The number 2 yellow corn for food stock is required to have less than 10%
water content. And other requirements like few damaged kernals, and so-on.
About $7.00 per bushel.
For Ethanol, the requirement is less than 30% water content, so in most
cases the farmer does not need to dry it. A big savings, even though less
money is paid for brewing corn. About 6.23 per bushel. About 2 gallons of
ethanol is produced from each bushel. How much energy/ fuel is expended to
brew each bushel, I could not find.
The water corn mash must be boiled to remove the alcohol, but if they
pump it down to lower pressures, less heat is required. Each gallon earns the
distiller about $2.34 when last I checked. There were over 100 new
distillers cooking corn, with more being built. So the E85 is close to all
alcohol and you pay closer to $4.00 for $2.34 worth of alcohol. The oil
companies love you.
If the government quit all subsidies for ethanol, to farmers, brewers,
and the oil companies, and the EPA stopped screwing with dozens of formula for
each area of the country. The oil companies would not buy one gallon of
alcohol, for motor fuel.
Ethanol in motor fuel is a construct of the US government trying to
satisfy the tree huggers. Nothing more.
The EPAs last great idea to reduce the evil fumes was a fuel additive
known as MTBE (Methyl-Tertiary-Butyl-
Ether). A vile poison that does not break down into anything else. It is
now in every water supply in the US in some quantity. Even water wells miles
from roadways (where there are huge concentrations) Now you breath it on the
freeway. It is the fuel for every known malady and birth problem. It was
forced on the oil companies who wanted nothing to do with it. It is now
outlawed federally, but before that each state outlawed its use before the
feds admitted it was a horrible idea. More tree hugger crap. And the folks who
love them.
We sit on a 600 year supply of oil. We are not permitted to drill for it.
I take pictures of Manatees at a Nuke power plant, converted to coal burning
at the cost of God knows what, so the tree huggers would be happy.
This coal plant scrubs the smoke to nothingness. Hauls it away to who
knows where so all of the delightful chemical compounds made in coal
smoke will turn up in the water some day.
Now the electric bill includes the never finished nuke plant and the coal
fired plant built on the site.
The wind farms now produce less than one percent of all electrical power.
With a trillion dollars and a big moon landing push that could be 5% in 10
years. T Boons idea is to build wind power and use the natural
gas that powers electrical generators in power stations to liquid
and run cars on that. The stations would need to be manned and
on standby, because the wind sometimes won't blow fast
enough. Generally a 95% back up must be maintained for wind generators.
Another problem is that we import 20% of the natural gas we use now. That used
to be zero. It was found along with oil but now we don't drill many wells
anymore do we? See California.............................See California
buy massive amounts of power from Canada.........see California have rolling
outages, and brown outs.
And they want a million electric cars. With no electrical grid to run all
of the demand they have now.
We are in the hands of Genius...................in the Wile E. Coyote
sense of the term.
Lynn E. Hanover
Lynn,
Do I detect a note of disillusionment/ frustration?
George ( down under)