Ethanol the untold story

by IP_SEC 22 Replies latest jw friends

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  IP_SEC

  I work in petroleum equipment service on the retail end. Ethanol is working itself toward a disaster. Well maybe disaster is too big a word but...

  Problems behind the scenes:

  After years of service, storage tanks build up a good deal of varnish on the inside. This varnish is not gasoline soluble so its no big deal. Varnish is alcohol soluble. When ethanol is put in the storage tank it eats up the varnish in the tank which is suspended in solution until it settles out. Then whenever a delivery is made it gets mixed back up into the fuel. In this case filters need to be changed, lines purged, and the site shut down until it settles again. After it settles, the fuel at the bottom of the tank must be pumped out and disposed of. As much as 1,000 gallons in a 10,000 gallon tank, per tank. The biofilters are also much more expensive than regular particulate filters.

  Additionally I'm finding many of the rubber gaskets, o-rings, and diaphragms in older dispensers are being destroyed by ethanol.

  E10 (gasoline with 10 percent ethanol) combines with water at a rate of 1:1. E85 combines with a practically infinite amount of water. 3 inches of water in the bottom of a tank (not uncommon in the high humidity of the South) sucks an equal amount of alcohol from E10 or E85 rendering near 6 inches of unusable crap water alcohol mix at the bottom of the tank. Perhaps 400-500 gallons in a 10,000 gallon tank. 500 gallons is a lot of money to lose for a small time operation. Crap that will really hurt your vehicle if it gets through the filters. If the jobber has not put biofilters on, it will get through the filters.

  We went through this in the late 80's early 90's. It was such a behind the scenes problem that major oil abandoned it. Now almost all major oil is going back to at least E10. If it is E10 they are not obliged to tell you by law.

  I just wonder at the real cost of ethanol to the individual retail outlets, branded or not. Energy wise I do not believe it is a saver.
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  heathen

  I agree a waste of time and farm land when you can grow hemp and get forty percent more volume per acre and zero carbon emissions when burned .
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  SixofNine

  "zero carbon emissions when burned ."

  Sweet. Magic weed!
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  IP_SEC

  grow hemp and get forty percent more volume per acre and zero carbon emissions when burned .

  Depend on how long you 'hold' it
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  JK666

  The other thing that they do not tell you about E85, is that your fuel economy goes down approximately 40% in MPG.

  JK
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  heathen

  news flash , hemp is not the same as pot .
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  IP_SEC

  Ya heathen but it still make for a good gaffa, no?

  
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  Satanus

  Who needs ethanol, when according to the add at the bottom, you can double your mileage w a simple kit;)
  
  S
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  besty

  A metric ton of wheat cost around $375 on the commodity exchanges in early 2006. In March 2008, it stood at over $900. Maize has gone from around $250 to $560 in the same period. Rice prices have also soared. The physical inventories of grain relative to demand are also down sharply in recent years.

  Several factors are at play in the skyrocketing prices, reflecting both rising global demand and falling supplies of food grains. World incomes have been rising at around 5 percent annually in recent years, and 4 percent in per capita terms, leading to an increased global demand for food and for meat as a share of the diet. China’s economic growth, of course, has been double the world’s average. The rising demand for meat exacerbates the pressures on grain and oil-seed prices since several kilograms of animal feed are required to produce each kilogram of meat.

  Feed grains have risen from around 30 percent of total global grain production to around 40 percent today. Land that would otherwise be planted to the main grains is shifting to soya bean and other oil seeds used for animal feed. It is forecast, for example, that U.S. farmers will cut maize plantings by 8 million acres, while raising soya-bean production by about the same amount. The grain supply side has also been disrupted by climate shocks, such as Australia’s massive droughts.

  An even bigger blow has been the U.S. decision to subsidize conversion of maize into ethanol to blend with gasoline. This wrong-headed policy, pushed by an aggressive farm lobby, gives a 51-cent tax credit for each gallon of ethanol blended into gasoline. The 2005 Energy Policy Act mandates a minimum of 7.5 billion gallons of domestic renewable-fuel production, which will overwhelmingly be corn-based ethanol, by 2012. Consequently, up to a third of the U.S. mid-Western maize crop this year will be converted to ethanol, causing a cascade of price increases across the food chain. (Worse, use of ethanol instead of gasoline does little to reduce net carbon emissions once the energy-intensive full cycle of ethanol production-- including the energy-intensive fertilizer and transport needs --is taken into account.)

  Source: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=surging-food-prices
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  IP_SEC

  Satanus, I didnt click on the add... dont worry simon, i will

  I dont pay for my own gas, but I've been kicking around the idea of making my own Brown's Gas cell to see how well it works. Just for fun of course