GM trucks. We were talking with him about it and back in 2002 or 2003 he said, "Yeah, these guys are going to get suckered in again. Once they've spent all these billions on these ethanol plants the Saudis will drop the price of oil and quickly put them out of business just like they did in the 1980's". Well I'm not sure if it was the Saudis pumping more oil, but the same thing happened. The price of oil dropped like a rock and just long enough to put most of these producers out of business.
We talk about the farms quite a bit and something we did about 2006 was sit down and look at the statistics on prices. Figured out where our high and lows should be. If the price got basically 1 standard deviation above the "average" price over the past 10 years we sold half the stock. If it went up more we sold the rest. If it went back down we'd sell again once it closed just below the price mark (which was $7.03 a bushel). Well now the price seems to averaging about $9 - $10 and we've locked in prices the past couple years around $12 on the futures market.
The only thing is we can see there is a bubble, especially in the land prices, maybe in the commodity markets as well. Now it's no where near what it is in say Iowa or Nebraska where some are getting $6k an acre, but there's a bubble there. That's why 6 years ago when all my friends were out buying houses and I didn't. I know my Dad is holding onto well over a $1M in cash with nothing he's willing to invest it in at the moment. He's basically divested from the stock market at this point. He holds a few bond funds and is buying into some energy funds and natural resource funds (mining, etc..) as well pipe lines (master limited partnerships). He doesn't feel particularly safe in the stock market. Housing/real estate has a major demographic problem over the next 15 years (too many houses and not enough people). He's invested in some tax free bonds (3% interest barely covers the "real" costs of inflation from food and energy prices). And people wonder why the economy is so shaky. Well people like him are holding on to cash and not investing. When people aren't investing the economy isn't growing.
Buying more farmland right now doesn't seem like a wise investment. As my grandfather would have said, "The hogs are high right now". There is definitely a bubble there. Crop prices on what we raise (rice and soybeans) should remain high, but what part of that is due to real inflatio/devaluation of the dollar and waht part of it is the world needs food? Rice is a staple for a lot of those mouths.
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There is a worldwide shortage of good safe places to park money.
Productive assets (like farmland) are attracting scared investor money.
So you might be doubly bubbled. High crop prices plus capital flight.
What is the ROI for farmland given current commodity/land prices and typical tenant farmers leases? That is the main thing the money will be looking at.
Scheduled to end.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The E85 manufacturers and the agriculture companies that grow corn have a lot riding on this, and are quite good at influencing Congress. There's a very good chance that they will successfully lobby to extend this subsidy.
That's a shame, because the subsidy was originally intended to support this fuel alternative for a short time in order to give it a chance to become economically viable. Well, it's had that chance and the results have been a disaster.
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> The E85 manufacturers and the agriculture companies that grow corn have a lot riding on this, and are quite good at influencing Congress. There's a very good chance that they will successfully lobby to extend this subsidy.
Unfortunately, I think you're right. I'll go one further -- I predict that even after we no longer add alcohol to gasoline, the subsidies will continue.
Re:Scheduled to end.... (Score:5, Interesting)
As I understand it, along with the subsidy expiration is the elimination of the tariff for Brazilian sugarcane ethanol, which was being imported anyway to the US because of the higher tax credit for sustainable EtOH when used for making E90 (US production being exported to Brazil to pay for it). So ethanol will actually become cheaper! A few gas stations near boating facilities have been selling unblended gas http://pure-gas.org/ [pure-gas.org] but most wanted the 5 cent per gallon credit for E90. Many small airports will let you buy leaded aviation gas for two cycle engines.
My chainsaw seized after overheating last month, after which I measured the ethanol content of my fuel mix to be 17.7% (add 100 ml of gas to 50 ml of water in a baby bottle, cap and shake well, read the water + ethanol level after it separates again). I am using $5/gallon aviation fuel in my new chainsaw. Using E85 voids the Husqvarna warranty!
Re:Scheduled to end.... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a shame, because the subsidy was originally intended to support this fuel alternative for a short time in order to give it a chance to become economically viable. Well, it's had that chance and the results have been a disaster.
And this is a reason that I've become a bit more wary about these sorts of government subsidies that are intended to 'kick-start' a particular technology. It's not that I think that it's not a good and valid use of government money to provide this sort of startup from which innovation can flourish but rather the high risk that, having gotten on the gravy train and now being dependent on the government for financing, those industries can often manage to get entrenched into a position from which they cannot be dislodged even after the justification for the subsidy is gone. Look at the sugar industry in the US for instance -- you just can't get rid of the subsidies because they've used all that lucre to buy enough support and now we are absolutely stuck with them.
IOW, I just don't believe the second prong of "well if it doesn't work we'll try something else" because you've generated a whole bunch of people whose jobs depend on not trying something else. And no one wants to be against jobs right? A Senator can quite validly say that cutting subsidy X will lose Y jobs in his State -- jobs that were created by a subsidy that has failed to make the industry self-sustaining. So it becomes a one-way ratchet ....
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It has been known for quite a while. (Score:3)
Hard to figure why the government subsidizes it so much. I'm sure someone will say, is there a huge corn lobby? Who pays them?
Re:It has been known for quite a while. (Score:4, Funny)
The answer to the last question is easy: You do, and I do, and we all do. That's the great thing about rent-seeking, it's self-sustaining. You use your rent to obtain more rent.
And yes, there is a huge corn-products lobby, headed by the Archer Daniels Midland company (motto: "We're not quite as evil as Monsanto.").
It was never worth it to begin with (Score:5, Informative)
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Solar Energy Storage (Score:3, Interesting)
E85 will make perfect sense once petroleum is removed from the distilling process. Ethanol will be one of many methods to "store" solar energy. It's still going to continue to be important in the internal combustion field. Current marketplace E85 doesn't make much sense, but it is a stepping stone. It's not a dead end technology, it's just one that requires a good amount of energy to to expended on its manufacture. Eventually, the price of this energy will decrease.
Maybe ethanol, but not corn ethanol (Score:4, Insightful)
We've seen that getting ethanol from corn kernels is not a good way to go about storing solar energy.
We've yet to see whether cellulosic ethanol plants work out as hoped, or not. If CE plants are able to cost effectively generate ethanol from cellulose-rich plants (like switchgrass, industrial hemp, etc), then there might be a future for ethanol as a biofuel, but not corn ethanol.
As a plant, it just takes too much energy to grow the corn, transport it, and you get too little energy back.
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As a plant, it just takes too much energy to grow the corn, transport it, and you get too little energy back.
Yes, ethanol from plants is a loss, except possibly from sugar cane under perfect conditions. Ethanol may become viable from algae or synthesized from natural gas, but the natural gas route seems a bit stupid since cars run on that already. Either way we need to get 5% efficiency or better, and plants struggle to reach that.
Re:Solar Energy Storage (Score:5, Informative)
Corn ethanol is an extremely inefficient way to "store" solar energy.
This whole boondoggle started because the U.S. always runs a corn surplus. The U.S. doesn't want a repeat of the 1930s, where crop failures led to hunger and near starvation, so the government deliberately subsidizes food production (mostly corn) to insure there's an oversupply. The question then becomes, what to do with all this extra corn? A lot of it is sent overseas as foreign aid. A bunch of it is converted to high fructose corn syrup, as a substitute for cane sugar. More still becomes grain feed for livestock, to satisfy our appetite for beef, milk, and cheese. And a few decades ago someone got the bright idea of converting it into ethanol to help ease the country's dependence on foreign oil.
That's the reason the country started making corn ethanol instead of using a more energy-efficient crop like sugar beets. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, it took on a life of its own, and under the influence of heavy lobbying we started growing corn for the sake of converting it into ethanol, rather than converting only excess corn into ethanol.
Ethanol, provided you make it from a sugar-rich crop, is actually a pretty good way to gather and store solar energy for transportation applications. The alternative (PV solar to electricity to batteries to electric vehicle) is horribly expensive. Wholesale cost of PV solar electricity is about $0.20-$0.25 per kWh, vs. about $0.055 (wholesale) for coal. The Leaf is rated at 34 kWh per 100 miles, or $6.80-$8.50 per 100 miles at wholesale PV solar electricity prices. To travel 100 miles requires 411 kg of batteries (EPA rage of 73 miles on 300 kg).
Brazil estimates its sugar cane ethanol costs $0.83/gal to produce [wilsoncenter.org]. If you figure a Leaf-like car would get 35 mpg, modify that for ethanol's 70% energy density vs. gasoline, that would mean 4.08 gal per 100 miles, or a cost of $3.36 per 100 miles at wholesale cane sugar ethanol prices. The 4.08 gallons needed to move the vehicle 100 miles would only weigh 12.1 kg. So sugar cane ethanol is 2x - 2.5x cheaper and 34x lighter than PV solar (this ignores the engine weight, but I'm just following the criteria of this argument - "storing" solar energy).
Captain Hindsight on /. (Score:3, Insightful)
[q]How much did all that government-backed R&D and tax credits cost us for something that was pretty clearly questionable to begin with?[/q]
It can't be easy having 20/20 hindsight. I mean it's not like any project of this magnitude has proponents and opponents, with both parties eagerly just waiting to go "I told you so."
It was worth a shot. We could as well have ended up with someone discovering a super algae or yeast or whatever (I don't fucking know, something bioengineered) once we went down that road. This time we didn't, don't be a fuckbag about it. No one likes a fuckbag.
Cheers
I'm all for keeping E85 if ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... it drives up the price of high fructose corn syrup.
Lets keep E85, but.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Most ethanol plants can convert to cellulosic. It's basically an additional tank at the beginning of the process where there is some additional fermentation. The problem more or less is the plants are based on the "corn shadow". That is how close they are to fields that grown corn. The whole Corn ethanol idea had some problems to begin with. 1) Plants weren't placed near trail or pipelines. A considerable amount of the cost of ethanol is taken up by poor planing for transportation costs. 2) Using cor
Hemp based bio-diesel (Score:5, Informative)
I know diesel engines have a lousy reputation in North America, but I firmly believe hemp based bio-diesel is a FAR better alternative than E85. Most importantly, hemp seed based bio-diesel is a net-positive energy solution, requiring less fuel to farm the hemp and process it into bio-diesel than you end up producing (kind of a critical point for any product to succeed in the energy markets.)
Some go so far as to claim that hemp bio-diesel is carbon negative. I'm skeptical about that, but it would be interesting to test the theory.
Unlike ethanol corn, hemp produces a great deal of fiber suitable for textiles and paper as a side-product, even if the main purpose of the crop is bio-diesel. Levi's jeans used to be made exclusively from hemp-fiber denim, not cotton. I've read claims that hemp based paper out produces poplar tree paper production by a factor of nearly 4:1, though again, I've not seen a study to prove that claim.
Most important of all, hemp is literally a weed and will grow almost anywhere, allowing the use of low-grade farmland instead of taking away from food-crop acreage.
But it's nothing new. The pro-hemp community has been screaming this "nonsense" at the top of their lungs for decades while the cannabis drug war drowned out their good points about hemp farming.
Don't forget cellulosic ethanol (Score:3)
There's been some talk over the past decade about cellulosic ethanol. I believe there's a couple demo plants being constructed a few places in the country. From my understanding, you could just as easily use cellulose from hemp as from switchgrass or trees.
So, you could take the seed and make bio-diesel (and, perhaps, lubricating oils - not sure if the hemp seed oil would be any good for lubrication or not?) for diesel engines, and cellulosic ethanol from the rest of the plant (which accounts for what, like
When it was new many of us wrote papers on it (Score:3)
But the refineries were built anyway- solely because of government money. It absolutely never would have happened naturally if there wasn't government money to be made.
Ethanol is feasible, just not here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ethanol is very feasible, just not he way we make it in the states. Sugarcane produces far more ethanol per weight than corn does, and it does so with much less manufacturing. However, the USA has a massive pre-existing investment in corn. Thus the issue.
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However, the USA has a massive pre-existing investment in corn.
The USA is mostly a lousy place to grow sugar cane.
Ethanol problems (Score:5, Informative)
Even Scientists from Ag departments of California universities have known that looking to corn-based fuels is a bad idea. Look at this report from Professor Tadeusz Patzek, A Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley [phoenixpro...ndation.us]:
Excerpts:
Why Corn Ethanol is Unsustainable, Let Us Count the Ways:
4.
Approximately 99% of U.S. corn is fertilized, requiring more fertilizer than any other crop.
Nitrogen fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides are all made from fossil fuels, as is the diesel
fuel, gasoline, LPG, natural gas, electricity, transportation and irrigation used to grow and
transport the corn.
7.
Because ethanol is a toxic and hazardous substance, its use is regulated by OSHA, DOT,
NFPA and NIOSH. Ethanol must be handled with extreme caution because it can enter the
blood stream from breathing the fumes, or by penetration through the skin or mouth. Exposure
can irritate the eyes, nose, mouth, and throat. As such, protective clothing, including gloves
and splash-proof chemical goggles and face shields should be worn by anyone coming in
contact with ethanol.
8.
People are advised not to eat, smoke or drink where ethanol is handled, processed, or stored
since the chemical can easily be absorbed. Moderate exposure can cause headaches, eye
and skin irritation, nausea, and drowsiness, whereas higher levels of exposure (over 1000 parts
per million over an 8-hour period) can cause shortness of breath, genetic mutations, damage to
the liver and central nervous system and unconsciousness. Exposure to ethanol levels of over
3300 ppm can result in death.
9.
Ethanol land requirements: Approximately 50 gallons of ethanol are produced per acre of
corn. Thus 2.8 billion acres of land would be required to generate 140 billion gallons of fuel
used in the USA annually, which is more than 5 times all of the cropland that is actually and
potentially available for all crops in the USA.
10. ...8,360 gallons of water are needed per equivalent gallon of
Ethanol water requirements:
gasoline in the form of ethanol. 140 billion gallons of gasoline are consumed in the USA
annually, times 8,360 gallons of water = 1.17 trillion gallons of water needed to grow and
process enough ethanol for the U.S. economy.
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I know you're not trolling. The person who authored that PDF is trolling.
Denatured ethanol is 95% ethanol +5% methanol. If you're talking about dangers from denatured ethanol that are different from the dangers of pure ethanol, you're just talking about methanol. Which is hazardous, yes, but there's no reason to put methanol in fuel. It's an extra step which makes everyone less safe. This is just dumb.
BTW, nowhere in the PDF you linked does he indicate he's specifically talking about denatured ethanol.
Just more US corporate corruption (Score:5, Insightful)
This the same kind of crap as Medicare Part D, where the federal government is not allowed to negotiate bulk drug prices with the pharmaceutical manufacturers. The Veterans Administration gets bulk rates, and their costs are significantly lower.
Every big financial sector is in on this game. SOPA/PIPA anyone? The mortgage meltdown and the bank bailout. This is endemic corruption, where all the big players rewrite the rules so they automatically make a profit. Even Jamie Dimon, head of JPMorgan-Chase said he had a "right to make money". That's not capitalism. He has a right to engage in business, and make money if he is successful, and loose money if he doesn't. What we have now is a rigged game, and it not so slowly destroying the US economy.
Scam (Score:3)
I know this is conspiracy-theory territory, but I'm fairly convinced the car companies/oil companies created E85 and meant for it to fail miserably so that they could say "Hey look, we TRIED to make Alternative Energy cars but nobody wanted them!"
My "proof" of this is two-fold. First, there are hardly any... in fact I don't know that there was ONE 'regular' flex-fuel vehicle. I mean family sedan, compact, you know... CHEAP car for the Masses. The smallest cars I found were like Crown Victoria - BIG sedans that are usually made for fleets. I don't need or WANT a car that big. I eventually got a Honda Civic, I was looking for that form-factor car.
Second, and this is the big one. I was willing to consider SUVs so I looked around and there was a Jeep that was flex-fuel. I forget which one. But it was NOT their smallest SUV by far.
So I go to a Jeep dealer and am immediately attacked by a sales shark. I say "I'm interested in the Jeep Monstrosity" and he starts drooling because I just asked about a $40K car and says "Yeah, we have one right here." And then I go "I understand there's a flex-fuel option".
It is important to understand that the flex-fuel version of the Jeep Monstrosity costs a lot MORE than the non-flex-fuel. We're talking $47K instead of $40K.
This should make a sales-shark happy. VERY happy.
Instead, he ACTIVELY tries to talk me into the CHEAPER, non-flex-fuel model, by telling me all the things that are WRONG with E85. "Oh you know it costs more in the long run. It'll ruin the engine. E85 gets lower mileage. It's a lot more expensive."
Seriously. A cat sales-shark tried very hard to get me NOT TO BUY a MORE EXPENSIVE CAR because it could take E85. If that's not proof that SOMEthing is wrong, nothing is.
Re:Kinda sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that e85 has less energy than standard gas does and typically you don't see a corresponding drop in price per gallon. Ethanol itself has less energy than gasoline does so you end up with less gas mileage than you would with regular gas. Claiming otherwise is just plain ignorant and requires one to ignore the laws of thermodynamics.
Re:Kinda sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
But it has a higher octane rating.
If you didn't have to have the "flex fuel" option then you could get better milage out of E85. Cars could run higher compression ratios and more spark advance. You could get very close or higher mileage out of E85 than Gasoline then... Oh and no breaking or bending of the laws of thermodynamics required. With the current compromise flex fuel set up you are correct.
Re:Kinda sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're going to switch over the whole system, and require new engines to get any benefit, you might as well just go straight to hydrogen and stop dicking around with this ethanol crap.
But since neither is going to happen any time soon, the point is moot.
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Hydrogen introduces a lot more complications from the methods required to store it. It's mostly centered around the fact that hydrogen is such a small molecule it interferes with the metallic crystal structure of the tank you're using to hold it. Ethanol is similar enough to gasoline that it doesn't require a complete refit.
Re:Kinda sucks (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, the flex fuel setup is not a compromise in terms of timing and mixture...an E85 vehicle has a ratio sensor in the fuel line that tells the ECU how much ethanol there is in the fuel. The ECU in turn advances timing and leans mixture when practical.
The issue is that thermodynamics still win out. If a car isn't turbocharged or stupidly high compression, being able to advance timing and run leaner isn't much of an advantage at all.
Even in a turbocharged car, during cruise you can already lean and advance the engine like crazy with regular gasoline as there is very little load on it.
The ONLY advantage to E85 is at WOT in a turbocharged or high compression engine, and most people don't spend much time at WOT.
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It's not quite that simple. Although ethanol has a lower energy content, it has a higher "octane number" and can be used at higher (more efficient) compression ratios than regular gasoline. An engine specifically designed for E85 wouldn't necessarily be much less efficient than one designed for standard gasoline.
However, cellulose-derived butanol is probably a better long-term solution.
Re:Kinda sucks (Score:5, Informative)
It's not just about total energy, it's about useful energy extracted.
Turbos usually require higher octane so that there won't be premature ignition under the extra pressure. They also get more power/efficiency out of the same fuel as they are driven by reusing exhaust gases. So it's entirely possible that a lower-energy, higher octane fuel can get better mileage with an efficient turbocharged engine...
Re:The Great Ethanol Scam (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The Great Ethanol Scam (Score:5, Informative)
This is the case for ANY motor not specifically designed to run on high-ethanol-content fuels. Ethanol is a strong solvent and strips oil films, breaks down hoses and seals, oxidizes ferrous metals, and generally tears apart gasoline motors. E85 "flex-fuel" motors are designed with ethanol's nastiness in mind, using different materials and lubricants, but even then, running E85 is harder on the engine and usually calls for more frequent service intervals.
Running E85 in ANY engine that does not explicitly state that it is designed to run on E85 will cause permanent and rapid damage. It'll probably completely destroy the engine before your next oil change.
Ethanol is complete crap as an engine fuel, with the lone exception being purpose built race engines that can utilize the higher detonation resistance for more horsepower per unit displacement. And those race motors tend to get rebuilt at least once a year, mitigating the wear factors.
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And they make up for that 3% by raising taxes to cover the subsidy. You lose whether you buy it or not.
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It was hyped as government mandates trumping market decisions for the purpose of appeasing special interests.
Which part of that did it not achieve? Seriously, no one ever expected it to survive after the end of the subsidies (and taxes on petroleum based fuels). There was no secrecy. It was plainly presented as appeasement to the Corn Growers Association, paid for by all Americans who use fuel or eat food produced domestically (ie. everyone)
Re:it puts the scare to foreign oil (Score:4, Interesting)
Most estimates are 5x the Saudi reserves (1.5 trillion bbls vs 300 billion bbls).
The modern water injection (fracking) process has made the exploitation of shale oil/gas much more economical, more or less on a par with foreign oil, so production is ramping up.
I don't know about 100 years from now--who does?--but in about 10-15 years, the U.S. is expected to be an energy exporting giant. Already, this past year, the U.S. became a net exporter of "energy products".
The other major energy reserve in the U.S., coal, remains to be fully exploited. There are estimated to be centuries (plural) of energy in U.S. coal, at current use rates.
All this doesn't mean we should be burning this stuff. The U.S. still wastes massive amounts of energy. Just painting all the government office building rooftops white in California would have prevented the rolling blackouts a few summers ago. Then there's the 18 mpg vehicles most people drive, when we could be driving 40-50 mpg vehicles.
Ethanol is cheaper than gasoline in Brasil, which is the world's top producer. They use sugar cane rather than corn sugar, and sugar cane is a much cheaper and higher yield source of ethanol. Recent discoveries of alternative sources such as switch grass may save ethanol yet. Switch grass is almost maintenance free, doesn't distort food prices, and in a few years is expected to be competitive or cheaper than oil.
In my opinion, car makers should make their E85 vehicle gas tanks a couple of gallons larger, to make up for the less dense energy content of ethanol. Of course, I'd like a few more gallons anyway; why is my Corolla only 11 gallons to begin with?
Regarding the whole energy subsidy controversy, keep in mind that there is a hidden cost to oil--the trillions of dollars we have spent and continue to spend securing foreign oil supplies. There's also a few thousand lives of soldiers sacrificed. No way would we have gone into Iraq in '91 or again in 2003, if it were not a huge oil producer threatening other huge oil producers. Frankly, if we were an energy exporter, we should be delighted to see Iran and Iraq duking it out, or Iraq invading Saudi or Kuwait and jacking up the cost of petroleum. Instead, we have to worry about every little political change in the Persian Gulf as a potential catastrophe for our economy.
Re:Propane is...light (Score:3)