04-25-2006, 08:12 PM
Badard's article has a lot of good stuff in it.
Ethanol is FAR from a "green" fuel. The evaporative emissions from ethanol-laced gasoline are a huge detriment in places like LA. And the combustion byproducts are nasty. Formaldehyde was already mentioned.
Also, ethanol is hydroscopic. It wants to go into any free water phase. And gasoline distribution systems are wet. So ethanol cannot be mixed at the refinery or even in the tanks at the terminals. It has to be mixed into the tank truck just before delivery So the logistics are a real pain.
Finally, ethanol provides basically no relief from oil. The energy required to produce ethanol from corn is basically break-even.
What ethanol has going for it is the agriculture lobby. That's it.
The real sad thing that's happened is the removal of MTBE. It is a very high octane fuel with a low vapor pressure. This give refiners the ability to add higher RVP stocks to their gasoline pools, whtih increases the gasoline from oil yield. And 36% of MTBE comes from Methanol, which in turn comes from natural gas. So it makes a great way to add natural gas to the gaoline pool. And it has been shown in the real world to improve air quality compared to gasoline or especially ethanol/gasoline.
Unfortunately, many underground gasoline storage tanks, especially in older gas stations, were leaking, and this caused MTBE to leak into the environment. There were already federal and state programs in place to require and pay for fixing the storage tanks. And gasoline is leaking regardless of whether MTBE is a component or not. But the agriculture lobby wanted to get ethanol into gasoline in place of MTBE, and they got the wedge issue they needed politically.
Even the oil industry helped. They wanted to end all oxygenates in gasoline... MTBE, Ethanol, all of it. They want all of gasoline to come from oil. Tighter supplies. Higher oil to gasoline content. Higher prices and oil yields. Much higher profits. They saw the risk that high prices would drop demand. But it hasn't so far. So they are pushing hard.
MTBE, OTOH, is huge overseas. Europe loves it. They have very tight standards for underground storage tanks, and no leak issues. Germany subsidizes ETBE... where ethanol substitutes for methanol. Low vapor pressure. It gets away from all of the bad issues with Ethanol, but still gets Ethanol into the gasoline pool. But it is not allowed in the MTBE-prohibited states in the US.
The US is actually cross-shipping MTBE to Europe for gasoline blending stock. That's just stupid.
Ethanol is FAR from a "green" fuel. The evaporative emissions from ethanol-laced gasoline are a huge detriment in places like LA. And the combustion byproducts are nasty. Formaldehyde was already mentioned.
Also, ethanol is hydroscopic. It wants to go into any free water phase. And gasoline distribution systems are wet. So ethanol cannot be mixed at the refinery or even in the tanks at the terminals. It has to be mixed into the tank truck just before delivery So the logistics are a real pain.
Finally, ethanol provides basically no relief from oil. The energy required to produce ethanol from corn is basically break-even.
What ethanol has going for it is the agriculture lobby. That's it.
The real sad thing that's happened is the removal of MTBE. It is a very high octane fuel with a low vapor pressure. This give refiners the ability to add higher RVP stocks to their gasoline pools, whtih increases the gasoline from oil yield. And 36% of MTBE comes from Methanol, which in turn comes from natural gas. So it makes a great way to add natural gas to the gaoline pool. And it has been shown in the real world to improve air quality compared to gasoline or especially ethanol/gasoline.
Unfortunately, many underground gasoline storage tanks, especially in older gas stations, were leaking, and this caused MTBE to leak into the environment. There were already federal and state programs in place to require and pay for fixing the storage tanks. And gasoline is leaking regardless of whether MTBE is a component or not. But the agriculture lobby wanted to get ethanol into gasoline in place of MTBE, and they got the wedge issue they needed politically.
Even the oil industry helped. They wanted to end all oxygenates in gasoline... MTBE, Ethanol, all of it. They want all of gasoline to come from oil. Tighter supplies. Higher oil to gasoline content. Higher prices and oil yields. Much higher profits. They saw the risk that high prices would drop demand. But it hasn't so far. So they are pushing hard.
MTBE, OTOH, is huge overseas. Europe loves it. They have very tight standards for underground storage tanks, and no leak issues. Germany subsidizes ETBE... where ethanol substitutes for methanol. Low vapor pressure. It gets away from all of the bad issues with Ethanol, but still gets Ethanol into the gasoline pool. But it is not allowed in the MTBE-prohibited states in the US.
The US is actually cross-shipping MTBE to Europe for gasoline blending stock. That's just stupid.