Yes. Those 450 million gallons of gasoline will produce 1250 million gallons of ethanol.

If you give me $450 million today, and I give you $1.25 billion tomorrow, wouldn't you take me up on that deal?

In the "Dust to Dust" model... including all growing, harvesting, and transportation costs, the "closed loop" reality is, it takes 3 gallons of gasoline eqivalent to produce, and deliver 5 gallons of ethanol.

Ethanol is NOT free. Who ever said it was?
It will just help us make our petroleum reserves last nearly twice as long.
Plus is it renewable! 100% of the ethanol burned this year will "grow" back next year! There is no way you can make a fair comparison in this regard to crude oil. When the crude is gone, it's gone. You never get it back.

 

Your point about the renewability of biofuels is a very good one, gpsman1.

I would be interested to know the difference in energy density between the ethanol you're talking about, the 3/5 Dust-to-dust ratio you mention, and the gas used to make it. Because if we really want apples-to-apples, we need to talk about not just a gallon of ethanol for every gallon of gas, but a mile travelled on an ethanol gallon v. a mile travelled on a gas gallon. So there's another ratio here, and if it's low enough, then what you're saying is still reasonable, though less favorable than you describe, but if it's high, then it's a bad idea. By low and high I mean the following:

If you can get 175% the energy out of a gallon of gas as the energy you get from a gallon of ethanol, and can go 175% the distance on it, then 3/5 * 7/4 = 21/20ths of the energy used to produce it compared to what you get out of it. Bad deal.

If the number is 125%, then 3/5 * 5/4 = 3/4 of the energy gained was used to produce it, so you have a reasonable argument.

I'm not sure what the actual number is, but I'm certain that ethanol isn't as energy dense as gas, so it's over 100%. The important dividing line is whether it's over 166% or not. Is it? Close?

 

Leah, here's the problem ( and it's not an easy one to answer ).

If you put gasoline or ethanol in your fireplace and burn both 100%, gasoline has way more energy expressed in BTU.

But gasoline is not burned 100% in your car, some goes out the tailpipe, and only a small percentage ( maybe 40% at best ) is used to move the car. The rest is lost as heat.

Gasoline has 115,000 to 125,000 btu per gallon.
100% ethanol has 68,000 to 76,000 btu per gallon.

A BTU is a British Thermal Unit. A BTU is the amount of heat (energy) required to raise the temperature of one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit. But the #1 use of gasoline is not to boil water, now is it?!

High BTU content in a gasoline does not necessarily mean the engine will make the most horsepower on that fuel.
Many car enthusiasts want the gasoline with the highest BTU content per gallon. Unfortunately, BTU content is of little value if some of the gasoline is still burning when the exhaust valve opens and all of that energy escapes out the exhaust as heat and unburned
hydrocarbons. Most gasoline engines do not have time to completely burn the gas in the combustion chamber.

A hypothetical example:
A gasoline car may use 115,000 BTU gas, but only burn 80% if it before the exhaust valve opens. A properly tuned ethanol car running E85 with 83,000 BTU ( the 15% gas boosts the BTU, and the ethanol boosts the Octane to 105 ) may burn 95% of the fuel before the exhaust valve opens.

So take your pick:
Gasoline: 80% of 115,000btu = 92,000 btu per gallon actually utilized.
E85: 95% of 83,000btu = 78,850 btu per gallon actually utilized.

The higher octane of E85 means you can build a higher compression engine and still avoid backfire and knock, and get more horsepower per BTU.

Take the above, and gasoline powered cars, and specifically built ethanol powered cars ( Indy Racers ) have a level playing field.

In testing using a 740 horsepower 358 cubic inch racing engine* with 14:1 compression ratio, the engine made 5 more horsepower on a 100 octane unleaded RFG (like 20% ethanol) than on 110 octane leaded racing gasoline, because the RFG contains an oxygenate
( more oxygen ) that allows for more complete combustion.

NOW consider it costs about $1.05 to $1.15 to make one gallon of ethanol, and ethanol usually sells wholesale for $2 or less. Add that to that fact that it is clean burning, and is renewable. Now, I feel, ethanol has the advantage, and is the best choice in areas where you have a choice!

-John

*Source: Rockett Brand Racing Fuel

 

Here is a very good ( and colorful ) chart:
http://www.ncga.com/public_policy/PD...hanolStudy.pdf

Basically, it states it takes 1.23 btu of fossil fuel to deliver 1.00 btu of gasoline to the pump.

Conversely, it states it takes 0.74 btu of fossil fuel to deliver 1.00 btu of ethanol to the pump.

So this is a 3.7 to 5 ratio, strictly speaking about btu.
Since gas has more BTU per gallon, essentially 3 gallons of gas produces 5 gallons of ethanol.

 

I doubt any LEV or ULEV is sending 20% unburnt fuel out the exhaust, where are you getting you info for this?

When there is more pure ethanol than gas then cars may be designed solely for ethanol, and take advantage of high compression. Until then engines aren't going to have higher compression than what is readily available.

Do you know if the 20% ethanol engine used more fuel by volume while making 5 more horsepower?

How can ethanol take the equivalent of .74 gallons of gas to make but only cost $1.05?

I'd love to see a detailed cost breakdown from your ethanol plant, separating this cost.

Thanks

Steve

 

I've seen this comment made in this discussion a couple of times now- people express incredulity at the cost of ethanol, given the amount of gas used to make it. I have a feeling that the answer isn't that less gas is actually used. I've said this a couple of times now but I think it bears repeating, because there are implications here that may not be clear to everybody. The government is HEAVILY subsidizing the production of corn in this country. This skews the price of corn. Which skews the price of everything made out of corn. The amount that things sell for may in some situations be less than it costs to make. Yes, that's stupid. It's certainly counterintuitive, perhaps even incredulous. But it's also possible in a system like this, with ridiculous and outsized subsidies intended to provide relief for poor farmers in very bad times, because the subsidies won't go away even when market conditions have drastically changed.

 

Also, that "fossil fuel" doesn't have to be gasoline -- it could be a cheaper fraction of oil (e.g.: fertilizer, pesticide) and thus not affect the price as much.

I wonder sometimes why they don't use ethanol to make more ethanol, even if only to prove a point?

 

Question for gpsman- I was trying to follow your numbers in the figures you are citing for E85, with the 85 eth/15 gas ratios, using the btu ranges you mentioned, and I wasn't able to get it to be consistent. [putting aside the issue of the 95%/80% distinction, which I, like worthywads, find puzzling]. When you calculate the btus actually used by the gas, you used the low end of the range, 115k measure for gas, but when you add in the 15% gas to the ethanol number, you switched to the high end of the range, 125k, along with the high end of the ethanal btu range. Was there some particular reason for that? Looks like there's perhaps a bit of fudging going on here.

Also, it's one thing to say that wholesale ethanol costs less than $2, but that's a bit disingenuous. If you want to compare that to gas prices straight up, it's a little hard to ignore the fact that E85 is going for $3.30 or so per gallon right now at the station down the street.

However, I really appreciate your providing the link to the summary of the Argonne study. Despite the fact that this summary and link have been provided by the website of the Corn Growers Association, I won't discount it; Argonne is a research lab in which I have the utmost confidence, having worked there myself as an intern on three separate programs, having many friends who work there, and having a family member who has been employed there for over twenty years. I find this research somewhat reassuring in terms of the future growth in ethanol production. I would like to draw everyone's attention to a couple of interesting lines from the summary.

 

This is from the op-ed page of the LA Times, 5-17:

". . . With current technology, almost all of this biofuel would have to come from corn because there is no feasible alternative. However, achieving the 15% goal would require the entire current U.S. corn crop, which represents a whopping 40% of the world's corn supply. This would do more than create mere market distortions: the irrestistible pressure to dirvert corn from food to fuel would create unprecedented turmoil"

For the full article, "Why ethanol backfires" go to: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/


I'm off to the Midwest. Catch you later.

 

That link was to the "Opinion" section ( so the article is suspect already ) but when I try to go there, the article in qustion is no longer there.

??????