Re: ethanol question

Posted by Paul on August 22, 2013 at 06:37:14 from (66.60.223.232):

In Reply to: Re: ethanol question posted by greg k on August 21, 2013 at 17:39:27:

Creating bulk ethanol takes a very large volume of corn, turns the starch into ethanol, turns the oil into a food grade oil, co2 gas, and high-protein livestock feed.

All these items have value, and are part of the economics of ethanol.

You need several thousand bu of corn every day. We are all familiar with corn handling, corn storage, here in the Midwest. We typically produce more corn than needed, and sell it at a loss to other countries as exports. Shipping the corn from the Midwest over to Europe or china is expensive, and results in low prices for USA corn farmers - typically.

So we started using that excess corn for fuel, and more so to improve the ecological footprint of gasoline.

Now the last couple years the economy got all messed up, and China and Europe have oodles of money, while the USA dollar has fallen in a pit, worthless on the world market. So the last couple years, corn appears very high priced to those of us in the USA, while it appears cheap to other countries.

This is not because of ethanol, and only a little bit because of the 2012 drought. Mostly is is because we have devalued our dollar in an effort to preserve our banking and insurance and investment industries.

To buy cornflakes, you are not competing with fuel for your car - you are competing with China and Europe. They have dollars to spend, we have deflated dollars here.....

As to using a different crop to make ethanol, what should we use? Corn grows well in much of the USA, we have huge infrastructure to haul, store, and process it, it grows a great deal of starch as well as the other products we can get from it. Sorghum has higher sugar, but it needs a drier climate to grow, and doesn't store as well. Elevators would need a new set of bins to store it, and it would be less valuable for other uses. Taking land out of corn production and putting it into lower-valued sorghum would be silly.

Sugar cane, only a very few acres in Florida and Hawaii are suited for that crop in the USA, and storage of cane would be very difficult. It works well in brazil, where that crop grows better than corn. Here in the USA, it would be a disaster to try more than a few small plants in the few areas cane grows.

Sugar beets likewise are very difficult to store, and only grow in certain soils. They are very expensive to grow, take a lot out of the soil.

I'm all for ethanol plants in areas these crops work to use these crops, but they end up being snmall, regional setups, we just can not manage these crops in our country to produce ethanol year around.

You guys do realize there are ethanol plants in the USA that do use sorghum? In the climates that works, I'm all for it! As most farmers are.

http://www.sseassociation.org/

Again in Brazil, totally different climate, they struggle to make corn grow in the rainforest, takes a lot of sprays, while sugar cane loves the climate there, grows exceptionally well.

We use mostly what is easiest to store and grow here in the USA - corn.

You have good questions.

I hope my answers help a little bit understand where we are at.

In the future, hopefully the cellulosic ethanol works out - several plants are being built, but unlocking the sugar from the stems of plants has proved to be more difficult than expected, and they are not nearly as efficient as they need to be....

Creating diesel from oilseed crops is actually more efficient than corn, however oilseed crops are so valuable that is it not as economically easy to make biodiesel as it is to make ethanol. A rendering plant near me (dead cows and pigs) is making biodiesel from the dead critters - a lot of difficulty getting going, but a wonderful use of a waste product.

In the past 20 years corn ethanol plants have evolved a great deal,going form using 6 gallons of water to only 2 to make a gallon of ethanol, as well as making nearly 3 gallons of ethanol per bu, compared to 2.3 in the beginning. They added in the oil seperator to sell off that higher value food product, and so on. They ave always made about 17 lbs of high-protien livestock feed for every bu of corn used so it is bot like we lose out the feed, either. onlt the starch is used for ethanol. This is why the ethanol subsidy could end a couple years ago, the corn ethanol industry has matured and can stand on its own.

We are in an odd ecconomic period where the USA dollar is struggling, as well as the drought of last year. And even still, with all that, corn ethanol is cheaper than the gasoline it replaces.

Many cars would run the best on a 25-30% blend, the ethanol at that level burns with more power, more efficiently, so even tho ethanol has less btu per gallon, the better efficiency gives a person much better ecconomy. If only it were cheaper to put in 'blender pumps' that allows you to choose the level of ethanol you want. Many folk with open minds would find their best deal would be a 30% blend in cars built since 2000. Mpg would be a bit lower, but the cost per gallon would make it a best deal.

In the future, we will find other processes, other ways of improving ethanol, and new crops to use.

All that will be a slow process, for now in the USA corn is the easiest to grow in enough volume, easiest to handle and store, easiest to process into ethanol and other valuable food and feed components, all at a positive energy and ecconomic return.

Paul

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