BINGO !!
Benn is right on target Ed.
We have E85 because the "farmer" (think Archer Daniels Midland) makes
a bunch of money from it.
If you have a Rain Forrest to burn distilling the stuff (Brazil) it is cheaper
than oil.
There are a group of noisy people calling themselves "environmentalists",
who don't know Junk Science from a Zip Code, that also support it.
Bryan
Benn wrote:
> My $0.02, in two parts:
> $0.01: Ethanol as currently produced for general fuel use (and this
> would basically apply to the E85 also) on average takes the same amount
> of energy to make a gallon of the stuff as you get out of the gallon of
> ethanol. Based on my own experiments with distillation, it takes a
> buncha heat to get much ethanol. The gummint has studied this (GAO I
> believe) and come to the same conclusion; the politicians, however, have
> other-than-scientific criteria.... Without serious taxpayer subsidies
> to the "farmer" (think Archer Daniels Midland) and likely others along
> the way, nobody would be thinking about making ethanol for general fuel
> use. Yeah, you COULD use solar or other approaches (instead of fossil
> fuel) to distillation, etc., but that would take a huge capital outlay,
> and I doubt that makes economic sense either.
> $0.01: IIRC The federal emissions cycles don't really require the
> engine to get into the WOT condition; otherwise it's likely most
> high-perf and/or large engines would have problems meeting the
> requirements. And the CA biennial test only runs the car at 25 mph on
> the dyno. So, Ed, your surmise that there might be a "loophole" re
> emissions and high combustion pressures/temperatures is correct.
> Benn
> P.s., Ed, you must've driven those high-compression small blocks a lot
> more conservatively than me to get 25 mpg...or else run 'em really lean.
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