Why are we still using ethanol?

[MossRoad]

I read somewhere that to make 87 octane e10, they blend 84 octane e0 with ethanol to bring it up to 87.

To get 87 octane e0, they blend 84 octane e0 with 91 octane e0 and get 87 octane e0.

91 octane e0 costs more to produce than 84 octane e0. And ethanol is cheaper to produce than 91 octane e0.

Supply and demand, more people demanding 87 octane e10, than demanding 91 octane e0, makes both 87 and 91 e0 much more expensive than 87 e10. It has little to do with corn at this point.

87 e10 has about 3% less power than 87 e0. So value wise, if you got 87 e10 for $2.00 a gallon, you'd have to be able to purchase 87 e0 for about $2.06 per gallon to get the same value in power/dollar. Until 87 e0 comes within 3% of the price of 87 e10, you're wasting your money purchasing e0.

Before anyone starts thinking I'm a corn fan, forget it. I dislike ethanol as a vehicle fuel. If you look at it entirely on a BTU efficiency level, we'd be better off environmentally and much more efficient if we powered all of our current gasoline vehicles with natural gas, and burned corn for heat in our houses. Then we wouldn't need gasoline at all. Diesel would become much cheaper, too, at that point, because diesel is cheaper to refine from crude oil than gasoline, refineries could do away with more of the expensive gasoline process, and demand for home heating oil would go way down.

Anywho, some things to think about. What would you replace ethanol with to control emissions and keep the current prices of fuel the same?

 

[Jonmad]

I am fortunate to have a small airport close by so I run aviation fuel in all my small engines. 100 octane and no ethanol. Around $5.00 a gallon but much cheaper than the pre mix.

 

[MossRoad]

Needlessly spewing lead into the environment.....

Does the Continued Use of Lead in Aviation Fuel Endanger Public Health and the Environment? - Scientific American

 

[JasperFrank]

A Follow up on Mossroads post. Driving across county; I live in the Pacific Northwest,... I came across many places in the corn belt that had adapted pellet stoves to burn corn kernels. I don't know if these were eatable corn kernels or the type of corn grown for ethanol, but I thought, this is brilliant! And I watched the stoves for a while to see what they were doing. They gave off what seemed a great deal of heat for just a small amount of Bio-mass. We don't burn corn in our pellet stoves, in the PNW, even though the wood pellets are $$$. What surprised me was just how efficiently and cleanly corn burns if used as a heat source like this. Corn is such a strange commodity now. Its morphed in to so many other things aside from food.

 

[Jonmad]

Pretty sure the avgas I知 using is unleaded but I will check on that. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Oldoak]

Supply and demand, more people demanding 87 octane e10, than demanding 91 octane e0, makes both 87 and 91 e0 much more expensive than 87 e10.

No, more people are not demanding 87 octane e10, we are purchasing it because it's cheaper in cost even though it is a poor fuel choice.

Ethanol gas mix is being forced on us by our government. Soon it will be e15 instead of e10 from what I have been reading. Anything to keep the farm lobbyist happy who in turn keep the politicians happy who vote their way.

 

[MossRoad]

A Follow up on Mossroads post. Driving across county; I live in the Pacific Northwest,... I came across many places in the corn belt that had adapted pellet stoves to burn corn kernels. I don't know if these were eatable corn kernels or the type of corn grown for ethanol, but I thought, this is brilliant! And I watched the stoves for a while to see what they were doing. They gave off what seemed a great deal of heat for just a small amount of Bio-mass. We don't burn corn in our pellet stoves, in the PNW, even though the wood pellets are $$$. What surprised me was just how efficiently and cleanly corn burns if used as a heat source like this. Corn is such a strange commodity now. Its morphed in to so many other things aside from food.

Those are corn burning stoves and leave a little golf ball sized clinker each day. Very efficient, but require electric for the auger to work. If you don't have power in an outage, they won't work. Other than that, great stoves. :thumbsup:

 

[MossRoad]

Pretty sure the avgas I知 using is unleaded but I will check on that. Thanks for the heads up.

If it's blue in color, it's 100LL, which is leaded. I'd be surprised if it's anything else.

 

[MossRoad]

No, more people are not demanding 87 octane e10, we are purchasing it because it's cheaper in cost even though it is a poor fuel choice.

Ethanol gas mix is being forced on us by our government. Soon it will be e15 instead of e10 from what I have been reading. Anything to keep the farm lobbyist happy who in turn keep the politicians happy who vote their way.

Again, I ask, what are you going to replace the ethanol with?

 

[4570Man]

Nothing and sell 100 percent gas maybe?