Anything with starch/sugar can be fermented into ethanol.
Just when you are paying by the truckload/trainload/boatload you want a starch source with as little water as possible.

#1 you don't want to pay to ship 100 tons of "water"

#2 you have to remove the water from the ethanol in the end

Sugar beets and potatos work well for ethanol.
But when you buy 100 tons, you get ~50 tons of water.
Those options are "juicy".
( same with grapes... in wine, you of course can leave the water in... )

When you buy 100 tons of corn, you get less than 15 tons water.
( field corn is less than 15% moisture )

I just finished a 734 mile trip with E85 in my FFV FEH.
I went east out of Colorado to Minnesota with 400 pounds of cargo.
Here are the stats:

Segment 1 (slightly downhill sections from 4700ft to 3000ft )
234.8 miles in 3.5 hours ~ 67 miles per hour ave. 60'F day
7.978 gallons = 29.431 MPG @ $1.999 per gallon

Segment 2 ( Nebraska, mostly flat, 3000ft to 2000ft )
180.8 miles in 2.6 hours ~ 70 miles per hour ave. 45'F mostly day
7.460 gallons = 24.236 MPG @ $2.389 per gallon

Segment 3 ( Nebraska to Minnesota, 2000ft to 1500 ft )
318.4 miles in 4.8 hours ~ 67 miles per hour ave. 30'F, headlamps on, heat on
13.700 gallons = 23.241 MPG @ $2.499 per gallon

Summary:

734.0 miles for $66.01 or 0.0899 per mile.
To beat that cost from pure gas, I would need to get 34.46 MPG.
Not likely @ 70 miles per hour in winter.

-John

Thanks for that info. Something I didn't know re: H2O content of various plants, etc. I as a biology teacher know about fermentation. In fact, I ran several labs involving fermentation.

But, while the tobacco thing just kinda popped into my head, as I think about it it may well be the, "perfect" cash crop for an ethanol based fuel. I assume it has a high water content (look at the size of those leaves) which is why the stuff has to be dried out.

Anyway from your perspective ethanol-from corn is perfect.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'll wait until they get the battery plug-in thing gets perfected - or what Bob is working on, rebuilding the batteries. Personally, I'll take my corn on the cob (yes, I know the dif between eating and field corn - and even maize).

Impressive.

Okay... please check my math... too many numbers in my head!

$66.01 / 734.0 miles equals $0.0899 per mile, right?

Ops.

close enough for gov't work.

John,

Editorial in today's LA Times titled:

As global starvation worsens, the U.S. plans to devote vast amounts of grain to producing ethanol.

"The U.S. is the world's top corn exporter, and about a quarter of last year's crop went to ethanol. Food prices, meanwhile, have increased so much that the World Food Program says it will have to raise $500 million more just to carry out its scheduled operations."

"It needn't come down to a choice between conserving oil or feeding the poor. The U.N. has developed a tool for assessing the impacts of biofuel production on food security, something Congress never bothered to study before passing its extravagant mandate."

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...,1470804.story

In addition there's a link to the FAO, Food and Agricultural Org. of the UN: the link is tool in the last para: http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/...782/index.html

Also the State of California has 3 E85 stations with plans to open more.

To paraphrase Ross Perot: "The gurgling sound you hear is your corn soup being pumped into your gas tank."

Great riding weather today. I'm outta here.

I'm not sure the relevence an L.A. Times anti-Bush opinion article on ethanol has in this thread, but okay, whatever. There was zero science included in the previous links. I appreciate your interest though.

While it is true more percentage of U.S. corn is going into ethanol than ever before, it is also true that more corn is being harvested than ever before... and the total tons of export are NOT going down.

The price of everything has gone up this decade.
It's called "inflation"... not ethanol.

-John

If anyone is seriously going to try using ethanol ( and you can go 50/50 with gas without any additional equipment ) I will mail you stickers or magnets from below at my cost.
PM me and I will mail them to you.
You can mail me back $ after you get yours.

I don't have any yet, but I will get some soon.
Heck, with the 'OPEC' sticker, you could cut off the E85 and use the rest since you have a hybrid!


OPEC Sticker 5x7" = $2.00


CornFed Sticker 3x12" = $1.00


Round Magnet ( for fuel door? ) 2.75" = $0.75


E85 Window Sticker 2x3" = $0.75
E85 Car Magnet 12" x 18" = $12.00

Have you seen this paper, on the overall environmental cost of using existing cropland to make biofuels, in the February 29th issue of the magazine "Science"?

Stan

Attached Images

Croplands for Biofuels - Science, 2008.pdf (138.7 KB, 9 views)