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Old Nov 10, 2009 | 12:14 AM
  #20 (permalink)  
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rcompart
Senior Member
Joined: Apr 2008
Posts: 3,178
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From: Chicago, IL
Default Re: Gas without Ethanol

Here in MN you'll find premium fuel at certain stations that is labeled "Non-Oxygenated" and I generally try to fill up with that when I can since I see better fuel economy and the car feels a little more peppier and I get the satisfaction of knowing that I'm not partaking in this whole ethanol crap. BTW, I grew up a farmer and have laughed at the stupidity of this whole ethanol craze. Might sound contrary to what might be expected but when you look at the numbers, they tell an entirely different story. If you took every tillable acre in the US and grew corn only for the purpose of making ethanol, you would barely be able to satisfy the fuel demands of the part of the Upper Midwest. We're talking about North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Iowa here. These are states with low population densities. Now that we've used every tillable acre to make fuel for these six states, where do we get our food from? Another thing to look at is all the propane used to convert the corn into ethanol. I was at a ethanol cooperative banquet one night with my dad and I jokingly asked one of the guys on the board there why they bring in SO much propane to convert the corn to ethanol and why they didn't use ethanol to convert the corn into ethanol? He didn't have a word to say but a got a few dirty looks from people sitting around the table. Makes you wonder what's so great about the fuel at this point but it gets even deeper when you take into account the cost of corn, the fact that diesel is used to power the tractors that plant, cultivate, spray and combine the corn, then propane is used to dry the corn and finally, more diesel is used in the semis that haul the corn to the elevators and eventually to the ethanol refineries. If there weren't subsidies there along the way, no one would be doing it because they'd all be broke before the corn even left the field. Now I'm not saying we shouldn't subsidize agriculture because one way or another everyone will weather its through taxes or a direct link between the price of goods but we should be spending this money on something that will be a viable alternative for the future, not until the next fad fuel comes along and we're looking at billion dollar distilleries on the side of rural roads. Ethanol is a great idea but the means by which it is made is just not effective. We need to be looking into using switchgrass and biomass to accomplish this, not tie up a food supply with this vaporware of a fuel source. Now that I'm stepping off the soap box, I'll throw this out there, when everything is done, my car will be running on E85 but not for economic or environmental reasons. E85 is probably one of the most readily available race gases available in here in the Midwest. You can find it at just about any gas station within a 10 mile radius. It burns cooler, has more power and is cheaper. The only caveat of this though is that it has to be properly tuned so it doesn't run lean and it will probably only get 10mpg when I'm done with it but when you're on the strip, who cares about economy, right?
 
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