Umm…that’s not even an argument. I’m not someone who believes the petroleum industry deserves all the protection it gets, but I’m talking about ACTUAL subsidies, not leftist excuses used to bolster wind and solar.
Food grade ethanol is more expensive. ?
Even fuel grade ethanol is more expensive than what you can buy it for in the petrol blends.
If you buy a 55 gallon drum for $475, it’s around $8.64 a gallon for fuel grade ethanol.
http://www.dudadiesel.com/choose_item.php?id=55geth
Or just plain hydrogen combustion engines. The only real weakness in hydrogen engines is the storage medium. Hydride is the safest material to store hydrogen, but its a highly controlled substance that is impossible to get since it is used in nuclear devices. However, I’ve heard that carbon nano tubes may be able to work as a substitute. Good thing we have a carbon nano tube manufacturer here in New Hampshire (Nanocomp). 
All I can say is that with electric motors you don’t have to go through an Escher 3D treasure hunt of an argument to find a fuel source. With biodesiel there is a bottle-neck, there are only so many restaurants that produce high volumes of cooking oil and they won’t be of standardized quality. But electricity is everywhere. Charging stations are becoming more common every day and anyone can purchase solar panels. They are less messy too. Why over complicate this? Are you guys thinking of a novelty vehicle or something that’s actually practical?
Ok, yeah, if you want to make something as gas heavy as E85, you have to dry it out. But if all you’re doing is putting that 2% of gas(or any of the other various things you can use) to make it legal to take out of a licensed fuel distillery, then 190 is just fine.
As far as “leftist excuses to bolster wind and solar”, hey, all I’m saying is that ethanol is a better fuel than gas, and on its own, without government interference, is cheaper than gas, on its own, without government interference.
I think Henry Ford said it, “There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There’s enough alcohol in one year’s yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years.”
I don’t know all the economic details of why this costs that or whatever, but here’s some numbers, going with sugar beets which are a great crop to use for ethanol and are pretty easy to grow.
Sugar beets are currently going for about $40 a ton(high price) in the bulk market.
You get about 24 gallons of ethanol per ton of sugar beets.
$40 / 24 gallons = about $1.67
so, if you(distiller/distributor) price your ethanol at $2 per gallon, you get ($2 * 24) $48 per ton of sugar beets, or an extra $4 per ton for the farmer and still get to keep $4 per tank of gas that you sell.
And I suppose that the gas stations would probably end up charging $2.25 a gallon for their profit as well, and everyone makes out, except the oil companies.
And before you poopoo that $4 per ton for the farmer, keep in mind that an acre of sugar beets will give you between 16 and 25 tons. And I don’t think there’s very many people living off of farming who plant just one acre every year.
blah. Stop getting me worked up, it wears me out. 
Sugar beets don’t magically turn into ethanol. There is a bunch of equipment, labor, energy and time needed. That all cost money, so the $1.67 per gallon cost of production isn’t realistic. That is the price you could produce it for if you buy sugar beets in bulk, have all the equipment, and provide the energy and labor for free.
Interestingly, when I was calculating the cost of ethanol in the E15 blend vs E0, the ethanol cost was about $1.61 per gallon.
Sure. Add some taxes, take away some subsidies, the price is going to be different. And yes, you are correct. $1.67 -would- be the price that you could produce it if you bought your sugar beets in bulk, had all of the equipment, and provide the energy and labor for free. That’s why you knock it up to $2 a gallon. To cover the labor and energy, and pay off the loans for the equpiment. And yes, obviously you’re buying in bulk. If you’re doing this in your backyard, you’re probably doing it for personal use rather than selling it. That’s why I gave the bulk price of beets, rather than whatever it would be at the grocery store.
I’m pretty sure the store charges a bit more than $40 a ton for sugar beets.
…and that’s simply not true.
Got some numbers?
bio ethanol E100 is more than $25 per gallon
https://www.hayneedle.com/product/moda-flame-ventless-bio-ethanol-fireplace-fuel.cfm
Of course it is, cause it’s marketed to rich people with nice fireplaces who don’t want to burn wood. It’s like buying rope at west marine for $2 a foot instead of $0.90 a foot at home depot.
Look, we can do price searches all day long and find high prices and low prices. You can find it in 16 oz cans for $20, if you want. No one makes it, cause no one buys it, cause everyone’s content with gas until the next major spike in oil and gas prices, so there’s very little pressure pushing the price towards the cost of manufacture, unlike gas, which is used by literally billions of people every day.
Wow, way to high-jack a thread.
(re: number for petroleum being cheaper) Only pretty much all of them ever. You have to ask yourselves why, if it’s cheaper to produce ethanol, petroleum is favored. It goes to common sense that once (if) petroleum production is cheaper ethanol production will become immensely popular. A simple google search finds no assertions that ethanol is cheaper, that I can find. I did find one greenie site claiming its getting closer.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, the burden of proof goes on you, since it was your claim.
I gave a bunch of real world numbers showing how cheap ethanol could be produced at a profit.
As for the reason why we don’t use it, we WERE using it about as much as gasoline. Ford favored ethanol engines, and rockefeller favored gasoline engines(because it gave him a way to sell the waste from his refineries), and it was running along about fifty fifty market shares between gas and ethanol, until rockefeller dumped literally a million dollars on the christian women’s temperance movement and with that(at the time ridiculously huge) amount of money, they managed to lobby a constitutional amendment into place making ethanol illegal. Sometime in the early 1900s, I believe it was. And with that, gasoline took the market, and with the oil money has successfully lobbied itself a cushy regulatory position which ethanol has a long climb to match.
Also, look at Brazil. THEY use ethanol, despite being an oil rich nation, and just sell all their oil to us.
Yeah, gotta go with what blackie said about that…and subsidies continue to cloud the issue. Bottom line, I don’t care if we use propulsion by flatulence if it’s cheaper and unsubsidized. Guess we’ll never know because we can’t seem to stop the subsidies.
i mean, you can -try- it if you want. A federal license to distill fuel ethanol only costs like $200, if I recall correctly. Hit up a bakery and make them a deal for their old doughnuts, make some stuff, and see if it’s cheap enough for you.
The model T was designed to run on gasoline. There is a myth going around that it was meant to be a multi-fuel vehicle.
Indeed, during our research into the origins of the Model T, we’ve yet to find credible sources or detailed information that supports the multi-fuel Model T legend. Nothing from Murray Fahnestock, nothing in any other Model T history, nothing from any Model T expert. So perhaps the best evidence that Ford engineers meant the Model T to run on nothing other than gasoline lies in original Ford literature such as the Model T manual (and manuals for Ford carburetors) that specifically stipulates fueling the car with gasoline.
It looks like there wasn’t a commercial ethanol fuel plant in the US until 1937, and it only last a couple of years.
http://theoldmotor.com/?p=162619
there was a company called Agrol, built an ethanol plant in Atchison, Kansas. For 2 years, ethanol blends were sold at over 2,000 service stations in the Midwest and could very well have been this station. The story goes, there was bitter fighting with the oil lobby who wanted nothing to do with ethanol ( sound familiar?) sold leaded gas a penny cheaper( .16 cents for gas, .17 for ethanol in 1937) to run them under, Agrol complained of sabotage to the plant, and they shut down in 1939.
I don’t know how the world got hooked on oil. Illuminati confirmed. I guess just offering it at a crazy low price. Home heating in Maine in something like 80% with fuel oil. Many houses don’t even have a fireplace. It doesn’t make sense considering how many trees are in the state. So now all of the “keep poor people warm in the winter” money goes directly to the oil companies.
I do think we will eventually get to electric vehicles. Ethanol is better than petrol, but it is only a stopgap, because there are already a bunch of vehicles that can run on it, or an 85% blend.
“Try it?” Home brewing and manufacturing are entirely separate things. I’m not going to produce gasoline and produce alcohol to compare the costs of manufacture.
Oh I meant just try ethanol and see if it’s cheaper. You can get a conversion kit for your car, if it’s not a flex fuel, and it’s post millenial, for a few hundred bucks.
Also, @blackie, first off, the model T wasn’t anything like the first car that Ford produced. Secondly, keep in mind that this was in the early early 1900’s, and they weren’t trying to be green like we do today. It wasn’t a -multifuel- vehicle, you could get it with a gas engine or an ethanol engine.
As far as ethanol plants, you are correct, and that was the point. You didn’t NEED ethanol plants. If you lived in the city and wanted to power your car from a centralized distribution network, you got one with a gas engine. If you lived out in the country, you made your own fuel, or you bought it from the farmer down the road who had a still behind his house cause what farmer ISN’T looking for a few extra bucks here and there.
I’d be more likely to convert a pickup to burn vegetable oil.