Mo' money fo' nibblets now?

Ain't that great? 2.15 billion bushels is enough to produce about 5.8 billion gallons [per year] of ethanol. Sounds great, doesn't it?

EXCEPT we use about 20 million bbl/d of oil. Factoring in ethanol's lower energy content, we will be replacing about 1.3% of our total crude oil consumption with corn ethanol.

So, even if we used 100% of our corn harvest for ethanol production, we can only replace less than 6.5% of our oil consumption. In the process, we'd cause a huge food shortages and untold hardship on American families.

But don't expect any farm state politician to mention any of these realities. "Just take the picture from my good angle over there..."

Maybe.. but if we started using switchgrass instead of corn, and use cullulose production rather than current ethanol production techniques... AND here is the big part... stopped paying farmers to NOT grow anything...

We'd be nearer 30% of our demand... combine that wth hybrid technology and auto-stop; and we'd be close to the 50% reduction we need to see transportation energy independance.

Yes, Waste -> Ethanol is way better than Food -> Ethanol. Switchgrass? I don't think so. Algae produce way more biomass per unit area than any other plant.

Also: Why ethanol? Ethanol cause all sorts of corrossion problems. Evaporative loss, VOC emissions, etc. Use your biomass to produce synthetic oil (with no sulfur and no aromatics it's much cleaner than fossil oil). Synthetic oil can also be blended with fossil oil at any convenients ratio, making its use very convenient and scaling up very easy to do. No need to spend a ton of money changing all the vehicles out there and rebuilding the fuel supply chain.

This baby should be smothered in its crib, corn crib that is.

My question is how much of this figure is appropriated for the MTBE changeover. Considering that ethanol is now the replacement for the chemical, it's expected that these figures should be coming in much higher, yeah?

Ash,

Auto-Stop?? Is that when the engine is turned off when idled?

Anyone got a clue why all the focus on corn rather than sugar beets or potatoes? Beets and potatoes have a much higher ethanol yield per acre than corn. Beets do not require enzymatic breakdown. Corn just got better lobbyists?

I remember a news foto from a few years ago of Idaho farmers plowing under their potatoes because the price would not support taking them to market.

"So, even if we used 100% of our corn harvest for ethanol production, we can only replace less than 6.5% of our oil consumption. In the process, we'd cause a huge food shortages and untold hardship on American families."

Really? Most of that corn is used as cattle feed. Much of the rest is used to produce corn syrup for sweetening various processed foods. Only a small fraction is destined for direct human consumption. I'm not saying corn is a great feedstock for fuel ethanol production but somehow I doubt that US families would suffer a famine if suddenly there were no more corn products in their diet. Maybe they'd even lose a few pounds and fit into a smaller vehicle.

---

Cellulosic ethanol promises greater yields by using the whole plant and, crops like switchgrass that can be grown on soils too poor for food crops. Unfortunately, it is not yet ready for prime time. The hard part is converting cellulose into sugars. From there, you can produce several compounds, notably ethanol and butanol.

Butanol would reportedly be preferable to ethanol from a fuel quality perspective: it can be blended with gasoline in any proportion without modifications to the fuel system, transported in pipelines without risk of corrosion and, has an energy density similar to that of gasoline.

When you obtain butanol from sugar via the new EEI fermentation process, the end product will also contain some residual butyric acid, a compound that gives human sweat a rather pungent odor. It is not clear if this is significant enough to cause customer acceptance problems. The EEI pricess is in also in the pilot plant stage.

Note that compound produced appears to be n-butanol rather than iso-butanol. This may affect the fuel's octane number. A big plus is the co-production of valuable hydrogen gas.

http://www.butanol.com/

Really? Most of that corn is used as cattle feed. Much of the rest is used to produce corn syrup for sweetening various processed foods. Only a small fraction is destined for direct human consumption. I'm not saying corn is a great feedstock for fuel ethanol production but somehow I doubt that US families would suffer a famine if suddenly there were no more corn products in their diet. Maybe they'd even lose a few pounds and fit into a smaller vehicle.
Hehe, haha. Let me see, a shortage of corn is not going to affect the price of beef? High fructose corn syrup is used in just about everything from soft drinks to peanut butter. Taking that off the market will have a ripple effect, the upshot of which will be expensive food.

Cellulosic ethanol promises greater yields by using the whole plant and, crops like switchgrass that can be grown on soils too poor for food crops. Unfortunately, it is not yet ready for prime time. The hard part is converting cellulose into sugars. From there, you can produce several compounds, notably ethanol and butanol.
OK, so we agree that 1) Cellulosic ethanol would be better than corn ethanol, 2) Cellulosic ethanol is not ready for prime time and 3) Converting cellulose to sugar is a pain in the butt.

I ask again: Why ethanol? If you go the gasification/Fischer-Tropsch route (to produce renewable synthetic oil out of biomass), you have the following advantages over cellulosic ethanol:
1. Use 100% of the available organic plant matter, not just the fraction of the cellose fraction that can be coverted to sugar.
2. No need for energy-intensive distillation to separate fuel from water.
3. No need to sell FFV or make any other adjustment to existing vehicles.
4. No need to retool the entire fuel distribution network.
5. No increase in emissions or evaporative loss.
6. A robust chemical process and not a sensitive biological process.
7. Ready for prime time.

Butanol would reportedly be preferable to ethanol from a fuel quality perspective: it can be blended with gasoline in any proportion without modifications to the fuel system, transported in pipelines without risk of corrosion and, has an energy density similar to that of gasoline.
Put it this way: Why butanol?

When you obtain butanol from sugar via the new EEI fermentation process, the end product will also contain some residual butyric acid, a compound that gives human sweat a rather pungent odor. It is not clear if this is significant enough to cause customer acceptance problems. The EEI pricess is in also in the pilot plant stage.
You mean on top of everthing else it also STINKS?

Note that compound produced appears to be n-butanol rather than iso-butanol. This may affect the fuel's octane number. A big plus is the co-production of valuable hydrogen gas.
Hydrogen, don't make me laugh. Hydrogen will be "at least twenty years away" for the next 50 years as for the last 50 years...

Increase in demand for corn will make the cattle food expensive too, which make our hamburger more costly. Which is no good. Perhaps it is a even better idea to make use of those corn stalk to make fuel, and eat those corn.

Energy rate of return for alcohol is very low, not sure how much? Is it even reach 1?

Of all the high technology you americans(at least for the one in charge up there) like to talk about, but what high tech? FT process from WW2 or celulosic ethanol? Why all the corn ethanol and hydrogen white elephants?

Why H2 = White Elephant
1. Cost
"One of the biggest advantages of biodiesel [or renewable synthetic oil] compared to many other alternative transportation fuels is that it can be used in existing diesel engines without modification, and can be blended in at any ratio with petroleum diesel. This completely eliminates the "chicken-and-egg" dilemma that other alternatives have, such as hydrogen powered fuel cells. For hydrogen vehicles, even when (and if) vehicle manufacturers eventually have production stage vehicles ready (which currently cost around $1 million each to make), nobody would buy them unless there was already a wide scale hydrogen fuel production and distribution system in place. But, no companies would be interested in building that wide scale hydrogen fuel production and distribution system until a significant number of fuel cell vehicles are on the road, so that consumers are ready to start using it. With a single hydrogen fuel pump costing roughly $1 million, installing just one at each of the 176,000 fuel stations across the US would cost $176 billion - a cost that can be completely avoided with liquid biofuels that can use our current infrastructure." - http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

2. Properties of hydrogen
"Hydrogen is often mentioned as a replacement for petroleum. But, hydrogen is not an energy source, so much as it is an energy carrier, and certain very significant technical challenges must be solved before "The Hydrogen Economy" ever becomes realistic. A workshop conducted by the Department of Energy in 2002 concluded that the transition to a hydrogen economy "could take several decades" for a number of reasons. Hydrogen has a very low energy density, is difficult to transport and store, and hydrogen fuel cells are very expensive. In addition, at present 95% of all hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels, which is why it is listed as "nonrenewable," even though the potential exists for creating it from renewable sources. Due to the substantial challenges, hydrogen can’t be counted on at this time to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil." - http://www.omninerd.com/2006/05/17/articles/52

3. It has a habit of going BOOM

Note that so far, hydrogen is only used for space travel, due to its high energy to mass ratio. Hydrogen cannot even penetrate the highly competitive air travel industry, where there is a significant benefit for light weight fuel. So, why would we use hydrogen for surface travel, where there is very little benefit for a light weight fuel?

A lot of that subsidized corn is being dumped into countries below the cost of production, undercutting local farmers and usually causing their agriculture to collapse. It would be better for all if the US would use the subsidized corn at home rather than meddle with other countries food security, however I can't see the US wanting to play fair anytime soon.

How about consuming 50% less fossil liquid fuel. More efficent lighter vehicles like most Europeans use would do it. Wouldn't that be a more common sense approach?

The remaining 50% could further be reduced by half with a mix of improved hybrids and PHEVs. At that point,(the remaining 25%) the use of ethanol and biofuels would make sense and would not require 100% of USA farm lands.

Upgrading Hybrids to PHEVs could reduce the remaining 25% to 12.5% or less and our good neighbour (USA) would finally stop importing fossil fuel. The Alberta Tar Sands production could be eased to one (1) million barrel/day or less. Canada's and US GHG would be reduced by 25% or more.

Sounds simple, but it would be more effective than multiplying gas guzzlers and consuming more and more.

An Engineer, I agreee and I think that hydrogen will only be viable for fuel cells and similar storage purposes; it's just plain not economically viable as a combustible fuel right now. In the future, I don't know but at least in the near term it is simply not a possibility.

Biofuels like cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel along with electric hybrids, plug-ins, and the like are all viable replacements for gasoline and diesel and will eventually fully replace fossil fuels along with other alternatives yet undiscovered, but hydrogen fuel is not an economical alternative at this point in time for a vehicle fuel and may not be for years, if ever.

We can make small amounts of hydrogen, i.e. enough for fuel cells, from hydrolysis but large scale production would require the use of copious amounts of fossil fuels, effectively forcing us to burn the oil to replace it with hydrogen.

I also want to add that real corn prices today are effectively unchanged since the 1860's until today; the market is so oversupplied that prices are depressed to the point where

Although I don't think corn ethanol is a viable or desirable feedstock for alternative fuels, using a significant portion of the corn crop for it will not seriously affect prices in real terms and might help stimulate agriculture in markets previously depressed by subsidized US corn.

It's a mixed bag, I guess.

Although I don't think corn ethanol is a viable or desirable feedstock for alternative fuels, using a significant portion of the corn crop for it will not seriously affect prices in real terms and might help stimulate agriculture in markets previously depressed by subsidized US corn.
Are you kidding? What economic theory is that? Certainly not Economics 101. In fact, demand for ethanol is already affecting corn prices: see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12754620/

Let's look at it from a different perspective:
1. We pay subsidies to corn farmers. The result is a lot of corn, but at least food is cheap. Your tax dollars at least save you some money at the grocer.
2. We pay subsidies to produce ethanol from corn. The result, in theory, is cheaper fuel - E85 currently costs less than gasoline. WARNING: compare prices based on miles travelled, not gallons purchased. Suddenly, our new fuel does not look so cheap anymore. Your tax dollars used to make fuel even more expensive!
3. High corn demand for ethanol results in higher corn prices. Talk about inflationary pressure. Suddenly, all food is more expensive. But what can you do, stop eating? Your tax dollars used to enrich the politically connected, and make your life more miserable...

An Engineer, it would increase prices and stimulate production of corn worldwide. That doesn't mean those higher prices will be either desirable or realistic, but they will be higher and they will eat in to the surplus at least until more production comes on line.

The only real way to revive corn is to eliminate the subsidies on it and its products. Otherwise, corn growers will have to deal with permanently and artificially low prices and the American taxpayer will have to subsidize a product neither desired nor economically viable without subsidies.

The money spent on corn and ethanol would be a lot more useful if put in to research or spent on tax credits for energy efficiency or similar purchases by individuals.

I like corn as a food, it is probably my favorite vegetable. That being said, I don't think that the production of Ethanol fuel, or Corn plastic, or both for that matter, would really keep the Corn off my dinner plate.

As a country we produce A LOT of corn, and we can grow more, pretty easily. Bio-Engineered food can't even be given away to starving countries, why not use it for fuel and plastics? Ethanol seems like a viable fuel alternative. An Ethanol/electric based hybrid seems to be the next step in land based transportation. We need to stop thinking of ways to not be so dependant upon fossil fuels and start taking action. The practical benefits of using alternative fuels that are readily available, and easily renewed are here, now, today, and we need to start using them. Ethanol may not be our savour from our dependence on petroleum, but it's a step in the right direction.

This article provides a bit more information about the broader picture on crop prices:

http://www.record-eagle.com/2006/jun/04ethanol.htm

***************

An Engineer:

> 3. High corn demand for ethanol results in higher corn
> prices. Talk about inflationary pressure. Suddenly,
> all food is more expensive. But what can you do, stop
> eating?

Gosh, I wish. If the only impact of ethanol production was to make the average American eat ~200 less calories per day it would be worth 10x what we're spending on it. This would extend more lives than curing cancer.

I read that the government pays farmers to keep 50 million acres in switchgrass to preserve the soil. If you get 500 gallons per acre you have 25 billion gallons, which would be enough for 25/140 or about 17.85% of the fuel we use now. Not bad, seeing as we pay to have it grown anyway.

The price of corn is a minor contributor to the cost of food on your plate. Farmers get very little of our food dollar; the cost is mostly in distribution and processing. As an aside, this is also true of energy consumption in the food sector: the US uses more energy cooking food than it does growing it.

About BTL via gasification: it's my understanding that the minimum economic size of an ethanol plant is smaller than that of a BTL plant. FT works best if the syngas is not diluted with nitrogen (since if it is you can't easily recycle it through the FT reactor, as the nitrogen builds up in the gas stream). You can gasify with oxygen, but oxygen separation plants currently don't scale down well, leading to a minimum size of about 100 MW. Or, you can burn the FT off gass in a turbine instead of recycling it, but that reduces the FT yield.

It would be interesting if a practical means of producing low-nitrogen syngas could be found that didn't involve a large oxygen separation plant. For example, chemical looping gasification, or better techniques for oxygen separation via membranes.

Not all the corn grown is food grade corn anyway...

The leftorvers from production are still used for cattle feed.

Corn is cheap, corn is in production and farmers have the equipment to plant, spray, harvest it etc.
They may not for other crops.

Even if the price goes up so what.

Barrel of oil 42 gallons $70+
1 gallon of gas $3+

1 bushel of corn 56 lbs $2 +/-
bag of corn chips 6 ounces $.75 = $2 per lb
= $112 per bushel

That is a 5600% mark up.

yet how many people compalin about the price of corn?

Regarding an earlier comment about beets and potatoes. It should now be obvious why we use corn vs beetsand potatoes. It's called the corn lobby. If it weren't for that lobby, we wouldn't be talking about corn.

An Engineer:
The hydrogen could be used to produce chemicals, like fertilizer. Sugar beets are nice, but sweet sorghum is way better (less water usage, 1.9 vs 3.4-6.1 energy balance).
____Algae oil could be used to at least sequester the carbon in the atmosphere. At most, they may be used to fuel the world. High efficiency solar cells may also push us across the finish line along with efficiency/ productivity gains.
____Another point was that we had a bumper crop of corn last year (and the year before). Some storage facilities ran out of room, and had to store the corn outside on plastic tarps.

"Ethanol may not be our savour from our dependence on petroleum, but it's a step in the right direction."

Think Green: Ethanol from corn is a net energy LOSS- it is a misguided political step /should not be difficult to comprehend.

Corn is used because the frementing and distilling methods are well known and investors are slow to back the use of untried feedstocks. In some places sorghoum is being tried and time will tell if big money get behind it.

An Engineer -

just to clarify: I'`m NOT advocating the use of H2 as a vehicle fuel. However, there are uses for it in the chemical industry.

Why ferment alcohols rather than go directly to BTL? Simple: fermentation is currently a lot cheaper. Fischer Tropsch will be limited to coal and natural gas feedstocks for some time yet.

Butanol may be mixed with gasoline in any proportion without having to adapt the fuel systems of existing vehicles. Its energy content is comparable to gasoline (i.e. there is no loss of range). It can also be transported in pipelines, eliminating expensive rail travel and blending overheads at the receiving end. It can be produced from any sugary feedstock. Bottom line: if the price is right, it's a better option than ethanol.

N-butanol itself does not smell bad, more like bananas actually. The problem is the butyric acid, perhaps a chemist will figure out how to neutralize the odor in a post-processing step.

Not sure what outdated study (or editorial) you are using to suggest Ethanol production is a net energy loss, but that is widely believed to be incorrect. More recent studies have proven that there is a positive energy balance for ethanol, as some of the more publicized ones were using incorrect assumptions, 20 year old data, or not counting all of the byproducts.

That is just with EXISTING technology. We will eventually use the cellulose, and there is potential to extract oil from the kernal as well. Now that there are economic incentives to maximize the yields of corn, this WILL happen in the near future. As we become more efficient at utilizing the corn, the subsidies will eventually decrease.

Yes, such technologies have taken too long to develop in hindsight, but that had more to do with the fact that oil was simply too cheap. This is the hand we were dealt (a plethora of corn), so we'll have to make the best use of it. Once the cellulose production is in place, we can then start to think about using different feedstocks (sorghum, switchgrass)

BTW....both gas and diesel have a negative energy balance as well.

I'd like to get off track a bit; hopefully Mike won't mind.

I see a lot of discussion about Butanol, but I've had trouble tracking down more information. I don't really doubt it's chemical suitability -- I'm sure it runs great, doesn't increase emissions, etc. My question is about manufacturability.

All of the references I see discussing the manufacturability are either from or are derived from Environmental Energy, Inc., a company which claims to have created a process with higher yield than the corn ethanol process. Has anyone seen something which independantly verifies this claim (on a commercial scale) or which compares the butanol process with a cellulosic process?

What's in a name -

until very recently, the only way to produce butanol from biomass was using a very old process based on acetone. Yields were so low the biofuels industry, though aware of the good fuel propoerties, focussed on ethanol instead. The EEI process promises to change that, and I have not come across anyone refuting that claim.

Unfortunately, technological feasibility does not guarantee business success. For any startup, marketing a patent to a giant corporation can be a difficult proposition. For example, agrobusiness giant ADM is pursuing a rival and possibly inferior technology based on Clostridium beijerinckii:

http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2004/01/30/bacteria_gives_crud_life_anew/

Another issue is that there is competition for butanol from the chemical industry, where margins are higher. This prices butanol out of contention as a motor fuel unless production volumes were to sharply increase. Thanks to congressional mollycoddling, corn farmers may profit more from inefficient ethanol production than they would from the EEI process.

Not sure what outdated study (or editorial) you are using to suggest Ethanol production is a net energy loss, but that is widely believed to be incorrect. More recent studies have proven that there is a positive energy balance for ethanol, as some of the more publicized ones were using incorrect assumptions, 20 year old data, or not counting all of the byproducts.
Is January 2006 recent enogh for you, see http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/311/5760/506? While the study did conclude that corn ethanol had a small positive energy balance, it also stated that the benefit was too small to make corn ethanol a candidate for replacing oil. "Nonetheless, it is already clear that large-scale use of ethanol for fuel will almost certainly require cellulosic technology."

Think of it this way: A positive energy balance of 1.2 means you have to use 100 bpd of ethanol to pruduce 20 bpd of excess. It would not take a big incident (a spill or an accident) to wipe out you 20 bpd margin. Heck, an operator's mistake could wipe out a month's worth of gain.

Sure, it will improve over time, to 1.4 or perhaps 1.5. Hardly anything to write home about.

Bottom line: There are better ways to replace oil.

A couple comments -

You originally stated that ethanol was a net energy loss - that is what I was refuting.

I never said Corn Ethanol was going to replace oil under the current techniques or even with the modest improvements that you suggested.

Utilizing the cellulose from the corn stalks and extracting the oil from the distillers dry grain that is a byproduct for a biodiesel feedstock will raise that energy balance well beyond what you have quoted.

The point of promoting CORN ethanol is not to suggest that it is the final solution - NO ONE thinks that! It is to get ethanol production off and running with enough capacity that simple economics will dictate that other feedstocks with higher yields will be used and waste products are put to use.

Also....

I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but asoline has a negative energy balance as well, so I'm not sure if this is a good argument. Even a marginal improvement is just that - an improvement.

I believe the latest updates from the DOE suggest the energy yield of gasoline to be around .8 (or almost a 20% loss in energy). Their latest numbers for corn ethanol also peg that higher than you have quoted - around 1.35 (almost a 35% gain).

Look, many of these studies are all over the board, and you can almost always find one to support just about any opinion that you have.

In my opinion, this is a step in the right direction. Why not take these baby steps, instead of sitting around and doing nothing until the grand solution presents itself?

OK, fair enough. Cellulosic ethanol may or may not be a big part of our future fuels.

My concern is that many people are looking for the next big thing. Ethanol sounds cool. But ethanol has many problematic properties including:
1. The energy required for distillation places an upper limit on ethanol production efficiency.
2. Ethanol is quite a bit more corrosive than gasoline, which could lead to engine problems. Also, ethanol cannot be pumped with gasoline for this reason. Delivering ethanol by ship, truck or barge adds a lot of cost, especially for us in the distant markets.
3. Issues of things like vapor lock, flame visibility, and cold starts have experts concerned.
4. Increased vapor pressure of gasoline-ethanol mixtures cause increase emissions and evaporative loss.
5. The miles per gallon of ethanol is less than the miles per gallons of gasoline, due to lower energy content. All those articles of E85 being cheaper than gasoline usually fail to point that out.

I think renewable synthetic oil (BTL) has significant advantages over ethanol. That said research into cellulosic ethanol is better than doing nothing.

Is ethanol really that much more corrosive than gasoline? I know methanol is highly corrosive, but I was under the understanding that it was mostly some changes to rubber gaskets and non-metal components that are needed to make an engine flex-fuel and ready for ethanol. I mean, it's a couple hundred dollars worth of upgrades in limited production - can it really be that bad?

Are you right on #4? I thought ethanol had a much LOWER vapor pressure (around 2 PSI) than gasoline (ranging from 7-15 PSI)? I thought that is what caused the potential cold starting issues, and why they settled on E85, to keep the 15% gasoline? While low vapor pressures cause issues with starting, I thought that it was better in terms of evaporative loss (the higher the pressure, the more evaporative losses).

Also, most of the studies I have ready compare the two on an energy basis, not volume, so I think the lower energy density is less relevent. Cost wise though, you do have a point.

Yeah, there are issues, but hopefully someone will come to their senses and consider butanol for all of it's benefits (higher yields, ability to transfer in pipelines, no engine modifications required).

Back to the butanol discussion, I am very interested in learning more about this, but there seems to be a lack of information.

Now, most flex-fuel vehicles are still optimized to run on gasoline. Projects such as Saab's Biopower concept proved that an engine can be tuned to run on ethanol and produce significantly more power, due to it's higher octane rating. This can help to offset the lower energy density, since a smaller ethanol powered engine can produce the same power as a larger gasoline powered one.

Now, since butanol has an even higher octane rating than ethanol, does that mean that similar, if not better gains can be made with an engine optimized to run on butanol? That would even further widen the benefit of butanol, as that is not factored in at all in the studies I have seen....

Oil to gasoline energy gain 0.8
Corn to ethanol energy gain 1.2
Sugar beet to ethanol energy gain 2.0
Sugar cane to ethanol energy gain 4.0
Cellulose to ethanol energy gain 8.0 (est.)

Would it be fair to say that corn ethanol processing leaves more cellulose behind than those others used for comparison? If so, once we start utilizing that cellulose for ethanol, wouldn't it make corn ethanol's total yield much closer? Do the others have any other major benefits, such as significantly less cultivation/fertilizers required? Faster growing? Anything?

Corn stover, or the corn stalk is now plowed under for cultivation. It has been estimated that 50% could be harvested for cellulose ethanol while still maintaining good soil quality. That other 50% is now used for animal feed.

When corn is made into ethanol, there is the distillers grain left over that is used for high protein animal feed. The animals need protein and plant stalk for their diets. So, you can see there is a tradeoff between human food needs, animals food needs and fuel requirements.

So, to answer part of your question, you would get higher energy gain by using both the corn and the stalk, than just the corn alone, but you would get the highest by using the stalk only.

When the corn oil is extracted from the distiller's dry grain to be used as a biodiesel feedstock, does that make this grain unusable as an animal feed? Is it essentially trading animal feed for biodiesel, or can you extract both?

There was a post on here about that. A company said that you could get ethanol from the corn, corn oil from the distillers grain and animal feed from what is left. You would have to look in the ethanol topics section to see.

All you are doing is taking the starch out to make sugar then ethanol, then the fats out to make biodiesel from the corn oil and what you end up with is healthy animal feed.

Thanks. I thought I read that same thing, but you never know who to believe. All in all, if you included the sugars they could extract from the stover, that's a pretty efficient use of corn. We'll see if it actually happens!