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U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds

#151

Post by parineum »

jfengel wrote: post #53
cashsterling wrote: post #37

As others mentioned, this is not a new finding. There is a lot of academic and industrial/economic analysis on this subject. Ethanol from corn was never a good idea economically for anyone other than corn farmers. It is also bad environmentally and places additional competitive demand on our food supply (choice and competition between corn going into food or fuel supply). Similar analysis has been done on other crop…

Corn farmers from Iowa. Where they hold the first caucus of the interminable election season. No American politician or political party can afford to offend corn farmers. We should count ourselves lucky that our gasoline is only 10% corn.

We subsidize corn for the same reason we subsidize oil and are starting to subsidize the semiconductor industry.

If we didn't subsidize food, we'd be importing a lot of food. In the event of war, famine, plague, etc, we don't want to be without a supply of food, fuel and now electronics.

Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds

#152

Post by fsckboy »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #120
hatsunearu wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethanol also is used as an octane booster. I'd rather take Ethanol than MTBE or TEL.

This should be the highest rated response to the parent because it's overwhelmingly used as a low octane fuel booster additive, not a fuel. If you have 85 gasoline and need to get it to 87, you blend it with an appropriate quantity of ethanol (octane rating 108.6, thanks for the correction). Reference: https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/ethanol_fuel_basics.html

pure ethanol according to wikipedia has an octane rating of 108 on the scale that's normally referred to. 100 is the octane of a particular isomer of the hydrocarbon C8H18 which is called... octane!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_rating#Examples

and for people not familiar with the subject, the purpose of an octane booster is to make your fuel less explosive (even though the point of your fuel is to be exploded to release it's energy) The problem with low octane fuels is not that they have lower energy, but that when you compress them they can explode prematurely (before you're ready to collect the energy) and compressing them is a way to get more energy out of an engine. Ethanol is less explodey, and so is tetraethyl lead.

Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds

#153

Post by Scoundreller »

mgkimsal wrote: post #48
fetus8 wrote: post #6

And it generally gets much worse MPG compared to regular gasoline!

I've been tracking my flex-fuel usage - mostly E85 fillips - for a while now, tracking price and MPG. At least with the prices I've been getting, I typically get around 15% less MPG, but the price is between 10-15% cheaper. My 'cents per mile' price has generally remained the same over the last year or so I've been tracking (been tracking longer than a year, but have been using E85 more regularly in the last year). N…

So then do you fill up with E0 or E10 so you can fill up less frequently?

Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds

#154

Post by [deleted] »

benp84 wrote: post #150
cashsterling wrote: post #37

As others mentioned, this is not a new finding. There is a lot of academic and industrial/economic analysis on this subject. Ethanol from corn was never a good idea economically for anyone other than corn farmers. It is also bad environmentally and places additional competitive demand on our food supply (choice and competition between corn going into food or fuel supply). Similar analysis has been done on other crop…

I was under the impression that corn ethanol was effectively solar energy because corn turns sunlight and carbon into biomass then we burn the biomass back to atmospheric carbon. Isn't that the fundamentals? Is there a big, basic reason it doesn't work or is it lots of little side effects? Thanks for weighing in.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds

#156

Post by specialp »

cashsterling wrote: post #37

As others mentioned, this is not a new finding. There is a lot of academic and industrial/economic analysis on this subject. Ethanol from corn was never a good idea economically for anyone other than corn farmers. It is also bad environmentally and places additional competitive demand on our food supply (choice and competition between corn going into food or fuel supply). Similar analysis has been done on other crop…

There is competitive demand with food supply but that is the point. If we did not have surplus corn produced, the USA would be very vulnerable to food disruptions. Because as we saw during COVID, business supply chains are only optimized to current demand without disaster. So if there is another channel to purchase corn it creates more demand and keeps excess production going at a price that is still possible to produce at.

If the USA suddenly had a food crisis, the ethanol production could be stopped.

Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds

#157

Post by [deleted] »

rootusrootus wrote: post #119
retrac wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is surprising how much politics and law can affect what is grown where. The US-Canada border cuts right across the prairies. Conditions are pretty much identical in northern North Dakota and southern Manitoba. Yet the border is clearly visible on some maps of agricultural yield: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OatsYield.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RyeYield.png

There are several factors in addition to ethanol, right? US livestock feed is primarily maize, but is that true in Canada? And the US has nearly 10x as many cattle. It seems like regulations are the primary driver in the border split, but not all of the regulations are about ethanol (also, Canada uses corn to make ethanol, too, in some areas).

[deleted]

Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds

#158

Post by greedo »

Scoundreller wrote: post #113
cashsterling wrote: post #37

As others mentioned, this is not a new finding. There is a lot of academic and industrial/economic analysis on this subject. Ethanol from corn was never a good idea economically for anyone other than corn farmers. It is also bad environmentally and places additional competitive demand on our food supply (choice and competition between corn going into food or fuel supply). Similar analysis has been done on other crop…

Ethanol is great for gas stations too. Your tank doesn’t go as far so you need to visit them more often. Dunno how the complaints about ethanol = bad because it’s hygroscopic really are. Yeah, 100% ethanol will pull in atmospheric h2o, but in a gasoline+ethanol mix? If anything, a small bit of ethanol helps “break the phase” and at least runs any moisture through your engine instead of a separate layer which is surel…

Ethanol gas is terrible for most car engines and fuel systems.

Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds

#159

Post by Scoundreller »

thinkthink wrote: post #72

[dead]

> There is more to Ethanol than just fuel.

But mostly fuel. The amount of fuel burned by the average person directly and indirectly is wayyyyyyy more than their distilled beverage and hand sanitizer consumption.

Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds

#160

Post by ravenstine »

danaris wrote: post #146
ravenstine wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it does not. This myth will not die hard. It's not a total myth per se, because it once was and sometimes still can be true for engine components that are simply not designed to handle ethanol. Such is not the case for pretty much every car built after the year 2000, roughly speaking. Every soft component in modern cars is designed to handle at least 10% ethanol, and effectively handle 100% ethanol. Corrosion is…

Cars are not the only engines that use gasoline. Lawnmowers, weedwhackers (with added oil), and snowblowers, just to name three things in my garage that get E85 gas[1], all have some degree of problems with it. [1] Because that's what's available around me, not because that's what they should be getting.

Are any of your small engines designed or specifically converted to run on E85? Or are you using some lower ratio of ethanol to gas? In any case, small engines like those in lawnmowers are more of an effort to get running properly because, unless something's changed, they're not using an ECU or lambda sensors that would allow them to change the fuel trim (I'm probably speaking the obvious here so forgive me). They usually have to be re-jetted and maybe have their timing manually advanced.
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