Can the US grow enough corn to produce all the ethanol needed to power all the motor vehicles in the US?

Answer 1

No, if every row crop in the U.S. was corn and all of the corn was used for ethynol it would only meet 25% of the U.S. petroleum needs.

Answer 2

It is possible, but not under a captilists society. The government would have to mandate over 400 million acres to be grown just for corn ethanol and then establish irrigation for all the acres.

It could be done with cellulose. Corn is a seed. A plant expends a lot of energy trying to make the seed. Cellulose is the wall structure on every cells of a plant. A really good season for corn get over 3 tons an acre. A really good season for cellulose production is over 11 tons an acre. Those are rarely achieved but cellulose is less expensive to grow and gets more per acre. Unfortunately the number of operational cellulose production facilities in the world could be counted on one hand due to a number of technical issues.

Anyway the only reason so much attention is on ethanol is that everyone has known how to make it for hundreds of years. The difficulties with ethanol is that it takes 30 to 35 percent more gallons of fuel to achieve replacement of gasoline and it has a multibillion dollar anti- ethanol campaign promoting two discredited scientists that disagree with the rest of the scientific community over the efficiency issue. Oil companies seem to consider ethanol a threat.

We should be focused on butanol. Butanol would only require 10 to 15 percent more fuel than gasoline currently does compared to ethanol's 30 percent. Unfortunately butanol is 30 years behind ethanol fuel in developement. With luck it might reach the current status of cellulose ethanol within a dozen years.

Answer 3

Perhaps especially as refining technology becomes more efficient.; The caveat here is that corn ethanol will only help in the issue of breaking dependence from oil. Unfortunately corn ethanol does as much environmetal damage(minus drilling) as using petroleum products as in emissions etc. On the other hand the damage is MUCH less when the ethanol comes from other biomass such as sugarcane. I believe right now there are only 2 refineries for the cane ethanol in the world.

Answer 4

I really don't think that U.S. can grow enough corn to supply the ethanol for the whole country.

First of all the U.S. imports BILLIONS of barrels of oil every year.

Second, corn does not grow year round, meaning that in the spring and summer we would have to grow enough corn for the whole year.

Third, ethanol is not quite as efficient as gasoline.

Answer 5

there's a component to this you aren't any more jointly with. Ethanol burning vehicle engines may have larger compression ratios. Making them extra effectual. look on the Audi R8 study platform. 22 to at least a million compression with direct injection. My previous beater pickup truck runs on ethanol and receives 20 mpg city and 23 street. And passes smog with cleanser tailpipe emissions than your Camry. i'd like to have 365 acres of corn to save that previous truck operating. flow large pink flow

Answer 6

Maybe, but apparently is is very expensive to ship, so people that don't live in the midwest will end up paying more for fuel that is actually less fuel efficient (about 20%) than gasoline.

Plug-in Hybrids are the way to go...the electric engine powers the entire car until you get going more than 45 MPH or so. So, if you live in the city, you might never use gasoline.

Answer 7

No. The amount of corn that is grown in the U.S. is only enough to fuel about 1/4 or less of the U.S.'s needs.

Answer 8

Not and be the bread basket of the world, too. Ethanol is useful for stretching our petroleum supplies, but will never completely replace them because the energy density is too low.

Answer 9

No. Unlike the rest of the world, American families usually have one car per driver, instead of one car per family.

Answer 10

depends on shipping laws. old taxes are in effect and make it hard to ship places.