How much energy does it take to produce a gallon of gasoline compared to producing a gallon of ethanol?

Question

when corn is used for ethanol, all the value is not lost in the process, a by product is left over that can be fed to livestock. so really corn used for ethanol is not taken out of the corn supply. if people would do a little research,they would find out most negative reports about biofuels have been funded by oil companies to convince the public that they are inefficient and takes more energy to produce than is returned. this is just completely false.in the past it was true, but many advances have been made just in the last year to improve energy production in ethanol. biodiesel made from any type of vegetable oil produces one gallon of biodiesel for one gallon oil. one of the results that effects every citizen of the U.S. is, that every dollar that is spent on biofuels in this country stays in this counrty instead of going to middle dictators and then funneled to terrorists so they can blow us up.

Answer 1

Good question.  

It is not an easy thing to figure all the energy and costs associated with each, because nobody agrees on what to include.  Some of the studies putting down ethanol actually put an energy value and cost on the solar energy (sunlight) that is used in the photosynthesis of the corn plant.  Last thing I knew there was not a cost for sunlight!

Here is a quote from the Missouri Corn Growers President:

"As far as energy balance goes, it takes twice as much energy to create a gallon of gasoline than it does to create a gallon of ethanol. It also takes 8 to 10 times more water to refine gasoline than it does ethanol."

Mike GeskePresident, Missouri Corn Growers Association

As to the food debate here is more from Mike:

"USDA Economist Ephraim Leibtag says that it takes a 50% increase in the price of corn to have less than a 1% effect on the price of food. When you have 4 cents of corn in a $3 box of cornflakes, you can’t have much effect on the final price. Claims that ethanol are causing food prices to go up, whenever the cost of food is determined 80% by the price of oil, are simply ridiculous."

Answer 2

A VERY  EXCELLENT question.  Anybody have the answer?

Answer 3

What about the energy it takes to get crude oil here from the middle east and Venezuela? They don't use sailboats.

And there is a byproduct from refineries called pet-coke that can be burnt in place of coal. It's a greasy,corrosive, toxic, and just plain nasty byproduct, but it' usefull.

3 ethanol plants that were going to be built within 50 miles of my home have been scrapped, 2 of them are partially completed. We really needed those jobs around here.

American Bio fuel will create jobs, which will create economic stimulus. Thinking ethanol is the one or main reason corn or tortilla prices are going up is very misinformed thinking. Drought, flooding, rising oil prices have as much or more to do with it. Right now the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys, along with some floodplains in Southeast Mo and Northeast Arkansas, I know that's where i live. Farmers are just hoping they will be able to get late beans on some of their ground, if it stops raining, wheres global warming when you need it.

I have no doubt that corn isn't the most bang for the buck when it comes to ethanol. But its viable part of the picture. Sugar cane, sugar beets and Switchgrass need to be used to their potential.

Ethanol isn't the ONE solution on the oil crisis, there isn't a ONE solution. All alternative fuels will have to be used together to solve the problem. Hydrogen, bio-diesel, solar, wind, hydro, and even nuclear must be employed.

Answer 4

Depends on the quality of the petroleum. Saudi crude contains a much higher percentage of gasoline than doeds Tar Sands Synthetic crude.

Depends on the matter used to make ethanol. Sugar cane produces a much higher yeild of ethanol per ton than does corn or sugar beets.

Corn used for ethanol is taken out of the food supply. Corn is used in many foods as sugars and as a cereal grain. Just check the food labels and you will be surprised.

The price for tortillas, a food staple in Mexico that is based on corn flour, has doubled in the past two years. Consider that the minimum wage is 50 pesos per day and you can see how this is a disaster. The price has doubled because farmers make more money selling tto ethanol producers.

Ethanol is not a fuel additive.

The only reason that E85 is sold is because the alcoholics will drink E100 unless it is mixed with gasoline.

Answer 5

IDK?

Tell me

Answer 6

Depending on the studies you have either a +30% gain or a -29% deficit depending on how they dice the numbers. The studies that show a gain tend to include the energy of the byproducts in their calculations and not the total energy input while the studies that show a deficit don’t us the energy of the byproducts.

We can’t grow enough corn or produce enough vegetable oil using food crops to meets our needs. We could use ALL the crop land to make fuel and we still couldn’t do it and if we did that there would be nothing to eat. Using food for fuel is stupid; especially when we could drill for our own oil, or look at other plants for our oil, look up algae oil sometime. According to government studies we could supply all our energy needs with algae oil and not displace food crops.

Don’t forget that it takes about 4 gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol at the ethanol plant, not counting the 750+ gallons of water it takes to grow enough corn to produce a gallon of ethanol.

And don’t even start with big oil, look at the corn lobby, they are one of the biggest pushers of ethanol.

If you want even more terrorist in the world keep using food as fuel, hungry people get desperate and when they see you driving a SUV full of ethanol and realize that one tank full of ethanol uses enough corn to feed one person for one year, it’s going to make them mad, and the dictator will point and say “You’re starving because the evil USA is using all the corn to drive big cars.” In truth terrorist have many reasons to kill you, you don’t pray to (insert god here)  or you don’t wear the right cloths, or have a beard or don’t have a beard, or you let you daughter date, or your wife vote, or you let women drive or ETC. in the end terrorist want power, power over you. What you wear, eat, drink, think, not unlike many groups in the US.

I’ll stop here before I go on a rant.

Answer 7

Ethanol is simply an additive to the gasoline. One unintended consequence of Congresses knee jerk reaction however; is that many of the poorest are having to pay a lot more for corn products.  That's because corn farmers are selling their acres for Ethanol production............

Answer 8

I don't know but there are things to consider (a lot of which I have forgot but...)

1. gas can be transported by the pipeline ethanol only by truck so that brings the costs up.

2. The Oil companies are getting 52 or 53 cents a gallon from the government, so we need to factor that in because you as the taxpayer are unknowingly paying for that. That is why they are building the ethonol processing plants.They are NOT discouraging it, they are benefiting from it. Ever see the BP ads?  

3. It takes energy to run these plants so you need to factor that in.

4. Then you have the other production, hauling of the corn product and so forth cost

Now do you get an idea why the petroleum companies aren't spending money on new refineries for oil? It's not the oil production decreasing its money.

Answer 9

Actually, to produce a litre of bio fuels does take a variable amount of energy, and likewise for a litre of fossil fuel energy. Then when we make a fuel like ethanol, not all of the money stays here. Rather, it takes a significant amount of imported fossil fuel energy to produce that ethanol.

We do get more energy from the ethanol than we consume as imported fossil fuel, but it is far from being a complete savings of imported fuel.

Yes, corn processing to ethanol provides a low grade foodstuff for livestock. It is not as low grade as corn itself is, but the volume is so much lower than for corn. We can grow beef using that foodstuff, and we can also grow beef using just the sugar and oil of the corn plus some urea, a small amount of alfalfa hay.

The reality is that removal of sugar,starch, and oil from corn really does reduce the available food for livestock, and hence for people.

But yes, we need to count the feed value of the corn byproduct when evaluating the cost of ethanol.

But, and keep this foremost as a point of reasoning, it is not just the energy balance that counts. Also we have to consider the use of land that could be producing other food for people.

In simple terms earth does not have enough agricultural land to grow all the energy we have been consuming. That is, even is we divert all of our land to grow corn and attempt to live only on the byproduct from the ethanol process, we still would not have enough fuel to continue our profligate consumption of energy.

We might be able to feed half the world's people and use half of the land to grow energy. That should help to reduce obesity. But with that compromise solution we would still have to reduce our energy consumption by about 80%

Ethanol and corn oil could provide enough fuel to till, plant, and harvest all the crops we grow, as long as we do not divert any to power a car fleet or  military use.

A major impediment in growing more fuel is that we are not able to produce the fertilizer needed to grow the fuel.. our production capacity is just too small. Last year we ran short, and this year many farmers can buy nothing because it has all been pre-sold.

I mention this because it points out that using that much fertilizer to grow ethanol is going to leave a lot of land that should be producing other foods very short of fertilizer.

World wide, fertilizer supplies are short, and with higher prices for grains, farmers world wide would like to be able to buy and use more.

That means that even if we wanted to feed everyone and grow energy, it will be a while getting the supply problems for fertilizer fixed.

That is, we are too late for 2008, probably even for 2009.