I don't understand everything about this but I am sad to say that my local gas station will no longer be selling gasoline. From what i understand the government is forcing oil companies to add ethanol to the gasoline. Maybe that or tax them heavily if they don't. Anyway, starting next month I won't be able to buy 100% gasoline anywhere according to my local guy. This is such an intrusion by government that I don't know where to start. We're propping some corn growers up because they decided to jump whole hog into this debacle of ethanol production years ago. I'd rather them take the tax money subsidizing this effort and put it to use paying the farmers to grow crops to feed the hungry and leave my gasoline alone.
Well that's a nice conspiracy theory LR and you're right. You don't understand the issue as well as you need too. (No offense meant)
First what's so great about burning pure gasoline? Guess what? You probably haven't. Gasoline has always had additives for specific performance purposes since the dawn of internal combustion engines.
I mean your argument is one that I heard when tetraethyl lead (i.e. no knock leaded gasoline) was banned as an additive to gasoline. That it was a gross intrusion of peoples rights. Never mind the fact that the lead contamination from tetraethyl lead use was world wide in scope and that the ecological impact of lead as a bioaccumulative toxin that has well known teratogenic and developmental affects, particularly on the young.
It's a similar case here. Adding ethanol is not about subsidizing farmers until you reach a concentration of ethanol that exceeds the quantity needed to oxygenate fuel for more complete combustion. Around 10% of so.
I don't think you properly understand why ethanol is required to be blended in gasoline. It is not to subsidize corn farmers. That's political BS.
Gasoline is complex mixture of long chain hydrocarbons. As a fuel it has these advantages. It has a low flash point, it has a high BTU value, the raw materials to produce it are abundant and it's relatively easy to produce in large volumes. One of the problems with gasoline though is the fact that it is composed of long chain hydrocarbons. The problem with long chain hydrocarbons is that they are extremely difficult to combust completely as modern internal combustion engines operate at far to low of a temperature to provide for complete combustion. End result is a substantial amount of that gasoline is emitted from your tail pipe as air pollution. Incompletely combusted gasoline has high volumes of Polycyclic aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH's, e.g. naphthalene), Volatile Organic Compounds VOC's (e.g. benzene, toluene, xylenes), Particulates (which contain heavy metals such as lead, arsenic and mercury) and such inorganic byproducts of incomplete combustion as Nitrous Oxides and Sulfur Dioxides (NOX's and SOX's). The inorganic by products of incomplete combustion of gasoline (particulates, NOX and SOX) are the ones notorious in urban areas for creating the phenomena known as "smog".
Now you may feel that requiring ethanol addition to gasoline is an intolerable invasion of your rights but far more people view your driving a vehicle that combusts non-oxygenated gasoline as a serious violation of our private and public property rights by contaminating them with the hazardous and toxic air pollutants. Not only that, it's well documented that using such fuels are a serious and well documented health threat due to the large volumes of hazardous air pollutants (PAH's, VOC's, Particulates, NOX, SOX, etc.) they emit.
Ergo, quite a while back, it was required, via the Clean Air Act, that oxygenating additives be added to assure a more complete combustion of gasoline (I believe 99.99% is the Clean Air Act Standard). At first MTBE (Methyl tert-Butyl Ether) was added as an oxygenator to fuels. The so called "100% gasoline" you've been used to using probably contains MTBE as an oxygenator. MTBE works quite well as an oxygenator.
So what's the problem then and why Ethanol? Well you essentially have the same problem with MTBE as an additive to gasoline that you had with tetraethyl lead. MTBE is a toxic chemical and testing has shown that in many regions of the nation surface waters and public drinking waters have been contaminated with unsafe levels of MTBE. Big problem. That's where Ethanol comes in. Ethanol may not be as good an oxygenator as MTBE but it is still an excellent oxygenator as ethanol (CH3CH2OH) is 35% oxygen by mass. Adding up to 10% ethanol provides enough oxygen to assure a more complete combustion of gasoline occurs and that substantially less hazardous air pollutants are emitted.
Now does this benefit corn farmers? Hell yes it does. What's wrong with that given the advantages gained? I like to see our farmers secure and prosperous cause that ultimately means I eat well and I'm all in favor of eating well. Nearly 40% of corn production goes into ethanol production which is mostly used as a fuel additive. So what do we gain from that on the positive side?
#1. Is assures cleaner burning gasoline and far less hazardous air pollutants, with their well documented damaging health affects, being emitted.
#2. It provides a huge market for farmers surplus corn creating a large market for their products which helps to assure farmers financial security which is strategically vital to all of us as it means we eat well and farmers thrive.
#3. It doesn't take a genius in mathematics or international policy to figure out the strategic importance of cutting gasoline consumption by 10%. Crude oil typically produces about a 40% fraction of gasoline. By adding 10% ethanol to gasoline and thus reducing gasoline by 10% we can reduce the quantity of crude oil we need to import for gasoline by 25%!! That's of huge strategic value given the volatility of the oil producing export regions.
So you're talking a huge win/win situation here vs. this phony perception that this is a gross invasion of your rights by government.
Now I'm sure others will have noted that corn as a primary fuel doesn't make sense as it takes more fuel to grow corn than is derived from ethanol production from corn. That's very true but that's not what were talking about here. We're talking about using ethanol not as a primary fuel but as a hugely valuable additive that makes gasoline far, far more safer to use and it provides other seriously important advantages.
In other words, this is a very good idea with damned few drawbacks.
