Cost of Ethanol V Petrol

silverharp

What I found interesting is that you need 1.4 the volumn of Ethanol to drive the same distance with Petrol





Cost of E85 fuel is higher than gasolineBy James R. Healey, USA TODAY


The heavily promoted alcohol fuel called E85 might cut America's oil use and help support U.S. agriculture, but it's not reducing motorists' fuel bills. It's boosting them significantly.



The price of E85 — a fuel that's 85% ethanol made from grain and 15% conventional gasoline — is higher than that of gasoline, even though E85 has only 72% as much energy. The U.S. Department of Energy says a vehicle has to use 1.4 times as much E85 as gasoline to go the same distance.
At some Nebraska stations, E85 was $2.19 a gallon Tuesday, while gasoline with 10% ethanol — a common substitute for unleaded regular in the Midwest — was $2.06. "This doesn't make sense," says Wayne Davis, a division manager at fuel company Bosselman, based in Grand Island, Neb. "Our customers are saying, 'I'm not going to buy E85, which is better for the environment and the economy, unless it's cheaper.' We're seeing E85 just sit." Related: EPA rules won't curtail ethanol demand.
President Bush, in his State of the Union speech Jan. 31, promoted ethanol as a way to help reduce Middle East oil imports 75% by 2025.
Ford Motor and General Motors are working with fuel companies to boost the number of E85 stations in the Midwest. The two automakers say they will build about 600,000 vehicles this year with the special equipment needed to use E85. About 5 million already are on the road. All that emphasis could be negated by pricing.
"Price dictates demand. Period," says Dave Lybarger, who sells E85 at one of his two Petro Plus stations in Garnett, Kan.
He was selling E85 for $1.94 a gallon Tuesday, and conventional gasoline for $2.19. "If you get it 40 cents under, you start attracting new business. If you get to just 10 under, you start to lose some (E85) business," he says.
Nationwide average price for gasoline has sunk to $2.286 per gallon, according to travel group AAA's daily report.
To be an even-up energy value, E85 would have to sell for 72% of that, $1.646.
But E85 wholesale prices have jumped to more than $2, so retailers can't afford to sell it for that.
The price of ethanol has been driven up because major oil refiners are suddenly buying in bulk. They're stocking up on ethanol as a replacement for MTBE, a petroleum-based additive suspected of causing cancer. MTBE and ethanol boost the octane of gasoline and can reduce pollution.
MTBE isn't officially banned, but oil companies are switching to avoid lawsuits.
"Gasoline with MTBE in it will become like gasoline with anthrax in it within the next 90 days," predicts Tom Kloza, veteran analyst at the Oil Price Information Service.

Lord_Ruryl

You must see the hidden cost of gasoline: billions of dollars in health cost all over the worlds because of lung cancer, and other respiratory problems. Add to that the millions of dollars that will cost the damage to the enviroment. Oil based fuels are the most expensive. It can be cheaper in the short term, but much more expensive in the long term.

Capt'n Midnight

saw something on TG4 about palm oil in indonesia and how they are trashing the rainforest (boo hiss) to make way for plantations.
the price is around $500 per tonne

this makes palm oil much cheaper than diesel !

this link might be handy if you want to look up other oils
http://www.bulkoil.com/scripts/oiltype_item.asp?p=22

damiand

Malaysia is worse. They are the worlds largest producer of palm oil. They have removed untold hectares of land to produce palm oil. Virgin forests are now limited to certain areas of the mainland.

The upside is that the palm oil inductry has made Malaysia a relatively wealthy country. The industry is controled by Petronas, which is owned by the Governmnet...... so its not like Shell, Exon, etc....

jimogr

Maxol’s E85 is currently about 25% cheaper than petrol, so it counters the lower MPG to some extent.

nilhg

There would seem to be some new develpoments in the biofuel industry with the big petrochemical companies getting involved

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/06/dupont_bp_to_pr.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butanol

http://www.butanol.com/index.html

It will be interesting to see how this develops as if the new fuel can be produced cleanly from cellulose it will allow Ireland a chance to produce a respectable quantity of its own fuel.

Capt'n Midnight

Main drawbacks are the possible patenting of the new process, but then again other methods could be utilised to remove the Butanol, like ultrafiltration or a PEG phase , or adsoption on charcoal etc. etc. Also Acetone (nail varnish remover) and ethanol are valuable byproducts and. And Butanol doesn't have any excise problems like ethanol and less miscible than water too - if only you could get it as a separate phase you'd be laughing as the separation of ethanol/methanol from water is energy intensive.

The other one is the smell if the alcohol is oxidised into an acid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyric_acid

Butyric acid, IUPAC name n-Butanoic acid, or normal butyric acid, is a carboxylic acid with structural formula CH3CH2CH2-COOH. It is notably found in rancid butter, parmesan cheese, and vomit, and has an unpleasant odor and acrid taste, with a sweetish aftertaste (similar to ether). Butyric acid can be detected by mammals with good scent detection abilities (e.g., dogs) at 10 ppb, while humans can detect it in concentrations above 10 ppm.

The acid is also a component of silage http://www.dairyone.com/Forage/FactSheet/Fermentation.htm

Butyric acid is produced by the anaerobic bacteria clostridia which proliferate if the silage is harvested too wet (<30% DM). In wet silage, the lactic acid bacteria may not produce enough acid to sufficiently lower the pH and prevent the growth of clostridia. Clostridia can also ferment lactic acid to butyric and break down amino acids to produce excessive levels of ammonia. Both of these effects can cause the pH to rise resulting in a unstable silage subject to further deterioration.

Clostridial silage is characterized by a high butyric level, high pH (>5), high ammonia (amm/tN>10), rotten and/or ammonia smell, reduced dry matter intake and possible disruption of the rumen ecology resulting in poor feed utilization.

meelick

jimogr wrote:

Maxol’s E85 is currently about 25% cheaper than petrol, so it counters the lower MPG to some extent.

Since that post was written, the price rises in March 2007 now means that it is 10% more expensive to run your car on E85 than unleaded. E85 (at the moment) is 94.5, whereas unleaded is about 1.14.9. But the use ratio of 1.4 means that the E85 works out more expensive.

Cheers,
Dave.

Lazairus

i think its the way they produce it , it uses only the corn , there has to use the corn stalk to be effective ,ie they cant use the corn stalk because it is hard celllite walls

D'Peoples Voice

meelick wrote:

But the use ratio of 1.4 means that the E85 works out more expensive.

I wonder if this is one of the reasons that Bioverda in Cork are not going to manufacture ethanol, but have instead decided to concetrate on biodiesel.
http://www.ntr.ie/downloads/50-Million-Investment-By-Bioverda-in-Cork-Biodiesel.pdf

What's the comparison for diesel versus bio-diesel.
Certainly with Bluetec/bluemotion diesel engines coming to the market shortly, perhaps the diesel market is where the future demand is coming from
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/motors/2007/0124/1169426825509.html

silverharp

D'Peoples Voice wrote:

I wonder if this is one of the reasons that Bioverda in Cork are not going to manufacture ethanol, but have instead decided to concetrate on biodiesel.
http://www.ntr.ie/downloads/50-Million-Investment-By-Bioverda-in-Cork-Biodiesel.pdf
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From what I've read the Corn based Ethanol has a negetive to neutral energy return, plus all the disadvantages that it can't be transported in pipelines as it is corrosive. Not to mention robbing Mexicans of their basic foodstuff.

meelick

silverharp wrote:

From what I've read the Corn based Ethanol has a negetive to neutral energy return...

Several studies done over the last 15 years have shown that it has a positive energy return. A survey of studies [1] by the Natural Resource Defence Council in the U.S. showed that of six studies looked at, only one showed a negative return. The remaining five studies showed a positive return of between 1.29 and 1.65 for corn-based Ethanol production.

Of course, this is all academic, as the Ethanol produced in Carbery's in Cork is from whey, a milk by-product (afaik). Unfortunately, I can't find any information on the energy return on whey-based ethanol production.

Cheers,
Dave.

References
[1] NRDC - Ethanol - Energy Well Spent - retrieved on 8th June 2007 from http://www.nrdc.org/air/transportation/ethanol/ethanol.pdf

silverharp

meelick wrote:

Several studies done over the last 15 years have shown that it has a positive energy return. A survey of studies [1] by the Natural Resource Defence Council in the U.S. showed that of six studies looked at, only one showed a negative return. The remaining five studies showed a positive return of between 1.29 and 1.65 for corn-based Ethanol production.

There is an article on the OilDrum about corn based ethanol, link below

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2615#more



8. To what extent does the use of corn-based ethanol reduce fossil fuel use?
Studies vary in the extent to which the extent to which corn-based ethanol can be expected to reduce fossil fuel use, depending on how the corn is grown, and the "boundaries" considered in the analyses. Some studies show that more fossil fuel energy is used in the production of ethanol than is provided in the ethanol produced. Other studies show a small net gain - typically about 20% of the fossil fuel inputs. Thus, the ratio of energy output to fossil fuel input is about 1.2 to 1.0.
One concern is that this net gain is much lower than for many other liquid fuel sources. For oil produced from wells, typically 15 gallons of oil are produced for each gallon of fossil fuel used in production. For ethanol from sugar cane produced in Brazil, the net energy gain is about 8 or 9 to 1. For most types of biodiesel, the net gain is about 2.0 and 3.0 to 1.0. Thus, even when the best planting areas are available, ethanol from corn appears to be inefficient compared to other liquid fuels.

meelick

I take your point, silverharp, and it looks perfectly valid to me. There is indeed a difference in energy return between other types of fuel and ethanol. I guess there's several issues here
* cost of ethanol v petrol
* cost of ethanol v other alternative fuels.
* how friendly these alternative fuels are.
All deserve their own thread (and probably have), and all add to the complexity of the discussion.

And it's hard to discuss the issue of the cost of E85 v petrol without diluting the thread with all the other related issues.

I guess we'll just have to keep up the research, and keep an open mind as to how much we can trust the numbers we are being fed from all sides of the discussion.

Cheers,
Dave.