America Was Wrong About Ethanol - Study Shows
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 พ.ค. 2024
- Using Corn For Fuel Seems Like A Dumb Idea In Light Of New Research
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Ethanol makes up 10% of most of the gasoline sold in the United States. A large part of why Ethanol is so prevalent is that the Renewable Fuel Standard, created in 2005, wanted to reduce the emissions of the fuels we use. Ethanol created from corn is renewable, because the corn takes carbon from the atmosphere to grow, creating a cycle that minimizes how much carbon is added to the atmosphere. At least, that's the story we were told.
New research out of University of Wisconsin - Madison, suggests that "the carbon intensity of corn ethanol is no less than gasoline and likely at least 24% higher." What's the solution? We need to choose options that have a greater percentage of net emissions reductions, so that we don't unintentionally increase emissions if regulators estimated predictions are incorrect.
Video References:
Main Study - www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas...
EPA Impact Analysis - 19january2017snapshot.epa.gov...
UW Article - news.wisc.edu/at-bioenergy-cr...
Oxygenated Fuels - www.epa.gov/ust/fuel-oxygenat...
TEL to MTBE to Ethanol - doi.org/10.1080/10406026.2014...
Octane Numbers - energy.mit.edu/wp-content/upl...
Harvard Law Research - eelp.law.harvard.edu/2020/09/...
Harvard Law Research Pt. 4 - eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-conten...
Renewable Fuels Standard - www.epa.gov/renewable-fuel-st...
US DOE - afdc.energy.gov/fuels/ethanol...
Pro Corn Ethanol Study - afdc.energy.gov/files/u/publi...
Counter Study - iopscience.iop.org/article/10...
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Living in the corn belt, the way I remember (take that for what it's worth) it wasn't marketed to us as Green, it was marketed as "open new markets to sell your corn".
it is one of the things they used to destroy americas econimee all you have to do is look at feed and food prices every year since since this disaster was started not to mention all the motorized devices thwere destroyed by this garbage it was just a well planned ateack................
"New markets" = rent$eeker$ being accomodated by the usual suspects
Im so confused by this video in what he doesn't say, partly in line with your comment. We have massive amount of corn syrup and corn sugars in all our food because of governemnt incentives to the corn belt, right? This pre-dates the 2005 date he mentions by like 20 years, ie we were already overproducing corn, and as you sggest, were looking for new markets for it...
correct!! votes.............
"We have too much corn at too low a price" = "How can we scam people into using the excess corn for pointless things"/
I'm glad you are shedding light on this again. Actually, these facts were known decades ago. Lobbies and special interests are a powerful thing.
Yup. It’s unfortunate how much of our society is chained to their paycheck. Makes enacting change incredibly difficult.
Was just going to say - we knew this in the 90s during the height of “reducing our reliance on foreign oil” days. It’s the Iowa place on the presidential nominating calendar… hard to win if you don’t win Iowa
Anything the govt promotes always is wrong and not their true intentions. Example fuel additive mtbe. The list is long.
Yup. Dick Cheney and the energy policy act of 2005 really screwed America.
This could also be big oil lobbying against the corn ethanol
In Brazil, engines are "flex", meaning that they offer the flexibility to burn 100% gasoline or 100% ethanol, and also any mix in between. Most people drive on 100% ethanol, just because it is cheaper overall. In the early days of the technology, these engines were pretty bad when burning 100% ethanol, in particular when the engine was cold. However, nowadays, with sophisticated electronic injection systems, you don't feel much difference, even when the engine is cold. The technology dates back to 1970's, in response to the oil crisis which put Brazil on its knees. Being a vast country with a lot of sun, Brazil implemented a large scale program of producing ethanol from sugar cane.
Yes. Also, now brazilian gasoline has 30% alcohol in it.
Brazil’s cane ethanol program is based on several lies.
Lie #1: there is an 8:1 EROI for cane ethanol. I did the math and it is no better than 2:1. Petrobras doesn’t want to count the burning of bagasse as an energy input because it is “free”, but it is energy that could be used for other purposes if not for corn ethanol, so it must be counted as an input. When properly computed, the EROI of Brazilian cane ethanol is about the same as USA corn ethanol. And we got the same 2:1 EROI growing cane ethanol in the USA when we have tried it. Only the difference in subsidies between the countries guides why one is a cane agriculture empire, and one is a corn agriculture empire.
Lie #2: Brazilian cane is farmed sustainably. Reality is the land is slashed, burned, overfarmed, and rapidly depleted, requiring new acreage all the time. The new land is forcibly acquired from indigenous people, who are also used as quasi-slave laborers in the fields. The land and water resource and environmental damage footprints of cane ethanol is much higher than those of the onshore or offshore crude oil to gasoline lifecycle.
Lie #3: Cane and corn ethanol reduce polluting and GHG emissions. Ethanol increases emissions of pm2.5 particulates, ozone, and volatile organics compared to straight gasoline. USA and German Academies of Science have also found their lifecycles also have increased GHG emissions.
The whole premise of bioethanol is false. Whatever the feedstock, making fuel-grade ethanol is completely dependent on huge inputs of fossil fuels and the lifecycle produces excessive emissions of GHGs. The finished fossil fuel energy used to plow, plant, fertilize, burn, harvest, transport, de-water, ferment, distill, dehydrate, and transport ethanol and blend it into the petroleum fuel supply would be much better spent and yield a manifold higher EROI adding new petroleum fuel to the fuel supply.
USA been using E10 for long time. Can still find 100% gas at a few gas stations. US has too many gas stations! Lol
@JuanGonzalez-hf6jc Not good for engines. If you can buy Ford Ranger trucks there..they use excellent gen2 - GTDI engine can use any fuel + trucks last 20yrs if cared for.
I learned to drive outside Campinas on dirt roads between sugar cane fields.... I feel like Earnest Hemingway 😂
I’m a little late to the comments, but my comment is that not all of the negative things were mentioned. 1 very big negative is the amount of water needed to grow Corn. The irrigation needed lowered the water table greatly, that water took many years to be deposited in the underground. It’s gone. Kansas has started limiting the amount of water that can be pumped, it’s a little late but it will take many years to rebuild the water table. I’m old so I’ll never live to see any difference.
Thank you for your video. Thank you Sir
Most corn(>85%) is not irrigated and of the top thirteen states who do irrigate only Nebraska is known for corn. The US and even dry Nebraska used MORE irrigation water before the RFS existed than after it was law:
National Totals Irrigation, in Bgal/d
1950 89
1955 110
1960 110
1965 120
1970 130
1975 140
1980 150
1985 135
1990 134
1995 130
2000 139
2005 127
2010 116
2015 118
Irrigation, Total self-supplied withdrawals, fresh, in Mgal/d
Nebraska 1985 7265.09
Nebraska 1990 6097.64
Nebraska 1995 7549.78
Nebraska 2000 8793.76
Nebraska 2005 8460.43
Nebraska 2010 5660.12
Nebraska 2015 6090.6
In other words, ending ethanol would not change irrigation use even one iota.
It is impossible for ethanol to have caused land to be broken up since US cropland acres have declined since ethanol. The corn belt actually grew more corn acres in 1980 before ethanol than in 2018, the year of most ethanol production ever.
One reason water tables are going down is that the land is not infiltrating the rainwater so it is running off to the rivers creating more flooding along the way. Years of acid rain made the calcium in the soil go down faster than normal so the magnesium tightened and compacted the soils without the calcium there to keep it flocculated. It also damaged our forests losing the calcium. We need to increase soil health and infiltration rates to rebuild the water tables and reduce flooding.
Without the subsidy for ethanol, KS would probably be a wheat or alfalfa state. Corn does best in tallgrass prairie rainfall further east. (Though I wish we still had some prairie left, tallgrass and shortgrass.)
Many decades at best if not a lot longer to replace the water maybe never
Iowa is the number one corn producer. They rely on rainfall
87% of corn is rain fed. Of the top states who do irrigate only dry Nebraska is known for corn.
There were no grasslands or forests broken up for ethanol. Quite impossible since US cropland acres have been declining.
Census data shows corn producing states (including Kansas) increased grassland/range, forest, and wildlife areas since ethanol came.
The corn belt actually grew more acres of corn in 1980 before ethanol than in 2018, the year of most ethanol production ever.
Erik Johnson, the corn ethanol subsidy ended back in 2011.
Petrol Heads and College Professors have been talking about this since the early 2000's. What we all agreed on was that the 10% ethanol requirement was pushed through congress by the corn lobby to grow and sell more corn with the help of government subsides. Also, the 1st state to vote in the US primaries is Iowa and that state is a huge corn grower. Politicians promised to vote the 10% requirement into to law to get the Iowa vote and help their chances at the wining the presidential nomination.
You are correct... it's political BS.
Nailed it. It is called Political Money Laundering. Also known as Corruption. Nuff Said
@@terrycannon570 that stunt has snow balled into a nightmare for marinas and other small engine industries,where do you think those industries do with the bad gas? Yes, they dump it on the ground, it also has increased the demand for fuel injection systems and carburetor system cleaning labor, actually economic pluses . Just name a few problems political lobbyists cost us daily
In all probability 'environmentalism' was founded by Vladimir Lenin at the Chelyabinsk Commune in the early Sovient; and, was simply a land grab by the then newly risen and entitled communist elites. Over time 'environmentalism' has most probably been a disinformation entity, continually 're-hatched' by the Kremlin, in order to gain complete world hegemony of fuels, fertilizer; hence, world food production (including bio-fuels).
@@richh1576 lmao care to cite any sources? this sounds like complete rubbish. have you ever even read an actual scientific journal article on these topics?
The corn lobby is insanely powerful. 10 years ago, I wrote a paper for an undergraduate economics class. TL,DR corn subsidies pay companies to jam high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) into our processed food. HFCS causes significantly more obesity than cane sugar. We are using our tax dollars to make people fat. My professor suggested that I should write a different paper, because no politician will ever cancel corn subsidies.
And they have to keep us fat and sick to maintain the big Med and big Pharma machine. Follow the money, it's a deep... Deep rabbit hole.
@@paulsto6516 Part of the problem is our system in the US that gives the ag states way more influence for the size of the population. Think of the Senate where Iowa, Nebraska, ND, SD, Montana, Kansas and Wyoming have 7 times the votes as CA with about 30% of the population of CA. The electoral collage also give these states undue influence. A screwed up system unique to our country!
Well, GMO's are VERY bad. Corn is not alone in causing health issues. Any company changing less than 1% of a Seed then claiming that they own the rights to ALL varieties of the original Seed? 100% EVIL
@@gregkramer5588 that's by design. Different things are important to people in different population densities, but if you didn't have the Senate disproportionately representing low population states you'd have every vote determined by residents of New York and California alone.
@@arcanondrum6543 That is basic capitalism, change a very small percentage of something that already exists and claim it is your invention, has been going on for many hundreds of years.
The funniest part of this whole ethanol affair is that before 1920 a huge portion of internal combustion engines ran on ethanol. Ethanol was cheaper and more ubiquitous than gas which made it the preferred fuel. It was, however, heavily taxed in certain countries, including the US before 1906, which did make it more expensive than gas. Ford's Model T ran on ethanol by default (though it could be adjusted to run on gasoline as well). Especially all performance/race engines ran on various alcohols, due to their huge octane rating. And one of the major reasons for prohibition was lobbying by oil/gasoline companies, Standard Oil in particular. It was very effective indeed.
Ubikuitous
Don't get me started on Standard Oil
One more thing. The feed value of the corn in animal rations, which remains after fermentation, was ignored and is a vital component of the ethanol equation. Suggesting agricultural lands could be returned to non agricultural uses would lead to a sharp increase in food prices and have a ripple effect on global hunger. Converting agricultural lands to subdivisions, parking lots and malls represents a far greater threat to life and quality of life and is a permanent loss of land that could be used for food production.
1990s that’s right in the 1990s Popular Science wrote a magazine article explaining how Ethanol didn’t make sense because its energy intensive. Crazy that 30 years later we still can’t figure that out.
@ChrisLammTweets, we can/have it's just the politicians and big business who are using it as an excuse for the power/$$$. Talking about "land changing", "elitist" Bill Gates came to mind as he owns the most farm land I believe of anyone in the country nearly a quarter million acres he has bought up in the U.S. Now why would a "computer geek" buy up a couple hundred thousand acres of farm land. Ironically in an article he claimed he hadn't bought it for anything related to "climate/emissions" but said his "investment team bought it" and then he said "We need to grow more robust SEEDS....This will help with biofuels...." which obviously is about "climate/emissions" but then he went on to suggest "Poorer countries are not likely to consume unnatural sources of meet but rich countries like the U.S., we should definitely be eating 100% synthetic beef...." What an absolute nut-job.
funny how the "right thing to do" is dictated by which group is donating the most money to politicians...🤔🤔🤔🤔🤑
@@oldrrocrALWAYS BEEN THAT WAY
First of all, he did point out the advantages of ethanol in increasing the octane rating, reducing engine nocking and providing oxygen (it can be done in other ways) to reduce carbon monoxide. So it's not ethanol that's bad but corn based ethanol produced in the way that most American farms grow corn.
It's been known for a long time that about 2% of the world's carbon footprint is spent on the Haber process needed to make ammonia needed to make fertilizer. And no, the Solvay process to make nitrates was even more energy intensive. But there are renewable ways of powering the Haber process, pretty fancy green ways of making ammonia and frankly it may not be a bad thing if at least a good portion of farmers reverted to growing things more organically and rotated crops.
Ethanol can be made from lots of other plant material. My own grandfather was doing so on an industrial scale, enough to light the homes of a million people, from sugar beginning in 1906. And I know researchers now who are perfecting doing this from algae again on vast scales.
@@oldrrocr Capitalism goes brrrrr
Switchgrass ethanol has been known for years, the corn standard continues and will likely continue because it is a MASSIVE government hand out to Archer Daniels Midland, the basically sole producer of corn ethanol in the US. Given the current geopolitical situation the RFS should be suspended entirely so the farmland currently devoted to ethanol production can be used to produce food instead as the two largest grain producers in Europe are currently at war with each other.
And don't forget the huge petrochemical industry that benefits as well, through the massive amounts of diesel, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc needed to grow the monsanto-sourced corn in heavily abused and depleted soils. The vast majority of the corn being raised is #2 field corn, which is not food grade; it's used for cattle feed and ethanol. and most of it is being diverted to ADM, while the preferred cattle food is shifting to soybeans.
What these studies don’t consider is that all of the byproduct of ethanol is distillers grain. All of this is being used as animal feed. If the corn wasn’t used for ethanol it would be grown for feed anyway. Some of these studies say that the ground is being broken up for ethanol. That’s not entirely true. None of the distillers grain is being wasted. So it also is being broke up for just ethanol. It’s needed for food production. By feeding animals. By making ethanol out of it first you get both. With close to the same carbon footprint. Not to mention that the same ground also raises other crops. Corn is just a rotation crop. Soybeans are also used to feed animals. We as farmers would still brake up land for other crops. And there are millions of bushel of corn in grain bins that could be used for food if it was needed. But it’s not. Ethanol is great for farmers and for so many other things. It’s being used as race fuels. Because of its high octane. It’s a 100 octane fuel when using E85. Us gear heads use it for our race cars instead of oil based fuels. Recap. The carbon foot print to make ethanol also makes animal feed. Not one bit of the corn is t used. So ethanol makes very little carbon over what would be made for animal feed anyway. And yes it takes energy to make the fuel. But then it’s animal ready. Without making into fuel the rancher has to run it through a grinder or roller mill. Which takes fuel and creates carbon as well.
@@wademills1616 Ontop of higher octane and higher knock resistance, using Ethanol also runs cooler in the combustion chamber, an cleans it out a lot better than gasoline. An I love how it smells.
With what's going on in the Ukraine and how that affects the supply and price of crude oil, I doubt any big efforts are going to currently be made to lessen the production of any kind of ethanol, corn made or not.
@@wademills1616 Sounds like the graduates of higher class coastal institutions that don't like meat or combustion engines realized a bunch of fly over country is making money off of corn.
I couldn't stop laughing at the corn cob being thrown around in the video.
I was worried it was a waste of food
The reason this happened despite it being both financially and environmentally terrible is because of corn subsidies. In America we pay farmers to grow corn and sometimes we pay them NOT to grow corn, to keep the market “steady.” The problem comes from the fact that without subsidies, nobody in their right mind would be making ethanol, they’d be losing so much money because of the logistics involved. 1 gallon of ethanol might need 1/2 gallon of diesel fuel to produce and transport it, it might need 3lbs of compressed natural gas to brew the corn (making beer essentially) the amount of electricity in making a gallon of ethanol is probably enough to drive an electric car 100 miles. It’s just another terrible idea from the bureaucratic system here in USA. Yay!
All the energy it takes to produce and deliver a product to the consumer is reflected in the price of the product.
Today the NYMEX spot cash delivered price of ethanol is $2.19/gal.
An unusable sub-grade of gasoline (RBOB) is $2.74/gal.
To turn RBOB into usable E0 costs even more and unfortunately becomes even more toxic and dirtier.
Ethanol is distilled at far lower temperatures than petroleum. Also, ethanol producers have been switching to using waste steam from natural gas electric plants. The largest ethanol producer has at least half their plants this way so the price of ethanol has room to remain low. Waste steam = free energy.
Ethanol producers are somewhat insulated from the price of corn for if corn is low in price, then so too are the prices of the distillers grains and byproducts. If corn is high in price like it was most of this year, they kept ethanol low with making it up with high prices of their distillers grains.
Corn ethanol is a value-added product of already existing feed production which leaves 100% of the protein and other things still available for feed in a healthier, more digestible/efficient, and more concentrated form called distillers grains.
Iowa State University measured all the energy it takes to produce an acre of corn into a "diesel fuel equivalent"
This included machinery, fertilizer, chemicals, tillage, planting, harvesting, drying, trucking etc.
They found it takes 34 gal of diesel to produce one acre of corn.
What do we get from those 34 gallons of diesel?
We get >500 gallons of ethanol.
But wait, that is not the kicker.
The kicker is we still get 100% of the protein from that acre of corn still available for an even better feed. A win, win.
All the costs incurred in producing and delivering a product are NOT reflected in the price. Certainly not in the world of American agriculture. Taxpayers heavily subsidize agriculture whether they like it or not, to the tune of US$30 Billion. Since the government is so secretive about this, some experts think the true figure may be closer to US$40 Billion. Over 600,000 American farms receive regular handouts. These subsidies artificially lower commodity prices, distorting the free enterprise system.@@danafletcher2341
I was directly involved in the effort to avoid the EtOH mandates on the oil and gas side. We specifically told all members of Congress we could make cleaner burning fuel without EtOH. We showed them we could do it. We said they could set whatever fuel standard they wanted as for how clean it needed to burn, and we could develop a fuel to meet it. But that is not what they wanted to hear. Most Congressmen refused to even speak to us about it. It was the period of time where I gave up on the US Government as a whole and realized it had nothing to do with actually helping anyone. The only language that spoke was money and whoever was willing to give more of it wins.
Unfortunately, Monsanto has more money than all the rest of us combined.
I was thinking when watching this video all the facts do not matter. The narrative has been set, the politicians have been paid (and are still being paid) and the EtOH will continue. It will take deeper pockets to change the narrative. FACTS and TRUTH DO NOT MATTER.
@@redbarond1 : yes, Monsanto even had a ride in Disneyland!
Yep, that sounds about right for US politicians. It won't be like that forever.
Money buys votes self interest buys votes. Voted into office who wants to loose their job. No use complaining when you need to realize the basic reality of political science.
I'm a little late, but Brazil (where I'm from) does use ethanol as fuel. And probably we're the only country in the world that does that in large scale. Here, at any gas station you have both options (ethanol or gas) and of course Diesel too. Our gasoline is mandatory 27% ethanol mixed or we use E100 (even BMWs now are flex fuel). We started it back in the 1970's due to oil crisis, but environment and sustentability wasn't a concern. We did it for economic purposes and we have a domestic control of an energy resource.
In Brazil we use sugar cane and it take 17 years to breakeven the carbon release. Many, many studies have been conducted here. One thing, decades of inovations made the whole chain to be 30% more cleaner since early 2,000s when 2nd gen ethanol began. We also have to consider ethanol from sugar cane has a better ratio of gallons per hectare than corn. But any inovation or gain you only can have if any country really adopts ethanol in large scale and then as expected, invest to make it way cheaper, relase less greenhouse gases, etc. That's what happened here.
Let's be real. If you wanna think about environment and sustentability we can only have by reducing private vehicles (ICE or EV) to public transportation. Tesla wont1s save us. What will save is our change in behaviour and consumption. You can't beat physics: 4,000lb car to carry 1 or 2 people is not efficient.
AMEN brother!
It is not efficient, but there is ways to make it so. Cars are still using metal body, but several cars have been using some form of synthetic material, it is widely used in races. Lighter exterior materials is one way. Battery reduction is being researched continuosly. That is higher density batteries. The lighter the car the more effivient and the samaller battery. ICE cars had 100 years to evolve but they ended up with very large SUV's and huge pickups that are never used for heavy work, they are used as a large lxury car for a family, but both SUV and pickups are used mostly to cary a single person during week days. Just plain terrible EV's are the right way to go, but they will go a fast evolution since so many large companies are putting billions in their development.
Yeah but the lighter the car the less safe it is in a wreck. That's why we can never have flying cars, they would absolutely fail any crash test standards.
@@trey2735 just don't crash the car
@@trey2735 any safety gained by driving a heavier vehicles comes at the cost of people outside of the vehicle which creates an incentive for others to drive heavier vehicles which creates a feedback loop that leads to heavier and heavier vehicles
I know this is an older video but iv'e got to say as a UK citizen I really like the style of this video, quick start, straight into the subject matter no heavy guitar riffs at the beginning no 'in video' ads for PCB manufacturers or VPN suppliers etc...love it, and i'll subscribe just for that, and of course for the very well presented subject...
The only problem with it is that there were no grasslands or forests broken up for corn. Quite impossible since US cropland acres have been declining since ethanol.
US Census data even shows corn producing states increased grassland, forest, and wildlife areas since ethanol as well.
Believe it or not, the corn belt grew more corn acres in 1980 before ethanol than they did in 2018, the year of most ethanol production ever and ethanol plants everywhere.
2018 Iowa 13,200,000 acres of corn with record ethanol production
1980 Iowa 14,000,000 acres of corn before ethanol
2018 Illinois 11,000,000 acres of corn with record ethanol production
1980 Illinois 11,600,000 acres of corn before ethanol
2018 Indiana 5,350,000 acres of corn with record ethanol production
1980 Indiana 6,450,000 acres of corn before ethanol
YAY! I've been a ineffectual proponent of switchgrass since the early 2000s. It's awesome to see this topic presented. Please now make a video showing alcohol production from switch grass vs from corn, especially showing the amount of leftover waste produced by both (just make two piles of the leftover biomass).
Just under half of our corn planted is value added into ethanol and distillers grains.
100% of the fertilizer and things in the soil still get fed to livestock in the distillers grains. Ethanol comes from only things of the air: solar energy, CO2, and water with the latter two recycled once burnt.
100% of the protein, minerals, vitamins, fats, etc are in the triple concentrated distillers grains. It is not a waste, indeed corn ethanol would be far too uneconomical to even produce otherwise. But with its feed factor, few other sources (even though they may make more ethanol per acre) can compete with it.
The Federal subsidy on corn ethanol ended back in 2011. There still exists a Federal subsidy for generation 2 ethanol which switchgrass would qualify for, and this subsidy is over twice as much as what corn ethanol's (generation 1) had been. There was a generation 2 ethanol plant almost built that was to use corn stover in Nevada, Iowa but this was never completed and was since repurposed.
It is hard and expensive to make ethanol from cellulose which is why all the drinkable spirits we have been made from sugars and starches.
Switchgrass requires a dedicated acre of land whereas corn ethanol comes from already existing feed production acres but as a source, we can only economically just over double our current production from it.
Corn has no nutritional value,
Its roughage until you turn it into corn fructose a sugar additive they put in soft drinks and use instead of cain sugers open a bottle of karo syrup its corn syrup its thick think what that dose in your blood stream.
Its banned in European country's as a sugar substute because its not healthy.
Your better off plowing it into the soil.
I also know sugar cane is about 12x more efficient. Since there is an already perfected system of production of extremely cheap ethanol in Brazil, why was not that copies into sunny and wet places like Florida or the golf cost states?
@@fmilan1 Bing copilot says we do a little, but the vast majority is (value-added) from corn. I imagine they make more money for sugar production. Hawaii imports expensive diesel to make dirty electricity, they could use their abandoned sugar cane fields to make pollution free cheap fuel and electricity for a fraction of what they spend on other renewables.
Bing states sugarcane make 560 gallons of ethanol per acre on a 35 ton/acre crop. Sounds a little low to me but that is what it said.
Value-adding corn into ethanol produces not only >500 gallons per acre but also 1000 lbs. of protein (& other things) per acre. This feed factor is why it can economically outcompete even sugarcane.
So much so that Brazil put an import tariff on US ethanol in 2017. Went up to 18% this year.
Brazil is also using corn for ethanol. It is a good fit because unlike cane, corn stores well so they are able to more efficiently run their ethanol plants all year-round in-between cane harvests.
@@deltalimaactual Switch grass is fine and there exists a Federal subsidy if anyone wanted to make it of $1.01/gallon. Corn ethanol's subsidy which had been $.45/gal. ended back in 2011.
Switchgrass requires a dedicated acre of farmland and dedicated fertilizer. Cellulose ethanol plants are expensive to build and it is harder to get ethanol from which is why spirits like whiskey, rum, gin, vodka, saki, etc. are made from sugars and starches, not cellulose.
Corn ethanol is value-added from already existing feed production acres which preserves the feed in a healthier and more productive form called distillers grains.
There were no grassland or forestland broken up for corn ethanol. US cropland acres have been declining so it is quite impossible.
Most corn grown is fed to livestock though there is nothing stopping us from eating distillers grains.
100% of the fertilizer and everything from the soil still gets fed to the livestock in the distillers grains. Ethanol is made only of things of the air: solar energy, CO2, and water with the latter two recycled once burnt.
Cattle cannot digest starch well and waste it out their backsides as methane gas and carb rich manure which turns into methane later.
I personally try to eat grass fed beef so if everyone ate like me, corn ethanol would not exist as it would become too uneconomical to produce without its feed factor (distillers grain).
I'm a chemical engineer. One of the projects we did in my plant design class was a corn based ethanol plant. You could tell who couldn't get their head around it being a net energy loss and losing money. A few groups tried to say their plant was profitable. Since corn has such low sugar concentration, it takes more energy to make the ethanol than you get from it's use as fuel. Need to use something like sugar cane or sugar beets like Brazil does to make it profitable. My professor made it a point that we all knew back when these regulations were rolling out that it was worse just from that aspect. Any savings in emissions at the tailpipe is lost in the production of the ethanol. Not to mention, all the corn being gobbled up for fuel made food manufacturers move to soy which caused food prices to increase. Now, biodiesel plants are moving to soy bean oil, so there are more food price increases as they compete with heavily subsidized biodiesel plants for soy.
Teh increase in food prices are justthe harbinger warning - even at few % of fuel this actually supplies. Did you ever look at it from the wide picture - biochemical/ sun / photosynthesis energy harvest pointt of view. My understanding is that to fuel a billion cars more and more with *any* plant crop it means that more and more of the 7 billion people on earth starve. Ultimately the total area of arable land needed to produce all fuel requirements - even via more efficient sugar beet - exceeds the land we need to feed humans.
If we have a spare Earth to grow these crops on then sure- otherwise this seems the dumbest idea ever.
As a Im a Physical Chemist and Mech. Engr. (thermo). Why would anyone NOT see that 10% EtOH is a net loss ... simply because of lower energy density of EtOH; and which also lowers the energy density of the combined fluids when mixed with 'normal' gasoline.
Why are the so-called environmentalists, politicians, and Lobbyists attempting to change & disinform the (inviolate) laws of thermodynamics ?????
If you really want to have your eyes opened, do a 'back of the envelope' estimate calculation of exactly how much of the 48 contiguous US states' surface area would need to be ***covered with SOLAR PANELS*** in order to equate to the approx. 100 'quadrillion' BTUs/yr. of energy presently consumed in the US.
@@richh1576 Most folks in Maryland hadf small farms or had a relative with one until the early 60's anyhow as gasoline ended up being gasahol we let each other know make sure you run it dry because condensation
Or use Dry Gas once in awhile
I believe. And have suspected for decades.
I work near an auto repair shop and consider this: all the emissions equipment costs mega money to repair and cannot be recycled. No only that, but the damage and unnecessary service, tags, licenses, paperwork, gov employees, the energy from the buildings, electricity, CO2 tied to what the goverment spends enforcing the codes to get to that 20% is more than they could ever hope to offset.
The more CO2 in the air the better plants grow which in turn puts more O2 in the air for people/animals to breathe.
Its called follow the money. Thats all its about.
@@billkeithchannel We are way beyond the sweet spot. And the added heat by the increasing greenhouse effect is a detriment to plant growth.
@@Sturzfaktor2 Are we actually, though? And if we were, couldn't we just put more trees(such in in those fields used for fuel crops), or, better yet, spread out the exhaust instead of concentrating in into megacities?
We do have a year and a half or so of environmental data from people being forced to mostly stay at home to consider as well.
Can you give me a few examples of such emissions equipment? The ones I know of are only costly or unable to be repaired because car manufacturers use them for profit.
A key point is missing from this analysis. How does ethanol compare to MBTE or fuel additives which perform the same function. Eliminating MBTE was a key justification for using ethanol.
Corn ethanol is non-toxic, very cheap, and 100% of the CO2 produced by the fermentation and burning of it is not newly added CO2. About the complete exact opposite of MTBE.
This study's claim that virgin land and forests were broken up to plant corn is utter horse hockey. US cropland acres have fallen since ethanol so it is impossible. In fact, the corn belt grew more corn acres in 1980 before ethanol than in 2018, the year of most ethanol production ever.
I'm by no means an expert but the use of MTBE caused noticeable environmental problems just a couple years after it was introduced. There's a reason we switched to ethanol so soon after we switched to MTBE and it's not because MTBE was fantastic. I'm not a huge ethanol fan (except in higher performance forced induction engines) but it's the best octane additive we have so far. I just wish the US used switchgrass or cane sugar to make it instead of corn but that's never going to happen with all the corn lobbying and subsidies
We actually started “playing” with ethanol back around the early 70s. Back then it was called “gasohol”. Grain processor ADM was the big instigator.
I studied in Energy Engineering, and this was something that I have been explaining to people for years that a lot of this stuff can be greenwashed and isn't necessarily as good as someone might think it is. The corn growers were subsidized which made it profitable to do so, but it increased food prices by reducing food crop space, the greenhouse gas reduction also depends on how detailed the scope is, but it also might not consider pollution due to fertilizers in land, water, and especially land use change effects. I think one of the most efficient ones was sugar at the time, but it also caused some places to have rainforest deforestation due to its profitability. The last I heard someone was developing algae for biofuel as well.
The subsidies also increase CO2 emissions - if CO2 emissions were a Bad Thing, which is arguable - as those subsidies are taken from the wealth created by private business which might well have used that taxed away cash to increase the efficiency of their own production. See Bastiat, what is seen and not seen.
The whole CO2 / Ethanol thing is a racket.
First of all the Co2 hysteria is scam just like the corona hysteria! Methanol and Ethanol in fuel is good not because of Co2 but because it reduces actual harful emmisions other then Co2. On my 1991 2 Liter Mercedes 190E I had to run it on 40% Ethanol fuel to pass the emmission tests here in Norway and when running that the test result was 0 emmision (lower then they could measure?). Without the Ethanol it had no chanse of passing the emmissions tests. . . .
What's more important is usually how energy is produced (or caught) rather than transported. Cultivating is a quite inefficient and pollutive way to get energy.
Co2 is an issue, just a complicated issue. Let’s just say that you could pump an unlimited amount of Co2 into the atmosphere and it would not effect climate in anyway. That completely ignores what it does to acidifying the ocean. More Co2 = more acidic oceans, less co2 = less acidic. It’s a pretty black and white. So why is acid water an issue. Well because it’s destroys habitat that is the base for almost all ocean life.
Fun fact the reef off of the coast of Florida has had 90% die off of the reef build species. Which has let to a collapse of the fishing industry in the area.
Hemp makes biofuel cost almost noting to grow dosnt require water or fertilizers or herbsides pulls co2 out of the air and basically has more then one use, and im not talking about it as a drug.
The plant has many uses.
We should also look at suger crops as a fuel then your motor will really rummmm along. Might even smell sweeter.
I'm sure there's not a lot of stock footage out there for corn based ethanol, but you did a great job creating your own! 😂
No kidding. It really got me! 😂
if switchgrass is cleaner why ethanol then which is so dirty in comparison?🤣
9:43 Will corncob fit in gastank? 😂
@@raven4k998bc people actually grow corn
@@jmasterc32_f76 and eat it with yummy butter melted on it mmm does your mouth not water just thinking about it?🤣
There are some errors in the UW-Madison study, based on a few smaller Ethanol plants which do use the same processes as the larger ethanol plants. Corn has a higher starch content than other grains. Second in the US cornbelt where most of the corn is grown, they have converted land to agricultural use in about 100 years, the actual number of acres has been reducing because of urban growth. The difference is made up by increasing yields on the land used, Tillage is not quite the carbon sin you make it out to be (and don't listen to lawyers talking about farming in the 1st place). Grasslands are not as effective at collecting atmo. CO2 as corn fields. Corn plants grow a lot faster and the corn kernels make up a small portion of the corn plants weight. All that corn plant is made from CO2 taken from the air and water. Tillage of the corn ground after harvesting the grain sequesters a significant amount of CO2 in the form of Soil Organic matter which further increases soil productivity.
THANK YOU!
You're about the 100th person commenting on this video about how wrong this study was (it was clearly agenda driven IMO), and yet our esteemed presenter ran and hid when people began calling him out for presenting this nonsense as fact. I'm no fan of subsidies (nor of high fructose corn syrup), but fuel ethanol is pretty damn useful, even when it's made from corn.
I can drive you around in a 50mi radius and show you lots of new fields were there were once fencerows, county roads, mature woods, homes, barns, pig-sheep-cattle-goat-horse farms, pastures, prairie grasses, etc. It is COMMON to see a 50a woods one day, and piles of trees burning for a week. I watched a 10a woods completely returned to farmground in 3 days...with a smoldering dirt covered hole for a week. They rarely log before dozing & burning. It is common to see very recently occupied houses & barns bulldozed for 2a of farm ground. I cannot tell you of a single fence row that I know of in a one hour radius of me...unless it is actively holding beef cattle or horses. Wildlife of any kind has no way to dodge predators or habitat to flourish/survive. There is no urban sprawl because landowners will not give up an acre....unless it is to lease a windmill....and I will get off the soapbox before I get going on that.
@@bradleywatt9769 That's an anecdote. Meaning it happened, but it isn't representative of the whole. The amount of land in the US being used for agriculture has dropped precipitously since the ethanol mandates. That's total amount of land.
@@bradleywatt9769 BS your a zrussian.
I like that my car is just a little drunk
You'd be more than a little drunk if you lived off nothing but 10%!
I work at a ethanol plant in 2014 they use a coal fired boiler to generate steam, the plant also used natural gas and electricity. Plus because of ATF regulations gasoline has to be hauled to the plant and mixed with the ethanol before it can be transported. After seeing it first hand I would guess ethanol does very little to reduce carbon emissions.
It can and does reduce emissions, it's the method we're using to make it at scale which is horribly inefficient. Question is, do we want cheap gas, or do we want cleaner gas? Can't have both, yet.
A solar reflector array and a highrise hydroponics tower... Energy, heat, and a gravity battery, built into one facility. that'd do it. Nobody is going to front the cost of construction though.
OIL refining also burns tons of natural gas and electricity, to distill gasoline. It actually takes more energy to make gasoline than the amount of energy that gasoline will produce.
Also ethanol is only bad in the US, because the US can only grow corn to make ethanol.
In brasil, where they make it out of sugar cane, the amount of ethanol obtained by mass, and by land area, is WAY much higher. Like 6 times more i think.
And corn is actually one of the worst crops for ethanol, but it's the only thing that the US can grow for it. Because of soil and climate.
@@gdxd7956 what about switchgrass?
You mean coal fired?
@@fieldlab4 Really. what are you a fifth grade teacher .talk to text does not always work
They knew the corn based ethanol math was horseshit. The politicians cooked the numbers to make it fit what they wanted, which was a way to require more dollars to be funneled to their corporate corn-growing friends. He says "farmers" but in the US almost all the corn is grown by corporations and the farmers are little more than employees.
They're cookin' the books again to make EV's look wonderful.
@@ichoppabroccoli3670 The lifetime carbon cost of EVs is lower than ICE and more to the point can be reduced with decrabonisation of electricity production.
Yes, I know renewables can't come close to fill the hole that removing "burning stuff" creates in energy utilisation - but they're a stepping stone in reducing carbon emissions until nuclear power gets better
Hint: ORNL MSRE, SINAP TMSR-LF1 - if the Chinese rebuild of Oak Ridge's 1960s work validates the results of 55 years ago, then nuclear power just got 80% cheaper to build/operate and waste output was reduced by 99%, whilst the reactor temperature got high enough to efficiently generate power and substantially reduce maintenance costs in the non-nuclear side (superrcritical steam production, instead of wet steam as is currently produced in nuke plants - which causes massive levels of blade erosion in steam turbines)
If nuclear energy is cheap enough, then hydrogen for Haber-bosch processes is carbon-neutral (current carbon emissions from fertilizer production are higher than the world's transport fleet) and you have enough energy available to tack on atmospheric carbon and make portable synthetic hydrocarbons - which gets around the massive costs and dangers of trying to use raw hydrogen as a transport fuel.
Yes, it means fuels will be more expensive than electricity (joule for joule), but in cases such as longhaul aviation, it's a cost that will be eaten (air transport will return to being something for the rich and public transportation _will_ rise again as fuel costs pass $10/gallon)
Worse than employees they are indoctrinated into a broken farming system and forced into debt
Just another Jimmy Carter failure. Remember when he was going to force the US to go to the metric system ?
@@ichoppabroccoli3670 at least with EV, the thermodynamics checks out, unlike ethanol. A properly supported EV network will produce double the distance a car can produce using the same amount of gasoline as fuel for their generators. Cars simply suck at converting fuel to motion and cogeneration makes fuel stretch significantly
The impact of using corn was indeed considered and this is why considerable effort went into using the stalks and other associated materials, much harder to do than using corn kernels but using genetic modification of the fermentation systems this was done. This then allowed biofuel to occur during the production of normal corn crops. The challenge was again cost in that this process was expensive and this is more the reason it failed as a venture despite some big name companies investing billions in this research. Ultimately, systems must not only be carbon positive but also economic. Plastics can be made from sugarcane but the cost of such materials is 3-4X the cost of hydrocarbon feed stock. The carbon argument is important but the king of it all ends up as economics.
If you're going to argue that ethanol isn't necessarily a poor choice aside from the emissions resulting from land clearing and production, I'd be interested in seeing a similar scrutiny applied to the process of refining oil. Specifically, consider the emissions impact of constructing drilling platforms and transporting oil in container ships across oceans compared to a farmer clearing land just once. It seems you've overlooked the fact that our energy demands are growing, and we must address today's needs. If, as you mention, the lifecycle of ethanol proves to be more favorable than the linear journey of oil from extraction to atmosphere, then the one-off impact of land clearing could potentially be less detrimental than the ongoing processes involved in importing foreign oil or erecting infrastructure for refining oil into gasoline.
Considering a container ship's journey from the Middle East to the United States, spanning roughly 8,000 nautical miles at an average speed of 23 knots with a daily fuel consumption of 150 metric tons, the voyage consumes about 13.78 million gallons of fuel. Intriguingly, this amount of fuel-the same consumed by a cargo ship on such a trip-could be used to clear approximately 1,722,861 acres of land with a bulldozer that uses 8 gallons of diesel per hour and clears an acre an hour.
I'd appreciate your perspective on this.
"Explaining the science behind slapping two corn cobs against one another."
This is my favorite video of yours that I have seen. Thank you for what appears to have been a lot of hard work.
Not everyone has what it takes to throw corn cobs at the wall, but I’m willing to put in the time to learn.
This. Lol … and SWEET CORN which is not like the field corn that is used for ethanol production
Nooo! I found the corn bit distracting and disrespectful of the white board. Once was ok but was way overdone. I suppose it’s entertaining for some, likely the same crowd that would start a food fight in grade school.
@@EngineeringExplained As an Iowan, them's fightin' woids!
@@EngineeringExplained All (negative emissions, Hydrocarbons & Nox) come directly from the moisture (H2O) that is 'baked into the cake' of all fossil fuels. As the fuel passes through the combustion process, the water turns to steam, and because water is a solvent, it attracts unburned carbons (HCL) and burned carbons (Nox), creating negative emissions. A catalytic converter is 'supposed to' reheat the exhaust enough to 'burn' the water enough to release the carbons (burned and unburned) lowering emissions.
However, not until the engine temp gets hot enough to make the catalytic converter hot enough to do it's job.
Now, just imagine, if there was a way to disassociate the hydrogens from the oxygen molecules in the combustion process. If those hydrogen atoms could be released, they could then be burned with the fuel, raising the BTU of the fuel, making it more powerful (more power= more efficient), as well as adding oxygen to the combustion process (kind of a little shot of nitrous oxide, increasing the oxygen level of the ambient intake air charge). And once the water has now been 'burned' (disassociate H2 from O), there are zero emissions, and no catalytic converter necessary.
Now imagine IF no catalytic converter is necessary, One could lower the engine water temperature, back to say 160-185 for maximum fuel burn efficiency, and oil viscosity life, one could increase efficiency even more.
Ironically, I know how to do the process of burning (disassociating H2 from O), simply by imparting a specific frequency into the fuel, before it reaches combustion chamber. The process of imparting a frequency upon the fuel changes the dynamic structure of the water in the fuel, changing it from H2O to H3O2 (known as Hydronium, Structured Water, or EZ water, depending on what discipline of science you are accustomed to)
The end result is (depending on driver) up to a 20% increase in fuel efficiency, as well as a drastic reduction in both HCL and Nox. In my experiments, the emissions measure in an algorithmic fashion, depending on how humid the intake air is that the engine is running in. That indicates that the moisture that the air is holding, is the factor that changes the emissions. I haven't quite figured out how to 'treat' the intake charge with the frequency I speak of.... Yet....
Now, to go one further, I am experimenting with adding MORE water directly to the gasoline and getting even more positive results. I'm currently adding 16oz. of tap water directly to 5 gallons of 87octane gasoline, and getting another 10-15% increase in fuel efficiency, with negligible effect on exhaust emissions.
I've tried numerous times to demonstrate my discoveries with gas companies, auto manufacturers, and politicians (concerned with environment). NONE of them will communicate with me, once I reveal how I do what I do... I've figured out it's not about the environment, it's about maximizing profit. Follow the $$$.
I've been saying this for 15 years. Ethanol is a great fuel, but corn is a poor feed stock. Switchgrass, sugar cane, and wood pulp are all significantly better options. Honestly, they only produce ethanol from corn due to lobbyists pushing it so hard.
Thank you for drawing more attention to this and for sharing this new study!
The ethanol conversion on switchgrass and all other cellulose based system is horribly inefficient.
Finally someone who gets it
@@bowez9 what does Brazil use?
@@Iahusha777Iahuah sugar cane.
But this video isn't about Brazil.
Switchgrass and most other cellulose sources are worse than corn. They are too bulky to transport. Most take more energy to process. Crops like switchgrass are single use. Unlike corn which produces ethanol plus acre for acre as much feed as soybeans.
Corn ethanol has another benefit for human security. We depend on corn not only for food but also many manufacturing processes. If there is a severe drought for example, ethanol production could be reduced. Thus, saving corn for other uses. I'd guess a 20-30% buffer against really dramatic consequences.
Can't do that with your other sources.
Good video, and lots of facts. However, a few things a left out regarding ethanol. 1st, the #2 yellow corn which is used for ethanol is not human grade corn. Its used maily for animal feed. That said, the byproduct of ethanol production, distillers grain, is about 1/3 of the volume by weight of the original corn. This is put back into the feed ration for animals, and is an excellent source of protein (since the starch has been extracted) in an easily digestible form, typically 15% more efficient than the raw corn.
Also, in another video from EE, if modern engines were set up for higher compression and turbocharging, they would make more power, on the same volume of fuel, even though ethanol is less energy dense.
Lastly, something that doesnt get brought up is the cost/carbon impact, and cost, of defending our oil assests in the middle east.
Yes and thank you.
The link for Cynthia Giles article (next generation compiliance) doesn't seem to work anymore. I'm looking for part 4 specifically and can't find it. Does anyone have a working link or a pdf they could share?
This discussion we took in Brazil in the 90's. Here we grow sugarcane (with second generation fermentation) thats waay more productive than corn ethanol.
The results of the discussion here is: no need to increase the crop area. Sugarcane DESTROYS the soil and the iimpact is huge. But where the damage is already done worth continue cropping.
Also, we have flexfuel cars, that run purely in hidrated ethanol, what also increase the impact. Our gas have 27% of ethanol too.
It's not perfect tho, in big cities, like Sao Paulo, the ethanol burn produces aldehydes that worsen the city smog
@Elias Håkansson Yep. Cars in ethanol are the worst in the winter too :)
There is a channel about an Brazilian that bought a Brazilian car and try to use the USA ethanol in his car. Less power, and smells like a very drunk person. Besides, they sacrifice crop fields that could produce FOOD.
E que bom!! Mais um brasileiro que fala as verdades sobre a cana, combustível etanol e os impactos ambientais que o governo INSISTE em falar que não acontece!!!
If sugarcane is destroying the soil in your property you're doing something VERY wrong. We already have the technology and management techniques to avoid that.
Source: am brazilian agronomist.
US restricts sugar cane and sugar cane ethanol imports - again due to lobbying by a strong US sugar cartel. This keeps US prices high and sticks us with worse tasting foods and poorer quality ethanol. Thanks politicians.
@Elias Håkansson we had that problem in Brazil as well, since some regions do get cold here. Initally (1st gen Flex - up to ~2010) cars had a cold start which basically injected a small amount of gasoline (separate tank, with 1-2liters), when the weather outside is below 15ºC. Around 2010, Bosch and Magneti Marelli developed a heating coil (2nd gen flex) that heats the ethanol before injecting it in the engine. Currently, some cars have direct injection (3rd gen flex) so that is no longer needed. I believe there isnt any car being produced today that is still 1st gen flex, that need the extra tank of gasoline for cold start.
@@Kiyoone here in Brazil we may have an advantaged vs. the US since sugar cane ethanol is used as fuel for cars since the 70's. Also, we are the 2nd largest producer of sugar in the world, so there was not the need to convert soil for sugarcane, when it began being used for fuel. All gasoline has ethanol here since the 90's, when we dropped lead and added ethanol in its place. All ethanol/flex cars here produce more power than when used with gasoline, for a few decades, specially those that were E100 only (no longer produced).
You left out the fact that ethanol doesn't contain the same amount of energy as gasoline thus reducing the efficiency of internal combustion engines resulting in more fuel being consumed in the pursuit of conservation. It's also bad for many engines, especially small engines, causing them to run too lean. Another wonderful known byproduct is that ethanol is hydroscopic which leads to fuel system problems and internal corrosion. Rubber and plastic can swell or lose their structural integrity causing seals to leak or fail. Some manufacturers will void the warranty if E15 is used. Everything about this substitute adds to more energy being consumed to compensate for it. If it worked there would be no need to mandate it.
"As a result, taxpayers have spent billions of dollars over the last 30 years subsidizing the production of corn ethanol, while at the same time creating unintended costs for consumers and the environment."
This was always politics. It's been well known since its inception that the unintended consequences outweighed any theoretical good.
detail question, what makes you say it's bad especially for small engines? don't oxygen sensors and stoichiometric EFI operating/control strategies correct it to lambda=1 which is say 14.7 for 0% Eth gas and 14.3 or whatever respective point (i forget) it might be for E10 gas etc?
Imagine having a carburetted motorcycle and leaving it for some time without starting it. Gunks up jets, clogs the fuel bowl etc
Makes startups after winter a pain in the back
Yes. I did use fuel stabilizer, didnt do jackshit
@@renizer not on lawn mowers/ lawn equipment and carbureted motorcycles. Anything without electronics to compensate. Seems like you’re nit picking and missing the bigger picture…
The best results would be reached if gasoline cars were turned into flex-fuel (or bi-fuel, whatever the name) cars. I installed a small box to my previous car and that basically monitors the data from lambda and increases the time the injectors are open. So it stands between the car's own computer and the injector. Of course it also monitors the alcohol concentration. E85 contains about 85% of ethanol and my 2001 Audi A6 was running like a charm with it and also with any mixture of that and gasoline. Only cold starts in the winter are a problem, below -5 celsius needs some gasoline mixture. Pure E85 consumption was about 30% bigger than 98 octane (Europe standard, don't remember the RON vs whatever differences) that has 5% ethanol in it and can be used without any modifications to your car.
But also, the ethanol should be made out of waste, not turn land and grow food for that. In Finland ST1 produces it's ethanol from wood industry's waste and some common waste too. So they're using the leftovers that wouldn't be used elsewhere. CO2 isn't of course the only emission difference, ethanol burns much cleaner too. And a bit cooler.
@@someguy9520 yes. I spent hours attempting to clean a carburetor on a motorcycle that had sat for an extended time. It never fully regained its original performance. At least not with the time I put into it.
Ethanol is economical in Brazil. Sugar cane grows so fast they have to cut it out of the median on the highways an throw it out for safety reasons so drivers can see over it.
According to BioZio, five gallons of kudzu mash equals about half a gallon of ethanol, which can produce about 270 gallons of ethanol per acre. This is comparable to corn which amounts to anywhere from 210 to 320 gallons per acre.
Your data is very old, today the US turns 2.9 bushels of corn into one gallon of ethanol while preserving 100% of the protein and other things for feed as distillers grains and other byproducts.
2023 corn yield was 177.3 bu./acre so this equals to about 514 gallons of ethanol per acre.
The five-year average US corn yield is 173.3 and this equals to 502.6 gallons per acre.
Iowa State University measured all the energy it takes to produce an acre of corn into a "diesel fuel equivalent"
This included making the machinery, fertilizer, chemicals, plus the tillage, planting, harvesting, drying, trucking etc.
They found it takes 34 gal of diesel to produce one acre of corn.
What do we get from those 34 gallons of diesel?
We get >500 gallons of ethanol.
But wait, that is not the kicker.
The kicker is we still get 100% of the protein and other things from that acre of corn still available for an even better feed called distillers grains. A win, win.
The biggest reason they went with corn was simply that it was easy and (relatively) cheap. Stuff like switchgrass is unquestionably better, but even today there is no cost effective way to convert it to ethanol at scale.
Yeah and I’m sure Monsanto had something to do with the choice of using a crop that relies heavily on their seeds and pesticides.
@@darylSKYTZOwillis Yes - Monsanto is the ignored elephant in this video.
You can thank the Obama administration for that one.
It’s funny, when I was 10 years old i did a paper for a literary competition discussing the effects of ethanol in Gasoline, the only difference is mine was based on sugar cane (grew up on an island, that’s where we get our ethanol). i did the argument against ethanol in gas and surprisingly won. That paper listed all the negatives which far outweighed the positives. Im 24 soon. This information has been out for a long time but the government doesn’t care
You're absolutely right. Keep fighting. This stuff was obvious to me when I was a kid too. Now I'm 50 and too old and tired to do anything about it.
Nobody does anything today unless it will net a profit, and that needs to change if we want to remain a viable species.
It’s the same with 90% of pharmaceutical drugs. The side affects far outweigh the intended benefit but yet the FDA approves this crap
Oh the government does care. About the corn lobby.
The government dosen't care...in more ways than one.
@@stickyfox
Existentially speaking, what is our ‘purpose’ in the universe anyway? The viability of the human race is irrelevant. In the big picture, it makes NO difference if we make it or not as a race.
I personally care very little about the emissions impact but I feel like for the sake of energy independence if we worked to make full ethanol fuel transition to possibly hybrids made to use 100% ethanol we could actually have a sustainable reasonable energy solution which would in 50-100 years reduce emissions and we would have a renewable fuel source. Also ethanol doesn't have to be corn based, it could be any old plant matter because it's just refined alcohol really. So maybe we experiment with different plants and find which is the easiest to grow in large quantities with minimal emissions and maximize ethanol output
All the clips of raw corn being thrown around at gallon bottles of ethanol were a nice funny touch 🤓
Very interesting video, shedding light on this issue. U had no idea that just tilling the land releases the C.
The fermentation and burning of ethanol releases no new CO2 so they needed to find a release of CO2 somehow, so they fictitiously claim virgin soils and forests were broken up for ethanol.
This is simply impossible since US cropland acres have been falling since ethanol came to be. Believe it or not, the corn belt grew more corn acres in 1980 before ethanol than in 2018, the year of most ethanol production ever.
100% of the fertilizer applied to corn still goes to livestock in the distillers grains. Ethanol is only made of things from the air: solar energy, CO2, and water.
What logic is it to assign all the CO2 from fertilizer to ethanol and none to the distillers grains?
Government subsidized agriculture of corn caused all of this. What a racket! Thanks for the update.
...and it'll never be undone.
Farmers have historically been supported by government in America because food production and the ability to feed ourselves is considered a part of national security.
Not just a farm subsidy but a subsidy for agriscience giants promoting their seed/fertilizer/herbacides and the petroleum companies that get to sell you about 15% more gallons when you look at the 14/9 split in stoichiometry.
@@76horsepower Unfortunately the ethanol subsidies aren't going to the small farmers but rather to the farming giants such as ADM as Jim Urrata pointed out below. These folks spend millions in lobbying to keep ethanol subsidies in place and they won't be interested in moving to switchgrass . And Jim's also right when he points out that ethanol "enhanced" gas is less efficient and causes us to use MORE fuel than would be necessary with alcohol-free fuel. This is the government working for big industry and against its citizens.
@@jimurrata6785 It is mostly for farmers but I think it is over done also. And I come from a farm family that still farms.
There was a large biomass project utilizing switchgrass in southern Iowa several years ago. The switchgrass was ground and burned in a coal fired power plant as a renewable fuel. I spent a lot of time mowing and picking up switchgrass bales. If memory serves, the BTU comparison between coal and switchgrass by the pound was small (coal > switchgrass). The whole project was shut down when "someone" came in and stated they were going to commercialize it. I think it needs a second, very, serious look. Switchgrass provides excellent erosion control (up to 20' deep root systems) and habitat for wildlife. If the push for electric cars is going to continue, the need for better fuels at power plants will become paramount.
Why are we wasting accumulating biomass that builds up along our streets, or after a flood or tornado. All the material that is organic can be processed with a wood still, and generate methanol alcohol.
Now the argument is that you have to use energy to create energy. You can extract the alcohol the from filtering cooking oil and 10-20 %alcohol to the oil for fuel to create the methanol alcohol.
You can process methanol alcohol from many organic sources, down tree limbs, grass clippings, manure from animals, and scraps from building materials ect. In fact we may want to rethink how we process sewage in our country.
It really is all about input vs output when it comes to biomass. Which is really why ethanol isn't as big of a benefit as expected. It's a lot of fuel (and carbon release from soil) to collect and transport organics to a processing facility. New data from a broader analysis, apparently, has shown this.
For any new processes It really comes down to tonnage of material. General cleanup would not provide the amount of material needed to offset the output in my opinion. After a disaster a lot of the arguments against the collection is negated because it needs to be cleaned up anyway. Manure processing is in place and works well in larger feeds lots to my knowledge. I do not have first hand experience with these systems and need to look into them. Processing of sewage is a whole other issue. Lots of chemicals and heavy metals involved from what I've seen and read. The biggest potential net gain is altering an already established process. Disaster cleanup, manure processing, household trash pickup, and possibly sewage all have some of that potential.
That all said - I don't think we should completely ignore carbon but I do agree that methane collection and use would better suit our needs and efforts.
Would cut in to to may profits. The sell them seed ,fertalizer,weed killer,pesticides, and fuel every year. The grass would only take fuel and time so to much money loss to let that happen. Oh and cows don't need corn to survive either.
Hunter and Joe do not make money off Switchgrass.
When we take organic material from the field we must return it in some form. Fertilizer is usually the form chosen, but even then we tend to take more than we return. Eventually, that becomes a problem.
I'm not a big fan of ethanol but in part 4 the reduction of carbon sequestered by tilling will remain relatively neutral because the residue from harvesting will all be reincorporated into the soil, and that is significant, weighing almost as much as the grain.And why do you show sweet corn as the stock when it's hard corn ( cow corn , for the city folks) that is used for ethanol.Other comment say it was a sales job to farmers but they still get subsidised, and probably get paid to not grow it.
In Australia I get less range filling up on fuel containing 10% ethanol compared with none. Also our V8 super cars that run on pure ethanol found that certain engine parts deteriorate faster with ethanol.
Ok, I'll bite. What engine parts deteriorate faster on pure ethanol?
@@ChurchAutoTest If I remember correctly it degrades rubber and plastic parts such as gaskets, seals and hoses. Being a racing team with a car running only on ethanol is what they found, however it occurred to me later that I saw the video at least ten years ago and that car companies have probably increased the resilience of modern parts to accommodate these issues.
@@garethbaker5179 Any car sold in the united states since 2000 has ethanol tolerant fuel lines so no issue anymore. I really don't consider fuel lines engine parts but I'll grant that old rubber may not have liked ethanol, just like old engine seals didn't like synthetic. Price we pay if we want to keep old cars on the road.
I don't think it ever was a secret that ethanol had less energy density and more costly to produce per BTU. I always took it as a way to subsidize the farmers' surplus and replace foreign oil supplies. What really wasn't apparent to the user was since State and Federal gas taxes are based on a fixed cost per gallon, the lower mpg results in paying a higher tax per mile.
also, it's making it harder for manufacturer's to hit their mpg standard, which makes the buyer pay more at purchase of the vehicle.
It costs less to make ethanol than gasoline when you end up buying the gasoline from people who hate you and spend YOUR MONEY on weapons to attack you with. The geopolitical situation changes the economics.
You are right. It is not a secret. What people forget is that we have MORE corn than we need. It would get wasted. We 100% want to grow more food than we need, to account for problematic years. So we ALREADY have the corn. Ethanol is a way to use up that buffer when we don't need it.
Now, certainly, the ethanol and corn industry lobby to get every advantage they can. Every industry is guilty of that though. Still, having a food buffer and finding ways to use the excess is a good thing. As noted in the video, causing an even greater corn growth increase. Which should not happen.
With electricity becoming renewable, obviously that is now the better choice. We still are going to want excess food; converting it to ethanol is likely a solid use.
I normally agree with Engineering Explained, but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want us to live on the brink of starvation, and also wouldn't want us to let that already grown corn go to waste.
@@legonut78 it's not corn that humans can eat. They wouldn't be wasting a crop they would plant something else. You can't plant corn year after year in the same field.
@@RJL612 I’m not following you. Are you saying that the corn used for ethanol is inedible? I assure you, it’s the same corn humans eat. Field corn (dent corn) is what we eat and it is used for ethanol. It is also our animal feed. So yes, corn is where our food comes from including most of the interior supermarket isles and all of our meat and dairy. Without corn, we die.
Also. You certainly can grow corn in the same field year after year. It’s cheaper to rotate it with legumes however, to reduce nitrogen costs. That problem is being solved however and someday soon corn will fix its own nitrogen. Several folks are working on it, which would be a huge win for Mother Earth.
One thing that is often forgotten about in the ethanol debate is the byproduct of ethanol production. When corn is converted into ethanol the carbohydrates in the corn are turned into ethanol leaving behind the protein, fats, and micronutrients creating a product called DDG's or dried distillers grains. DDG's are a very valuable feed for cattle and other livestock as it is rich in protein which is typically the most in demand, and expensive macronutrient. The beneficial by products created during the distillation of grains is often completely disregarded in the cost/benefit analysis of ethanol.
Thanks, didnt no about it.
This is never forgotten about, and is taken into account in all studies of ethanol, including the one Jason mentioned. Without taking that into account (and it is usually overestimated), ethanol is _severely_ carbon positive.
Cows should be eating grass anyway, not corn nor waste from it.
@Kswa S Are willing to pay the outrageous prices for beef to have grass-fed cattle? A rough estimate would be around $40.00 a pound for the cheapest cuts of beef.
There isn't enough pasture space for the cattle. 3 head of cattle per acre.
Now if we captured all the methane emissions from those cows and converted that to fuel also.
Please clarify:
Brazil has been using E85 for decades.... they simply import very small amounts of CO2...how can that possibly be a co2 problem?
What I remember is that Ethanol was introduced as a way to reduce our reliance on OPEC in the late 70’s while Carter was president. Then… like all things… the money took over. The corn subsidies all of us pay help fund corn lobbies who want to sustain themselves.
I’m just impressed how Jason keeps improving his production value. Using jugs and randomly falling corn to illustrate the effect corn has on our environment. Keep up the great job. 👏
The corn slapping really ties it all together.
Jason slowly become how to basic..
Oh yeah. I totally understood the inward depth of the corn slapping. Top notch.
There was at least one banana in there!
I agree, very corney.
There is another factor that I didn't hear you address. When comparing reduction of emissions between E10 and E0 gas, you also need to factor in reduced fuel mileage due to the ethanol. So while I'm polluting 2% less on E10, I'm burning 5% or more E10 fuel overall to travel the same number of miles I would on E0. I'm curious if that was something Tyler's study factored in. Because if you factor in burning MORE fuel per mile, then it's apparent that ethanol doesn't do what they claim it will. And never did.
Even with just 10% ethanol added to E0, the Swiss Federal Laboratory for Materials Science and Technology found that the especially health devastating ultra fine or nano particulate emissions were lowered by 97%, carbon monoxide lowered by 81%, carbon dioxide lowered by 13%, aromatic hydrocarbon emissions lowered by 67-96%, and genotoxic emissions lowered by 72%.
@@danafletcher2341 I looked up that study and found it referenced from 2016. It's interesting that it specifically only applied to direct injection engines, which are engineered for better efficiency/lower emissions to begin with. Those engines come with their own problems, but regardless, suffer from the same reduced fuel mileage using ethanol products compared to pure gasoline, thus still burning more fuel per mile driven. Fuel that's still 90% gasoline. I'm not remotely sold that a 10% change in fuel type reduces emissions by 13%, much less 72-97% of anything. If it's true, the study can be replicated by others. And should have been. But if that's the only study showing reduced emissions since 2016, and others that show a net increase, I'm not buying it.
Clay you're spot on and it should have been touched on in this presentation. 5-8% increase in consumption with E10 vs non-ethanol gasoline in my personal vehicle. Nascar switched over to 15% ethanol and saw a 10% increase in consumption or reduction in efficiency. However you want to look at it. How is that "green"? I'm just a simple man with some common sense.
But then again I don't have a vested interest in corn, ethanol production or its subsides..........
except the efficiency of a otto cycle is dependent on the compression ratio. Without the octane enhancer your engine would be forced to run at a compression ratio of 7.4/1 vs running an engine at 11/1 . And that is what happened in the early 70%, Ethanol was forced in as a oxygenating agent to reduce hydrocarbon emissions. It was never there to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. MBTE was its competitor but was taken out (cancer causing) And a engine with E10 at 11/1 will far outdo an engine at 7.4/1 running on E0. This is the octane effect of adding ethanol.
There's not only that consideration, but the issue with so much land being turned to corn production for ethanol. This has caused a decrease in other food crops, particularly rice, as farmers around the globe are not in farming for their health but to at least break even financially. This has had devastating effects upon world food supplies. I know that the green crowd thinks that it's a win to kill off large swathes of the Earth's population because it will be "good for the planet", but it's a bit less of a positive if you are one of those who starves.
SUGGESTION: this is a little different than engineering videos, but car related. What changed in car paint (or alloys or clear coats) that has drastically reduced rusting in cars? When I was a kid, if a car was 5-10+ years old, it was a rust bucket. But that's not the case anymore. What changed?
They also use less steel in car bodies nowadays. Neither aluminum nor fiberglass resin will rust, even if the paint is bad.
It was created to help boost the price of corn and reduce the cost of subsidies to the farmers going broke right and left. They were paying farmers to not grow, and they were paid to idle acres. Farmers did not clear land back then. Places like Brazil were clearing forest, maybe based on what effect the raising corn prices caused globally
Here is how the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act affected food/feed prices(if at all):
2007 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$4.20 WITH 4 .7B GAL MANDATE
2008 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$4.06 WITH 9B GAL MANDATE
2009 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE=$3.55 WITH 10.5B GAL MANDATE
2016 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$3.36 WITH 15B GAL MADATE MAXED OUT
2017 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$3.36 WITH 15B GAL MANDATE MAXED OUT
2018 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$3.61 WITH SAME 15B GAL MANDATE MAXED OUT + MOST ETHANOL EVER PRODUCED
Wheat
2007...............$6.48/bu
2008...............$6.78/bu
2009...………$4.87/bu
2016...………$3.89/bu
2017...............$4.72/bu
2018...............$5.15/bu
Soybeans
2007..............$10.10/bu
2008..............$ 9.97/bu
2009...……...$9.59/bu
2016..............$9.47/bu
2017..............$9.33/bu
2018..............$8.48/bu
Excellent video.
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As an engineer, I know that there are many more reasons why adding ethanol to gasoline is a bad idea.
For one thing, ethanol makes gasoline MUCH more difficult to store over several months.
Once the ethanol separates from the gasoline, it can’t be forced to mix properly again. That gas becomes virtually useless.
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It will be almost impossible to stop the use of corn-based ethanol in the USA. Huge companies are making many billions of dollars each year from this business. These companies have hundreds of big lobbyists with huge budgets.
This will be VERY hard to change.
If there is going tl be a switch it has to be economicaly fesable ofcourse, a lot of the fermenting equipment can be reused for switchgrass but the farming equipment is not.
Bro we need the ethanol for our tuned cars. How about you tell the government to race octane limits to beyond 91, 93
Exactly- I live in a corn-ag state (Illinois) and the amount of profit that is generated by this ill-advised boondoggle means we will never escape this. Politicians love the rewards of bribery as much as the big ag companies.
Wow dont you know corn ethanol is essentially free? Its a free byproduct that would be otherwise unused and wasted anyways.
Give the public solid reasons why it benefits them to switch and even the most powerful lobbies lose. Lobbyists can only vote once - constituents outnumber them.
But the decades of overregulation have created a lot of problems that flow into this policy - ignoring those is why big lobbying efforts succeed more than the money. Without a comprehensive solution the people hurt indirectly start fighting the changes. Lobbyists capitalize on this.
Now might be a good time for this fight - American farmers are likely to benefit from Russia's stupidity shortterm. If those market gains can be stabilized agribusiness will be less dependent on ethanol.
It has been known for many years that corn based ethanol is an absolutely idiotic idea. In the end, the reason for choosing it was to prop up corn prices and make corn production more viable, it was not to reduce CO2.
It was also a political move to buy off the ag lobby.
Corn based ethanol is a good idea in one, and only one, case.
Makes a damn fine whiskey. Although even there, it's inferior to barley or rye.
@@SimuLord
You can keep the corn.
I’ll take the single malt thank you.🤣👍🥃
isn't corn genetically modified, therefore the big guy who owns the patent is collecting his greedy share
@@johndrew6730 Buy off the ag lobby? You mean they get favors from Congress and we pay them ? Both? Pretty sure the lobby does the buying in exchange for beneficial legislation.
In 2005 when my dad became convinced that ethanol was bad for Iowa. His main reasoning is, it has caused the consolidation of the farming industry and has eliminated small family farms because corn easy harvest and this create a Walmart like affect on farming. I don’t think gov is gonna change because farmers will be mad about short term losses even though it’s bad for them in the long run. I am Iowan farmer.
Iowa and even the rest of the corn belt grew more acres of corn in 1980 before ethanol than in 2018, the year of most ethanol production ever.
2018 Iowa 13,200,000 acres of corn
1980 Iowa 14,000,000 acres of corn
Forest use land from Census data:
2012 Iowa 2,968,000 acres
1982 Iowa 1,227,000 acres
Grassland and pastures from Census data
2012 Iowa 2,879,000 acres
1982 Iowa 2,065,000 acres
Rural parks and wildlife areas from Census data:
2012 Iowa 510,000 acres
1982 Iowa 313,000 acres
All the ethanol plants in Iowa must have been a big help for the economies of small towns across Iowa. The trend of consolidation in farms began long before ethanol.
With ethanol, more of your money goes to Iowan workers and Iowan businesses who pay Iowa state taxes and put the rest in Iowan banks to buy goods and services that you and/or your fellow Iowans produce.
With petroleum, more of your money goes to Arab sheiks and transnational companies who put it into Swiss banks and pay little if any in taxes.
It was always obvious to me corn wasn't green. After husking, it's completely yellow.
There is an unpopular variety "Oaxaca Green Dent" and I am partial to the white "Silver Queen" because I heard corn smut likes it. Smutty (huitlacoche) quesadillas are tasty.
I would like to know more about how they calculated the land-use for ethanol. Farmers generally don't react to market changes by simply clearing and planting virgin land. They usually just change what gets planted on the acres they already have, and maybe plant low-yield acres which are unprofitable when prices are low. And in terms of corn markets in general, if corn based ethanol is elevating prices, that means other corn consumption goes down. High feed prices mean reduced meat production, or high HFCS prices mean more substitution of cane sugar. The Ag markets are not in some steady state where increased demand can only be met by clearing virgin land.
It's a really messy economics problem to model how many virgin acres are really being cleared and plowed in an ethanol vs non-ethanol US energy policy. This is true in a lot of CO2 modeling when it comes to setting policy. It's really straight forward to calculate the emissions of a defined industrial process. It's hard to model what happens out in the real world which is governed by market forces.
But perhaps that reinforces your point that it's not a good idea to undergo huge policy programs when the modeled payoff is only marginal. The focus should be on solutions which offer very clear and very large advantages such that it doesn't matter if your calculations or assumptions were off by a few percent here and there.
Remember. All models are wrong. Some models are occasionally useful
I doubt that "family farms" are clearing new land: They do not have it. But the small farmer, the "family farm," seems to be a disappearing entity. They are useful to exploit when justifying legislation, and convincing voters that a program is "for the people." However, increasingly the farming is done by large corporate farms (I liked the term in the book, "Wind Up Girl:" the "Calorie Companies."). Increasingly, the "family farms" produce to contract for the mega-corps. The mega-corps commonly till their own land (as opposed to contracted land) as well. Mega-corp exists to expand. Indeed, stagnation is death. Thus, mega-corp must acquire more contractors (a diminishing resource), acquire smaller/vulnerable/available industrial agriculture firms, or expand their own tilled acreage. Here is where I expect that you will find the land use conversion.
Ethanol is made and there is a byproduct that is fed to cows. Ethanol makes sense. Not to mention the U.S needs 10% less fuel from Arab countries.
@@billharm6006 - "Mega-corp exists to expand. Indeed, stagnation is death" - BUT our planet is finite! So I guess these "superior idiots' ( by which I mean while they may have a "higher" education, they have a poor grasp of reality! ) see planet extinction as just another "externality" they can continue ignoring???
@@deshaunjackson8188 Ethanol makes no sense on any sort of large scale. It is all about energy density. You have to burn more Ethanol to get the same or similar performance among other things.
Studied and did research on this in college 15 years ago and the conclusion was it was way more inefficient and countries should think long and hard about using food stocks for energy ambitions. Yet auto makers signed on to it
I hope you got an F in whatever class you did that study for. Because ethanol is not using feedstock. Ethanol allows us to get both food and fuel from every kernel of corn.
@@jeffp6786 ethanol fuel divert corn from food production. Making food more expensive. ethanol is a crime against poor people.
@@jeffp6786 still need to produce increasingly more corn as more cars started using higher ethanol contents
not to mention how variable seasons can be with droughts
@@Brandon_letsgo That is not true in the slightest. Corn is not diverted from food to fuel. Once the ethanol is extracted, DDG (dry distillers grain) remains. That DDG is then fed to livestock thereby creating food.
@@austinh1028 No. The vast majority of corn used for ethanol would be grown regardless for animal feed. With ethanol, we extract the fuel from the corn leaving protein dense distillers grain to feed to livestock.
The reason this study is bogus is because it assumes the land growing corn would go back to idle if not for ethanol. That's simply not true and skews the study results.
Back in the 1970's(my engineering college years) I read studies in my engineering/science magazines about the energy output of ethanol. All the estimates were that the ratio of energy INPUT(to plow, plant, grow, harvest, process, ferment, distill) - to - the energy OUTPUT(when the resulting ethanol is burned). That ratio was estimated as very near 1:1. With ethanol advocates claiming 1:1.2 at their high end and the detractors claiming 0.7:1 at their low end.
And what's more is the energy INPUT is mostly from burning fossil fuels which produce CO2. And then the ethanol is burned which produces more CO2. The entire process from end to end nearly doubles the CO2 instead of reducing it.
All the energy and CO2 it takes to produce and deliver a product to the consumer is reflected in the price of the product.
As such note the spot cash delivered price of ethanol today is $1.49/gallon.
The price of sub-grade unusable gasoline (RBOB) is $2.32/gallon.
To turn RBOB into usable E0 fuel costs even more much like premium costs more. Unfortunately, it becomes even more toxic and dirty.
Or simply splash in >10% ethanol to RBOB and the resultant usable fuel becomes less toxic, far cleaner burning, and cheaper/cheaper per mile to drive with. Who can be against that?
Iowa State University measured all the energy it takes to produce an acre of corn into a "diesel fuel equivalent"
This included making of the machinery, fertilizer, chemicals plus the tillage, planting, harvesting, drying, trucking etc.
They found it takes 34 gal of diesel to produce one acre of corn.
What do we get from those 34 gallons of diesel?
We get >500 gallons of ethanol.
But wait, that is not the kicker.
The kicker is we still get 100% of the protein from that acre of corn still available for an even better feed. A win-win.
Not to rush you Kthwkr but its 2024...
There's a presumption in this which is that you would necessarily replace natural growth with a plowed field 1:1 to create ethanol. You would need to look at how much farmland is expanding per year, then also look at how much it would have expanded were the policy never adopted. Also you need to look at the fact that if you suddenly cut off all ethanol requirements, all these corn farms go under and grow nothing. That doesn't replace that initial carbon back into the soil unless its allowed to grow natural vegetation for the next 100 years, in which case growing corn instead for 100 years would probably offset that benefit.
I think we're looking too short term. 30 years is a lot, but the US changing to more aggressive GHG reductions in 30 years is not going to change global warming. Every bit that we reduce GHG emissions is just being replaced by growth in countries like India and China.
Our main goal should be creating strategies to reduce the deficit, rather than become over-focused on the initial carbon debt.
There was no natural vegetation, virgin soils, forests, or any other lands broken up for ethanol. Such a thing is impossible for US cropland acres have been falling since ethanol.
If we outlawed ethanol with another Prohibition, what would cattle feeders who now feed distillers grains use for an alternative source of protein?
Answer = they would simply switch to feeding the less healthy and less concentrated corn straight.
Believe it or not, the corn belt grew more corn acres in 1980 before ethanol than they did in 2018, the year of most ethanol production ever.
2018 13,200,000 acres of corn with record ethanol production
1980 14,000,000 acres of corn before ethanol
2018 Illinois 11,000,000 acres of corn with record ethanol production
1980 Illinois 11,600,000 acres of corn before ethanol
2018 Indiana 5,350,000 acres of corn with record ethanol production
1980 Indiana 6,450,000 acres of corn before ethanol
I grew up in Iowa. Entire state's economies are built on corn production. Prices are always very low per bushel, so farmers need to create many bushels to turn any kind of profit. The problem is, we don't need nearly as much corn as is produced. So we are stuck trying to find ways to use it. Problem is, most of these usages just aren't very good or healthy: corn-fed beef, high fructose corn syrup, ethanol, etc. Since the 80s, the government has actually paid farmers money NOT to produce more crop. The alternative is to drive entire economies into bankruptcy.
I think what really needs to happen is that alternative crops be found for these farmers. But that would be heresy if I went back to Iowa and said that.
My understanding is that corn based plastics are practical.
@@steven4315 No, they aren't. It's another desperate solution to sell all this corn. It's a big plant and we only use its ear to produce those plastics. Any other solution that uses the whole plant is better.
I live in Michigan, I feel the same way when I talk about how car culture is killing us.
Organic produce
My grandfather was paid not to grow corn in the 1950s, in Indiana.
Then he planted clover, got a bee guy, made money on that, then, when it went to seed, he had me combine it up and made money on that too! Lol Long b4 Ethenol!
Ethanol fuel was never about carbon emissions. It persists because for some reason in America, the Iowa Caucuses largely determine who gets to run for President, and Iowa has a lot of corn farmers that would be upset if demand for their crop drops off.
You're on the right path, but that's an oversimplification. Yes it's because of politics, but not due to anyone caring about voters.
Agricultural lobbying is why it exists in the first place, because the corn subsidy from the Dept of Agriculture paid farmers to grow it before it was ever even sold. So they lobbied the EPA to require it in fuel to ensure corn prices stayed high.
That’s not actually what happens with ethanol distillation. Engineering Explained failed to mention the fact that corn ethanol has a useful byproduct that these other alternatives do not, namely distiller grains. These are used as highly nutritious feed additives for livestock.
They use E10 in Europe too. I live in Ireland and we use E10. (E10 is RON 95 with 10% ethenol) we have no way of growing corn on a large scale in Ireland as we do not get the weather for it and yet we are still using E10. So I doubt it is because of the corn farmers.
Get away from lead. Ethanol is a octane booster allowing lower quality of gasoline to be used.
Your "Iowa caucuses" comment is silly. Obama? Biden?
There is a lot of good information here, I feel they miss an important point, (maybe he said it and I missed it?) To a point, a lot of corn is going to be grown no matter what, corn used for ethanol doesn't get used up, only about 20% of it, the remaining amount left over goes to livestock feed as distillers grain. In a way, we are making corn more efficient by getting more benefits out of it, fuel and feed. No matter what we do on this planet, something has to be used to produce something, the challenge is to be the most efficient at that conversion as we can.
Hmmmm... I always thought the addition of ethanol was to poke a 10% finger in the eye of the Saudis, while at the same time providing a market floor for corn farmers.
I know here where I live, the amount of waterways, tree lines, and grass decreased big time when farmers realized they could grow corn if they could address certain limitations of the land here in Nebraska. They put center pivot irrigation systems into use which also operate from largely fossil fuels or electricity generated by fossil fuel. There is a large amount of energy used to produce the anhydrous ammonia used to fertilize that ground every year to get a crop of corn from it. I'm pretty sure that the UWM study could've gone even further in identifying carbon released by some of these other inputs required to grow a decent crop of corn.
Iowa has the worst water ways in the Nation because farmers now plant right to the edge. The govt subsidizing ethanol is woven into many aspects of life there, it won't be easy to take that away. Farmers are never going to return crop land into native grass lands, without, you guessed it, massive subsidies.
@@9023gregb If it became legal to sell non-ethanol fuels again, it might not take that long.
Same where I live in
@@9023gregb you got it! The environmental damage done to the land in the quest for more corn for more ethanol, has caused loss of erosion controls that had been in place since the 1930s. Much of that was habitat for wildlife that has decreased in population. Which is another in planned negative effect driven by the unsuccessful attempt at reducing carbon with corn based ethanol.
I live on the border of NE/IA in the heart of corn country. What is noticeable (but rarely discussed) is the loss of habitat from the increase of corn production. There has been an extreme drop in the pheasant (and grouse/quail) population in the last 30 years that coincides with the growth of corn. The boundaries of cornfields have been pushed out to the limits, and land that may have sat idle is now plowed and planted. Shrubs, tall grasses and growth around fence lines used to surround cornfields and provide cover for pheasants. But that’s gone, and corn cover only lasts until harvest. When modern ag equipment harvests, the resulting field is barren until the following spring.
Hasn't helped the monarch butterfly either.
The only thing they brood on is milkweed and that has all but disappeared with the use of glyphosates.
Thanks for sharing your perspective!
Because that is the primary purpose of the corn ethanol program. It's welfare/gov cheese for big agro.
EVERYTHING in America is a RACKET. It is now not that unusual to hear about police robbing people on the side of the road and now, they are even robbing armored cars (YES, this happened).
EVERYTHING is a RACKET in the United States. Even our wars are RACKETS. There is NOTHING we do that is not a racket.
That is sadly the problem with almost all human land-use. I belive we need to adress this very soon if we want to stop the biodiversity losses.
@@EngineeringExplained It gets a little more interesting. This is a larger problem across the entire corn-growing region of the US, which is far larger than just Iowa. The loss of habitat for species in the Phasianidae family (pheasants, etc.) and the Odontophoridae family (quails) has so reduced bird populations that more and more Americans of all political affiliations are starting and joining conservation groups, if for no other reason than to hopefully be able to hunt them again at some point in the future. For example, the bobwhite quail has been all but extirpated from several US states. They're just canaries in the coal mine, though. There are even bigger underlying problems...
It is my understanding that carbon is released from the soil not just with the initial tillage, but in all subsequent tillage. Further, carbon sequestration in soils involves many organisms in addition to plants. Soil microorganisms, both bacteria and fungi, are essential, and tillage wreaks havoc on them. Check out Dr. Elaine Ingham and Farmer Gabe Brown (and many more) for more on the subject.
Most corn is grown with a no till methodology these days. It's easier and cheaper to boot. Just leave the leftovers in the field where they lay and plant through them.
So glad to see that you collab'd with How To Basic for this video
After experiencing lawn mower issues last year, I started using Ethanol-free gas in all of my small engine equipment. So far, it seems to store much better than gas with Ethanol.
I hope more people look at this. You should NOT run gasoline with ethanol in your small engines (look for premium without ethanol). In the long run, its not good for the engine.
This is key.
Ethanol is higroscopic, it attracts water. E10 gas can be stored for 2-4 months before it hoes bad. E0 gas lasts for 4-6 months.
the smell of VP small engine fuel
Nothing wrong with using ethanol gas in small engines, just finely store it in them.
For something that a gallon of gas lasts a year then premium ethanol free gasoline is the only way to go. For something like a generator the cost of that would be less then desirable. My solution is I run both, I’ll run regular gasoline for the week and bring a can of premium as well. The premium is the last tank that gets ran before putting it away. Of course this only works for something that goes through a sufficient amount to make it worth the effort.
I remember almost 20 years ago my wife's uncle was a petroleum engineer for ExxonMobil and was laughing at what a crock ethanol was and that everyone knew it, but it was being forced onto them.
The fact they grow corn for the express purpose of turning it into ethanol when there is so much food waste that could be used instead tells you all you need to know about the corruption involved in this
Yeah cause Exxon has been soooo honest right?
@@michaeld4861 And this has to do with what? The OP is talking about their wife's uncle - I THINK they might be credible as a family member. Exxon, sure think what you want, youre probably not wrong.
@@michaeld4861 Honesty has nothing to do with chemistry.
@@highestqualitypigiron Ethanol plant near me had little to no waste. All of the corn is used to its full potential
In Brazil we have been using sugar-cane ethanol as fuel since the 70's, and it is great. You can choose which fuel to use when filling the tank (most cars here can run on both), and the gas has about 25% sugar-cane ethanol on it, so the new high compression engines either NA or turbo, can get more horsepower and better overall efficiency.
i love E85 pumps in Australia.. i make 600hp on premium 98, or 750hp on 85% ethanol.
if i drive to conserve fuel its even better..
I’m waiting for the study on diesel emissions and what impact it’s had in the industry. From decreased reliability, increase in demand for large parts like engines and rare earth minerals in catalyst, it should be quite the study. We can burn diesel clean and efficiently without the particulate filters and catalyst. But then we would have reliable engines that get 25 mpg and don’t burn down houses. Instead, many new engines struggle to reliably get more than 5000 hours on them before failure and an increasing amount failing near the 1000 hour mark due to increased exhaust temperatures.
Keep asking the right questions, Mike. Tier 5 for offroad.... folks be crazy.
Yeah, why do so many people forget that the majority of European Cars and Trucks used to be DIESEL until oil companies imposed "green" laws through governments in order to drive up profits. :/
@@mouseblackcat5263 It wasn't oil companies. It was the populace of Europe.
@@christianlibertarian5488 Not any that I ever spoke to. They hated going to Petrol from Diesel. Diesel is Safer, Cheaper, and more Useful for as more than just Fuel.
@@christianlibertarian5488 lol what? If they start banning euro 5 diesel and let go euro 3 gasoline emissions it’s by law that they want to kill diesel.
Ethanol was always a taxpayer subsidy to big ag, it worked as intended
@@benchoflemons398 incorrect, it was in fact due to lobbying by big ag. There were increasingly more countries producing their own corn and relying less on imported American corn, thus dropping prices. It was intended to create a new, domestic market for corn that would increase prices and be less susceptible to increased production globally.
No one gives enough shits about voters of any demographic to make a policy like this purely to placate them.
@@benchoflemons398 No it has nothing to do with farmer votes. They are literally the smallest voting block in America, that would be political suicide. The reason for it has to do with American food policy. Farming is heavily meddled with by our federal government.
@@benchoflemons398 That only proves my point. It has nothing to do with placating farmers OR placating people who marry young. It’s about overall energy policy / cultures where dating/marriage isn’t just a means for using someone for sex.
@@benchoflemons398 A quick Google search shows me that the ethanol requirement was passed by Congress in 05, which wasn't even a voting year so them doing it for the Iowa caucus damn near 3 years in the future just doesn't hold up.
It sure wasn't farmers who read the study referenced in this video and started a lobbying campaign to get this passed, and Congress sure wasn't thinking of a caucus 3 years in the future.
A lobbyist or an employee of big ag read the study and saw an opportunity. A quick Google search confirms this.
My god man, the information is out there at the tip of your fingers. Look it up before so boldly stating such opinions based clearly on nothing more than gut feelings.
Farmers have been supported historically by the government in America because the ability to grow our own food and feed our population is considered a part of national security.
Iowa was a powerful political force during this time. They not only got corn ethanol as the standard, they made sure that sugar couldn't compete. From previous reading I believe that you can get 5-6 times as much ethanol from the same energy output that produces corn ethanol.
Coming at this from an energy perspective. New solar and agrivoltaic projects can deliver upwards of 100x the miles per acre when running ethanol vs kWh. The transition away from ethanol and ICE vehicles would result in orders of magnitude reduction in biofuel production and ability to grow more food and reduce deforestation for biofuels globally.
A Ford electric pickup on an acre of solar panels under idyllic conditions can drive 10,000 miles on an acre of land (with 320 mile range).
A Ford flex fuel 4WD pickup on E85 for the whole US average corn yield of 513 gallons of ethanol per acre can drive 7695 miles (460 mile range) plus give 1000 lbs. of protein and other things for feed.
If Ford came out with their ethanol optimized eco-boost ethanol engine they drove in prototype which was 15-20% better mpg than E0, it could go 11799 miles (661 mile range) on an acre of corn plus provide the 1000 lbs. of protein and other things for feed.
In wintertime the electric vehicle in northern states can drop its mileage by half. So bad that the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Metro even quit using their electric buses when cold.
Corn ethanol is value-added from existing feed production acres. There were no forests or grasslands broken up for it. Quite impossible since US cropland acres have been declining.
Ethanol is stored solar energy.
FROM BING CO-PILOT:
>>>An acre of solar panels can generate an average of approximately 4,200 to 12,800 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy per year. The actual output depends on factors such as the location, panel angle, and environmental conditions1. To put this in perspective, it’s enough to meet about 80% of the energy needs of an average household.
If we consider optimal conditions-such as a flat location with high sun exposure-an acre of solar panels could potentially produce up to 20,000 kWh annually, which could power nearly 250 average households1.
Keep in mind that these estimates vary based on specific circumstances, but solar panels are indeed a sustainable and renewable energy source! ...
living where i do and working on the amount of farm equipment that I do I find it insane that the fuel consumed by the equipment maintaining and harvesting this corn is never factored in either in addition to the equipment being reasonably fuel inefficient
AND the soil destruction, AND the increased use of dwindling fertilizers, AND the increased dead zones in coastal waters from excess nutrient runoff, AND the use of marginal land that was previously wildlife habitat-
Agree! And I think the new study referenced in the beginning of this does actually take this into account, along with a whole bunch of other factors that were ignored/never considered in the original equations... in order to give Ethanol a great big push and a shove into profit-land
Not to mention that the transportation cost is usually double.
Oil tanker ships are super efficient. Shipping high volume corn in trucks only to throw most of it away is super inefficient.
Then you refine them and still have to ship both to the pumps.
Also, something really important that nobody mentions is that forests probably absorb more co2 than corn fields.
Then factor in that producing ethanol runs a net energy loss (it takes more energy to produce than you get back from the fuel)
The growing global food demand while we are decreasing corn production for consumption...
And the fact that ethanol is actually MORE EXPENSIVE to produce and only costs less because of tax funded subsidies...
And you'll see the ONLY benefit is the increased price of food (corn) for the corn farmers union.
They poured unbelievable sums into getting the laws changed to require ethanol knowing full well it was worse in just about every way.
Then look at the consumers side. It's less energy dense so you get less mpg. It absorbs water out of the air so it goes bad quickly and can damage your vehicles. It dissolves standard rubber fuel lines. And a lot of older vehicles with carbs really struggle to burn it.
I used to think it was great, but it turns out it's a worse scam than the prius. It doesn't improve anything but tax revenue and profits for Monsanto.
Welcome to the world of politics where nothing makes sense but sure makes cents.
Agreed. This was a gift to the corn farmers. It is never a good idea to burn food for whatever reason.
Corn is barely food 😂
Except on a BBQ
Corn syrup is the worst. Cane sugar is so much healthier. But the “flyover states” in the Midwest “lobbied” aka bought our senators to hand the corn industry billions every year.
@@rowanparmiter7622 Yeah, I like to burn a steak pretty good on both sides while it's still bleeding in the middle.
@@rowanparmiter7622 you beat me to it by 1hour! 😆
that study is wrong because every 2 to 3 years you have to sub soil the fields and every year you have to plow and disc the fields to get a decent crop of corn
It is a greener fuel, but it won't do any good of you're only using it to mix with gas. In Brazil most cars can run on 100% ethanol.
This "quantifies" what many have been arguing for years- the costs to till, plant, fertilize, harvest, transport and refine ethanol must be considered. The resultant emissions from farming, the emissions from refining, plus the reduction in fuel economy know to exist with ethanol-based fuels (you burn more of it than gasoline) further calls into question ethanol's economic as well as environmental viability. And, I'd question the viability of switchgrass (etc) as the "flower" of the plant (i.e., the corn "cob" vs. the flowering head of other vegetation) would seem to require more real estate to produce. So why corn? I maintain that, when in doubt, follow the money as there's huge federal dollars going to subsidize the farmers to produce the required volume of corn!!!
I concur: Follow the money.
Using ethanol to bring down the price of gas is like buying a new refrigerator, then selling it used on ebay to pay your mortgage payment. Ethanol is government subsidized because it takes more energy to make than it produces (thanks ADM)- and it will drive up the cost of corn- which we need for our food supply! More democrat dumbfuckery. FJB LGB 🤡🤡
Yep...gov't funneling money to farmers is the problem. So corrupt.
I followed it! Archer Daniels Midland.
There is no subsidy anywhere for ethanol look it up
We’ve known for years that switchgrass-based ethanol is a better solution than corn-based ethanol. But, our government doesn’t subsidize the growing of natural prairie grasses like it does corn.
Cane ethanol would be even better than that. Much higher energy potential.
But corn has very little energy in it, even for the biological machines it's been tailored to power (our stomachs) being more of a filler than a nutrient, so there's no surprise there.
@@1SqueakyWheel Again, this decision had nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with political grift to an important primary state.
@@1SqueakyWheel That's why Brazil uses for their ethanol which yield more higher output while short growth cycle to produce sugar canes
@@Astroinmotion Exactly. I remember my Dad and I discussing the use of sugar ethanol in South American countries for all these reasons, when he was still healthy. (he's been gone almost a decade now).
Seems like the government gets in its own way a lot of times. They always talk about looking for a better solution and lowering emissions and hear a solution is staring them right in the face (switchgrass) but they won't do anything with it. The politics get in the way of doing what's actually better.
What about the stability of ethanol gas in humid environments? I have a car that sat with the same gas for 2 years in the most humid county in Florida. The ethyl gas was still good.
I remember reading about this in a book when I was a kid.
On paper it made sense, but they overlooked one thing, farmers are human and will go for whatever makes more money hence growing corn instead of other stuff or clearing land.
Corn apparently doesn't use as much carbon as a lot of other crops like well funnily enough some of those fruits that were being thrown.
And if they have to grow those elsewhere because now the current crops are all corn, we need to till those again.
Governments care if it somehow makes them look good.
My country is promoting being car lite or something.
You know how much of our emissions are made by vehicles? 1% that's all vehicles by the way, not just cars but all the public transport and logistical transport as well.
Removing all the personally used cars will result in idk 0.75% reduction?
I remember reading how switchgrass was so much better 30 years ago in Successful Farming. Not only does it have a good conversion, it also is very low maintenance so not much fuel is used to produce the switchgrass, you just cut it every year or 2x a year. Successful Farming talked about how it would be so much cheaper to grow switchgrass because you don't need the till, cultivation, reseed and so on. They actually had a chart of a lot of many different ethanol fuel sources and seed corn was the worst of them all.
Yeh but the genetically modified corn's patent owner needs his cut, and he has more political clout
@@natchan5076 Monsanto and Cargil will be sending out their hit squads.
The switchgrass lobby isn't as powerful as the corn lobby.
You guys are on crack if you think they will be piles of switchgrass 100s of feet high in bales at the local processers. 95% of the land was already in production, so that great carbon kill is taken out of the equation. No word on cheap feed for livestock was talked about. Sure, go to 60% switchgrass across millions of acres, whats the corn price going to do? where's that put the livestock industry. All in the tank where these egg heads want it.
@@tjfarmer9380 Any way you slice it, using land for biofuel means less land for food production, whether it's corn or grass.
Very interesting, thanks! In Switzerland, land cannot be used for the production of ethanol. therefore, it is produced from wood scraps only. Likewise, biomethane is produced from food scraps, agriculture waste etc. and it's proportion in the natural gaz mix is on average 25%.
Anyway, this is a discussion with the CO2 religion that is false from the ground up.
Is that not methane?
Methane is 38 times as "warming" as CO2.
@@fredschnerbert1238 which is why they put it into the natural gas to burn it into CO2 instead of having it leach into the atmosphere from rotting in a landfill. Pretty smart if you ask me!
Wood produces methanol.. (MeoH) not ethanol..
This is an older video, so I hope I get a response. This study made the assumption of tilling soil, most corn growers are using a no till method, how does this play into the factor? I appreciate no till has its problems as well, especially with corn in herbicides, and chemical fertilizers, however I am curious from the CO2 perspective as discussed in this video.
There were no new lands broken up for ethanol. It is simply impossible since US cropland acres have declined since ethanol came to be.
Believe it or not, the corn belt grew more corn acres in 1980 before ethanol than they do today with record ethanol production and ethanol plants everywhere.
2018 Iowa 13,200,000 acres of corn with record ethanol production
1980 Iowa 14,000,000 acres of corn before ethanol
2018 Illinois 11,000,000 acres of corn with record ethanol production
1980 Illinois 11,600,000 acres of corn before ethanol
2018 Indiana 5,350,000 acres of corn with record ethanol production
1980 Indiana 6,450,000 acres of corn before ethanol
The US used 11,160,933 tons total fertilizer on corn in 1980, before ethanol.
In 2018, the year of most ethanol production ever, the US used 10,521,850 tons total fertilizer on corn.
100% of the fertilizer and things in the soil are still fed to livestock in the distillers grains. Ethanol is made only of things in the air: solar energy, CO2, and water with the latter two recycled once burnt. What logic is it then to assign fertilizer and CO2 all to ethanol and none to feed, i.e. the distillers grains?
The combined age of the people who did this "study" was about 50 years old. I cant seem then doing it "for 14 years".
Not sure that #4 is valid, As a farmer I'm growing corn for a profit and I have a limited-size farm. The American farms were cleared many generations back. Very few farmers have additional forest land to clear that would even be productive farmland. The size of the farm is the size of the farm. Now I can grow corn on all of it, but that would delete the soil in a couple of years, So I still need to rotate crops such as soybeans, etc. so at the most I can only grow corn on half my usable farmland. also, consider a bigger problem, that Farmland has been decreasing as we build towns and cities on top of the good soil that was farming communities, so if you want to continue farming you move farther out to less productive soil. City growth replacing farm land decreases crop production and in creases the cost of food.
Thank you sir for typing in!!
This is a very good presentation with good supporting documentation. In the 1975 my engineer/farmer father along with a friend that was a plumber built the largest ethanol still in our county. It was a highly efficient packed column and could distill ethanol to a fraction of a degree. It could produce near 95% ethanol. It was powered by a boiler that burned firewood from dead trees on the farm so the fuel cost to distill was nearly zero except gas for the chainsaws and a little fuel for the farm truck to haul it to the still. He even raised the corn which was used to make the ethanol which was quite cheap at the time. The left over mash was donated to a neighbor to feed his hogs. After two years of experimenting with different ethanol mixtures from 10 to 95% including a trial run of 50% ethanol and 50% water he found that he could not break even with just using straight gasoline. The fuel consumption was greater with any mixture of ethanol in his gas tractors and didn't even come close to the efficiency of his diesels. Even though his only real cost was the corn he used instead of taking it to market, It was a money losing proposition. He did not even count the cost of the large still which was built from surplus materials nor the expensive government permit to distill ethanol nor his hours of labor building and running his project. Running ethanol was a waste of resources and it was rusting his metal storage tanks including the metal tractor fuel tanks. When they started building ethanol plants in our area a couple years later, we knew they were a money losing business as the cost of corn doubled and their fuel and labor costs to distill were much higher than ours. It was a feel good government scam that made a lot of people money but did nothing to actually help the environment or reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It required more fertilizer and chemicals to raise more corn which is harmful to our well being. While we made more money on our corn, we could no longer drink the water from our well which is now contaminated with nitrates. My father's early experimenting was fairly scientific at the time. None of the tractors back then were fuel injected and all the engine tuning had to be done by trial and error but the results compare closely to the literature of work done more recently. Just a side note to consider. I don't know of any farmer that raises corn using ethanol powered equipment.
Nice to hear perspective from those with experience on the field!
I suspect this has a lot more to do with corn than ethanol itself from what I gather though :/
If ethanol producers gave away their distillers grains, they all would lose money as well. The feed component is what makes corn outcompete most any other source even though they make more ethanol per acre.
John Deere and Cummins just dropped a chunk of money into a company named ClearFlame who converts diesel engines into pure ethanol burners. So clean it eliminates the need for the costly and unreliable exhaust particulate filters and DEF. Henry Ford's dream of ethanol tractors may come true.
The US actually used more fertilizer and chemical in 1980 before ethanol than after.
Everything from fertilizer and from the soil is still goes to the feed, the only thing that goes to the ethanol is solar energy, CO2, and water with the latter two needed for the new gallon of ethanol.
Here is how the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act affected food/feed prices (not counting inflation):
2007 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$4.20 WITH 4 .7B GAL MANDATE
2008 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$4.06 WITH 9B GAL MANDATE
2009 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE=$3.55 WITH 10.5B GAL MANDATE
2016 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$3.36 WITH 15B GAL MADATE MAXED OUT
2017 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$3.36 WITH 15B GAL MANDATE MAXED OUT
2018 WEIGHTED CORN PRICE =$3.61 WITH SAME 15B GAL MANDATE MAXED OUT + RECORD PRODUCTION OF ETHANOL
Wheat
2007...............$6.48/bu
2008...............$6.78/bu
2009...………$4.87/bu
2016...………$3.89/bu
2017...............$4.72/bu
2018...............$5.15/bu
Soybeans
2007..............$10.10/bu
2008..............$ 9.97/bu
2009...……...$9.59/bu
2016..............$9.47/bu
2017..............$9.33/bu
2018..............$8.48/bu
Govern = CONTROL
Ment = MENTAL
The WORD GOVERNMENT IS
MIND CONTROL !
We can't vote our way out of it !
Any where in the world !
If you have any doubt in 20 22
Look up the word politics !
Parasites always kill their host !
@@crazydragy4233 NO IT'S ABOUT THE PARASITES ! That controls our MINDS ! Check out the Arab spring ! And how ethanol base fuel caused it ! Then ask Al Gore why did he lie ?
Solution is simple, let petrol carry the full cost of the pollution it causes.
That said, making ethanol out of corn might not be optimal...
Having previously worked in biofuel research in the early 2000s, the conclusions reached in this study have always been my takeaway regarding ethanol.
Cutting down Borneo's rainforest was a big mistake.
This isn't regarding ethanol, it is regarding corn based ethanol. Like he mentioned, other sources of ethanol production result in far better numbers.
@@rdizzy1 Sorry, I guess I should have been clearer - I was referring to corn-based ethanol, as it was the subject of this video.
Did you factor distillers grains into your conclusions? Every study that I've looked at that results in a negative for corn ethanol fails to get even the most simple facts straight. The one in this video is no different.
@@rdizzy1 They only result in better numbers because they are flawed. Switchgrass and most other cellulose sources are worse than corn. They are too bulky to transport. Most take more energy to process. Crops like switchgrass are single use. Unlike corn which produces ethanol while at the same time acre for acre as much feed as soybeans. The protein and fiber in corn is not converted to ethanol.
Corn ethanol has another benefit for human security. We depend on corn for many things. If there is a severe drought for example, ethanol production could be reduced. Thus, helping ensure enough corn for other uses. I'd guess it provides a 20-30% buffer against really dramatic consequences.
I have flex fuel at my local gas station. It’s rated at 94 octane (E50). It costs $2.77. At my local wholesale gas station Costco/BJ/Walmart 93 Octane (E10) costs $4.09. Using E50 drops my MPG from 30 to 25. You go from 114,000 BTU to 95,000 BTU. $2.77 x 120% = $3.25. I save damn near a $1.00 a gallon using ethanol.
That is assuming that the farmers would let their expensive, productive land go to seed and no productivity. Not likely
Welcome to the club dear millennial engineer. The inefficiency of corn ethanol was widely discussed around the time of the bill. The problem is that corn farmers are a strong lobby and have made a lot of money from this. Let it serve as a warning for looking for government regulation to solve our problems.
yes, I remember going over this a long long time ago..
Like all the other alternative energy schemes, there is big profit to be made for a few with little benefit to the rest, and usually the profit is in the form of public subsidy, without which they might break even or lose.
@@AnonyMous-jf4lc There is a big ethanol operation that sprang up near my home in the mid aughts, no doubt due to public policy suddenly making it profitable.
Iowa Caucuses.
Not to mention companies like John Deere. There's HUGE money in all those combines.
Good vid.
I'm not sure of the ethanol source but here in the UK, we have recently moved to 10% and many people are reporting higher fuel consumption, therefore further reducing the environmental savings.
Yea true, I recall reading (somewhere, multiple places) that E10 UL will reduce economy by about 3-4% vs E5 UL
@@Assimilator1 Spot on, recent MCN dyno tests of motorcycles
Ethanol fuel is a scam.
That IS correct. Ethanol has about 70% the energy density of pure Gasoline. So with 10% added you will see around 3% worse MPG. Ethanol does allow higher compression ratios and If an engine is designed to take advantage of that you can reduce this defict.
@@rgrigio Even turn it into a benefit. It's not fair to judge an engine that has had 100 years of fine tuning to one type of fuel to the same engine running a different fuel and then blame the fuel for a lack of efficiency. There's sort of a conflation of two issues though, one being the energy density of the fuel and the other being the efficient extraction of that energy. They aren't related.
Ethanol is less energy dense, but what matters is the net energy put into useful work. In a gasoline engine less energy is converted into useful work even at best design efficiency as a ration of gross to net. Ethanol is able to extract more effective work meaning the ration of net to gross is HIGHER in an engine DESINGED FOR ETHANOL. The question is how those factors fit into the larger puzzle of tradeoffs.
For a gasoline engine 10% ethanol is about as high as one can go before you increase fuel consumption for the same amount of work. Unless you go to 95% Ethanol in an engine designed for it, in which case you are getting a lot of benefits and MORE efficient extraction of energy. The main reason they put ethanol in fuel though is not for environmental reason, but to help keep it dry, blended, and at the appropriate octane.
Thank you for this analysis. It is appreciated by helping to look at all sides of the arguments around ethanol. It never made sense to me, but I didn't have scientific arguments to contribute.
I remember seeing a video on this topic a few years back that argued it was to subsidize the struggling farmers. The powers that be knew it was a net loss of energy, but did this anyway to prevent a bunch of farmers from going out of business.
There are a couple things here I would like to point out:
The land transition study said that the increase in land use was 26% more than the EXPECTED INCREASE in land use, NOT 26% more TOTAL land use. In other words, if the otherwise expected land use increase was 10,000 acres/ year, the actual increase was 12,600 acres/year.
Acres planted to corn fluctuates by as much as 10 million acres/year depending on weather, input costs and the price of corn, and this generally happens in a several-years-long cycle. During this study, corn acreage went from 86M acres in 2008 to 94M in 2016. However, the peak was 2012 with 97.25M acres, where it began to fall off until hitting a low of 89M in 2018. (Source: USDA Crop Acreage Reports)
Also, the vast majority of the "new" acres of corn are from farmers choosing to plant more corn and less soybeans or wheat in fields based on prices for that year, from converting unused grass pasture to row crop fields, or from planting fringe ground that had been idled during years where the price of grain was not high enough to justify planting that land. There is very, very little truly new land being converted into farmland. In fact, farmland acreage has been slowly and steadily declining for decades, as urban and suburban areas continue to grow and take up land that was previously farmed. In fact, there were 48 MILLION fewer acres of farmland in 2018 than in 2000 (USDA).
Thank you for stating this. As a Kansan who's closest neighbor is 600ac of corn, I am really confused by the land use change figures. Added corn acres =/= tilling virgin soil. It may be anecdotal, but I can't remember the last time I saw grasslands taken down and turned over into row crops.
Thank you! It is very hard to explain agricultural statistics to a bunch of lab rats,
but you did a great job.
@@WildcatWarrior15 WE are not in Kansas any more.
I know huge amounts of CRP land was converted back to farmland.
@@danielgerhardson7017 But CRP or (conservation reserve program) land had been in production prior to being put into reserve. Those acres also fluctuate annually.
This doesn’t take into account the increase in fuel consumption when ethanol is added. Volume for volume, ethanol generates about 30% less energy than hydrocarbons fuels, so you have to use more fuel to travel the same distance. The difference may only be a couple of percent, but as you have shown, small percentages matter.
I do believe this has been taken into consideration.
This wouldn't be the case if we designed cars to run on the E85 ethanol and it's 105 octane...you could bump the compression ratio up and pick up big efficiencies there. Basically we are using the wrong car engines for it.
@@robertelmo7736 I agree with you the current daily driven cars are not set up to be efficient on biofuels. As a gearhead, I modify my car to increase its performance and in this process, I have learned some of the naturally aspirated cars have increased compression to 13:1 on pump E85. Granted, the pump has to test for 80% ethanol or more for these cars to safely run but I would be curious to see an optimized engine for high ethanol content such as E85 and how its increased efficiency compared to traditional gas engines.
A while back I was driving across the country. One of the states I passed through had a higher ethanol percentage in the fuels. I spent less money per gallon crossing that state, but spent more money per mile doing so because my MPG dropped so much running that fuel.
yep you are right. I run E10 (94RON) in a 6 cylinder Australian ford falcon which also runs on LPG. I get about 8% less kilometers less than I get running our standard unleaded (91RON). The car runs a little better on E10 though. What i do is i start the car from cold on petrol and when the motor warms up I switch to LPG. which gives about 20% worse economy but costs 55% of the cost of E10. nothing is easy these days but with what is going on in the Ukraine I am glad I have dual fuel. E10 cost me $1.61/litre 91 cost me 1.90/litre and LPG cost me 0.869/litre. I just looked online and already most outlets are selling E10 at $1.95/litre
Impressive to see a "suggested video" that is actually intelligent and well thought out. Not done watching yet, but a side note this, it does keep farms active to function as reserve food production if there is a food crisis, but you probably cover that
Actually he doesnt and the sad commenters on here vilify farmers. Its like they dont eat or anything...oh wait there AI bots!
Just the amount of propane burned in the grain dryers on our farm for corn is insane. No way it is a "green" fuel.
Iowa State University measured all the energy it takes to produce an acre of corn into a "diesel fuel equivalent"
This included making the machinery, fertilizer, chemicals, plus tillage, planting, harvesting, drying, trucking etc.
They found it takes 34 gal of diesel to produce one acre of corn.
What do we get from those 34 gallons of diesel?
We get >500 gallons of ethanol.
But wait, that is not the kicker.
The kicker is we still get 100% of the protein, fiber, fat, vitamins, and minerals from that acre of corn still available for an even better feed called distillers grains. A win, win.
@@danafletcher2341 Now look at who paid for that study. Guess what.
@@thomashockman4972 I could say the same thing for you.
We don't need a study. We know that all the energy it takes to produce and deliver a product to the consumer is reflected in the price of that product.
As such note that the spot cash delivered price of ethanol on the NYMEX is $1.48/gallon.
The price of an unusable sub-grade of gasoline (RBOB) is $2.76/gallon.
It takes more energy to produce sub-grade gasoline than ethanol.
To turn RBOB into usable E0 fuel costs even more for the very same reason premium costs more. Unfortunately, it becomes even more toxic and dirtier.
Or, simply splash in >10% ethanol to RBOB and the resultant usable fuel becomes less toxic, far cleaner burning, and cheaper/cheaper per mile to drive with. Who can be against that?
The bushel of corn gets dried whether or not it gets ground directly into feed or if it gets ground and value-added into distillers grains and ethanol.
Cattle feeders who now use distillers grains would have to find an alternative source of protein if we had another Prohibition. That would be simply feeding the less healthy and less concentrated corn straight.
100% of the fertilizer and everything from the soil still gets fed to livestock in the distillers grains. Ethanol comes from only things of the air: solar energy, CO2, and water with the latter two recycled once burnt.
Ethanol C2H6O = no fertilizer
Distillers grains = all the fertilizer
What logic is it to then assign all the energy and CO2 of fertilizer to ethanol and none to distillers grains?
@@thomashockman4972 All the energy it takes to produce and deliver a product to the consumer is reflected in the price of that product.
As such note that the spot cash delivered price of ethanol on the NYMEX is $1.48/gal.
The price of unusable sub-grade gasoline (RBOB) is $2.76/gal.
To turn RBOB into usable E0 fuel costs even more for the same reason premium does. Unfortunately it becomes even more toxic and dirtier.
Of splash in >10% ethanol to RBOB and the resultant usable fuel becomes less toxic, far cleaner burning, and cheaper/cheaper per mile to drive. Who can be against that?
Whether the corn gets dried and ground directly for feed or ground and value-added into distillers grains and ethanol, the same amount of drying will happen.
The US used 11,160,933 tons total fertilizer on corn in 1980, before ethanol.
In 2018, the year of most ethanol production ever, the US used 10,521,850 tons total fertilizer on corn.
100% of the fertilizer (& everything from the soil) still get fed to livestock in the distillers grains. Ethanol comes from only things of the air: solar energy, CO2, and water with the latter two recycled once burnt.
Ethanol C2H6O = no fertilizer
Distillers grains = all the fertilizer
What logic is it to then assign all the energy and CO2 of fertilizer to ethanol and none to distillers grains?