Wednesday, May 1, 2019

No Corn for Ethanol-Gasoline Mixtures

It is time to remove the market distortion for corn that is the government's economic incentive to produce more corn.  If we insist on burning gasoline-ethanol mixtures, it should make energy, hence economic sense.

"· It takes more energy to make ethanol from corn than you get from the ethanol.

· Corn requires a whole lot of fertilizer, and the runoff goes into the Mississippi River and runs down to the Gulf of Mexico, where it creates a dead zone the size of New Jersey.

· A gallon of ethanol has only about 2/3 the energy of a gallon of gasoline; hence, your miles per gallon will decrease if you use gasoline containing ethanol.

· Making corn into ethanol for our cars is tantamount to burning our food, and it is driving up the cost of the food left to eat. Corn is a staple food for hogs, cattle, sheep, and chickens, so the cost of all meat and poultry are going up, along with the cost of corn itself.

· Ethanol loves water and soaks it up from its environment, so it can’t be shipped in long-distance pipelines with gasoline, because the water will corrode the piping and pumping machinery. The ethanol will dry out pump seals. Consequently, it has to be transported in trucks at a higher cost and mixed with the gasoline near the end-use consumer market.

· The only good reason for making corn into ethanol is for whiskey." https://www.econlib.org/the-chemistry-of-ethanol/ 

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