Make Ethanol for $1 a Gallon?

I'm make a hydrogen cell this week for my truck

If that is true, Big Oil will either put a hit on those people or find a legal way to shut it down, buy the rights and shelve it, or something else.

Lol...Ya we use ethanol on our 07 Avalanche but the gas station is kinda far so what we do before the prices of ethanol go up is bring a 14gallon gastank and fill it up on the way back from riding...The price on ethanol really depends on how much gas they mix in...the more gas mixed in the more expensive it gets you'll see on the sign it will say for example E85 that means 85% Ethanol and 15%gasoline...last week it was E90 for us so it was only about $2.00 a gallon.

Shitty

You are confusing methanol with ethanol. If you want to make 15-20% more power than gas by running alcohol, you want to use methanol. It takes almost double the fuel so you need a modified carburetor to do it. Ethanol makes less power than gas.

Yep, I ran methanol in my sprint car and it takes WAY more volume to get the same result.

Plus methanol absorbs a lot of water from the air. It also is very hard on an engine and will eat up cylinders, we used top oil to help with that, but usually shut the engine down by turning off the alcohol, then squirting marvel mystery oil in until the engine until it smoked like mosquito fogger and stopped trying to leave some residue.

E85 is 20% less efficient than pure gasoline. So you fill it up for less at the pump but you fill it up more often because of the poorer mpg.

I was thinking volume might be a problem but I see they want to have a commercial-scale plant producing up to 100 million gallons of ethanol a year by 2011 which is nothing to sneeze at. I am curious if they can keep a steady supply of raw materials (sewage, wood, corn, etc) to keep that rate of production. It's certainly interesting and should help out if nothing else. Might be a way to help get rid of waste too instead of building these huge landfills.

You have a carb? I thought pretty much everything was FI these days, or is your truck not from these days? Almost everything around these parts is 10% Ethanol as well but I live in cornfield county. Lot's of E85 as well.

Wow that's weird. Could have swore I was talking to some dude about his 98 nissan truck burning ethanol and poof, he's gone along with all his quotes. Maybe I'm losing my mind?

We've had ethanol discussions before and I've brought up the cellulosic ethanol pilot programs. I've been following this company for a while, and they are the real deal. The article is a bit optimistic on the biomass (refuse), it's not quite there yet, but they are get an honest ROE of 7 plus on switch grass and entire corn plants.

I am a huge proponent of ethanol. Just to clear up a few things about ethanol that are often misrepresented.

1. Ethanol results in fewer miles per gallon than gasoline.

While this is technically true, it is only relevant to the way we are currently using it, specifically, Flex Fuel Vehicles, or FFV's. You cannot efficiently burn ethanol and still be able to use 87 pump, it's simply not possible. Ethanol has a much higher octane rating than gasoline, around 105 to 110. Consequently, ethanol is able to achieve a greater thermal efficiency than gasoline, but only if the engine is designed to do so through much higher compression and ignition mapping. However, it is not currently commercially viable to build a vehicle capable of taking full advantage of ethanol (who wants to have to find race gas if there's no ethanol available?). I predict that as ethanol becomes more cost effective, more acceptable, and more widely available, FFV's will be designed to make better and better use of ethanol. They may start out requiring either E85 or Premium pump and no longer run well on 87 pump. Eventually, the technology in engine design will allow for on the fly changes that will truly allow ethanol to be used most efficiently.

2. Only current FFV's can run ethanol, it will ruin older vehicles.

Essentially, today's FFV's do nothing more than advance the timing to partially take advantage of the increased octane and to minimize knock. Any 90's era (OBD I and later) and newer US vehicle will safely run ethanol but for this issue. A simple upgrade kit can be purchased for most vehicles to allow it to do the exact same thing that FFV's do. Most vehicles made since the early 90's have fuel lines, fuel systems, and internal components that are capable of using ethanol. However, ethanol is a "cleaning agent". If you look at the back of the bottle of any of the common injector cleaners or fuel system cleaners you'll see that their primary ingredient is ethanol. In the event you run E85 in an older vehicle, you should expect any build up, scale, rust, sediment, or any other contaminants in your fuel system to be expunged. This may cause the fuel filter to become blocked, or cause some components of the fuel system to fail. It is wise to carefully check your vehicle and ensure that you have a decent filter on it before using ethanol for the first time, and introduce your vehicle to it a little bit at a time.