ALT-2 E85 Ethanol Explained
E85, 85% ethanol, 15% Gasoline is a fuel easily adapted to by today's standard available technologies. Brazil runs on it, along with E100, 100% ethanol, the lowest "E" fuel available there is E20, which can run in any normal gas burning car. The oxygenated fuels we burn in America are generally E10 to E20. There are already 6 million flex fuel vehicles on the road in the US today. It is a complicated answer to why we don't have more ethanol in our tanks, a mixture of science, politics, market demands and plain old market manipulation for profit. Here are some of the issues and why they are more smoke than fire.
Science, boy, do they fool the public with this. This is why we need more education in America. If you assume corn as the source of mash for the distillation of ethanol, like in good old mountain dew you can make a few predictions with numbers that could scare you from the whole ethanol concept. Predictors with the purpose of putting you off the idea site some dubiously figured facts to tell us that we just can't grow enough corn to do it, that if we use corn what will we and the poor cows eat, food prices will sky rocket., that it takes .7 gallons of petroleum to make a gallon of less energy storing ethanol. Corns producing farm co-ops and petroleum producing industries have heated debates with each other over this. There could be some valid points on either side. That is if corn was the only thing we could use to make ethanol, or an alcohol that we could use as fuel is made the same way they make whiskey.
In fact, you can ferment and distill almost every plant (carbon based) there is. Yes, high sugar crops are the easy, highest yielding materials to make ethanol from, an corn is one example of one of those, another example would be sugar cane, that's what Brazil primarily uses, guess what, high starch works too. Ethanol from high starch distillates are already available, Vodka from potatoes, whiskey from rye, beer from other grains. That isn't exactly tongue in cheek if you see that is ancient technology, really doing it.
Even if you run out of the ideal crops, or want to use them for something else, Cellulostic Refining gets you that same ethanol. Plants are mostly water, after that they are a combination of sugars, starches, and cellulose. Yes that's a gross simplification, but it is essentially true. Cellulose doesn't get digested by the typical organisms that change sugars and starches into alcohol and carbon dioxide. But cellulose can be changed into a starch or a sugar. This can be accomplished with heat, pressure, enzymes, and/ or other micro organisms. I think a slow digester that doesn't actually take much energy might be the ticket. Or maybe we can use the cellulose leftover for something else like refining them into something that we could use with ethanol. This is hardly new thought, finger nail polish to paint thinners to industrial volatile chemicals are all created this way. Most of them are flammable. You can make heat with flames. Bacteria are our friends.
On the distillation process, Cousin Zeke knew that Uncle Jed used to build a small fire under his still. You need low, slow heat, this doesn't have to come from foreign oil. Anything that you can make heat with works, if solar power isn't strong or predictable enough, out it where the sun is the strongest and let it help, it will do it for free.
Although we seem to face these endless theoretical complications for why not, there are even more reasons how and why we can. Debating against this is a stall tactic, I sure hope it quits working soon.
One more thought for those who get it. Isn't it ironic that Brazil, who has gotten around these obstacles is the name of the movie.
