E15 Coming to a Gas Station Near You!

In reply to frenchyd :

The corn mandate is still a terrible idea.  Sugars in sugar beets, waste fruit, and even sugar cane does not take any effort other than squishing the stuff.  Corn takes energy to warm up the starch and then add enzymes to *then* make sugar.

According to this https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Biofuels/Why-Sugar-Beets-Are-Preferable-To-Corn-For-Ethanol-Production.html sugar beets produce twice as much alcohol per acre and uses 40% less water.

And I'm seeing the same numbers for sugarcane.

That's just alcohol per acre- not the additional steps required to turn corn starch into sugar.  

There's SO MUCH wasted fruit that would be better off it used for making wine then fuel alcohol.  And that would lower the cost of ethanol.

The corn mandate for E10 is really stupid.

frenchyd said:

In reply to rslifkin :

Ethanol has about 114 octane by itself. It is slightly less fuel efficient  but makes more power.  
 Any vehicle post 2001 vehicle can safely run E15. 
My wife's 2013?Gonda CRV. We use it frequently  because it's 5 cents a gallon cheaper. 

This is a lie, at least according to my owners manuals. 

bobzilla said:

frenchyd said:

In reply to rslifkin :

Ethanol has about 114 octane by itself. It is slightly less fuel efficient  but makes more power.  
 Any vehicle post 2001 vehicle can safely run E15. 
My wife's 2013?Gonda CRV. We use it frequently  because it's 5 cents a gallon cheaper. 

This is a lie, at least according to my owners manuals. 

They may say that in the manual, but they all can.  I'd bet it was put in there to make sure drivers didn't put E85 in.  The cars have been tested.  Heck, the original "justification" of E10 was to lower emissions for early cars by making them run 3% leaner.  

This is a horrible idea on every level.

They don't allow more booze in the gas because of pollution, then they decide to waive that.

Using corn to create fuel is stupid during a good year.  Sugar cane, beets, even switchgrass would be less stupid, especially now.  I believe 3 of the top ten grain producing countries are going to be WAY off on what they have produced in the past.

Can't go into it much more without violating TOS

alfadriver said:

In reply to frenchyd :

The corn mandate is still a terrible idea.  Sugars in sugar beets, waste fruit, and even sugar cane does not take any effort other than squishing the stuff.  Corn takes energy to warm up the starch and then add enzymes to *then* make sugar.

According to this https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Biofuels/Why-Sugar-Beets-Are-Preferable-To-Corn-For-Ethanol-Production.html sugar beets produce twice as much alcohol per acre and uses 40% less water.

And I'm seeing the same numbers for sugarcane.

That's just alcohol per acre- not the additional steps required to turn corn starch into sugar.  

There's SO MUCH wasted fruit that would be better off it used for making wine then fuel alcohol.  And that would lower the cost of ethanol.

The corn mandate for E10 is really stupid.

 

Help me understand please.  I thought corn was cheaper than fruit or sugar beets etc to grow.  I understand about Iowa and politics but are you telling me ethanol is mandated to be made from corn?   
   In addition I went on Line to check the price of  denatured ethanol. And $36 a gallon????? $1099 for a 55 gallon drum ?????  
E85 around here is $2.79/9 a gallon.  Maybe we should buy some E85 and distill the gas out?   

In reply to frenchyd :

The issue is that there is extra federal credits and grants given to corn ethanol and not any other source- this dates back to work by Bob Dole in the '90s.   Being such an ethanol enthusiasts, it's curious you were not aware of that.

I used to have a source for ethanol free gas, and now i dont, so for the last few years everything gets whatevers at the closest pump. No problems in my small gas engines, 2 strokes, or 98 Chevy 1500. Havent had any problems. Ive moved a couple of cars over the E85 in the past and Im a believer. It race gas for the street. Pretty much the first mod I want to do to my 1le is flex fuel kit and tune. Its cheaper fuel and makes more hp, I cant recommend it enough for performance cars (politics aside).

I havent ever had a problem, I know some people do, but I think for the vast majority of people this is overblown and they wouldnt have known if it wasnt for the news coverage

alfadriver said:

In reply to frenchyd :

The issue is that there is extra federal credits and grants given to corn ethanol and not any other source- this dates back to work by Bob Dole in the '90s.   Being such an ethanol enthusiasts, it's curious you were not aware of that.

Thanks for letting me know.  I'm a ethanol advocate because I am a racer.  E 85 is the cheapest race gas I've ever bought. 
 I really do try to ignore the politics behind it. 
 

Now why is 98% ethanol so darn expensive?   It can't be made into booze. 

Toebra said:

This is a horrible idea on every level.

They don't allow more booze in the gas because of pollution, then they decide to waive that.

Using corn to create fuel is stupid during a good year.  Sugar cane, beets, even switchgrass would be less stupid, especially now.  I believe 3 of the top ten grain producing countries are going to be WAY off on what they have produced in the past.

 

Can't go into it much more without violating TOS

Are you a racer?  

alfadriver said:

bobzilla said:

frenchyd said:

In reply to rslifkin :

Ethanol has about 114 octane by itself. It is slightly less fuel efficient  but makes more power.  
 Any vehicle post 2001 vehicle can safely run E15. 
My wife's 2013?Gonda CRV. We use it frequently  because it's 5 cents a gallon cheaper. 

This is a lie, at least according to my owners manuals. 

They may say that in the manual, but they all can.  I'd bet it was put in there to make sure drivers didn't put E85 in.  The cars have been tested.  Heck, the original "justification" of E10 was to lower emissions for early cars by making them run 3% leaner.  

 With 131,000 miles on it you'd think if E15 was a problem my wife's Honda would display that by now. 
     

alfadriver said:

In reply to frenchyd :

The corn mandate is still a terrible idea.  Sugars in sugar beets, waste fruit, and even sugar cane does not take any effort other than squishing the stuff.  Corn takes energy to warm up the starch and then add enzymes to *then* make sugar.

According to this https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Biofuels/Why-Sugar-Beets-Are-Preferable-To-Corn-For-Ethanol-Production.html sugar beets produce twice as much alcohol per acre and uses 40% less water.

And I'm seeing the same numbers for sugarcane.

That's just alcohol per acre- not the additional steps required to turn corn starch into sugar.  

There's SO MUCH wasted fruit that would be better off it used for making wine then fuel alcohol.  And that would lower the cost of ethanol.

The corn mandate for E10 is really stupid.

 

This doesn't make any political sense.  Why would Dole make the deal with Iowa?  Florida is massively more important and they grow sugar cane.  
    I do know America pays 2 times the world price for sugar  and the sugar growers already are solidly in bed with that party.  Is it a shot across the bow for Minnesota's beet growers?  

Opti said:

I used to have a source for ethanol free gas, and now i dont, so for the last few years every  gets whatevers at the closest pump. No problems in my small gas engines, 2 strokes, or 98 Chevy 1500. Havent had any problems. Ive moved a couple of cars over the E85 in the past and Im a believer. It race gas for the street. Pretty much the first mod I want to do to my 1le is flex fuel kit and tune. Its cheaper fuel and makes more hp, I cant recommend it enough for performance cars (politics aside).

I havent ever had a problem, I know some people do, but I think for the vast majority of people this is overblown and they wouldnt have known if it wasnt for the news coverage

I can't agree more. Since Ethanol is basically booze. And a lot of people think it's horrible. Does that mean they think they are poisoning themselves when they have a beer or glass of wine?  

frenchyd said:

Toebra said:

This is a horrible idea on every level.

They don't allow more booze in the gas because of pollution, then they decide to waive that.

Using corn to create fuel is stupid during a good year.  Sugar cane, beets, even switchgrass would be less stupid, especially now.  I believe 3 of the top ten grain producing countries are going to be WAY off on what they have produced in the past.

 

Can't go into it much more without violating TOS

Are you a racer?  

What, in the everloving berkeley, does that have to do with anything he said?
Jesus wept, man.  What are you even talking about?

In reply to Mr_Asa :

Just trying to understand what was said.
 To explain it. Racers like ethanol.
   People who want to save money can appreciate ethanol.   

I own more carburetors now than I ever have before, and this news saddens me. I mostly feel bad for my old bikes. They might get sta-bil on their next fillups.

californiamilleghia said:

Just to ask , 

does China have E - 10 or E15 since that is where most of the rebuild kits are made , 

Does any other countries use E10 - E15 ?

just wondering if China makes one type of rebuild kit for the world ?

I just replaced the Keihin carburetor on my 24 hp Kohler last fall with a cheap chinesium copy from Amazon.  It sat all winter with E10 87 Octane in it.  No issues.  Runs beautifully.  I should have done it sooner.

In reply to Cactus :

I winterize everything with Stabil  and make sure it runs afterwards to  fill the carbs with it.  ( the gas /Stabil mix)  but then I've been doing that now for 30 years.  

frenchyd said:

This doesn't make any political sense.  Why would Dole make the deal with Iowa?  Florida is massively more important and they grow sugar cane.  
    I do know America pays 2 times the world price for sugar  and the sugar growers already are solidly in bed with that party.  Is it a shot across the bow for Minnesota's beet growers?  

Welcome to American politics: "doesn't make sense"

There's definitely a reason that ethanol based fuels anywhere outside the US aren't made from corn.  I'm not sure about the cost difference, but from the resource input (and therefore environmental) perspective, corn is definitely not the best source of ethanol.  I'm pretty sure Brazil uses mostly sugar cane for theirs. 

In reply to rslifkin :

I understand Brazil. Use what you've got etc. I doubt fruit will ever be viable as a source for ethanol,  too labor intensive to harvest. 

    With ethanol here in America we don't grow that much cane or beets. ( that's why Americans pay twice as much for Sugar as the rest of the world )   
     
I'm just thinking of costs here. Not trying to get political.  I know the old moonshiners used to buy sugar to mix with the corn.   
 Now I understand they use enzymes to extract(?) the corn syrup to convert to alcohol.  Leaving most of the remains for animal feed. ( supposedly it's better for the animals(?)   I digress.  
       America has massive amounts of corn acreage and the price of corn has dropped from its previous highs.      I do see lots of former corn fields laying fallow. Conversation at the diners is the price being paid barely covers the cost of growing and unless they have a bumper crop it's hard to make a profit.    
    
    So how much does it cost to grow a gallon of ethanol from Corn , sugar, whatever?  I mean I'm thinking of land, labor,  seed, fertilizer,equipment,  etc  and still have a profit for the farmer?  
      I understand the farmer takes the weather and yield gamble so their profit needs to reflect that. 

   
     
    

In reply to frenchyd :

Corn is a racket in the US.  We use it as a sweetener not because it is good but because it is cheap, and a lot of the reason it is cheap is because the market is protected by tariffs on cane sugar.

And then to keep it from being so cheap that small farmers starve, we pay people to not grow it...

frenchyd said:

alfadriver said:

Berck said:

In reply to rslifkin :

Right.  So where are the adaptive limits? Pretty sure E85 is over them? And why the E10 limit--because it's all that was tested with, or do manufacturers have a more sophisticated reason for the limit?  I was thinking about the fact that the Miata spends a lot of time in open loop mode where it ignores the O2 sensor because its ancient ECU can't react fast enough, but guessing it probably runs so rich in that state that E15 is fine?

E10 is the limit because a study 20 years ago suggested that we can't grow more corn to support more than that.  Which is a good reason to part with the corn mandate for ethanol.

For newer cars, E10 is the nominal fuel, so adjusting for E15 is really easy.  For older cars where E0 is the nominal fuel, E15 isn't that far away, and I think the EPA actually tested for E20 to check older car robustness to the much higher limit.  And I'm pretty sure that E10 actually means E5 to E15 at the pump.

Older cars should be learning an adjustment that applies to WOT, BTW.  Should- I know the cars I worked on did.

Pretty sure 20 years ago farmers weren't generally using the dense planting they do today.  I believe most was row planted back then.  
  Still see a lot of fallow fields  where farmers aren't planting because the price of corn is too low. 
   

Corn is still planted in either 30" or 36" rows, there are some planters made to do a "double row" that puts two rows about 6" apart with staggered plants but there is still a 3' gap between each set of double rows.

Here's the thing about making ethanol from corn. A very large quantity of the corn grown in the US is used for animal feed, it always has been. After an ethanol plant extracts what it needs from the corn what is left is called "brewers grain" which is still a viable animal feed. So they can resell the brewers grain as a feed source, so using corn for fuel doesn't substantially effect corn supply. Our national farming infrastructure is setup for corn, and is able to be produced in a much larger swath of the country which also makes it a better choice for the ethanol plants. While corn may not be the best source for sugar, it is OUR best source for sugar.

In reply to gearheadmb :

Nonsense.  I mean, you're right that you can feed the sugar-extracted corn to livestock, but you're wrong about everything else.  There have been plenty of robust studies that show that ethanol production absolutely impacts food prices (more than just corn because the subsidies encourage planting corn instead of something else), and not just in the United States, but especially in Mexico as well.  And it's not free--it should be pretty obvious that once you extract much of the sugar from feed corn, it's not as good at being feed corn anymore!  Our farming infrastructure is setup for corn, but plenty of other things as well.  We have an enormous sugar beet infrastructure as well, and it'd make more sense in terms of value for land use to produce ethanol from that than corn.  As for "produce corn in a larger swath of the country" -- larger than what?  You can grow switchgrass in a larger swath of the country than corn without fertilizer or much effort and easily extract ethanol from that.

Berck said:

In reply to gearheadmb :

Nonsense.  I mean, you're right that you can feed the sugar-extracted corn to livestock, but you're wrong about everything else.  There have been plenty of robust studies that show that ethanol production absolutely impacts food prices (more than just corn because the subsidies encourage planting corn instead of something else), and not just in the United States, but especially in Mexico as well.  And it's not free--it should be pretty obvious that once you extract much of the sugar from feed corn, it's not as good at being feed corn anymore!  Our farming infrastructure is setup for corn, but plenty of other things as well.  We have an enormous sugar beet infrastructure as well, and it'd make more sense in terms of value for land use to produce ethanol from that than corn.  As for "produce corn in a larger swath of the country" -- larger than what?  You can grow switchgrass in a larger swath of the country than corn without fertilizer or much effort and easily extract ethanol from that.

The biggest impact to food prices is transportation. The vast majority of transportation is oil based. 
   Oil used to be under $40 a barrel and now it's at $100 a barrel 

 nothing else even begins to approach  that inflation. 

In reply to frenchyd :

Also false.  Transportation accounts for about 5% of food prices, overall.  More for fresh fruits and vegetables, less for cereals. 

According to the IMF, food costs have gone up for 3 main reasons:  

(1) Demand for staples for both human consumption and animal feed has remained high, especially from China, as countries have stockpiled food reserves due to pandemic-related worries about food security. (2) The recent 2020-2021 La Niña episode—a global weather event occurring every few years—has led to dry weather in key food exporting countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States. This has caused, in some cases, harvests and harvest outlooks to fall short of expectations. As demand has outpaced supply, US and world stocks-to-use ratios—a measure of market tightness—reached multi-year lows for some staples. (3) Strong demand for biofuels increased speculative demand by non-commercial traders, and export restrictions are additional factors supporting world producer prices.