E85: Fuel of the future?
This
year I bought a flex-fuel vehicle. A flex-fuel engine runs on either regular gas
or a combination of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline called E85. I bought it on
purpose. I was looking for a way to cut down on my use of oil. I would like us
not to use any fossil fuel. I think it is possible. We just have
to get started on that path.
I
chose a flex over a hybrid because I think it gets better “gas” mileage than
a hybrid. For instance, if I get 20 mpg from E85, I am really getting 120 mpg of
gasoline because my fuel is only 1/6 gasoline. A hybrid that gets 50 mpg gets
only 50 mpg of gasoline. Since my primary goal was to reduce my use of fossil
fuels, I chose the flex vehicle. I am, however, watching development of
flex-hybrid vehicles which could theoretically get over 300 mpg of gasoline. How
cool would that be? Why don’t we have them already?
It
was hard to think about buying a flex when it was impossible to get E85 anywhere
reasonably close, but at the same time difficult to imagine demanding
neighborhood stations carry it if I didn’t even have a vehicle to use
it in.
With
the thought of just getting started on the path, I set out to buy one. The
beauty of the flex vehicle is that in the absence of E85, I can just run regular
gas, but also I can now say to the guy on the corner, whose company advertises
how green it is, but doesn’t sell any alternative fuel in my
town, “where’s the E85?”
Happily
for me, shortly after I finally bought my flex-fuel vehicle, E85 became
available almost in my neighborhood, just a 5-mile drive down the
very street Cheryl’s Herbs is on. Colleen Kashif, a local, independent
businesswoman with a pioneering spirit began selling E85 at her ZX Express
on Manchester in Kirkwood. For the past 6 months, fueling stations in the St.
Louis area have been introducing E85 at the rate of 1 new location a month.
Colleen recently converted her premium pumps to dispense E85. I believe this
move has already paid off for her. I find reasons to go to Kirkwood to spend my
money on things I would buy in Maplewood if E85 were available here.
Update (11/1/07): I stopped at Colleen's ZX Express a couple of days ago to fill up with E85. She was selling it for $2.19. She said it had been $2.09 the previous week. Gas in my neighborhood is selling for $2.69. Oil is closing in on $100.00 a barrel. In addition to everything else, my Flex is now becoming economical as well. Not my intent but I'll take it.
The
first authentic internal combustion engine in America, developed by Samuel Morey
around 1826, ran on ethyl alcohol (ethanol) and turpentine. In 1896, Henry Ford
introduced his Quadricycle, a vehicle which ran on a pure ethanol/gasoline mix
(like E85). In 1908, he designed his famous Model T to run on ethanol. He said
it was "the fuel of the future".
I
was born in 1949, two years after Henry Ford died. Cars ran on gasoline. Period.
Ford’s comments seemed quaint and naïve. It would be many years before I even
heard of ethanol being used for anything except drinking.
Ethanol
can be made from corn, wheat, sugar beets, sugar cane, switchgrass and other
prairie grasses, grain straw, cheese-making byproducts, milk production waste,
used chopsticks (Yes, they do this in Japan), olive tree trimmings, coffee
beans, fruit juice production waste, coal, potato waste, beer-making byproducts,
fast-growing trees, animal waste, sawdust, construction waste, yard clippings
and other cellulosic material. Bacteria, capable of eating waste and producing
ethanol in a very short (and cheap) time are being enlisted to the cause as
well.
In
this country, at this time, most ethanol comes from corn, which has
pre-established production and distribution lines. This is, I think, not the
best source for the environmemnt and others should be encouraged.
I’ve
been talking about E85 for years with Farmer Bob, my old Brentwood neighbor, who
has a farm and grows corn in Illinois.
There
has been some concern recently that the increased cost of corn is causing other
food prices to rise. So I asked Farmer Bob and he said, no, not the corn price,
but he thought oil prices (and a combination of other factors) were more
responsible, so I looked it up.
In
1951 a bushel of corn cost $1.84.
Today
it costs around $3.50 a bushel. The price has not yet doubled once in over 55
years!
On
the other hand, consider that a barrel of oil in 1951 cost $1.71.
Today
(10/07) it costs around $90. That price has doubled more than 5½ times in that period.
I
think Farmer Bob is right. I spoke with a woman the other day who remembers gas
at 19 cents. I remember a quarter but that was a bit later. Gas on the corner
today costs $2.55. How can Farmer Bob even make
corn that costs less than twice what it did in 1951 with machinery powered by
fuel that costs more than 10 times more? A full-size 1951 Ford had a base price
of $1,417. A full-size 2008 Ford has a minimum base price of $23,245 or 16.4
times what it did then. Why shouldn’t a bushel of corn cost $30 or more? A
$3.50 bushel of feed corn is making chicken cost more? I don’t think so.
Years ago it was thought that ethanol production used more energy than it consumed. Unfortunately this was simply not true. It is especially not true today as technological advances have increased efficiency and yield. Today’s ethanol produces 1.67 times* the energy needed to produce it. As more closed-loop ethanol facilities (those which do not use fossil fuels) come on line, farmers produce plant material with machinery run on ethanol and other biofuels (and grow more crops not in need of intensive chemical treatments) the efficiency of ethanol production should continue to improve. In fact we already see this happening. Today, one bushel of corn now yields 2.8 gallons of ethanol—up from 2.5 gallons just a few years ago.
There
is a fuel, widely used today, which uses more energy to make than
is produced and that fuel is gasoline. Gasoline produces only .79 times* the
energy needed to produce it. For this reason alone (and there are so many
others!) it seems to make sense to hasten towards the day when gasoline will no
longer be used as fuel.
By
using E85, I will cause 431 less gallons of gasoline to be consumed this year. I
will also cause 1700 less pounds of greenhouse gases to be emitted. I could
actually get, I guess, higher figures if I drove more. I actually walk a lot -
another way of cutting down on the use of fossil fuels. I purposely live close
to where I do most of my work so that I can walk more often than drive.
Ethanol
is a much cleaner fuel than petrol (gasoline):
It
is a renewable fuel made from plants.
It
is not a fossil-fuel: manufacturing it and burning it does not increase the
greenhouse effect.
It
provides high octane at low cost as an alternative to harmful fuel additives.
Ethanol
blends can be used in all gasoline engines without modifications.
Ethanol
is biodegradable without harmful effects on the environment.
It
significantly reduces harmful exhaust emissions.
Ethanol's
high oxygen content reduces carbon monoxide levels more than any other
oxygenate: by 25-30%, according to the US EPA.
Ethanol
blends dramatically reduce emissions of hydrocarbons, a major contributor to the
depletion of the ozone layer.
High-level
ethanol blends reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by up to 20%.
Ethanol
can reduce net carbon dioxide emissions by up to 100% on a full life-cycle
basis.
High-level
ethanol blends can reduce emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) by 30%
or more. VOCs are major sources of ground-level ozone formation.
As
an octane enhancer, ethanol can cut emissions of cancer-causing benzene and
butadiene by more than 50%.
Sulphur
dioxide and Particulate Matter (PM) emissions are significantly decreased with
ethanol.
I
have also discovered that E85 produces 105 octane compared to the 87 octane
rating of regular gasoline. This provides a very noticeable increase in
performance.
You might already have a flex vehicle and not really be aware of it. I recently noticed that the Post Office in my area had dumped their old mail vehicles in favor of new Chevrolet flex-fuel mini-vans. I quizzed up my mail carrier. She said she fuels the vehicle at public stations and had no idea what E85 was or what flex-fuel meant. Now, I suppose the Post Office is using the purchase of those vehicles to meet some sort of “green” quota, but without actually using E85, they are no more “green” than the older vehicles. OK, maybe a little. They are smaller.
Recently
my local newspaper (a once great and well-respected daily) has been running a
series of negative articles about E85. This would seem a little odd at first
glance as the newspaper is located in a city surrounded by what can pretty much
be described as “corn country.” I don’t know the origin of their anti-E85
bias but I can only think it must be the oil companies who would be so opposed
to the wide-spread adoption of alternative fuels. Can you think of others?
The
newspaper drones on and on: E85 is not the final answer [So
what?], E85 makes food too expensive [Does it
really? See below], E85 is not cleaner than gas [Yes,
it is. See above], corn uses too many pesticides [actually
it does, and herbicides too, but it has and will continue to do so
regardless of whether there is ethanol or not – another topic, another
article], ethanol plants are not doing as well as they had hoped [So what?]. Only trouble
is, it’s all garbage. All of it. The newspaper should be ashamed of its
collective self. You might think that after receiving a letter from the head of
the American Lung Association disputing their assertion that E85 was no cleaner
than gas that they might begin actually doing a little research of their own.
Printing oil company news releases verbatim isn’t really journalism, is it?
Just after we bought our new flex, a 2007 Dodge Caravan, we drove to Baraboo,
Wisconsin. We used E85 the whole way up and back. We found E85 available near
the highway in abundance the whole way. We located E85 dealers easily on the
internet prior to our trip. We actually stopped for fuel more often than we had
to in order to encourage more E85 retailers and to check on the variety of
prices available. It was a bit of an adventure for us.
Recently
Terry Winkleman of Home Eco (http://www.home-eco.com/)
asked us to display our new car at a “Green” car show down at Schlaffly
Brewery sponsored by an organization called Green Drinks (http://www.greendrinks.org/)
which gets together periodically for various “green”-themed events. At the car show,
I met the daughter of a gentleman who had restored an old St. Louis building and
rendered it “green.” The Green Drinks group at their previous get-together
had toured that building. I also ran into Heidi Schoen, the Green Living Editor
of The Healthy Planet (http://www.thehealthyplanet.com/index.htm),
a St. Louis health/wellness/natural living/environmental newspaper in which
Cheryl’s Herbs has advertised for many years. Heidi asked me to write an
article for The Healthy Planet about my flex. The article was to be 400 words.
It was hard for me to choose only 400 words to write about E85 (as you can see
for yourself if you’ve read this far) but I did my best and decided early on
to flesh out the story here. I hope I chose the right 400 words to entice
readers to look here for more information.
Todd Smith, writing an online review of the green car show in the Citizen Journal (Citizen Journal), quotes Nate Forst, a St. Louis resident, as saying he would be willing to drive a vehicle powered by solar energy if and when it became practical. I certainly share that sentiment, but I hope that until that vehicle becomes a reality, Mr. Forst doesn’t just continue driving around in some old gas guzzler. I’m not saying he is, mind you, but there are real alternatives out there – like E85 – which may be (and hopefully are) just steps along the path to a future in which no fossil fuels are used and the air is clean and healthy. There are things we can do TODAY! We just have to get started on that path.
Update (11/1/07): A UN official recently stated that biofuel production could lead to thousands of deaths from hunger. This was not the same official who recently stated that use of biofuels could increase food production and actually help feed the poor.
I know people (I'm not naming any names) who think
that the corn used to produce ethanol is the nice juicy sweet corn in grandma's
garden, but no, it is actually made from field corn which is typically used to
feed livestock. I bet that UN guy doesn't get that either. So, wouldn't it still
be better to feed the corn to the livestock than make ethanol? First see the
note in red at the bottom of this page.
Then consider this: In addition to ethanol, many
other products can be obtained from each and every bushel of corn produced. One
bushel of field corn is 56 pounds and provides: 31.5 pounds of starch or 33
pounds of sweetener or 2.8 Gallons of ethanol – PLUS - 13.5
pounds of gluten feed, 2.6 pounds of gluten meal and 1.5 pounds of
corn oil. I just don’t see how this is causing people to starve. It would
seem, in fact, that producing more corn for ethanol, and thus also producing
more high quality feed and corn oil, would have just the opposite effect. I
wouldn’t bet against our hapless UN guy being a paid mouthpiece of some
country’s oil industry. Why else would he make such a silly statement?
References
& Interesting Links:
(*
USDA)
"Henry Ford, Charles F. Kettering and the Fuel of the Future," Automotive History
Review, Spring 1998, No. 32, p. 7 - 27. http://www.radford.edu/~wkovarik/papers/fuel.html.
The
American Lung Association of the Upper Midwest recommends E85 as a “clean air
choice.” http://www.lungum.org/
U.S.
Dept. of Energy site on alternative fuels:
http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/fuels/ethanol.html
E85
Discussion Forum:
http://e85vehicles.com/e85/index.php?PHPSESSID=e9e91df64816d9a5abfc6f2a1fd084df&
Find E85 near you: http://www.e85refueling.com/
Clean Fuels Development Coalition: http://www.cleanfuelsdc.org/pubs/pubs.html
AutoblogGreen
a clearing house of news and blogs about green cars. A great site.
A cool site about alternative everything: http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol.html#ethintro
Producing 2.2 pounds (1 kilo) of beef generates as much greenhouse gas as driving a car non-stop for three hours.
Jeffrey S. Hoard
10/19/07
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