As a result of making Slivovitz, I have gotten to thinking more about ethanol in our gasoline. I do not buy gasoline that has ethanol in it if I can help it. I don't get as good of mileage with gasoline with ethanol and I don't think it is good for my engines, so I decided to share a few fact about ethanol in my blog.
You can look up ethanol on the enter net and find out and that is what I did. Being a farmer and brewer, I know a little about corn and fermentation. That gives me an advantage over the average tree hugger. Corn sells for about $3.50/bushel and a bushel of corn weighs about 56#. That is our starting point. Modern ethanol mills can produce about 2.8 gallons of ethanol out of a bushel of corn. Now it starts to get interesting. If you were to burn corn, it produces about 8,000 BTU/#. That means that if you were to burn a bushel the corn in your furnace, it would produce about 448,000 TBU's. Now how about the 2.8 gallons of ethanol that was produced from that bushel of corn? It would only produce 212,800 BTU's. That is less than half of what you could get from just burning the corn.
Remember that to make ethanol out of corn requires the input of a lot of heat. My estimate is that it takes at least 50,000 BTU to process one bushel of corn. That nets us out about 162,800 BTU's plus the other costs of production. Assume that the company can sell the processed corn for $0.50/Bushel. That means the corn raw material for 2.8 gallons of ethanol is $3.00. Now we have the raw material corn costing $1.07/gallon of ethanol. The current market price of ethanol is $2.07/gallon. Given my figures above, I would guess that to be about right.
Next, we need to look at the heat value of gasoline and ethanol to see if we are getting a good deal or not. We know that there is not as much heat in a gallon of ethanol as there is in pure gasoline or we would not get reduced mileage with the ethanol blended fuels. My experience is that with fuel that has 10% ethanol, I get about 10% less mileage. That sounds to me like there is "zero" value to me from the added ethanol. What has been your experience?
What a lot of people do not consider about gasoline is that it has at least $0.58 per gallon of road tax. When we take the tax off $2.91/ gallon gasoline we fine that gasoline really on has a cost of $2.33/ gallon. Because the $2.07/ gallon of ethanol produces less heat and mileage, it is a "loser" from the start. I would also like to remind you from my prior blog that the Carbon Dioxide taken out of the air by the farmer's corn "all" goes right back into the air when the ethanol is made and eventually burned. You have to ask, "Why are they not telling us all of this?" If you want to save our planet from global warming, ethanol is clearly not the way!
You can look up ethanol on the enter net and find out and that is what I did. Being a farmer and brewer, I know a little about corn and fermentation. That gives me an advantage over the average tree hugger. Corn sells for about $3.50/bushel and a bushel of corn weighs about 56#. That is our starting point. Modern ethanol mills can produce about 2.8 gallons of ethanol out of a bushel of corn. Now it starts to get interesting. If you were to burn corn, it produces about 8,000 BTU/#. That means that if you were to burn a bushel the corn in your furnace, it would produce about 448,000 TBU's. Now how about the 2.8 gallons of ethanol that was produced from that bushel of corn? It would only produce 212,800 BTU's. That is less than half of what you could get from just burning the corn.
Remember that to make ethanol out of corn requires the input of a lot of heat. My estimate is that it takes at least 50,000 BTU to process one bushel of corn. That nets us out about 162,800 BTU's plus the other costs of production. Assume that the company can sell the processed corn for $0.50/Bushel. That means the corn raw material for 2.8 gallons of ethanol is $3.00. Now we have the raw material corn costing $1.07/gallon of ethanol. The current market price of ethanol is $2.07/gallon. Given my figures above, I would guess that to be about right.
Next, we need to look at the heat value of gasoline and ethanol to see if we are getting a good deal or not. We know that there is not as much heat in a gallon of ethanol as there is in pure gasoline or we would not get reduced mileage with the ethanol blended fuels. My experience is that with fuel that has 10% ethanol, I get about 10% less mileage. That sounds to me like there is "zero" value to me from the added ethanol. What has been your experience?
What a lot of people do not consider about gasoline is that it has at least $0.58 per gallon of road tax. When we take the tax off $2.91/ gallon gasoline we fine that gasoline really on has a cost of $2.33/ gallon. Because the $2.07/ gallon of ethanol produces less heat and mileage, it is a "loser" from the start. I would also like to remind you from my prior blog that the Carbon Dioxide taken out of the air by the farmer's corn "all" goes right back into the air when the ethanol is made and eventually burned. You have to ask, "Why are they not telling us all of this?" If you want to save our planet from global warming, ethanol is clearly not the way!
