Re: Ethanol is still $2.45 per gallon... How come ?

Rob Dekker wrote:
That does not make any sense ! If ethanol can be blended into
> gasoline up to 10%, you would expect the blenders to mix in more
> ethanol at this price ! After all, they could offer a lower retail
> price, and/or increase their profit in doing so.

And most are doing so. The problem is that a normal gasoline car's fuel system starts having problems with more than 10% ethanol; ethanol is more corrosive than gasoline, and higher concentrations start eating away at the tank, lines, injectors, etc. Texas is pushing the limit with a mandatory 15% in certain counties.

In most places, the law allows "up to" a certain percentage of ethanol, sometimes varying by season. Oil companies used to only put ethanol in their top-grade fuels to improve the octane rating since ethanol was cheaper than actually refining gasoline to 89-93 octane. Now ethanol is cheaper than any gasoline, which means it's made it into lower-grade gasolines as well, which allows cheaper refining since the gasoline itself can be below 87 octane. No change in law was required, even if the "up to" looks silly today.

Thanks to the rise in oil prices, E85 would be cheaper than today's E10/E15, but most cars out there can't take it without long-term fuel system damage. Their computers also get confused because ethanol is far more oxygenated than gasoline, which leads to suboptimal performance and warning lights on the dash, which scare/confuse consumers.

Over 85% ethanol has cold-start and other problems; Brazil's E100 cars have a small (<1gal) gasoline tank under the hood that is used to get the engine warmed up to solve that, but that starts requiring more serious design changes than simply upgrading the quality of fuel tanks and lines to accept a more corrosive fuel to create a "FlexFuel" vehicle.

S
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