Using Ethanol

[Clem Z.]

Re: Using Ethanol

Pat emailed me about this "home ethanol station". He heard about it on Fox News, and I saw that Clark Howard mentioned it as I read his Web site, today. He mentioned an article in The New York Times... some of you can probably fill in my thoughts from here.

www.efuel100.com/

Using their own data, 13 pounds of sugar will make one gallon of ethanol, and the "station" can make 35 gallons of ethanol per week. This will fuel two 13 MPG mid to full size vehicles for about a week at 450 total miles (remember that E85 MPG is about 70 percent of E10).

You will also need some yeast and a non-trivial value of electrical power plus about 5 gallons of water per gallon of produced ethanol.

First you will have to hump 450 pounds of sugar a week from your supplier, so you will need a pickup truck.

I googled "raw crystalized sugar" and found one supplier who offers 50 pound bags for about $75. This is food quality product. Maybe there is "industrial quality" product that is cheaper - I don't know, but using a $1.50/pound the raw sugar cost is nearly $20 per gallon of ethanol exclusive of the yeast and electrical power, so I don't know how they come up with their $1/gallon unless you can buy raw sugar for about a nickel a pound. I don't know of any commodity you can buy for a nickel a pound.

The numbers just don't add up, and the mass media is too lazy or too stupid to do a simple analysis using some basic chemistry and economics.

Duke

you buy that much sugar a week the ATF will be at your door.

[Pat L.]

Re: Using Ethanol

This was a great discussion. It is disappointing because I really was looking for an excuse to uphold a long standing family tradition---making whiskey (ethanol). I guess I'll just have to wait until gas gets to $10 per gallon.

[Robert R.]

Re: Using Ethanol

Duke,
Not that many, but whenever I am on the Interstate, and see the tach getting close to 3,000 I think, "...what if we did change the trans?"

But you are right, the reality is that the cost of fuel is not as much as if it were a daily car.

Bob

[Joe L.]

Re: Using Ethanol

Duke,
Not that many, but whenever I am on the Interstate, and see the tach getting close to 3,000 I think, "...what if we did change the trans?"

But you are right, the reality is that the cost of fuel is not as much as if it were a daily car.

Bob

Bob-----


...and keep in mind that there are MANY folks whose DAILY DRIVERS get poorer fuel economy than our old Corvettes. In fact, just about as bad as the WORST of the old Corvettes.

[Mark J.]

Re: Using Ethanol

There was an interesting article in the NY Times on this subject April 27, The entire article is available online. They do address the cost of sugar, but say

For starters, sugar-based ethanol doesn’t look much cheaper than gas. It takes 10 to 14 pounds of sugar to make a gallon of ethanol, and raw sugar sells in the United States for about 20 cents a pound, says Michael E. Salassi, a professor in the department of agricultural economics at Louisiana State University. But Mr. Quinn says that as of January this year, under the North American Free Trade Agreement, he can buy inedible sugar from Mexico for as little as 2.5 cents a pound, which puts the math in his favor. While this type of sugar has not been sold to consumers, E-Fuel says it is developing a distribution network for it.

Also, there was a vendor at Carlisle - I believe in 2006, don't know if they came back in 07 - that specialized in converting cars to run on E85. As I recall, they had 2 converted cars on display. One was a newer vette, and the other was a 69.

You have to register for NYTimes dotcom to get the article.
title is:
Home Brew for the Car, Not the Beer Cup

By MICHAEL FITZGERALD
Published: April 27, 2008

[Duke W.]

Re: Using Ethanol

The problem is that 20 cents a pound for sugar is if you buy the stuff by the railcar and that's FOB at the loading point. Then you pay transportation. And that 20 cents a pound may be for unprocessed beets or cane -straight from the field. Processing is required to get it into the useable form of "raw crystalized sugar", which adds cost.

To make your own ethanol you're going to pay a retail "bulk" price for sugar in, say 50 pound bags, and that's a much higher unit price than a carload.

My quick google search yielded 75 bucks for a 50 pound bag of "raw crystalized sugar", which is what the machine vendor recommends. Maybe someone else has some other pricing data.

This NYT article was probably the one Clark Howard mentions on his Web site. The trouble with these guys is that they don't live in the real world, can't do basic math, and believe anything promotors and academics claim. But people are willing to believe this stuff, get all excited and run around screaming that the oil companies are screwing us. It's the mass media that is screwing us with shoddy pie-in-the-sky reporting.

The real question for them is how much is a 50 pound bag of raw crystalized sugar in NYC. They could have gotten a real answer from any resturanteur.

2.5 cents a pound is only $50/ton. What does it cost to ship a ton of bulk cargo in a hopper car a thousand miles? I'm not familiar with bulk rail rates, but I bet $20/ton for that distance is cheap! If you got the sugar free from the field the transportation, processing, and delivery to a retail source in 50 pound bags isn't going to be much cheaper than what it costs, today. Oh, and at each stage enough profit margin has to be added for everyone to stay in business. That'll drive the commies nuts!

Duke