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Integrated SSFR Process Could Make Cellulosic Biobutanol More Competitive with Ethanol

Researchers at the US Agricultural Research Service (ARS) are refining an integrated method of producing cellulosic biobutanol that could make it more competitive with ethanol as an alternative to gasoline. (Earlier post.)

Research team leader Nasib Qureshi began investigating the production of cellulosic biobutanol from wheat straw in 2003. His initial fermentation-based process involved the usual four sequential steps in such an approach (pre-treatment, enzymatic hydrolysis, fermentation using Clostridium bacteria, and recovery). Qureshi and colleagues then devised a way to consolidate three of the four steps into a simultaneous saccharification, fermentation and recovery (SSFR) process.

Dilute acid pretreated wheat straw in a bioreactor is simultaneously saccharified by a combination of three commercial enzymes and fermented by a culture of C. beijerinckii P260, which produces a combination of acetone, biobutanol and ethanol (ABE). There is no expensive detoxification step (overliming) typically required for dilute acid pretreated feedstock, thus offering significant cost savings.

A gas stripping procedure (the fourth step) is used to remove the acetone, biobutanol, and ethanol as they are produced. Gas stripping also solves the problem of product inhibition caused by the toxic effect of an accumulation of butanol on the fermenting organism, C. beijerinckii.

In early trial runs, the method increased biobutanol productivity by twofold above traditional glucose-based fermentation, but the pace of fermentation outran the pace of hydrolysis. Qureshi added small batches of additional sugar in a process dubbed “fed-batch feeding”. This resulted in a significant increase in biobutanol production.

During a 22-day fed-batch operating period, a culture of C. beijerinckii P260 converted nearly 430 grams of sugar (glucose, xylose, arabinose, galactose, and mannose) into 192 combined grams of acetone, biobutanol, and ethanol.

If scaled up further, the process could yield 307 combined kilograms, or 99 gallons, of acetone, biobutanol, and ethanol from 1 ton of wheat straw. According to Dr. Richard Bain at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the current expected yield for cellulosic ethanol from a biochemical process is about 90 gallons per ton of biomass. Dry mill corn ethanol yields about 102 gallons per ton of grain.

C. beijerinckii produces a specific ratio of the ABE chemicals (about 3:16:1), but efforts are under way at ARS to develop genetically modified bacteria that will make only biobutanol.

The SSFR process reduces the production cost of butanol significantly and can make the commercial production of butanol from lignocellulosic feedstock much more economical.

Qureshi and his colleagues are also investigating the use of other cellulosic feedstocks for the process.

Resources

  • Qureshi, N. 2008. Bioconversion of lignocellulose to butanol (a superior fuel) and process technology [abstract]. In: Proceedings of Innovations in Biofuels 2008, May 14, 2008, Baltimore, MD. p. 3.

  • Qureshi, N., Ezeji, T.C. 2008. Butanol (a superior biofuel) production from agricultural residues (renewable biomass): Recent progress in technology. Biofuels, Bioproducts, and Biorefining (Biofpr) 2:319-330.

Comments

Henry Gibson

Even the conversion of straw into biofuels can subtract from the food supply by not being made available to replentish the soil with it.

Butanol is probably the best transport fuel for conventional gasoline powered engines. It can be stored for long periods.

Butanol might best serve people by being kept in storage in large quantities to deal with any gasoline shortages. It is likely that butanol can be stored in large excavated salt formations.

Subsidiary fuels can ease the transition to Plug-in-hybrid vehicles. Hybrid vehicles themselves will free up more energy than these subsidiary fuels can produce.

John Galt

"Even the conversion of straw into biofuels can subtract from the food supply by not being made available to replentish the soil with it."

A doomer fallacy. Rodale's longest-running organic field trial (winter covercropping) illustrates this.
http://newfarm.rodaleinstitute.org/columns/research_paul/2006/0606/nitrocorn.shtml

"Butanol is probably the best transport fuel for conventional gasoline powered engines. It can be stored for long periods."

Other than the toxicity, sure. And grain can be stored even longer.

"Butanol might best serve people by being kept in storage in large quantities to deal with any gasoline shortages. It is likely that butanol can be stored in large excavated salt formations."

WAT?

--------

Simultaneous processes is old hat for system designers (patent search gas-stripping and vacuum fermentation). A bit too much potential for Ethanol bashing, as Anon Gibson demonstrates. C-5 sugar-based butanol fuels will have to wait for the industrial solvent markets to be saturated. Ethanol will always be a better alcohol for common fuel use, btu-cultist aside.

Larz

Get ICEs off the road. The only good use for
an ICE now is for a range-extender genset on a
PHEV.

K

An improved method which reduces butanol cost is welcome. What it means for vehicles is another matter.

Butanol is said to be somewhat better than ethanol for ICEs.

But the US, and others, should compare on the basis of total cost i.e. infrastructure plus fuel cost.

We certainly won't be better off building for both ethanol and butanol. One of them should be dropped from consideration. Ethanol is much farther along and easier to handle than butanol.

The question of infrastucture is too often ignored. Our tendency is to jump for the best theoretical solution.

Being theoretically best is dandy if you want to build your own vehicle or form a car club. But when dealing with hundreds of millions of vehicles and millions of pumps the production and distribution of the primary fuel is not a hobby.

I think we must use a lot of ethanol for a decade until electrics become the norm in personal vehicles. Fuel cells still seem a decade away. And my favorite, CNG, costs more than phasing in ethanol/gasoline blends of various percentages.

Off topic: China is talking about making methanol in enormous amounts. I don't expect that to last.

rob

John, don't waste your breath (or fingers, whatever). It's simpler just to mentally edit that out.


It seems like this particular organism doesn't metabolize all that quickly. Hopefully there is room for quite a bit of optimization on that front as well.

As for infrastructure, it's my understanding we already have it. Butanol can blend with gasoline in just about any concentration, has similar energy content, and doesn't corrode pipelines. It is the nearest direct substitute for gasoline of the alcohols.

Fungolo

Mr. K,

U R Dum

Beauty of butanol, other than higher BTU content over ethanol, is compatibility with CURRENT infrastructure.

U R Dum

K

There are about 200 plants producing ethanol now. They are producing about 6 billion gallons/year.

The farm states have ethanol firmly written into law at the state and federal levels. Where is the political will to change that? How fast would it be done?

Can those ethanol plants quickly adapt and produce butanol? Or would those plants be mostly loss? If not, do you believe we should subsidize butanol plants to compete with them?

An emerging butanol technology can't merely be as good as today's ethanol. It must be better, ethanol produced from cellulose isn't standing still.

I can buy an ethanol blend today. And that is true in large parts of the country. Where is the butanol?

Oh, the butanol will come from wheat straw? See, we have this report that says so.

Let's look at the first paragraph again:

"Researchers at the US Agricultural Research Service (ARS) are refining an integrated method of producing cellulosic biobutanol that could make it more competitive with ethanol as an alternative to gasoline."

Words like "refining" i.e. improving. And "could make" are not words I find assuring.

I have no quarrel with butanol as such. But why develop both alcohols to tens of billions of gallons? And if you choose butanol where do you get the political support to make production ramp up starting now?

For that matter, what would the engineers build today.? As far as I know there is not one single proved plant design making butanol from wheat straw.

Gasoline/alcohol blends for the next five years will use ethanol. And probably for ten. Ethanol is that far a head.

And I choose a lot of actual - real - ethanol rather than the promise that something else would be better if only it were available.

Treehugger

If the process yields 3 different types of fuel (ethanol, butanol, acetone) I have hard time to understand how it could be more efficient than processes that yield ethanol only, am I wrong ?

John T

Treehugger,
I think that most, if not all, of the processes that produce ethanol/butanol/acetone produce some proportion of all three. Just different feedstock and different processes change the % of each. It's just a matter of which one you're optimizing for. I have seen some research, Lai from UCLA I believe, that was trying to genetically engineer the e. coli they were using to stop producing ethanol/acetone...but no results yet.

So there isn't a process that produces "only ethanol" or any of the others for that matter.

Engineer-Poet

The total yield of product may be greater with fermentation to ABE than EtOH alone.  This would depend on the specific organisms involved.  IIRC, the products of yeast fermentation of glucose are 2 molecules ethanol plus 2 molecules CO2.

Acetone may have considerable value as a byproduct, or it could be hydrogenated to 2-propanol or further to propane.

Another thing not clear here is the energy overhead of the gas-stripping process.  Evaporation of the ABE products involves an increase in entropy, and the recovery of the vapors as liquids requires rejection of that entropy as waste heat.  If that's excessive compared to the useful output, this process would be useless no matter how efficient the fermentation is.

DaveD

@K

You bring up some good questions about whether we can afford to produce both and why change when there is already lots of ethanol (Billions of gallons even).

The problem is that the existing ethanol comes almost entirely from foodstock plants and will have to be switched to some type of cellulosic ethanol anyway. Different processes which will require those 200 plants to make changes anyway. So the next question would seem to be whether to change to a new ethanol process or to butanol when that change happens.

Every source I can find will completely agree that butanol is better because of it's energy density, compatibility with existing vehicles, ability to use existing infrastructure (no, ethanol can NOT do that and requires all kinds of special handling and special blending and new flex-fuel vehicles). Butanol can be shipped through normal gasoline pipelines, in normal gas trucks, dispensed in normal gas stations, etc. None of that is true for ethanol.

And we shouldn't focus on this wheat straw article. This is the first time I've ever even heard of it used. Everything else is from processes that use the exact same sources as ethanol (corn, sawgrass, sorghum, sugarcane, sugar beets, biomass from algae, etc). There really is no difference between the two as far as feedstock.

However, the other points you raise are very true for ethanol. It does exist today, it does have all the government subsidies and approvals, and it is not waiting for more breakthroughs to be economically viable.

So your question is still valid. Do we have the political will to make a switch from ethanol, which is already established, to butanol? I would normally say no...too many inhibitors, but this may be an unusual case in that there will probably have to be some major changes in ethanol plants anyway as they move to cellulosic sources and processes.

There are already some companies licensing the technology/process to change existing ethanol production over to butanol. I have no idea how expensive that is so whether or not that's economically viable is still up in the air.

Here is another quote:
"...a new process has been developed using continuous immobilized cultures of Clostridium tyrobutyricum and Clostridium acetobutylicum to produce an optimal butanol productivity of 4.64 g/L/h and yield of 42 percent. In simple terms, one microbe maximizes the production of hydrogen and butyric acid, while the other converts butyric acid to butanol.

Compared to conventional ABE fermentation, this new process eliminates acetic, lactic and propionic acids, acetone, isopropanol and ethanol production. The fermentation only produces hydrogen, butyric acid, butanol and carbon dioxide, and doubles the yield of butanol from a bushel of corn from 1.3 to 2.5 gallons per bushel. That matches ethanol's track record -- and ethanol fermentations do not yield hydrogen."

That one I've seen from multiple sources, but here is where I cut and paste it from:
http://www.lightparty.com/Energy/Butanol.html

Here is a nice, unbiased .pdf about butanol from www.ethanol.org : http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=ethanol+to+butanol+production&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8

Other good reading: http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/20073/

John T

Treehugger,
I think that most, if not all, of the processes that produce ethanol/butanol/acetone produce some proportion of all three. Just different feedstock and different processes change the % of each. It's just a matter of which one you're optimizing for. I have seen some research, Lai from UCLA I believe, that was trying to genetically engineer the e. coli they were using to stop producing ethanol/acetone...but no results yet.

So there isn't a process that produces "only ethanol" or any of the others for that matter.

k

DavidD: Thanks for the reply. You do see the problems but perhaps reach an opposite conclusion.

If demand were static existing plants would convert to the cheapest production method. They would have to. Ethanol demand is not static, it is rising and seems destined to do so for a decade. That means new ethanol plants will be built.

The existing ethanol plants would not have to be converted to cellulosic ethanol production. They would continue using foodstocks as long as they were profitable. And that might be a long time.

And despite sanity, those older foodstock plants would be protected politically with subsidies for some time while cellulose plants phased in.

The ethanol handling problem is, IMO, overstated. Otherwise I don't see why you can buy blends in much of the country. That has been true for years.

Ethanol blends are not available everywhere; there simply is no profit in some places at this time. The availability is limited by economics, not by handling.

It wasn't the wheat straw as such that caught my eye. It was the assertion that the process might make butanol cost competitive. The implication being that existing methods do not.

If any butanol is cost competitive without a cellulosic method then that fact seems well concealed.

OTOH if it is not cost competitive then either the cellulosic method must be proved and used, or butanol needs a subsidy to compete with ethanol.

Or we could drop subsidies for ethanol instead. In that case it will be ethanol from Brazil that butanol must defeat, not our local ethanol brew.

We may end up with both alcohols subsidized and competing for the same feedstocks. Never misunderestimate Congress.

Existing cars can use 10% blend ethanol. That is far beyond our present ethanol supply. I would go with 10% for a few years then offer 10% and 15%. A few years later offer 15% and 20% and drop the 10%. That alone will keep us busy for a full decade.

Part of the confusion may be about what infrastucture means. I see it meaning:

What must be built and changed to get alcohol X in our fuel tanks?

Considering that ethanol is already in many fuel tanks and supplies are increasing I would say butanol faces the infrastructure burden. The ethanol infrastructure is in operation.

The main thing I want to avoid is losing direction and headway by simply fluttering to the next alluring solution.

I doubt either of these two alcohols will be running ICEs in 2030.


Engineer-Poet

Quoth k:

Ethanol demand is not static, it is rising and seems destined to do so for a decade.
This "demand" is manufactured artificially, by mandates.  E85 costs more than gasoline per mile, and it appears that many people reject it even where it is available.

Alain

There's no use in fighting between ethanol and butanol. All the planned capacity of ethanol production together will only be a small percentage of national fuel production.
Butanol can be blended with fossil gasoline at any percentage , also with ethanol-blended-gasoline.

So any ethanol produced can be blended together with any butanol together with any fossil gasoline.

Whenever the limit for ethanol is reached, it will be clear we won't need extra ethanol production. But that won't be soon. No single production facility will need to stop or alter production in the near future because of blending problems.

DaveD

@K
You're right about the real world infrastructure. It's probably a more useful definition the way you've described it.

It seems like there has been so much of an outcry against corn and other food based ethanol that there would be some major changes there. At least going forward for now facilities. But then again, once a system is in place, with momentum....it's almost impossible to stop it and economical cellulosic doesn't exist yet.

I was thinking about butanol being better because it can be blended in much higher concentrations in existing vehicles. Ethanol can only go as high as 15% without major changes to the car which is why we have "flex-fuel" vehicles which have the right kinds of parts, etc that won't corrode with higher ethanol blends. Butanol can go much higher, possibly even 100% depending on who's numbers you believe.

Or course, that leaves one small problem LOL :

I was just checking the latest gasoline use in the US for transportation (as opposed to all petroleum)and we using approx 142.5 billion gallons of gasoline per year (http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html). It looks like we'll produce about 8 billion gallons of ethanol this year (multiple sources) so only about 5.6% of our driving "gasoline".

So even with all the ethanol production we have today (which has doubled in the last three years), we still don't have enough to really make a big dent in the gasoline supply. Considering that we only have about 220 million gallons of butanol produced in the US...it clearly doesn't matter what % I want to blend butanol with gasoline because there is nothing to really work with, at least today.

However, it seems to me that we're going to have to get to at least 25 billion gallons of ethanol/butanol to do the 15% blends we're talking about. I was just hoping that we could get some changes to the subsidies so that butanol and ethanol got the same treatment. If we're going to triple current alcohol fuel production then wouldn't it be better to do the new production around butanol if possible? If butanol really can be simply dumped into existing gasoline infrastructure with no change (I'm sure it's not really that easy, but hopefully close), then wouldn't it be worth considering that for all new plants being built?

Of course, I'm assuming that the recent things I'm reading are real and that you really can get the same volume yield of butanol vs ethanol in production now.

I'm very hopeful that algae for biodiesel will take off and be cost effective. My understanding is that after you finish squeezing all the lipids out for biodiesel, the left over biomass is good for making butanol/ethanol. Seems like a good way to kill two birds with one stone.

Jim

I don't know what to think of this. Both this article, and biobutanol in general.

Excuse me, but I don't think producing "nearly" 192 grams of biofuels is really all that newsworthy. Shouldn't they scale it up a little first? Maybe produce a whole gallon of biobutanol before calling the news wires?

Anaerobic digestion can produce about 11,000 MJ per ton of biomass. This compares with the 6700 MJ per ton cited for ethanol above, or 8000 MJ (?) per ton with this process. Note that they don't even hint at the ratios of ethanol, biobutanol, and acetone produced.

What a poor article! Why do they waste our time?

@DavidD:

If we can get PHEVs going for our personal transportation, we can save about 75% of our fuel used (gasoline) on them. We can assume gasoline used (142.5 billion gallons/year) is 100% for personal transportation/light vehicles. So 142.5x(.75) = 107 billion gallons of gasoline saved annually. That would save about 6.5 million barrels/day of oil, about a third of our daily use. (Obivously, not easy to do, but if the remaining fuel used is E85 or methane, we'd have the ability to produce those amounts.) The diesel and JP-8 uses are another story. Hopefully, we can get biodiesel via algae going.

In any case, it should be clear that getting a viable PHEV technology working has much more leverage than choosing between biobutanol and bioethanol.

I'd also make such vehicles tri-fueled, allowing for both methane and some kind of gasoline/biofuel. The methane would keep refueling costs lows. The liquid fuel would function mostly to allow for long range and rapid refueling with extant infrastructure.

K

David and E-P: E-P first.

Demand is demand whether it is mandated or not. If the nature of politics changes then ethanol mandates and subsidies might go away. Since I don't see that happening I figure ethanol will be the our player in alcohol fuel blends for a decade.

And beyond a decade? You may know. I won't even guess.

David: It looks as if cellulosic ethanol and celluosic butanol are both nearly mythic beasts. Beasts which stir our imagination even though we have never seen either at the pump.

That little excursion into fantasy does not mean I doubt both will come. They will. I think ethanol is ahead in the cellulose demolition race, aka the algae and enzyme derby.

Returning to existing production processes: Ethanol seems to have the edge in costs - certainly with subsidies - and butanol the edge in desirable features.

You hit this right: "Considering that we only have about 220 million gallons of butanol produced in the US...it clearly doesn't matter what % I want to blend butanol with gasoline because there is nothing to really work with, at least today."

Quantity matters. If butanol production were to double every year for five years it would still be lower than ethanol production today.

And it would be bidding against ethanol for foodstock all the way.

The result would be that both alcohols cost more. For one would deliver less value per unit of input. But there lies a quagmire since both would not use exactly the same inputs.

Other: a nice factoid is that a little alcohol raises the octane rating of the blend. And a higher octane rating means compression can be higher. The result is more power or a smaller engine using less fuel. This is not a panacea - the savings are small but real.

But computers now adjust the ignition timing to prevent knock. I don't know if that reduces the advantage of higher octane or not. Possibly it does and the octane boost is not a factor.

"Butanol is said to be somewhat better than ethanol for ICEs."

Wrong I-Butanol is 100% better than Ethanol for a number of reason, the most important is it is compatable with ALL existing ICE engines no flexfuel nonesence needed because its so similar in BTU to RFG.

2.The mileage loss with e85 blends is eliminated I live in Dallas and they mandate E10 here I go home to Austin 2x a month and get real gas there. on the trip down my mileage using e10 is 21.2 on the way back its 24.1 the only diffrence in the trip is the fuel as its the same distance each way and i have a digital MPG readout on my dash not the in car factory rubbish i have an mpg readout from my OBDII port via an ECU on my dash it also lets me see just about every reading of every sensor at will in real time too.

3. Also very important Butanol is not corrosive to metals like ethanol, and can be mixed in any % to regular gas and transported via pipeline.

DaveD

@Jim

You are completely right about the PHEVs. In fact, that is my dog in this hunt anyway. I'm busy with my company trying to produce one of those and go into production so I hope that is the path that makes a big difference! Of course, we are getting slammed on the capital side right now because...surprise....our current investors seem to be in a bit of a jam right now. This is SUCH a rough economy for getting things off the ground. No, I will NEVER go into advertising on here for our company if we ever do get into production because I think this forum is for us to exchange ideas and get educated, not sale each other snake oil or even real products.

But the reality is that even if everyone of the folks out there who has a pipe dream to sell EV/HEV/PHEV makes our dreams come true....there are 250 MILLION cars on the American road. And that fleet turns over every 15 years. I'd like to think we'll move to some type of EV faster than that, but with an economy like this it will slow us down even worse for a while. People are just surviving and won't be getting rid of the cars they have. So that 75% savings is probably a long way off.
We definitely have to move in that direction but I've become interested in trying to attack the problem from the fuel source as well so I've started learning about biofuels to see if that can help. Interesting from a geek perspective anyway.

@K

Yes, this whole cellulosic beast seems to be mythical so far. But geez, people are throwing so much money at it that hopefully they'll get lucky and make something real out of it?

I know it's just as mythical at this point, but if I had to bet my money on something in biofuels...I'd put it on biodiesel from algae. Clearly just a wild opinion at this point, but a gut feeling that I'm usually pretty good at.

Of course I may be wasting my life right now on this PHEV and so what do I know :-)


Jim

@DaveD

Maybe we should chat. If you have a chance contact me at jimjhb(AT)aol(DOT)com.

================

I'm not sure EVs will displace PHEVs anytime soon. Big difference in having a 40 mile range vs. 300 mile range (and waiting hours for recharge at the end of that.) I don't see that happening soon.

The paranoid in me sometimes thinks all these alternate fuel serve mostly to muddy the waters and stifle progress. But I admit of the 'alternative' alternatives butanol does seem to float to the top of the list. But if we add that, should we also add methanol? I think methanol and butanol are both pretty toxic, which seems to be one of the reasons methanol has been dropped.

So that would leave the short list as: ethanol, biodiesel, methane, butanol, and perhaps methanol. Anything else? (Don't say hydrogen...grrr!)

K

Someone - unsigned - commented that butanol was not merely somewhat better than ethanol but 100% better.

The precision and confidence of that percentage arouses my curiosity. Let me pose a few questions:

Does B produce twice as much power per gallon?
Does B produce twice as much mileage?

Does B cost half as much?
Is B cheaper at all?

Can you buy B at the pump?
Can you expect to find B at the pump soon?

Is B produced more efficiently from foodstock?
Is B produced more efficiently from cellulose?

I think we know the answer to those questions. So where is this 100% better.

It turns out B is said to be 100% better because it mixes well with gasoline in all percentages and can be used in virtually any gasoline engine.

And the commentator doesn't like the 10% ethanol forced upon him in Dallas.

Well, no one disputes that B is a better fuel. And that would be an advantage if butanol were produced in reasonable quantities. But roughly 40 times as much ethanol is being produced. As I pointed out you would have to double butanol production every year until around 2013 to match the ethanol production of today.

So I will guess that few people will go to the paint store and buy that 100% better fuel and then funnel it into their car. But who knows, maybe that would seem like fun down in Dallas?

The complaint about ethanol corrosion in high % is a diversion. We don't produce enough ethanol to mix it at 10%. We may not make enough to reach 5% yet.

So where is the big threat of high % ethanol destruction to fuel systems? Well much of it comes from some midwest states that foolishly are mandating high % ethanol mixes be sold.

Let them! They are making their own drivers poorer. And harassing them a bit too. That is not a fault of fuels but of politicians.

Keep gasohol at 10% until it can step to 15%. That will take years. Meanwhile we will learn if the cellulose products are going to pan out. And if so, which ones.

Some have cautioned: don't chase a few more BTUs from a product you won't get. I'm in that camp right now.

OTOH there are some bets on butanol and/or patents on butanol processes. We shall see how they fare.

That is the nature of gambles. There is an article on GCC today about venture capital for that very purpose.

John Galt

"John, don't waste your breath (or fingers, whatever). It's simpler just to mentally edit that out."

It's my duty to say something. It's the least I can do.


"It seems like this particular organism doesn't metabolize all that quickly. Hopefully there is room for quite a bit of optimization on that front as well."

Butanol producing bacteria have known performance. When economic considerations are made comparing the production rate and feedstock costs, it makes great sense. The production rates reported in the literature are generally based on batch methods which peter out at around 1% v/v and don't exploit steady-state real-time production rates which are comparable to ethanol. If product is removed in real time either by gas-stripping or vacuum fermentation, then it's the feedstock and cell density which is important, not alcohol tolerance or average metabolic rate under "normal" conditions.

"This "demand" is manufactured artificially, by mandates. E85 costs more than gasoline per mile, and it appears that many people reject it even where it is available."

As usual, Anonymous-Poet smears ethanol for a cheap thrill to sound like an Informed Elite.

"Ethanol" can be made more cheaply in Iowa, or New York or Alaska, than can petroleum-based liquid fuels. WELL below $1.00 per gallon delivered. Ofcourse E-85 costs more than gasoline. The oil companies buy all of the stocks and bid up the price EVEN THOUGH THEY BUY MORE THAN THEY ARE LEGALLY REQUIRED TO.

You want to see demand for ethanol fuel? Get rid of the mandates and watch the gasoline futures go up. Then watch capital flow to cheap localized waste processing plants which could generate 100 billion gallons GGE without touching food glucose.

John Galt

Economic trick question:

If a bushel of corn costs $5, how much does the amount of corn from a bushel of corn cost?

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