write your congress-critter - increased ethanol in gasoline

No I never said that. I said ethanol doesn't reduce miles per gallon in some engines. Or put another way some engines get better gas mileage with ethanol blends than they do with straight gasoline.

You think that means I am saying ethanol doesn't reduce calorie content. You think this because you don't have the brains to understand what I said.

Nobody but you and Mr. Bean said anything about thermodynamics. Thermodynamics may predict how much heat is produced from a gallon of fuel. But thermodynamics does not predict how far you will travel on a gallon of fuel. If you think that the amount of heat produced and gas mileage are the same thing you know little about IC engines. If thermodynamics could predict real world mileage of vehicles they wouldn't do any fuel economy testing. They would just calculate the mileage for each vehicle.

I never said anything about thermodynamics because it is not relevant to the point. You have never explained how you think it might be relevant or made any sort of coherent point of any kind.

That is correct. Let's make the comparison with a Ford flex-fuel engine. In order to get better efficiency you need to make the comparison in an engine that is designed to take advantage of the ethanol blend. It has been demonstrated that the Ford flex fuel engines do get better mpg's with ethanol blend (usually around 20%-30% ethanol) than they do with straight gasoline.

I did not say any given engine. The engines that are designed to take advantage of ethanol blending will be the ones that get better mileage. Many engines that weren't so designed won't. In a few years most of the new cars will get better mileage on ethanol blends because that is what will be in the gas tank in US cars. Also, in a few years there will be higher concentrations of ethanol than the 10% that is available currently in conventional gas pumps.

You are the one that is mistaken.

"Run a two wheel-drive V8 Ford F150 on regular unleaded gas, and the EPA says it'll get 14 mpg city, 19 mpg highway. Run it on E85 ethanol, and it gets 11 mpg city, 14 mpg highway. In other words, fill up on environmentally friendly E85 ethanol, and you'll get fewer miles per gallon than you would on gasoline."

that's a flex fuel ford.

oh, wait, maybe these guys didn't stay awake in your thermodynamics lectures. or maybe you're a clueless retard that can't even use google. i'm confused.

that's because you don't know what the f*ck you're talking about! or understand basic scientific principles.

only if the taxpayer continues to stand for this bullshit and the agri/oil conglomerates keep skinning their sheep..

and yet, strangely, i'm not the one pulling numbers out of their ass. retard.

The question was what is the mileage when using around 25% ethanol? The calorie content of the fuel would predict the mpg's would be less than straight gasoline but mileage test have shown it does better than E0 gasoline. Here is a quote from the article I posted earlier:

"Significantly, the flex fuel vehicle tested on an E20 ethanol blend outperformed its gasoline efficiency by 15 percent."

Nobody needs to be forced into higher ethanol blends. Drivers when given the choice will ultimately choose what produces the best mileage. Right now many flex fuel vehicle owners are choosing to mix E85 with E0 to get the mix that produces the best gas mileage. In some states you can do that right at the pump just dial the ratio of ethanol to gasoline you want and then fill the tank. If people want straight gasoline they can fill up with that.

Jim, I certainly have heard of the Diesel engine- and the Diesel cycle. Its efficiency is not due to the fuel used per se. Kerosene has been used in a number of spark ignition engines, especially in the US in the late 19th Century and early 20th.

Further, gasoline can be used in the Diesel cycle.

Yes kerosene has been used. What conclusion are you trying to draw from that fact??

You claimed that: "Losses in a heat engine have little to do with the fuel"

Yes it is true that gasoline can be used in a diesel but it is horribly inefficient used in that configuration which is why nobody in their right mind would burn gasoline in a diesel. This illustrates why your statement is false. The fuel used is the most important determining factor of losses in a heat engine. Engine efficiency has always been built around the properties of the available fuel. And gasoline presents less opportunity for incorporating thermal efficiency into the engine design compared to a fuel like diesel or ethanol.

-jim

OK. I buy that, but if the choice is MBTE or ethanol, I'd rather have ethanol. If the choice also includes neither, I am for that.

See references further below regarding the "energy balance." And of course there is a whole different discussion rearding the use of corn to feed animals, instead of using corn (or other crop grown instead of corn) to feed people directly. I raise around 50 head of cattle. I don't feed them any corn at all. They eat grass, with limited quantities of oats and stored hay as a winter supplement. But most Americans prefer beef with high fat contnet and that means "grain fed" beef. Think how many Mexicans we could feed if we stopped diverting all that corn to cattle, hogs, and chickens. BTW, chicken crap makes an excellent high ntrogen fertilizer, you just have to worry about heavy metal contamination....

I can't speak for all the experts out there. But for me.....I raise about

120 acres of corn per year. Each acre requires about 0.6 hours of "tractor time" (tilling / planting). This burns about 4 gallons of diesel fuel. I use around 120 lbs of nitrogen fertilizer which is primarily made from natural gas (for sake of arguement, say this is equivalent to another 12 gallons of diesel fuel). Throw in another gallon for harvesting, another for transporting the corn, and another for the pesticides, and say I am using 18 to 20 gallons of diesel fuel to make 150 bushels of corn (9,000 lbs). This corn can make around 300 to 400 gallons of ethanol plus around 3,000 lbs of high protein animal feed. I have no idea how much energy is used to distill the ethanol, but I cannot imagine it is equivalent to the energy content to the 300+ gallons of ethanol produced.

Not if you adjust for inflation. In fact my Father was getting about the same per bushel in the 70's as I was getting for the last few years if you ignore the "crazy" prices in 2008. I contend that the only thing crazy about current corn prices is how low they are when adjusted for inflation. Historically high prices would have been in 1918, 1947, 1951, 1974, and maybe 1980 and 1995. Average prices in 2008 ($4.06 in 2008 dollars) were actually low when adjusted for inflation.

You need to look at a chart of actual averge prices paid, not peak speculator prices. Not many farmer got that $6.25 peak shown. Let me ask you this...would you rather have $3.80 per bushel in 1973 dollars (

) or $6.25 in 2008 dollars? According to the government, $6.25 in 2008 would be equivalent to $1.29 in 1973. My Father was getting over $3 for corn in 1973. And actual average corn prices in 2008 were only a little over $4 ($0.82 in 1973 dollars).

Todays price for September corn is $3.53....given the drough and this historically low price, I am going to lose big time on corn this year. Fortunately I cut back on corn acerage.

Farmer are not making much money on corn in much of the US. There are two current subsidies being paid, the so called "Direct" payments and the "Countercyclical" payments. They are not tied to future production, so they don't directly encourage (or discourage) production, they just keep marginal farmers in buisness which tends to keep the prices low. Payments based on historic corn acerge are relatively tiny compared to payments for cotton or peanuts (on a per acre basis). Soybean subsidies are even smaller (on a per acre basis). The LDP payments in theory could be very high, but because the target prices are set so low, they are in effect non-existent. There are very large farmer that receive very large checks from the USDA, but they have little to no effect on planting decisions.

The subsidies being paid today are not tied to currrent crop prices (which are in fact historically low when adjusted for inflation). They were set by the last farm bill. They are significantly lower than set by the prior bill and I can only imagine them going lower when the bill is replaced (2011?). To be honest for a small farmer like me, they are almost not worth the trouble. In order to get the subsidies you have to comply with all sort of rules and I have to constantly go to the FSA office to file reports, etc., etc. If they go much lower, I think farmers will start ignoring the bureaucracy. The current subsidies have three effects that I see - they help keep large marginally profitable farmers in business, they give the government a certain amount of control over what is planted, and they "encourage" farmers to provide information to the government. US food prices are low by developed world standards, so I think you are probably getting a decent return on your "subsidy" dollars. But, It would not bother me if they went away.Without the subsidies, farming would be much more risky and there would probably be much wider swings in food prices. This would present oppurtunities for good, well financed farmers to make a lot more money. Farmer who are barely holding their heads above water would probably go under.

Is corn acerage at a historic high? I suppose you can claim historic highs if you limit history to the last 10 years. But the acerage devoted to corn production steadily decreased for decades, so I am not sure it is fair to ignore a 85 years of statics and concentrate on a period of reduced production (see

Here are the actual peak years (at least since they started collecting the data in the 1920's):

1932 - 113 million acres 1933 - 110 million acres 1931 - 109 million acres 1930 - 104 million acres 2007 - 94 million acres (2007 was the highest acerage in "this" century)

In fact when comparing the 85 years from 1926 till 2010, 2007 was the highest ranked year of the new century and it was only 16th on the list.

2010 ranked 21st, 2009, 25th and 2008 26th. The average number of acres of corn planted from 1926 through 2010 was 82 million acres. 2010 was only 89 million acres. So I don't think you can claim we are at historically high acerage for corn.

Corn has a lot of advantages as a crop for mechanized farming. Compared to other "summer" crops (say cotton, peanuts, or soybeans) it requires relative fewer and cheaper herbicides and insectidides, yeilds well, doesn't suffer from soil borne diseases, and is easy to plant and harvest.

Personally I have been shifting away from corn becasue of historically LOW prices (when adjusted for inflation). For 30 years corn was the crop that paid the bills for my family. Now, I barely break even on it. The yields are better than ever, but the prices when adjusted for inflation are less than half of what they were in the late 70's.

We aren't? So what was was the Gulf War about? Would anyone give a d$%n about Kuwait if there was no oil there? How about the military forces in Saudia Arabia. Are they just there on vacation? Did we invade Iraq becasue of the scenery?

Actaully I am against the ethanol subsidies paid to oil companies.

Again, I am not for the $0.51 per gallon of ethanol subsidy.

Ed

Use of ethanol as fuel for the most part has nothing to do with oxygen. Most of the ethanol is being added as an octane booster. MTBE was the first choice of the refiners to replace lead in gasoline when the phase out of lead started in the mid 70's. After most of the states and finally the EPA banned the use of MTBE because it was showing up in drinking water all over the country, ethanol took off because it is really the only viable octane booster available. Everything else has environmental ot economic disadvantages. And the main reason an octane booster is used is it saves petroleum at the foundry. The refiners can meet the octane requirements without ethanol but it would require about 3% more petroleum input.

The EPA also claims an oxygenate must be added in the winter in some urban areas in the country where smog is a problem.

That is right. The more corn that goes into ethanol the less diabetes and heart disease.

Mexicans had no problem growing enough corn to feed themselves before US dump surplus grain on Mexico in the 90's. Destroying rural economies is not feeding people it is wiping out their livelihood through greedy predatory marketing.

The stated purpose of the subsidy when passed by congress was to compensate the oil companies for closing down their MTBE production facilities. The ethanol producer organizations say they can do without the subsidy as it won't affect ethanol usage, but eliminating it will raise the cost of gasoline.

We use a 10% or so mix in our gas. The dumb thing is that we have to ship the stuff here to Hawaii to do it. It's nutty but somebody must be getting some dough for this crazy caper. We do get a drop in mileage but the good part is that I can use the cheapest grades without knocking.

Doesn't the petroleum have to be shipped in also? I believe the state of Hawaii is trying to encourage a local ethanol industry.

-jim

Unless I'm misinformed, oil is shipped here and all the gas in the state is supplied by one refinery. I have not heard of any state effort to mass produce ethanol here. I think Brazil is heavily invested in making fuel out of sugar cane. We could do that too on a smaller scale, I guess.

dsi1 be getting some dough for this crazy caper.

And you get just one guess as to which "somebody" is /supplying/ the "dough". Bonus points for guessing who that "somebody" got their "dough" from.

as consumers, our best option is neither. with modern catalyzed refineries, there is no need to use additives like this to make the fuel usable and burn cleanly. but production would favor those with more modern plant, and those who have bothered with investing in their infrastructure. and of course, those who haven't just pick up the phone and complaint to "their" representatives.

but it's a perverse equation. our local pbs station had an article about mtbe additives and how our then governor was the first to mandate its use in california gasoline. the gist of it was that one of the oilcos had a refinery process that produced a lot more mtbe than they were using, and rather than just flash it off as was their previous practice, they persuaded wilson that it was an "oxygenate" and thus the mandate was born that would use their otherwise waste product. and all the other refiners had suddenly to come to this oilco and pay extortion prices for their newly mandated mtbe supplies until they had their own production figured out. oh, and this governor's wife just heppened to be on the board of this oilco at the time. strange coincidence.

now, having discovered the sales benefits of using what the oil industry itself has referred to as "volumizers" like mtbe and ethanol, they're all over it. especially if they can get the taxpayer to cough up to pay for them to use it!!! so ethanol it is. and they'll say whatever bullshit they need to say to keep selling it to the ignorati, which includes most politicians, about "clean burning" and "oxygenation".

it's a total scam.

> >

typically, "positive" energy balance numbers, seem to selectively omit elements of the energy equation. and are published by vested interests. these two factors are not unrelated!

bottom line on this - the majority of the billions spent every year in agricultural benefits ends up not in the hands of the farmers the public are taxpayers are [not un]happy to pay for, but in the hands of two companies - adm and cargill. i have no problem with farmers getting money to feed the nation, provide very important [but often forgotten] food security, and to provide [very important] foreign policy leverage. in fact, i think that's probably a better investment than a lot of our misdirected military spending [osprey for example]. but i want it in the hands of [producing] farmers, not the corporations that manipulate the markets.

they sure are to the big farmers. there is a texan ranch that receives, iirc from an npr program i heard, over $1bn a couple of years ago. for that kind of dough, you can hire some pretty good accountants and administrators to make sure you're getting every cent of what you can.

you could do some corroborative sleuthing from here:

the purpose of first gulf war was indisputably clear. what was [is] the second war about? who did iraq invade? were they refusing to sell us oil?

good. i am against any tax breaks for oil companies, regardless of pretext. and i am against hocus pocus called "oxygenate" when it isn't, but which means commodity conglomerates and oilcos use unfair means [federal deceit] to get into our back pockets.

we should scrap it. and if we're serious about foreign oil and energy security, we should get serious about improving fuel efficiency. the best way not to import forign oil is to not burn it!

well, if any state /could/ produce sugar for ethanol, hawaii is it. but you don't because you're not politically important. and this is all politics.

but that is the "official" reason, even if it's a factual misrepresentation.

bullshit. even the oilco's don't say that any more.

it's not about lead replacement, it's about "oxygenate", otherwise known as "calorie reducer" or "volumizer".

see above. and it's a politically acceptable cash cow for the agricultural conglomerates.

"foundry"??? is ethanol used to make steel? and it /increases/ gasoline sales, not reduces it.

no, they would lose 3% in sales because of the higher calorie content.

hocus pocus.

idiot.

bullshit.

No it is not the official reason. Oxygenated formulas are only required in the winter in a relatively small geographical part of the US. The official reason is it was approved back in 1975 for the new cars that required lead free gas. Ethanol was one of several permitted lead substitutes. Today it is the only one left standing.

Yeah well than why is it in almost every gas tank in the US. It is the middle of summer in case you haven't noticed.

Your stupidity is only surpassed by your ignorance.

FYI, foundries don't make steel.

That sentence should have been - the main reason an octane booster is used is it reduces petroleum input at the refinery.

There is no point talking numbers with some one who can't add, subtract or count.

cut out some repetivie and unrelated stuff.....

>> >>

That was the most wacko "energy" balance I have ever seen. A total pile of crap. A hectare is about 2.5 acres. They are claiming ridiculous numbers, even fior a small farmer like me. I've never spent 4.5 hours of labour on an acre of corn (11.4 hrs per hectare). The large farmers with more modern equipment spent even less. And I am not sure how they translate that into "energy." I don't irrigate my corp and most farmers don't either, so that line is BS. How do you convert "machinery" into enrergy usage. It seems they assume the equipment is only used for corn converted to ethanol. I use the same equipment for all my crops, not just corn. Finally they are claiming a corn yield of around 70 bushels per acre. No farmer would stay in buisness long if they could only raise 70 bu per acre (the US average is about twice that). My worst year so far was over that (although this year might not be).

It looks to me like the "authors" of the this "report" picked unrelated statistics at random in an effort to make a case againt ethanol produced from corn. Total BS. Did you look at the links I provided?

.....

I am not sure where you are getting that 1 billion dollar number. According to the database link you provided the top Texas receipient of USDA Subsidies received $10,593,474 over a 15 year period (an average of around $706,231 per year). The biggest single recipient in 2009 was not a person at all, it was a Peanut Marketing Association and they got just short of 4 million dollars. But this is really misleading. This this was a group of farmers who pooled their peanut production for marketing reasons. And in this case the subsidy was not actually a subsidy at all. The government runs a program where farmers can get a loan from the government based on the value of their crop. They government holds onto the crop until it is eventuially sold and the loan is repaid. So eventually the government recouped all of that "subsidy."

I know there are farmers that get very large program payments. But the way the plan is structured it is hard to say a particular subsidy is a "corn" subsidy. The payment are based on past production. So while you might get a certain level of direct or countercyclical payments because you planted corn in the past, the amount of the subsidy is not related to what you are planting now. And remember the data they are giving you is the "total from

1995-2009." If you look at the charts the trend is downward.

I compared what I actually got in subsisudes from the government to what this web sites says I got. They showing about double what I actually recieved. I assume this is mostly becasue of the way they treat the loan program. Until this year I raised peanuts. Every year I have to put my peanuts under loan to get paid in the fall. Eventually the peanuts are pulled out of storage by the endl user (a "peanut company") and the loan is repaid (and it is actually repaid by the company that buys the peanuts, not me). It is a silly system that the government set-up and peanut (and cotton) companies manipulate to their advantage. It lets me get paid in the fall and allows the peanut companies to not pay for the peanuts until they actually need them. Apaprently the Enivromental Working Group would rather not properly accont for this program. It is not a subsidy to the farmer at all, but they apparently pretend it is. I am sure they would much rather distort the facts to further their position that fairly report tthings.

......

Did you read the article? It says a "Farmers will plant a record-high soybean crop while boosting the amount of corn acres by 3 percent this spring...." It didn't say they were planting record high acerages for corn. I gave you the 2010 acerage above. It is far from a record.

One factor that probably led to an increase in 2010 corn planting is the disppointing 2010 winter wheat crop. I would guess a lot of farmers assumed lower wheat production would lead to higher corn prices next fall. So far that is not the case. Corn prices have been drifitign down all summer. I wish I had not planted as much corn as I did (and I already cut back some).

Ed