ethanol in gasoline
#72
11-11-2011, 02:51 PM
Outstanding HDF Member
Last point....
Don't mean to offend anybody or get anybody pissed off or into a huge debate. I'm just throwing some information out there as I always here a lot of mis-information and negative crap about ethanol and farmers, agerage used to grow corn, etc.
I'm just defending what I believe in and what I know from dealing with these issues every day. Don't mean I know it all or how to solve everyone's issues with fuel. Agree or disagree, it's all good....after all we all ride Harley's so life is good.
On a lighter note, it's Friday afternoon, almost quitting time & it's 52 degrees...think I'll go take me a ride
Don't mean to offend anybody or get anybody pissed off or into a huge debate. I'm just throwing some information out there as I always here a lot of mis-information and negative crap about ethanol and farmers, agerage used to grow corn, etc.
I'm just defending what I believe in and what I know from dealing with these issues every day. Don't mean I know it all or how to solve everyone's issues with fuel. Agree or disagree, it's all good....after all we all ride Harley's so life is good.
On a lighter note, it's Friday afternoon, almost quitting time & it's 52 degrees...think I'll go take me a ride
#73
11-11-2011, 02:58 PM
Outstanding HDF Member
Before ethanol blending, all regular gasoline leaving the refinery WAS 87, now it's more like 82-84 because they can blend 10% ethanol into it at 115 octane and still achieve 87 at the pump.
If it STILL left the refinery at 87, with 10% ethanol blended it would be more like 95 at the pump. Higher octane for regualar gasoline would mean engine manufacturers could produce engines with higher compression, which equals power + efficiency.
Refineries are only going to make gasoline at a quality that meets the MINIMUM octane requirements after being blended becuase it costs them much more to produce higher octane. They can meet this minimum requirement by producing lower octane because the ethanol blend brings the octane rating back up to minimum 87.
If it STILL left the refinery at 87, with 10% ethanol blended it would be more like 95 at the pump. Higher octane for regualar gasoline would mean engine manufacturers could produce engines with higher compression, which equals power + efficiency.
Refineries are only going to make gasoline at a quality that meets the MINIMUM octane requirements after being blended becuase it costs them much more to produce higher octane. They can meet this minimum requirement by producing lower octane because the ethanol blend brings the octane rating back up to minimum 87.
#75
11-11-2011, 03:05 PM
The problem on all these ethanol threads is that most have opinions, and few have facts. Minnesota has been an "ethanol" state for a long time, and our modern vehicles run fine on 10% ethanol, and a big benefit is that we no longer have gas line freeze up in the winter. Why? Because ethanol absorbs (gasp!) water ! It no longer collects in the bottom of your tank !
I have one gas station within 30 miles that sells non-oxygenated fuel. By state law, this fuel can only be used in "collector cars, tractors, small engines, motorcycles and boats," and I fill my cycle tank any time I go by, even though this fuel is slightly more expensive, due to its limited use. It does give better mpg with our current engines, and that is why I buy it. Moisture absorbtion is not a concern: it's a sealed tank, as is all fuel injected vehicles. The only moisture available to be absorbed is what is in your tank, and that moisture is burned off with the fuel, rather than settling to the bottom.
Now, for some of the facts. I am a licensed USDA grain inspector, working for a private contractor, that grades and tests corn at a wet mill plant owned by one of the largest ethanol producers in the nation. The plant processes 1.4 million bushels of corn....PER WEEK ! That's 1400 semi loads a week ! If our farmers average 140 bushels per acre, it takes 10,000 acres of corn, per week, to run just this one plant. Is this corn taken out of the food chain? Absolutely not !
A corn kernal consists of four dinstinct parts: starch, protein, germ, and fiber. Ethanol is only produced from the starch of the corn. The world does not need more starch (think sugar, think fat people eating tacos), but the world does needs instead more protein. Because the corn is cooked during the milling process, the protein and fiber (from the hull of the kernal) becomes a very highly digestable product, used in pet foods and large animal feed, (as well as "human" food.) This wet feed, now with the starch and germ removed, as it leaves the plant in semi loads, is now so high in protein that it cannot be fed directly to livestock, but is instead carefully blended into siliage and hayliage at the feedlots, raising the protein level of the feed to its optimum for maximum livestock gains, increasing productivity. The germ of the corn is converted to corn oil (think Mazola), also a food product. The starch can also be used in the manufacture of corn syrup and fructose, i.e., sugar, which is then used in the food industry, candy industry, ice cream, beverage industry, and breweries, allowing our country to import less cane sugar from other countries.
So the corn has not been removed from the food chain during the maufacture of ethanol. Ethanol is rather a value added product of the corn processing. Ethanol is also being produced from non-food crop sources, such as switch grass, which can be grown easily on poorer, higher erodible soils, without tilling the soil.
Now, where is the savings on "dependence on foreign oil? Well, it's not going to happen at 10% ethanol gas, if the gas mileage is 10% less. The savings is coming, however, as more and more E85 vehicles are produced and driven with E85 fuel. The current E85 engines are also designed to run on gas, so their E85 efficiency is not yet very good. A flex-fuel car that gets 30 mpg on gas may only get 20 mpg on E85. But running E85, the savings on foreign oil are already big. Here's how it figures out:
In 300 miles, a car at 30 mpg would use 10 gallons of oil based gasoline. At 20 mpg it would use 15 gallons of E85, but only 15% of that fuel, or 2.25 gallons, is oil based. Once cars are produced that run only on alcohol based fuel, you will see the mileage increase as well, as the engines will be able to run much higher compression, benefiting from the high octane level of alcohol vs gasoline. This is already happening in some European countries that are years ahead of us in reducing their dependence on oil. There are many foreign web sites on how to tune turbo engines to produce maximum power on E85, by raising their boost level on the turbos. Think this isn't true? Check and see what fuel the INDY racers are running....they are the fastest race cars in the world--running on 100% pure alcohol.
Subsidies? Just do some of your own research and see how much the oil industry is subsidized. Be sure and add in the cost of the military and American lives lost in the middle east.
Cost of food? A bushel of corn is 56 lbs. At $3.50 a bushel, a one lb box of corn flakes in 2007 had 6.2 cents worth of corn in it. At today's price of $7.50 a bushel, that same box of corn flakes (costing around $4.00!) has only 13.4 cents worth of corn. You can bitch all you want about today's food prices, but the value of the corn in that $4.00 one pound box is still less than 14 cents. The cost of transportation, however, is a major factor in our cost of food. The price of diesel fuel has benefited by the use of soy oil, made from soy beans.
For those of you who are just now getting 10% ethanol in your state:
1)Don't run it in older engines that weren't designed for it
2)Don't use stale gas--ethanol has a much shorter shelf life, especially when constantly exposed to the air.
3)Don't store your seasonal engines without adding a gas stabilizer, such as StaBil or SeaFoam.
4)Expect to eventually have to change out your fuel filters, as ethanol will clean the gunk out of your gas tanks. Once clean, however, they stay clean.
5) Yes, alcohol absorbs moisture. That is a benefit, not a detriment. Instead of building up in your tank where it can cause problems, it is absorbed and burned continuously. The product, Heet, was routinely used during northern winters to absorb gas line moisture. It is pure alcohol, and is no longer needed in the winter in our ethanol states. All modern vehicle gas tanks, including your Harleys, also are sealed from constant exposure to outside air, minimizing moisture absorbtion.
For those of you old enough to remember the debates of leaded vs unleaded gas, when it was forced on us in 1972, these ethanol debates are similar. Now, decades later, everyone has accepted non-leaded gas. I predict down the road a few years these ethanol debates will no longer exist. Ford designed his first cars to run on alcohol, not gasoline. We're coming full circle.
Scroll down on this site, and just see where corn is used throughout our food, beverage, and industrial products. Ethanol is just one more value added product of corn. No matter how it's used, it's still a bargain at today's price of $6.37 a bushel.
http://www.ontariocorn.org/classroom/products.html
Even though the price of a bushel of corn is more than a dollar cheaper than just three months ago, I bet the price of your corn flakes haven't come down.
I have one gas station within 30 miles that sells non-oxygenated fuel. By state law, this fuel can only be used in "collector cars, tractors, small engines, motorcycles and boats," and I fill my cycle tank any time I go by, even though this fuel is slightly more expensive, due to its limited use. It does give better mpg with our current engines, and that is why I buy it. Moisture absorbtion is not a concern: it's a sealed tank, as is all fuel injected vehicles. The only moisture available to be absorbed is what is in your tank, and that moisture is burned off with the fuel, rather than settling to the bottom.
Now, for some of the facts. I am a licensed USDA grain inspector, working for a private contractor, that grades and tests corn at a wet mill plant owned by one of the largest ethanol producers in the nation. The plant processes 1.4 million bushels of corn....PER WEEK ! That's 1400 semi loads a week ! If our farmers average 140 bushels per acre, it takes 10,000 acres of corn, per week, to run just this one plant. Is this corn taken out of the food chain? Absolutely not !
A corn kernal consists of four dinstinct parts: starch, protein, germ, and fiber. Ethanol is only produced from the starch of the corn. The world does not need more starch (think sugar, think fat people eating tacos), but the world does needs instead more protein. Because the corn is cooked during the milling process, the protein and fiber (from the hull of the kernal) becomes a very highly digestable product, used in pet foods and large animal feed, (as well as "human" food.) This wet feed, now with the starch and germ removed, as it leaves the plant in semi loads, is now so high in protein that it cannot be fed directly to livestock, but is instead carefully blended into siliage and hayliage at the feedlots, raising the protein level of the feed to its optimum for maximum livestock gains, increasing productivity. The germ of the corn is converted to corn oil (think Mazola), also a food product. The starch can also be used in the manufacture of corn syrup and fructose, i.e., sugar, which is then used in the food industry, candy industry, ice cream, beverage industry, and breweries, allowing our country to import less cane sugar from other countries.
So the corn has not been removed from the food chain during the maufacture of ethanol. Ethanol is rather a value added product of the corn processing. Ethanol is also being produced from non-food crop sources, such as switch grass, which can be grown easily on poorer, higher erodible soils, without tilling the soil.
Now, where is the savings on "dependence on foreign oil? Well, it's not going to happen at 10% ethanol gas, if the gas mileage is 10% less. The savings is coming, however, as more and more E85 vehicles are produced and driven with E85 fuel. The current E85 engines are also designed to run on gas, so their E85 efficiency is not yet very good. A flex-fuel car that gets 30 mpg on gas may only get 20 mpg on E85. But running E85, the savings on foreign oil are already big. Here's how it figures out:
In 300 miles, a car at 30 mpg would use 10 gallons of oil based gasoline. At 20 mpg it would use 15 gallons of E85, but only 15% of that fuel, or 2.25 gallons, is oil based. Once cars are produced that run only on alcohol based fuel, you will see the mileage increase as well, as the engines will be able to run much higher compression, benefiting from the high octane level of alcohol vs gasoline. This is already happening in some European countries that are years ahead of us in reducing their dependence on oil. There are many foreign web sites on how to tune turbo engines to produce maximum power on E85, by raising their boost level on the turbos. Think this isn't true? Check and see what fuel the INDY racers are running....they are the fastest race cars in the world--running on 100% pure alcohol.
Subsidies? Just do some of your own research and see how much the oil industry is subsidized. Be sure and add in the cost of the military and American lives lost in the middle east.
Cost of food? A bushel of corn is 56 lbs. At $3.50 a bushel, a one lb box of corn flakes in 2007 had 6.2 cents worth of corn in it. At today's price of $7.50 a bushel, that same box of corn flakes (costing around $4.00!) has only 13.4 cents worth of corn. You can bitch all you want about today's food prices, but the value of the corn in that $4.00 one pound box is still less than 14 cents. The cost of transportation, however, is a major factor in our cost of food. The price of diesel fuel has benefited by the use of soy oil, made from soy beans.
For those of you who are just now getting 10% ethanol in your state:
1)Don't run it in older engines that weren't designed for it
2)Don't use stale gas--ethanol has a much shorter shelf life, especially when constantly exposed to the air.
3)Don't store your seasonal engines without adding a gas stabilizer, such as StaBil or SeaFoam.
4)Expect to eventually have to change out your fuel filters, as ethanol will clean the gunk out of your gas tanks. Once clean, however, they stay clean.
5) Yes, alcohol absorbs moisture. That is a benefit, not a detriment. Instead of building up in your tank where it can cause problems, it is absorbed and burned continuously. The product, Heet, was routinely used during northern winters to absorb gas line moisture. It is pure alcohol, and is no longer needed in the winter in our ethanol states. All modern vehicle gas tanks, including your Harleys, also are sealed from constant exposure to outside air, minimizing moisture absorbtion.
For those of you old enough to remember the debates of leaded vs unleaded gas, when it was forced on us in 1972, these ethanol debates are similar. Now, decades later, everyone has accepted non-leaded gas. I predict down the road a few years these ethanol debates will no longer exist. Ford designed his first cars to run on alcohol, not gasoline. We're coming full circle.
Scroll down on this site, and just see where corn is used throughout our food, beverage, and industrial products. Ethanol is just one more value added product of corn. No matter how it's used, it's still a bargain at today's price of $6.37 a bushel.
http://www.ontariocorn.org/classroom/products.html
Even though the price of a bushel of corn is more than a dollar cheaper than just three months ago, I bet the price of your corn flakes haven't come down.
Last edited by MNPGRider; 11-11-2011 at 03:26 PM.
#76
11-11-2011, 09:39 PM
A fifth of the nation's corn crop now goes to make ethanol.
The ethanol mandates have been exposed as a bankrupt policy. Not only have they put the fuel industry in competition with food producers for the corn crop, they've shifted acreage into corn cultivation that previously was used for other crops, including soybeans and wheat. That's led to additional price pressure on everything from milk to meat.
In April, an advisory panel to the European Environment Agency urged the European Union to suspend its 10 percent ethanol mandate in response to the global food shortage.
Congress won't back off the mandates without a fight.
The farm lobby loves the steady market the ethanol requirement creates and the higher prices.
The ethanol mandates have been exposed as a bankrupt policy. Not only have they put the fuel industry in competition with food producers for the corn crop, they've shifted acreage into corn cultivation that previously was used for other crops, including soybeans and wheat. That's led to additional price pressure on everything from milk to meat.
In April, an advisory panel to the European Environment Agency urged the European Union to suspend its 10 percent ethanol mandate in response to the global food shortage.
Congress won't back off the mandates without a fight.
The farm lobby loves the steady market the ethanol requirement creates and the higher prices.
#77
11-14-2011, 06:20 PM
A fifth of the nation's corn crop now goes to make ethanol.
The ethanol mandates have been exposed as a bankrupt policy. Not only have they put the fuel industry in competition with food producers for the corn crop, they've shifted acreage into corn cultivation that previously was used for other crops, including soybeans and wheat. That's led to additional price pressure on everything from milk to meat.
In April, an advisory panel to the European Environment Agency urged the European Union to suspend its 10 percent ethanol mandate in response to the global food shortage.
Congress won't back off the mandates without a fight.
The farm lobby loves the steady market the ethanol requirement creates and the higher prices.
The ethanol mandates have been exposed as a bankrupt policy. Not only have they put the fuel industry in competition with food producers for the corn crop, they've shifted acreage into corn cultivation that previously was used for other crops, including soybeans and wheat. That's led to additional price pressure on everything from milk to meat.
In April, an advisory panel to the European Environment Agency urged the European Union to suspend its 10 percent ethanol mandate in response to the global food shortage.
Congress won't back off the mandates without a fight.
The farm lobby loves the steady market the ethanol requirement creates and the higher prices.
The price of ONE BAG of seed corn is now around $350. It contains 80,000 kernals, and is enough for only two acres. That's $175 of cost per acre to a farmer before fertilizer, gas, equipment expense, just to put the crop in the ground.
Do you like eating corn flakes? That one pound box of corn flakes costing $4.00 contains less than .$14 cents worth of corn at $7.50 a bushel. Corn today is priced a lot lower that that.
Grain elevators all over are loading "unit trains" of 100 car loads of corn each week for the foreign market. Each train car contains 3,000 bushels, or three semi loads, of corn. They ship out of Duluth, Galveston, and New Orleans. There is no shortage of corn here in this country, nor is there a shortage of other crops. Farmers are still being paid to keep marginal farm land out of production (i.e., CRP, Conservation Reserve Program). These acreas provide much need soil erosion control, and support the multi-million dollar hunting industry.
Soybeans have hit $13.00 a bushel, but have also now dropped. Soy oil is a major factor in the renewable fuel program. Farmers will rotate their crops each year, but will also produce what is in demand. However, the price of the commodity at the producer level is, will be, and always has been, the lowest cost factor in any equation you want to compare.
$4.00 box of corn flakes = < $.14 worth of corn. What part of that don't you people understand? If farmers don't get a decent price for their corn, you'll be eating Cheerios instead of corn flakes. The ethanol industry has helped keep those corn flakes on your breakfast table.
See my post #75.
Last edited by MNPGRider; 11-14-2011 at 06:24 PM.
#78
11-14-2011, 07:04 PM
Ethanol is NOT a problem as long as it's concentration in the fuel is at or below 10%.
I see a lot of Urban Legends and Pseudo-Science on this forum regarding Ethanol as a Boogieman. I suspect that dirty fuel, or folks that voluntarily put other additives in their fuel tank (known as Mouse Milk in the industry) that also contain Ethanol thus raising the concentration over 10% are more the issues and these have nothing to do with the Ethanol, or the amount of Ethanol that the fuel company put in.
If Ethanol concentration goes over 10% it will play havoc with rubber/plastic bits that are usually made from Buna-n polymers. Replacing Buna-n with Viton materials takes care of this but Viton has less of a tolerance for friction (such as when used for Accelerator Pump Cups and the like).
I see a lot of Urban Legends and Pseudo-Science on this forum regarding Ethanol as a Boogieman. I suspect that dirty fuel, or folks that voluntarily put other additives in their fuel tank (known as Mouse Milk in the industry) that also contain Ethanol thus raising the concentration over 10% are more the issues and these have nothing to do with the Ethanol, or the amount of Ethanol that the fuel company put in.
If Ethanol concentration goes over 10% it will play havoc with rubber/plastic bits that are usually made from Buna-n polymers. Replacing Buna-n with Viton materials takes care of this but Viton has less of a tolerance for friction (such as when used for Accelerator Pump Cups and the like).
#79
11-14-2011, 07:28 PM
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Ethanol is a scam by the powers that be to force us to use an inefficient fuel that also artificially raises the price/demand for corn. Creating ethanol uses more diesel to harvest the corn to turn into the ethanol than the actual amount of ethanol you get from that corn.
#80
11-14-2011, 09:02 PM
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All I know is that my horse feed is $15 a bag and my chicken scratch feed is about the same. And a bag of corn that used to cost $3.50 is now almost over $7 per bag. Somebody is getting screwed, and I know it's me (and every other taxpayer who pays subsidies, and then higher prices for their animal feed).