UN urges US to cut ethanol production

[Violet Fashion by Mindy]

I've been personally involved with changing servos over to E10 , will not let it get anywhere near any of my cars.
You need an additive to mix ethanol with petrol , but because of that petrol will now mix with water also.
This is ok if your underground infrastructure is new but if you run old steel tanks which are older than 10 to 5 years which all of those are now
you will have holes in them and water penetration.
Also older style rubber seals will not like ethanol.

Underground steel tanks are supposed to only have a shelf life of 10-15 years anyway. If a garage is still using a steel petrol tank made in 1999 from the company I was working for I'd be very suprised. Even back then most service station tanks were being made of fibreglass.

[snowflakes]

That has nothing to do with people starving around the world. The people that go hungry all over the world:
1 - Keep giving birth to children beyond the carying capacity of the land they depend on.
2 - Don't make any efforts to increase the carrying capacity of their land.
3 - Sit and pray from soneone else to solve their problems and make no plans at all no even for short term.
4 - Have no problem accepting handouts and propaganda from NGO's that tell them the situation is someone elese's fault.
5 - See point 1.

Guess what, you can make your own ethanol for fuel from your house hold and garden waste. You can use ethanol as fuel if you have devices ready for it or use it for bio diesel (actual diesel), that is ethyl ester instead of methyl ester. You can also make your own caustic soda from garden waste. Unfortunately Unckle Sam is trying to sell us the idea that we need the same type of infrastructure used for gasoline with the only purpose of saving the value of mutual funds.

I do agree with your 5 points. There is too many people sharing a pie, we are on the road to some major paradigm change and it probably wont be pretty.

I do know that you can make ethanol in home. The thing is that it is not sensible economically or environmentally. If you do it home you need all the equipment of distillery and you wouldn't make enough to meet your needs. This where the economics of scale steps in. If you live in US, you already have nice infra to get all the household waste to a water treatment plant without almost any additional use of energy. Now you can make make the biodiesel which has greater energy density (BTU) than a ethanol -> less energy and money used to deliver the product to customers -> win & win situation.

[Bleifuss]

Underground steel tanks are supposed to only have a shelf life of 10-15 years anyway. If a garage is still using a steel petrol tank made in 1999 from the company I was working for I'd be very suprised. Even back then most service station tanks were being made of fibreglass.

Yeah steel in ground doesn't last.....

[harryc]

Interesting technical points here - just drove from Chicago to Florida and back, using E85 whenever available, my Dodge van works just fine (if not better) with it.

I would expect more of the F---- the Aaarabs (and Persians), go USA, from this forum. What ever happened to becoming energy independent ?

[Nyusu]

Interesting technical points here - just drove from Chicago to Florida and back, using E85 whenever available, my Dodge van works just fine (if not better) with it.

I would expect more of the F---- the Aaarabs (and Persians), go USA, from this forum. What ever happened to becoming energy independent ?

It works only because its not wide spread. If everybody transfers to biofuels, especially 100% biofuel, then we just simply wouldnt have enough place on earth to grow food.

[harryc]

It works only because its not wide spread. If everybody transfers to biofuels, especially 100% biofuel, then we just simply wouldnt have enough place on earth to grow food.

There is no single silver bullet - part of a solution is better than none at all.

IIRC much more would be gained with that old 55MPH idea - now that we have the technology to enforce it .......