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legislative agenda
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Ethanol has a higher octane rating: http://www.ethanolrfa.org/page... To put e85 in a car that is configured compression and timing wise for say 91 octane would be like putting 113 octane race fuel in that same car. Basically the car would run like it was rich, real rich. Now without changing the compression, you could wheel this car into a dyno-tuning shop and have them reflash the ECU with an optimized air/fuel mixture using the e85, and it would run OK again. You would burn more fuel with this car even after the retune, and if there are any fuel system parts made of plastic or rubber they would need to be upgraded (or eventually it would fail). Now if you took this car after the retune and put 87 octane gasoline in it again (say, on accident), you would probably do some serious damage (chuck a rod) if ever the engine were put under heavy load (like stomp the go pedal). Automobiles configured to run both e87 and e85 are most definitely not optimized for power or economy.

Well first off, the USA is an Ethanol EXPORTER.. So nothing is going to Brazil.

Second, it all comes down to dollars and cents. 40% of US petroleum is produced locally. That percentage of it that goes to foreign oil goes to Canada, Mexico, and Nigeria in that order. Saudi Arabia is a distant 4th.

You pay (currently) about 13% less at the pump for E85 but you get 35% less mileage: you've made a fools bargain.

E85 has never been cost effective at the pump IN SPITE of the massive subsidies and tax breaks.

By 2025 it is estimated that light trucks and cars (i.e. average Joe vehicles) will account for 45% of the US oil consumption.

You're way behind the times; they already do. The US burns about 9 million barrels/day of motor gasoline out of a hair over 20 million total.

Lightweight SUV class vehicles have been demonstrated using plain gasoline to acheive fuel economy beating today's compact and subcompact cars. By 2025 it is estimated that light trucks and cars (i.e. average Joe vehicles) will account for 45% of the US oil consumption.

Setting aside the question of why you drive a Suburban while touting light SUV-class stuff (hypocrisy?), the SUV form factor is inherently draggier than a car. The same powerplant technologies that can make a 40 MPG SUV can make an 80 MPG car. You know, like the Daimler-Chrysler ESX3, the GM ParadiGM and the Ford whateveritwas.

Hogwash. Do some research to at least validate part of your namesake.

Done long before you ever thought to ask. (More here).

Take it from the horse's mouth: 2005 ethanol production was only ~4 billion gallons. Production this year isn't even projected to reach 6 billion gallons.

Cellulosic ethanol has so much resource available to it only someone ignorant of the reality would make such a statement. Apparently this includes you. Cellulosic ethanol utilizes paper sludge, grasses, agricultural waste (of which we produce about one billion tons/year) that currently is generally burned or dumped into landfills. Waste biomass along can produce approximately 25-30 billion gallons of ethanol per year at current level of conversion technology.

I've read The Billion-Ton Vision. It projects a whole 10% of transportation fuels will come from biomass in 2020 (see the sidebar in the first page of the introduction, page 18).

How many people can actually use E85 when ethanol is only 10% of transportation fuel? That's the proof that the whole flex-fuel vehicle thing is a scam. The auto companies are getting CAFE credits for guzzling monsters that can run on E85, without there being enough ethanol to run more than a small fraction of them.

Production of ethanol loses about 50% of the energy right off the top; it disappears into the process either as metabolic losses of the yeast or process heat in hydrolization or distillation. That's energy that can be used productively if you aren't wedded to the idea of using liquid fuels. There are other ways to use biomass, such as carbonization. Direct-carbon fuel cells (a variant of molten-carbonate fuel cells) can convert charcoal to electricity at up to 80% efficiency, and the off-gas from carbonization is combustible and can run engines. With a scheme like that, you can do a lot more than just offset some fraction of oil consumption; you can:

• Provide all transport energy.
• Between carbonization and wind, provide most scheduled electric generation requirements now provided by gas and coal.
• Manufacture excess charcoal for use as a carbon-sequestering soil amendment (search for "terra preta de los indios", or start reading here).

Ethanol is a very lossy way of making biomass suitable for even lossier internal combustion engines. It's a dead end.

By using industry standard breeding and cropping practices, by 2050 using switc

Check it out yourself.

http://www.biodiesel.org/

http://www.ethanolrfa.org/

http://www.ethanol.org/

http://www.e85fuel.com/

And so I continue the great legacy of answering my own questions shortly after I've asked them...

"One bushel of corn yields 2.5-2.7 gallons of ethanol from the starch component of corn"

Also interesting that the processes of ethanol and corn oil (biodiesel) production from corn don't seem to interfere with eachother, and are somewhat complimentary: http://www.ethanolrfa.org/prod_process.html

=Smidge=

And so I continue the great legacy of answering my own questions shortly after I've asked them...

"One bushel of corn yields 2.5-2.7 gallons of ethanol from the starch component of corn"

Also interesting that the processes of ethanol and corn oil (biodiesel) production from corn don't seem to interfere with eachother, and are somewhat complimentary: http://www.ethanolrfa.org/prod_process.html

=Smidge=