Is ethynol fuel really more cost efficient than convential fuel?

Question

Read an article today in my local newspaper by a local reporter. He had filled his auto up twice with ethynol fuel (the one with the additive produced from corn). He reported that while he was using ethynol his milage dropped 30%.

If this is the case, is it really cost efficent in the long run to use ethynol fuel? However, I really don't want to hear about how it's saving the environment or the polar bears in Alaska.

Answer 1

First: If his efficiency dropped only 30 per cent he is doing better on efficiency than the average.
Second: Ethanol creates less CO2 when burned than gasoline, but it is worse when it comes to other pollutants.
Third: It is MORE expensive. You pay 18% Federal tax on gasoline, Ethanol is not only untaxed, it is subsidized. A situation that will change when enough people are committed to using it.
Forth: It takes more energy to produce and transport ethanol than you get from it when you burn it.
Fifth: It DOES NOT REDUCE DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL!!!
Why? It is primarily made from corn. Farmers use gasoline powered tractors to plant, spray, plow , weed, and harvest.
Diesel powered trucks transport the corn to be processed. The ethanol cannot be transported by pipeline so diesel powered trucks transport it for final distribution. Fertilizer used in the fields is made from petroleum base stocks. It all takes a lot of oil to produce.
Sixth: It is very inflationary!. Corn is FOOD. Corn is used to feed livestock. It is already pushing up the price of chicken, beef, milk, farm raised fish, pork, tacos, breakfast cereal, pet food,etc.
Bet I can find more reasons why it is the WORST energy alternative any politician or environmentalist could think up.
There is NOTHING positive I can say for it.
I hope these are enough reasons to reject it.
By the way, Bio-diesel isn't so bad, but we will need more modern diesel vehicles to put it to good use.

Answer 2

The main benefit of ethanol fuel is not that it's more efficient - I think a 30% mileage drop is probably about average - it's the fact that t's renewable. Even if you leave environmental concerns out of the equation, eventually fossil fuels will run out. They're just too slow to renew. Ethanol is made from corn - there's a new crop every year. On the environmental side, it does burn cleaner than gasoline, and by growing fuel rather than minig it, it does save the polar bears in alaska. It's not a perfect solution, but it is a good one.

Answer 3

I think it is not the savior it is touted to be. The fuel mileage is horrible. It is very corrosive to the whole fuel system. there are not enough acres in the USA to grow the quantity of corn it will take to fuel the fleet of vehicles on the road now much less in the future. The cost of milk is $3.50 a gallon because it turns out that hungry dairy cows do not produce as much milk as corn fed cows do. Who would have thought that?

It maybe renewable, and there are probably other crops that will produce Ethanol more efficiently than corn, but in the end it is a fuel that is burned thereby creating the green house gas co2. Call me wacko but why don't we skip the transitional stage of energy production and start developing green fuels now?

Answer 4

Ethynol has less energy than gasoline and costs more to produce. If this were not the case we would have been using it already, the technology has been around for years. Also any problems that using the fuel causes are paid for by the consumer. There may be significant additional costs to using alternative fuels in the long run.

Answer 5

The best estimate that I have read is that it offers only 30% more energy than what it took to make it in the first place, when you consider everything that goes into farming, distillation and distribution. Don't look for those numbers to get any better until they star making it from more efficient stocks such as switch grass or sugar cane, and right now Congress isn't going to help the latter two crops with midwestern voting farmers lining up to cash in by raising corn.


Regardless of its source, ethanol differs from gasoline because it recylces carbon thats already in the air instead of pumping up new carbon from where its been in storage in a well for eons.

Answer 6

Another factor is that the cost of food made from corn and products reliant on corn, i.e., cows, chickens, etc., is going up and up, because the price of corn is going up due to the ethanol craze. Even worse, because there are subsidies for corn used for ethanol, more and more farmers are converting their fields over to ethanol corn crops instead of other food crops. So instead of being reliant on foreign oil products, we are soon going to become more reliant on foreign food products. Is that something we REALLY want?

Answer 7

If you take away the subsidies, ethanol is far more expensive. It also has increased grain prices. It takes nearly as much fuel to produce as it provides. It has some potential but is not the miracle fuel it is purported to be.

Answer 8

Your mileage is 30% less but ethanol cost 50% less so you save 20% in money.
(Plus we do not have to keep paying the middle east for oil, Braxil is totally independant of imported oil now and it is saving them all kinds of money, plus it puts people to work in their country. We could do the same thing
And it sound like you know ethanol is carbon neutral, while oil is not (just an aside - I do not believe that global warming is caused by humans, but by natural cyclical processes)

Answer 9

Ethynol is the most environmentally destructive alternative there is. Since when is it environmentally friendly to convert grassland or wooded areas to row crops?

First you must clear a field. Burning it is the most efficient way to do this. Then you plow the field, plant corn, fertilize it, spray it with herbacides and insecticides, divert water to irrigate it and then refine it into alcohol.

Answer 10

Actually ethynol fuel has proved to give your car more problems than regular fuel so maybe its not the greatest