e85 fuel hits my home town

[coffeeman]

E85 processing plants are popping up all over the country. The company I work for will be building one here in the northwest (broke ground last week).

And expect the big oil companies to fight it too - I've even heard one quoted as opposing E85 because "it is unethical to use a food source for fuel with so many hungry people in the world." Yeah, uh-huh, sure...that's why you oppose it.
.

After one processes the grain, corn etc. can the left overs be used to feed animals?

There are a lot of hungry animals too......Coffeeman

 

[LC Brewing]

Yes. The process is actually pretty intersting - they use most of the waste as additional products.

The spent grains (leftover from mashing process) are sold as feed for cattle. In areas with large agricultural markets, like central-south US (where a lot of plants are located) and eastern Oregon (where a plant is about to be built), they sell the spent grains directly to local farmers. The plant we are building, due to the lower agricultural market in our area and the close proximity to major shipping, will actually be drying the grains and shipping them overseas for cattle feed.

In addition to the spent grains, the CO2 that is given off during the fermentation process is captured, cleaned, compressed, and sold to bottled gas companies for use as industrial or commercial gasses.

As I understand it, they also have use for the other byproducts of distillation, such as the lower alcohols and the other "dredges" that are left - but I don't recall at the moment what those uses are...

 

[Joe1]

The oil companies will have to get involved because it requires adding 15% gasoline to the alcohol or the engine simply won't. There was an interesting article in either popular science or popular mechanics about these alternate fuels. They cost a lot to produce and they do not have the energy or efficiency of gasoline. The article stated there was a substantial loss of mileage and power. I believe they said it took 1.59 gallons (I may be wrong on this exact #) of E-85 to produce the energy of 1 gallon of gasoline.

The two previous posts complained about significant mileage and some power loss. It doesn't make sense to buy a car that gets 22 mpg on E-85 over a car that gets 30 mpg on gasoline purely from an economic standpoint. It certainly won't cost less to produce or purchase, and the cost per mile to operate it will exceed that of straight gasoline.

As I recall, there is also a cold weather issue with this stuff.

I'm not going to rush out and buy an E-85 vehicle and do the long term research that the manufacturer should be doing at my expense. Kind of like the early Corvairs, Vega's and GM 5.7L Diesel engines.

In summary, lousy mileage, less power, poor running issues, cold weather issues, overall higher cost per mile to operate, no real long term usage research to go on, oh yeah and it costs more energy to make a gallon of fuel.

To produce all the E-85 that we consume as gasoline, not factoring in worse mileage it would take 50% more crop land than all the crop land than the US has.

 

[jayhaitch]

Not rabble-rousing in the least. My point was that even if more expensive and giving less performance, there is something to be said for domestically producing fuel, and not needing to import anything from hostile countries. I hope you don't consider Canada a hostile country We do export a lot of natural gas and tar sands oil to the US. I think in most things Canada and the US are surprisingly good neighbors. I don't know the numbers, but I wonder if a big push toward E85 and biodiesel occurred, could the US eliminate needing to import Middle Eastern oil/Nigerian oil?

Even if there is a net energy loss (though better technologies, grass-based raw material, etc will improve the equation), growing crops to turn into biodiesel to run the tractors that grow the crops to make more biodiesel is still a net gain, if all the work, money, and profit stays domestic. From the purely economic standpoint, no. Import from whomever is the cheapest. From the geopolitical standpoint, don't give money to people who hate us. And besides, there's probably more profit to be made for farmers growing fuel crops (whatever that may end up being) than competing to grow food that is even more highly subsidized by the EU. Why are farm commodity prices so low? Too much supply. So increase demand to raise prices.

I reiterate: come on GM/Ford/DaimlerChrysler: where is a nice midsized diesel to power your half-ton pickups/full sized SUV's? I want one

 

[TractorLarry]

It needs to be cheaper to have value. I don't know the exact rate, but E85 burns at a faster rate than standard gasoline.

I've heard as high as 40%, as low as 25%. Somewhere in between is the truth I suspect.

-Larry

E-85 was cheaper??? That seems to be the opposite of what I have heard would happen. Do you have any local or state tax breaks involved? My new pickup can use E-85 but I have never boiught any because there isn't any available for 100 miles around that I know of.

 

[TractorLarry]

Holy crap. So if my explorer gets 9 MPG (it does), then my mileage might drop to 2 MPG.

Where do I sign up

-Larry

Gordon,
There's one in Shelby. My gov Taurus can use e85. Some vehicles run better on it than others. My mileage drops 7 mpg on e85. The reason it's cheaper that regular gas is because it is subsidized.

 

[oliver28472]

And now its not even cheaper, same price as regular!!

 

[Z71]

What gets me with the debate over E85 etc is that they same folks who advocate using it to save on oil resources are oil change fanatics (excuse me; Recreational Oil Changers) and change thier oil more often then is really necessary even though its been proven that using synthetic oils can extended drain intervals.

For instance a person I know went hundreds of miles to buy a new GM vehicle that was E85 (and has to go 40 miles to fill up with it) yet he will not follow the oil change light in the truck. Changes his oil every 3000 miles. So while he agrues with everyone about using E85 and about the enviroment, he buys the cheapest motor oil and changes if way to often.

I just shake my head at his foolishness. So I wonder who is doing more for the enviroment. Him or me, who only changes my oil once a year and disposes of it properly. All his oil is stored in gallon jugs in his gargae and when I asked him if he wanted to get rid of it because I was going there, he said he was saving it for his B in L to put on they gravel road to his camp. See's nothing wrong in that. But he buys E85 and that make him the man.

btw-He does not buy the cheapest oil because he is cheap, but because he thinks they are all exactly the same.

 

[midlf]

Z71 - I don't argue with that type, I just tell them they are idiots and why and then walk away.

 

[Lawnjocky]

I'm in Illinois and E85 is subsidised big time. From building the plants to lower fuel taxes. But the price difference per gallon is not that much. Besides the lower MPG there is another possible problem with this fuel, the cost of our corn flakes is going up. I can't remember where I read it but the article was talking about the impact all these bio fuels are having, and will have on the cost of the food we eat. That pesky supply and demand thing. I'm all for being environmently sound, but the cost's, all of them, need to included in any plans we make.