I'm not so sure I agree with their study.

I didn't read the whole article, but I agree 100%, have thought this for a long time now...corn is for food, not car/truck fuel.

 

Follow the money……

 

Corn is for eating and making bourbon....ethanol is for race cars....just like God intended.

There have been lots of studies done on this. On average, it takes nearly as much energy to make the ethanol (fertilizer, planting, harvesting, refining, trucking) as you get out of it. There are some by products from the corn that help offset the energy consumption.

I'm all for clean energy, but this isn't it.

 

So should we burn ethanol to make electricity to charge electric tractors to plow the fields to grow the corn that makes the electricity?

 

Ummm....

 

Nothing in that article that I haven't seen elsewhere - and many of those points were brought up before the mandate for mixing ethanol in with gasoline came into effect. It doesn't add in that vehicles get lower MPG using ethanol mixed fuels than if using pure gasoline either - which even the gov admits (article is about E85 - E10 is not nearly that high of a loss).

 

Perhaps there is hope on the horizon..

I agree that ethanol from corn is not an efficient, nor necessarily "green" use of agricultural land.

But scientists are working on ways to synthesize gas, and other fuels and chemicals used for plastics and such.

Using renewable electrical sources.

Can the world make the chemicals it needs without oil?


After all, gas stores energy very efficiently.

And perhaps our politicians should look at research before simply banning things.


Just a thought.



Edit..

 

Corn is horrible as a food source for most animals, because it's largely indigestible. If you process it, it can be turned into digestible food. If you process it it it can be turned into alcohol too. Used for different purposes. Ethanol or bourbon, whiskey...

Prior to the EV, ethanol fuel was made in e10 and e85 to reduce dependency on foreign oil.

 

Here's a little reading about corn and the human body.
Why Does the Human Body Not Digest Corn? | Livestrong.com


Here's the kicker with ethanol, it's fully biodegradable, unlike regular gasoline. So it reduces greenhouse gases.

 

All in all, when you take production into account...I really, really, really doubt that.
And then factor in the reduced fuel economy, all the fuel that gets dumped out due to going bad, all the carburetors that get replaced due to being ate up, all the OPE that gets thrown out/replaced due to ethanol related issues...its just a bad idea...and as was posted earlier, follow the money...someone has/is getting their pocket lined from ethanol.
Bottom line, if government wasn't subsidizing it, we wouldn't have ethanol at the pump.

 

FIFY

 

Problem is it employs a lot of people. You probably would first have to have a suitable product that most of them would find acceptable or you won't get support.
Plenty of uses for the alcohol even power generation.
Maybe better crops for growing biomass?

 

Switchgrass, or better yet, algae from wastewater plants.

 

Yup, switchgrass, sugarcane, etc...and yes, there's tons of largely untapped potential from wastewater plant effluent!

 

You mean when we're not all full of chit.

 

Exactly. But there's a lot less of corn that is digestible, compared to other grains.

 

Just not as tasty.