Why aren't we making more Ethanol fuel for cars?

Question

How come we aren't growing Corn or whatever here in USA to make Ethanol?

I think it will be cheaper than Gas/Oil.

Answer 1

Corn is a food stock.

Ethanol is not as effective in powering a vehicle.

High cost if amount of energy needed to turn corn in to ethanol.

Bio-diesel is a better alternative but you are still using food to power your car instead of yourself. Food powers animals not cars, that's why we call it food.

We need cars that have better fuel economy. I have a 10yr old car with a 6-cylinder engine and I get 31 mpg at 70 mph. I would need to drop down to a 4 cylinder engine today if I want a car that get 30 mpg and those won't get that at the speeds I drive on the highway.

I would even go for hydrogen powered or fully electric cars. You could even cover the roof of the car with solar panels to both power the car and charge the battery.

Ethanol is a lousy way to fuel a vehicle. You need fuel to power the vehicle used to plant the corn. Then you need fuel to power the vehicles used to harvest and transport it to a processing facility. Then a large amount of fuel energy (what ever fuel used to fuel the power plant) to transform it into a substince that must then be added to gas to lower you vehicles mpg. Where is this benificial or even a cost savings?

Answer 2

Brazilians have being using sugarcane ethanol  since the 70s and they use the sugarcane bagasse to power the destilaries. Almost all cars in Brazil are sold with flex technology with allows them to switch from gas to ethanol. The sugarcane is for the most part harvested on the southeast area of that country and uses only 1% of the agricultural land. They even used genetic engineering to increase the sugar level content on the sugarcane. And while the plants are growing on the fields the they sucks up CO2. There is a US tariff of 54 cent a gallon on brazilian ethanol.

Answer 3

If we use our ethanol to power the equipment to make corn, we end up having to grow one h**l of a lot of corn just to grow corn, then making ethanol is not all that cheap.

But the real reason we are not making a lot more ethanol, the corn stock needed to make it has become prohibitively expensive. Some major flooding in corn country this year may make it even more costly. Just take a look at the price of corn futures.

Answer 4

Foreign ethanol is more cheap...

Answer 5

As of right now the process for making ethanol is very expensive. So large corporations aren't interested remember that profit comes first environment second.

Answer 6

Current Ethanol is a horrible answer to our gasoline problem.

More Oil need to be found and drilled, or we will not care when we can no longer drive our own cars.

We must find better sources than a fuel source that is less efficient than gasoline, takes as much energy to make as it creates, uses 26 pounds of corn for a single gallon, is helping to starve people worldwide and raise many of our food costs.

If Ethanol has only 70% as much energy and you get 30 MPG with gasoline then you get 21 MPG with ethanol.

Answer 7

For decades the US government has been paying subsidies to corn farmer not to grow Corn, the same way that they have been paying cotton grower not to grow cotton, to keep the price up.

however most of the cars built since 1995 are able to run on ethanol.

however until recently the price difference has been so small that the loss of power and mileage has not been enough to make it cost effective.

Also Ethanol has been known to be corrosive to Gas powered engines, while Bio Diesel is actually beneficial for the deisel engines, it just make sense to use the corn for diesel instead of ethanol.

Answer 8

Con - Some argue it will end up being more expensive than petrol and that the energy required to create the stuff actually results in more pollution than comes from petrol.

Con - Contains 34% less energy per gallon than petrol, thus fuel economy is reduced.

Con- Pure ethanol can only be used in specially made engines

Con - Some vehicle manufacturers void their warranties if fuel with more than 10 percent ethanol in it is used.

does that help?