Is E85 Dead Now?

twdorris writes "With a stoichiometric ratio far lower than that of gasoline (much lower than the price difference), buying the E85 ethanol fuel blend instead of gasoline was already hard to justify. Unless you raced your car on a track where E85 provided a great alternative to race fuel, it really didn't make financial sense. And there are other reasons not to buy E85, too. Like the impact corn-based ethanol is having on food prices or the questionable emissions results (PDF). So, now that the ethanol subsidies provided by the U.S. federal government are scheduled to end this summer, it's going to be even harder to justify E85 (at least in the U.S.). This change will basically make a gallon of E85 cost the same or slightly more than gasoline. With so many things working against it, are the days numbered for readily available E85 at your local gas station? And should it have ever even been made available to begin with? How much did all that government-backed R&D and tax credits cost us for something that was pretty clearly questionable to begin with?"

Comments

10% Ethanol

[XanC]

Does that mean that we'll go back to having gasoline actually be real, 100% honest-to-God gasoline too?

Re:10% Ethanol

[smpoole7]

For the record, I know of only one location that sells E85 in this area. Doesn't mean there aren't others, but if there are, I haven't seen them.

One of the talk shows on our station is a good ol' boy who talks auto repair. He insists -- vehemently -- that ethanol lowers mileage so much that whatever you saved on emissions, you lose because you're burning more fuel as a result. The callers to that show seem to echo that sentiment.

I know in my own car (Nissan Altima, and I LOVE it), I seem to get a bit more mileage when I'm burning pure gasoline -- about 5% more.

YMMV (literally, in this case) and that's hardly scientific, but there you go. :)

Re:10% Ethanol

[tripleevenfall]

I had a Ford truck that would run on E85, but it said right in the owner's manual that the gas mileage was 15-20% poorer.

Ethanol is a net loss of energy. It takes more energy to produce a gallon than you get by burning it. Combine that with the fact that we could cover the entire country in corn and still not be independent of fossil fuels - it's a complete boondoggle.

Re:10% Ethanol

[shentino]

It's not a boondoggle.

It just wasn't designed to do what you thought it was.

Namely provide back-door subsidies to Big Corn.

Re:10% Ethanol

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't raise octane content, but octane rating, which is a measure of susceptibility to autoignition, indicated as the iso-octane content of a mixture of heptane and iso-octane with the same properties -- but as soon as there's anything other than heptane, the octane rating is nothing to do with octane. Ethanol raises octane rating by being difficult to ignite -- basically because it's an alcohol instead of a hydrocarbon, and they act different.

And E85 will let you get more power, and comparable MPG, from the same block vs. gasoline precisely because of ethanol's awesome octane rating -- the only catch is, you need to increase the compression ratio to make it happen (which will boost your efficiency enough to compensate the decreased energy content of the fuel) -- but turbocharged engines (which can do that on the fly) are sadly unpopular in America, land of the big-block V8.

Re:10% Ethanol

[Xyrus]

Ethanol from corn has always been a stupid proposition. It's a little above break even at best, is hard on the soil, you'd need a huge amount of acreage to replace any decent fraction of fossil fuels, uses a food crop as a fuel source, and the list goes on and on. The only reason it as done is because of the corn lobby, despite just about every other expert saying it was idiotic to do so.

There are much higher yielding and less destructive ways to produce ethanol. But they can't compete with the massive government subsidies going into to the Midwest's corn hole. Hopefully these subsidies will expire and the true cost of corn based ethanol will quickly kill it so that the more intelligent and productive means can be put into action.

Re:10% Ethanol

[Anonymous Coward]

This. I have a friend at the local state university who studies various alternatives to gasoline that come from plant sources. According to him, corn ethanol is practically the worst choice they could have made. The other choices, including using various native grasses, end up with net positives, without using cooked numbers, and are much much higher than ethanol's figures when using realistic numbers. The problem, there is no "grass" industry in the same way there is a "corn" industry.

Re:10% Ethanol

[j-turkey]

That's just semantics.

It takes less energy to drill a gallon of gasoline out of the ground and deliver it to your fuel tank than you gain by burning that fuel in your engine. It takes more energy to grow corn, turn it into ethanol and deliver it to your fuel tank than you gain from burning that ethanol.

If you were using solar powered tractors to grow the corn, and solar powered trucks to move it around it might make sense (just might, it wouldn't necessarily.) Given that most of the energy to produce the ethanol comes from gasoline or diesel, it makes no sense to use ethanol.

I believe that in most cases, it's more than just semantics. Most (not all) corn is grown using conventional (petroleum-based) fertilizer. According to Michael Pollan, producing one calorie of corn uses two calories of petro-fertilizer. This is only counting fertilizer use, not the additional energy used for farm equipment, moving product/raw materials, the distillation process or loss of energy during distillation.

I'm shocked that this is not cited elsewhere when discussing Ethanol as an energy source, especially when used to reduce our dependency on petroleum (foreign or otherwise). Given that we're using more petroleum to make it than it would save, it appears to be a bit of a boondoggle.

...either that or I'm horribly misinformed. (Note: Pollan's book cites a peer reviewed study for this claim - I'm just citing what I read from memory)

Deader Than a Doornail

[eldavojohn]

I come from a family of farmers, some of which have taken advantage of the high price of corn. Well, around Christmas they were talking about two things. One is the serious disregard for pollution standards from most (they said more than just those caught and fined) ethanol refineries. And also the negative effect it has had on farmland in their area. The second was that many refineries were shutting down as these subsidies came to a close (my dad pointed out two abandoned as we drove along) and as a result some farmers had bought up land at high prices expecting the recent price of corn to continue. They had figured they would be getting $6 or $7 a bushel and there was a lot of talk that since the refineries were going down and production was already juiced that this was going to lead to a lot of farmers losing money in these purchases. From what I gathered from folks who have been doing this for many decades: this will be a very painful learning experience for everyone involved and this seems to be the sentiment whether the wind blows right or left.

Re:Deader Than a Doornail

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, that's about the size of it. Congresspeople tipping off their buddies in big business to buy cheap farmland because they were about to legislate a corn bubble, and then making sure to tip them off again that the subsidies would not be renewed, so they could sell the land to unsuspecting farmers at corn bubble prices, only to have it come crashing down.

Typical corruption scam by government.

Re:Deader Than a Doornail

[XiaoMing]

From what I gathered from folks who have been doing this for many decades: this will be a very painful learning experience for everyone involved and this seems to be the sentiment whether the wind blows right or left.

What was the lesson exactly?

That it's a total douche move to lobby for subsidies to grow corn in order to make a completely unrealistic and net energy/money losing biofuel?
That it's a bigger douche move to switch from growing actual foods to growing this shit and driving up prices of general foodstuffs that would have grown on the same land, as well as the cost of meats from livestock that used to feed off of dent corn?
That it's really fucking annoying when many of the country's engines are being rotted away from the inside-out up by the water-loving ethanol that corn lobbyists demanded be put into gasoline?
Or that it was a completely idiotic idea to then invest "long-term" (but ironically very short-sightedly) in the Land of Oz that they managed to make for themselves?

I live in Wisconsin and go to school with quite a few farmers, and can relate to them and feel bad for them on an individual level, but some of the assholes at the top of this heap, namely the lobbyists for subsidies, can go fuck themselves for how much trouble they've caused in the name of greed.

Re:Deader Than a Doornail

[ducomputergeek]

We still have our family farms (my dad has a little more than half I have the rest), but we rent them out to other farmers these days. It totals about 600 acres, 450 roughly farmable the rest is woods, in southeast missouri. About 12 years ago we basically spent the cash we inherited when my grandmother died on leveling the land, putting in irrigation, etc. as well as grain bins on the farm. We expected about an 18 year return on the cash investment (on paper the value of the land we made an instant profit of about $300 an acre. Dry land it was worth about $1200 an acre, cost about $850 an acre to level and could be sold as irrigated/leveled land at about $2300 at the time. These days you can easily get $3500 an acre and maybe $4k if you are willing to wait for the right buyer). What we didn't foresee was $10 a bushel soybeans starting to be the "average". The increase in production we've seen from being able to water and switch to rise basically went from $20k a year to $60k a year. Now that's been closer to $80 and even close to $100k a couple years and we recouped the cash investment about 2009.

About 2007, the farmers decided basically go to a three crop rotation of 50% rice, 25% soybean, and 25% corn. That lasted about one season because we put a stop to it. There are a couple 20 acre fields that are still "dry land" and those do get corn placed on them every other year and that's fine, but we saw the bubble that was corn. We decided a few years ago to come up with a rotation and stick to it. Don't try and play roulette with the market. That rotation is rice, then the following year double crop spring wheat and come back with late beans. If for some reason that combination stops yielding the returns we desire, then we'll reevaluate. But there is no sense in getting suckered in with hype (like our farmers were). "Oh Corn is high this year, we better plant more next year". Problem is too many other farmers think that way and guess what: next year there is more supply and the price goes down. As my grand father said: The time to get into the hog market is when the price is low. The time to get out is when it's high."

My father remembered the whole Ethanol debacle from the 70's and 80's. One of our close family friends is a retired sales/marketing head for GM trucks. We were talking with him about it and back in 2002 or 2003 he said, "Yeah, these guys are going to get suckered in again. Once they've spent all these billions on these ethanol plants the Saudis will drop the price of oil and quickly put them out of business just like they did in the 1980's". Well I'm not sure if it was the Saudis pumping more oil, but the same thing happened. The price of oil dropped like a rock and just long enough to put most of these producers out of business.

We talk about the farms quite a bit and something we did about 2006 was sit down and look at the statistics on prices. Figured out where our high and lows should be. If the price got basically 1 standard deviation above the "average" price over the past 10 years we sold half the stock. If it went up more we sold the rest. If it went back down we'd sell again once it closed just below the price mark (which was $7.03 a bushel). Well now the price seems to averaging about $9 - $10 and we've locked in prices the past couple years around $12 on the futures market.

The only thing is we can see there is a bubble, especially in the land prices, maybe in the commodity markets as well. Now it's no where near what it is in say Iowa or Nebraska where some are getting $6k an acre, but there's a bubble there. That's why 6 years ago when all my friends were out buying houses and I didn't. I know my Dad is holding onto well over a $1M in cash with nothing he's willing to invest it in at the moment. He's basically divested from the stock market at this point. He holds a few bond funds and is buying into some energy funds and natural resource funds (mining, etc..) as well pipe lines (master limited partnerships). He doesn't feel particu

Re:Deader Than a Doornail

[Hatta]

No, corruption does not imply doing something illegal. Corruption implies doing something unethical.

Scheduled to end....

[cfulmer]

The E85 manufacturers and the agriculture companies that grow corn have a lot riding on this, and are quite good at influencing Congress. There's a very good chance that they will successfully lobby to extend this subsidy.

That's a shame, because the subsidy was originally intended to support this fuel alternative for a short time in order to give it a chance to become economically viable. Well, it's had that chance and the results have been a disaster.

Re:Scheduled to end....

[dak664]

As I understand it, along with the subsidy expiration is the elimination of the tariff for Brazilian sugarcane ethanol, which was being imported anyway to the US because of the higher tax credit for sustainable EtOH when used for making E90 (US production being exported to Brazil to pay for it). So ethanol will actually become cheaper! A few gas stations near boating facilities have been selling unblended gas http://pure-gas.org/ but most wanted the 5 cent per gallon credit for E90. Many small airports will let you buy leaded aviation gas for two cycle engines.

My chainsaw seized after overheating last month, after which I measured the ethanol content of my fuel mix to be 17.7% (add 100 ml of gas to 50 ml of water in a baby bottle, cap and shake well, read the water + ethanol level after it separates again). I am using $5/gallon aviation fuel in my new chainsaw. Using E85 voids the Husqvarna warranty!

Lets keep E85, but..

[bhcompy]

lets switch to switchgrass please. You don't need to waste food or farmland for switchgrass, it grows in many difficult conditions and is cheaper to manage by far. It also has better energy energy content by far.

Re:Kinda sucks

[LWATCDR]

But it has a higher octane rating.
If you didn't have to have the "flex fuel" option then you could get better milage out of E85. Cars could run higher compression ratios and more spark advance. You could get very close or higher mileage out of E85 than Gasoline then... Oh and no breaking or bending of the laws of thermodynamics required. With the current compromise flex fuel set up you are correct.

Hemp based bio-diesel

[msobkow]

I know diesel engines have a lousy reputation in North America, but I firmly believe hemp based bio-diesel is a FAR better alternative than E85. Most importantly, hemp seed based bio-diesel is a net-positive energy solution, requiring less fuel to farm the hemp and process it into bio-diesel than you end up producing (kind of a critical point for any product to succeed in the energy markets.)

Some go so far as to claim that hemp bio-diesel is carbon negative. I'm skeptical about that, but it would be interesting to test the theory.

Unlike ethanol corn, hemp produces a great deal of fiber suitable for textiles and paper as a side-product, even if the main purpose of the crop is bio-diesel. Levi's jeans used to be made exclusively from hemp-fiber denim, not cotton. I've read claims that hemp based paper out produces poplar tree paper production by a factor of nearly 4:1, though again, I've not seen a study to prove that claim.

Most important of all, hemp is literally a weed and will grow almost anywhere, allowing the use of low-grade farmland instead of taking away from food-crop acreage.

But it's nothing new. The pro-hemp community has been screaming this "nonsense" at the top of their lungs for decades while the cannabis drug war drowned out their good points about hemp farming.

Re:The Great Ethanol Scam

[jpstanle]

This is the case for ANY motor not specifically designed to run on high-ethanol-content fuels. Ethanol is a strong solvent and strips oil films, breaks down hoses and seals, oxidizes ferrous metals, and generally tears apart gasoline motors. E85 "flex-fuel" motors are designed with ethanol's nastiness in mind, using different materials and lubricants, but even then, running E85 is harder on the engine and usually calls for more frequent service intervals.

Running E85 in ANY engine that does not explicitly state that it is designed to run on E85 will cause permanent and rapid damage. It'll probably completely destroy the engine before your next oil change.

Ethanol is complete crap as an engine fuel, with the lone exception being purpose built race engines that can utilize the higher detonation resistance for more horsepower per unit displacement. And those race motors tend to get rebuilt at least once a year, mitigating the wear factors.