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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

#221

Post by pton_xd »

UncleEntity wrote: post #214
mywittyname wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is how most E85 engines generally work. They have a E15 engine map, and an E85 and map. And use sensors to figure out which fuel is in the tank and which map to use. Stock cars generally don't take full advantage of the octane benefits of E85 because they will blow up if someone fills the tank with E15. But in the aftermarket world, "corn powered" cars make substantially more power, especially turbocharged…

They don’t have to manually switch maps, modern ECUs can figure out the blend and compensate.

Agreed, there are several aftermarket ethanol content analyzer sensors available, easily installable onto the fuel line of any car. These supply an ethanol % reading to the ECU and allow for aftermarket tunes to adjust timings based on the current fuel blend. No manual swapping necessary.

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

#222

Post by randomdata »

kraussvonespy wrote: post #211
randomdata wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it is profitable to do so. There is a large market for it, from animal feed, to sugar, to tortillas, to many things in between. The trouble is that it's unpredictable how big the crop will be before planting. As mentioned before, yields can vary quite significantly from year to year. As such, you will have periods of excess where we don't have enough storage for it all. Ethanol was promoted as a way to clea…

When ~45% of US corn is used for ethanol production[1], I'd say we can stop considering that "periods of excess" and call it what it really is: grift. [1] - https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-other-feed-gr...

On the other hand, US soybean acres have grown by essentially the same amount over the same period (63.78M in 1983, 87.45M in 2022). It is well understood that soybeans and corn are kept in the same rotation for a lot of practical and ecological reasons, so how are you establishing that it isn't excess as a byproduct of producing other crops? None of this happens in a vacuum.

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

#223

Post by 1letterunixname »

Scoundreller wrote: post #149
1letterunixname wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here, let me Google that for you :) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/taxpayers-ontario-can... Go ahead: your old Corolla will become a dead Corolla. https://blog.raleighclassic.com/is-it-safe-to-use-ethanol-in...

[flagged]

Whatever, pal. If you don't have anything of concrete value to contribute, then don't complain about free. :)

I have one of those "classics" and have to hunt for low ethanol fuel constantly.

It's a huge PITA to retrofit to modern fuel rails when custom NLA injectors are $$$$.

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

#224

Post by gruez »

FinalBriefing wrote: post #203
gruez wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a poor justification for the current regulatory regime in which ethanol in gas is mandated . If MTBE or TEL then they should be banned. If regular gasoline doesn't have enough octane, it should be up to the market to figure out which octane booster should be used, rather than the government enforcing use of ethanol by decree.

That’s also how we ended up with leaded gasoline.

The fact that the current regulatory regime hasn't forced the use of an octane booster that is acutely toxic is more of a case of a broken clock being right twice a day than it being good policy. I would even argue that in this case, the broken clock isn't even "right". As the OP points out, use of ethanol has negative consequences as well, and the fact that its use is mandated basically gets rid of any incentive to come up with a better octane booster.

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

#225

Post by TylerE »

bluGill wrote: post #99
rightbyte wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can adding octane be an anti-knock additive? Isn't the rating normalized too octane, so it can't bring the average under 100, ever? Like, compared to even worse carbon chains than octane? Edit: Never mind got the scale backwards. I'll keep the comment here to shame myself.

Octane is a measure of the relatives ratios of the octane molecule with some other (I can never remember which). 100 octane means the fuel acts in your engine the same as fuel made from 100% octane molecule. 0 octane means it acts like 100% the other, 90 octane mean it acts like a mix of 90% octane and 10% the other. You can go below 0 or above 100 if you find some other molecule/mix that acts worse/better, though ho…

There’s also the issue of how/what exactly you’re measuring. There are two different scales that result in European readings being several points higher (eg US 93 is ~ Euro 98)

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

#226

Post by Laaas »

hammock wrote: post #15
Laaas wrote: post #13

Intuitively this seems wrong. The explanation in the article doesn't seem convincing. Any form of synthetic fuel that doesn't take more carbon out of the Earth should be better, no?

More energy in the form of diesel and fossil fuel derived fertilizer went into corn ethanol than you get out in usable fuel

This feels like the arguments against electric cars saying the electricity is generated by fossil fuels anyway.

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

#227

Post by kube-system »

Scoundreller wrote: post #189
m-ee wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing scientific but on motorcycle forums I used to frequent people often blamed E15 for seals swelling up and no longer working. I can’t say if that’s the cause but I did have a face gasket between the fill neck and tank expand. After sitting out for a few days it shrunk back to its original shape.

How old are the motorbikes though? I could see it being an issue on bikes built before >=e10 became nearly unavoidable. I wish my gaskets would swell a bit. All of my auto seal/gasket problems were on the intake manifold or oil system interfaces.

Here in the US, there are a lot of really old motorcycles on the road, compared to other vehicles. As they’re mostly pleasure vehicles.

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

#228

Post by iancmceachern »

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.

Put simply, the land is fertilized with petrochemical fertilizers that come from oil and have a heavy carbon Footprint, the automated equipment that harvests it and moves it to the processor burns a lot of diesel. It's not as if the corn just springs up, there are costs.

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

#229

Post by dontlaugh »

Scoundreller wrote: post #166
greedo wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You saying the manufacturers haven’t adapted anything for cars to run on E10 in the first place?

Which is the default minimum in most of Europe. Some places have even higher ethanol mixes.

Even 90% ethanol is fine for any injection petrol engine. You just need to mix it with something that burns with a visible flame and some detergents.

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

#230

Post by dontlaugh »

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.

The logic is sound, biofuels can even theoretically reach negative carbon emissions by burying husks and similar.

Corn is just not the best plant for the purpose. Soy or hemp are two better examples, especially for biodiesel.

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