Historically, burning ethanol in 4 stokes engine was first developped in the USA at the beginning ot 20th century.

Early days tractors and other farming equipments were powered by 4 strokes ignition engines designed to run on alcohol (ethanol) that was locally produced from corn...
This quite successful development ended abruptly with enforcement of prohibition and the carburettors of those engine were transformed to use gas.
For some of these engines, a special spacer had to be fitted between cylinder block and heads to reduce compression ratio that was too high for the low octane gas of these days.

In Europe mecanization of farming came later, without this ethanol period.
Nowadays, there is a little development of "crude vegetable oil" (ie locally produced colza oil) burnt pure or mixed in diesel oil by farming equipment diesel engines.



Philippe DEJEAN


Making fuels for use in engines from food products is counterproductive.
Corn is better used to feed people or cattle and pigs. Used oil from deep fryers as it is a method of recycling. Used directly as new vegetable oil to produce bio-diesel is dumb. Same thing using corn to produce ethanol.
The methanol I wrote about is produced from natural gas. Now if more attention is devoted to producing ethanol from switch grass, camel grass, or the wood in brush piles that is a byproduct of clear cut logging you are using products that have minimal other use to produce a sellable and useful commodity. Brush piles burn in a very dirty manner and are thus 100% pollution. If they were to be chipped and then used to make into ethanol the digested leftover product could then be used to fuel a power plant or for fertilizer. Now the pollution is spread over more end uses.

Dale Davies


Whether you love or hate ethanol produced from corn is up to you, but the tree hugger university professors and media from the coasts don’t have a clue about America's mid section where the bulk of all grain crops are grown.  There are approximately 90 million acres of crop ground being utilized today to grow corn. This is the same corn acreage as 1895 (not a typo), granted yields were only 17% of what is achieved today. http://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/croptr14.pdf

There are no rainforests that are being destroyed which Pelosi would know if she would land in Iowa, and most farmers are extremely conservation minded as they are well aware that if they destroy what they have they'll be out of business.

Over 90% of the U.S. corn crop is used for NON-HUMAN consumption which is 10% less than it should be cause it's making us all obese. There is so much corn that 20% of it is exported, (no one is going hungry because of a shortage of corn). When the price of corn nearly tripled in June of 2008 ethanol became the scapegoat. In reality the major petroleum producers nearly cornered the corn futures market driving the price through the ceiling in an effort to halt ethanol's growth.  At the same time they pushed fuel prices higher in part to justify raising the price of the fertilizer they produce for corn farmers that had remained nearly unchanged for 20 years.

It is interesting to note that the price of gasoline and diesel fuel made a very quick and steady climb that peaked at the same time in June/July of 2008.  The media delivered the story they were given by the oil industry and the Grocery Manufacturers Association and went so far as to blame ethanol for causing the price of gas and diesel fuel to raise.  Most stupid Americans are happy to swallow their daily dose of news without question so they even believed Hollywood who blamed ethanol for causing the quadruple rise in popcorn prices at the movies (popcorn of course is not used for ethanol).  The bread industry followed suit and before long the rise in the price of everything at the grocery store was because of ethanol courtesy of the GMA and Big Oil.  Most people think that ethanol production devourers corn leaving a void in the food supply chain.

Actually in most cases only the starch is removed in the dry milling process of ethanol production leaving 17.4 lbs per bushel of a very high protein animal feed (distillers grains) that is feed to cattle, hogs & poultry. There is so much distillers grains available for animal feed that over 25% of it was exported last year (it might have been the only thing we sold to China other than our industries).


No one is growing corn just for fuel. The ethanol industry is a product of the EPA's efforts to eliminate dangerous MTBE.  The politicians saw it as a way to develop alternative energy and help the struggling U.S. farmer and of course get votes.  The oil industry who always comes out  on top has been the beneficiary as they are the recipient of the subsidies and blenders credits that most taxpayers have been lead to believe went to farmers and ethanol producers and they decide how much ethanol gets used since it has to be blended with gasoline in this country.  It was quite amusing that Detroit made such a media event of the introduction of "Flex Fuel Vehicles" in the U.S. when in fact they have been selling variable fuel vehicles to Brazil in mass since the mid 80's and in smaller quantities since the early 70's yet they can't seem to get them to work as well here.

My dad ran E-85 in his unmodified 1995 Dodge V-8 pickup for 165,000 miles. I agree that the use of "waste" cellulose seems like a good idea, there's a lot of it, but without an industry to use as a springboard like corn ethanol, it'll never happen.  Like everything our government touches the ethanol industry included is a regulatory and policy nightmare with ever changing direction and political idiots making scientific decisions for special interest groups. Most of the emphasis of cellulosic ethanol is on enzymes that don’t work and high acid hydrolysis which destroys most of the sugar produced. Ultra low multiphase acid hydrolysis is very efficient but it doesn’t meet current energy department guidelines (which are coauthored by none other than Abengoa Bioenergy of SPAIN). Abengoa is the leading recipient of federal funding for their ongoing lack of success in turning cornstalks into fuel in their York NE plant.

One more thing; Switch grass became an energy crop because Alabama senator Jeff Sessions made the suggestion to Al Hubbards, economic adviser to President Bush who searching for a new fuel crop to included in the state of the union address.  Switch grass is a good energy producing crop if it has adequate rainfall and grows in the right climate, but the political geniuses in Washington assumed because it is considered "hardy" that it could achieve maximum yields in places like Wyoming where even the sagebrush fights to survive and their economic model included free storage and shipping of a very bulky product that can't be stored long term without decay or risk of combustion.

So where are we going to grow this miracle grass--on corn ground of course because we don’t need all of that because there's too much of it, oh but wait, I thought we had a food versus fuel problem :-), you can fool most of the people all of the time.  BTW if we're are going to do this, sweet sorghum is a much better alternative (same yields as Brazilian sugar cane).  Yes the ethanol industry has its problems but it's not a negative impact, the industry might be able to stand on its own if its competitor wasn’t holding it hostage.
Finally, a large box of Corn Flakes costing $4.32 contains 7 cents of corn.

Danny Petersen-Nebraska
Go Trump!


I am for the lowest cost of fuel and food. I am against the feds mandating anything.
The market place rules as long as we don't do biz with countries that don't let
their currency float. Floating currency leads to automatic balance in trade.

If Trump makes it he better by god fix the currency situations. He could do it
with an increasing import tariff until a balance of trade was achieved. Start out
with 5%. This would pay done the debit in sort order as EVERYTHING is now
made in China. What do you want? Cheap goods or a job?

Paul Lamar



Part of the problem with ethanol is that it damages some engine components
mainly on older vehicles. On flex fuel vehicles, the more ethanol in the fuel
the poorer the fuel economy. If run continually on E85 your engine will not last
as long due to washing down the cylinder walls because of the higher amount
of fuel required. Then bring into this discussion the amount of fossil fuel needed
to produce and transport the ethanol. Granted the conversion from gasoline to
some blend of alcohol is quick and inexpensive for the manufacturers. To recoup
the lost fuel economy due to the required greater amount of fuel in the cylinder,
the engine needs to be designed for use with that fuel. The problem then becomes
what exactly is the fuel/fuel blend and what compression ratio and valve timing
combination will work best?


A better solution is to source a fuel that is readily available and understood. That
in my mind would be natural gas. Granted it is not a renewable fuel, but sources
are being developed to obtain gas from manure and garbage dumps. Spark ignition
engines built with 15:1 compression ratio will get a similar MPG to gasoline. Range
may be a bit of a problem but not insurmountable. Natural gas burns very cleanly,
you can refill over night at home and still part in underground parkades. With
propane you can not. Because natural gas burns so cleanly, oil change intervals
can be extended which reduces the need for oil for that commodity.
I think corn to ethanol will follow Carters boondoggle and eventually fall apart
but only after a few people make millions from the grants that the tax payers are
required to cough up for.

Dale Davies



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