Ethanol, another nail in the coffin of GA

[flat country pilot]

Bruce,

Don't leave the 170 Association and please don't sell your 170. I read this website for a year before I decided I wanted a 170 and your one of the more experienced people here. I know money talks and $4plus or $5 fuel is no fun. I do agree your j3 could put the fun back in at 4gph.

Congress has now requested big oils tax returns from the IRS to probe into these high prices. I wonder if the IRS will be able to find the tax returns?

MTBE has been outlawed in several states and that is driving the demand for ethanol right now. The US just can't produce enough Ethanol to replace MTBE yet and Therefore the price of ethanol is high.

Even with an STC for ethanol, or a diesel engine, the price at the pump is still high. I think a break up of the oil companies to create more competition could help prices.

N3243A asks if the production of ethanol is worth the energy it takes to produce it?

Whether I grow wheat, corn, peas, canola, soybeans, flax, etc... I still have the investment in all the equipment, transportation and proccessing.
But with biodiesel in my equipment we can almost eliminate fossil fuels. Your right, the source for nitrogen in fertilizer is derived from natural gas.

The arguement that producing ethanol uses more energy than it provides is grossly misleading. Who would be behind the scam and who would benefit from it?

The discussion on farm subsidies does not belong here. But for the record, WE SHOULD NOT HAVE ANY

[GAHorn]

The biggest problem with alcohol fuels is their affinity to absorb water, which can then precipitate out as the fuel cools at altitude. Engines run poorly on water.

[Bruce Fenstermacher]

Bruce,

Don't leave the 170 Association and please don't sell your 170. I read this website for a year before I decided I wanted a 170 and your one of the more experienced people here. I know money talks and $4plus or $5 fuel is no fun. I do agree your j3 could put the fun back in at 4gph. .....

I NEVER said I'd leave the association. You guys are stuck with Teresa and me I'm afraid.

What I said is for the first time the realization hit me that I may not fly my 170 enough to rationalize keeping it. A thought that until now hadn't occurred to me.

For me the pain at the pump well exceeds any pleasure I might get flying the 170 and so it will just sit. That is no good or any plane.

I said I wouldn't consider buying a 170 right now but I meant any plane that burns more than about 4 gph. My budget won't allow me to have fun feeding it. If I'd always used 100LL and had taken that in consideration with the cost to airplane ownership it might be different.

[Bruce Fenstermacher]

George I understand the water issue to be the problem with alcohol.

How do you explain the use of AGE85 fuel then?

[Bill Hart]

Bruce,

I just got my AOPA magazine in the mail yesterday and it has an article on avgas and I was wondering if you had read it and is this thread is a result of that article or just uncanny timing?

As Flat Country Flyer has already stated before I decided to purchase a 170 I was checking out the forum here and you were one of the people that I thought gave some of the best advice and I think that if you got rid of you 170 while you might still be a member you participation here in the forum would most likely decrease and that in my most humble opinion would be a great loss to the Association.

[4-Shipp]

Baylor University has been doing research on alternative fuels for many years. I don't know much about their work, but came accross the info duirng college research for my oldest. Attached is a link to the Baylor Insitute for Air Science. Havent' spent much time there myself but it may offer some insight into the future.

http://www.baylor.edu/bias/

Bruce

[lowNslow]

Bruce, interesting site. The article at http://www.baylor.edu/bias/index.php?id=111 shows they have STCs for engines running 100% ethanol.

[N3243A]

The arguement that producing ethanol uses more energy than it provides is grossly misleading. Who would be behind the scam and who would benefit from it?

The discussion on farm subsidies does not belong here. But for the record, WE SHOULD NOT HAVE ANY

Hey Flat Country, I don't mean to start an "ethanol war", I just wanted to start some dialogue on the topic. I'm not trying to be misleading, I am just passing along data. Cornell and University of Cal. Berkeley professors did what looked to me like a pretty thorough analysis and determined that ethanol from corn and soybeans takes 27-29% more fossil fuel consumed in the process than new fuel created.

Here is a quote from the Cornell study on ethanol:
"The government spends more than $3 billion a year to subsidize ethanol production when it does not provide a net energy balance or gain, is not a renewable energy source or an economical fuel. Further, its production and use contribute to air, water and soil pollution and global warming," Pimentel says. He points out that the vast majority of the subsidies do not go to farmers but to large ethanol-producing corporations.

So who benefits from the "scam"? Sounds like the ethanol production companies, not farmers....Sounds like your in the agriculture industry. What is your take on this?

[Tom Downey]

Hitler ran his war machine on coal oil for more than 4 years, why can't we ?

we have enough coal in Pa. for conversion to oil for the country's needs for the next 250 years.

But guess who has congress in their pocket?

[bradbrady]

wow,
I go away for two days and there is two pages writen! (cool) Ethanol can be made from anything organic, crops, grass, wood (there's something to get our tree-hugger friends up in arms). Althow I'm somewhat a tree huger myself. Ehtanol can be produced with little or no fossal fuel. Just not the way it's produced now. My inital Querry on my post to Bruce is what would it take to make our aircraft ready to burn 100% ethonal? You Know the nuts and bolts (or more true to need o-rings, gaskets, ect. ) anyone have any idea?
brad

[blueldr]

Brad,
If you don't use fossil fuel to produce ethanol, what kind of fuel DO you use???

[bradbrady]

Brad,
If you don't use fossil fuel to produce ethanol, what kind of fuel DO you use???

The sun. Which created the fuel in the first place.
brad

[flat country pilot]

I have lost a couple posts here when I click on preview. They dissappear forever. What am I doing wrong?

[flat country pilot]

N3243A,

Were here to have fun not war

I haven't read through Cornell and Univ of Cal. Berkeley research. I can tell you for a fact that it costs about $1.80 per bushel to grow corn. This cost of production includes farm equipment, fuel, depreciation, interest on $, transportation, utilities, the shirt on my back, all family living, my C170 and all costs associated with flying it, everything. The anti renewable crowd typically takes the $1.80 per bu and adds in all their dreamed up costs on top of it.

One thing this country has is an over abundance of cheap corn. When we get to the point that all farmers are using biodiesel in our equipment, we can take out the cost of fossil fuel.

[flat country pilot]

What do they power an ethanol plant with? Check out BlueFlintEthanol.com

Ten miles from our farm is a coal fired power plant generating electricity. It creates superheated steam to turn the turbine generators and then the steam goes through cooling towers to cool it back into water. This cooling proccess is a waste of heat energy.

Blue Flint Ethanol is going to use this excess steam in the drying process of the ethanol plant. No doubt they will get their electricity from the coal fired plant. This is a relatively efficient use of energy to produce ethanol.

When there is enough renewable energy for transportaion the only fossil fuel left in the process will be the coal. The anti renewable crowd will want to add the entire cost of the coal fired plant into the ethanol equation. They will go through pages of complicated calculations when all they have to do is take the cost of the electricity from the plant. This is a fraction of a cent per KWH.