On Fri, 22 Jun 2007 11:04:03 GMT, "Blueskies"
wrote:


"Roger (K8RI)" wrote in message ...
On Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:29:52 -0700, Stella Starr
wrote:

Looks like they thought they were aligning with national standards. From
a timeline report by that state's Renewable Fuels Commission:

"2003-Michigan State Legislature adopts and Governor Jennifer Granholm
approves property tax incentives for the manufacturing and blending of
biodiesel fuel. State legislation for mandatory labeling of 10% ethanol
blends at Michigan service station gasoline pumps is changed to be
consistent with national voluntary label standards..."

It is interesting, as I'd thought the first gasahol was 15% ethanol, but
there's no way to know whether local blends are ten, fifteen or some
random percent. Makes it hard to test performance, doesn't it?


In Michigan I think it's 10% and has been. Alcohol costs more than
gas now days. The only reason it's priced so low is due to subsidies.

Our early Gasohol was 10% here although back then I don't think there
was a standard. OTOH back then it took nearly 1 1/2 to two gallons of
fuel to make one gallon of ethanol.




Which then gets you 75% of the mileage of 'pure gasoline'.

Alcohol has 60% of the energy in gas. If 10% of the gas is Alcohol
then you have only lost 6% (0.1 X 0.6 = 0.06), but as the Alcohol acts
as an octane booster , *theoretically* they should be able to save a
bit in the refining process to produce the lower octane gas that they
boost back up with the alcohol. In the end though it's probably close
to a wash as far as cost. Corn futures are already going up and look
at the price of beef which is corn fed. Anything that uses corn is
already on the way up which means it will be more (maybe much more)
expensive to produce Ethanol using corn as will be any thing else that
contains, or eats corn. Having been a farmer in a previous life and
still owning the old family farm, as an educated guess I'd say the
price of cord will easily double within the next couple of years,
subsidies or no subsidies. It has the bonus of the *possibility* of
eliminating some farm subsidies, but even without the subsidies the
higher prices will still cost the tax payer more.

In the long run we need to become independent from foreign oil as well
as reducing emissions. Currently all ways of doing this cost more than
that expensive foreign oil.

I think I mentioned it before, but now they want to build a coal
fired, 750 megawatt power station on the SE corner of Midland. (MI).
http://www.ourmidland.com/site/index... =578054&rfi=8
(watch out for line wrap in some readers) Caution, lots of spin in
article. :-)) This figures out to be about a mile long train of coal
every other day. Even if they run 80% of the sulphur and 90% of the
mercury recovered from the stack gas it still leaves a staggering
amount of pollution.