The local news of note this week is that an ethanol refinery is going to be built in a little farm town just down the road. They'll process 200 million bushels of corn a year to start. If that's happening in a little farm town of about 300 people that never has been a big corn growing region, I suspect there are a number of other (larger) refineries popping up elsewhere.

This is the future ladies and gentlemen, mark my words.

A peek into the crystal ball tells me that GM will probably file bankruptcy to void their UAW contracts, then engineer some sort of retiree buyout program to cut or eliminate their legacy costs. Buick division will be eliminated. While all this is going on, GM will be investing heavily into flex fuel technology, and tooling up a generation of cars that will take the company back to it's roots - i.e., a car for every stage of life.

Just about the same time GM emerges from bankruptcy, the US government will announce sweeping tax benefits to farmers who grow ethanol corn, oil companies that refine and blend it, and car companies that build cars to run on it. Small industries that specialize in ethanol conversion of older cars will also be granted near tax-free status.

Suddenly, The USA will surge out front again. GM and Ford will be years ahead in developing ethanol cars and trucks. Their new, leaner financial state will be enhanced by the tax credits, and those employees who manage to dodge the downsizing axe will benefit handsomely. Small manufacturers and ethanol conversion shops will spring up everywhere. Farming will become a good paying job for the first time in decades. We will need 85% less crude, so we can eliminate our dependence from all foreign sources. The terrorists will be reduced to throwing rocks at us from the backs of camels.

It ain't a perfect picture, and it's going to get darker before the dawn - but at least it's not quite a bleak as our media would have us believe.

It's quite the coincidence that you would bring this up as I just finished reading an article in the May issue of Popular Mechanics on the emerging alternative fuels (including the corn-based Ethanol).

There are a few major problems you may be overlooking that would need to be ironed out for Ethanol to become our primary fuel source.

E85 is a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline.

So we aren't going to completely do away with our dependance on or production of our current fuel source using E85 (ethyl alcohol/ethanol).

A gallon of E85 has an energy content of about 80,000 BTU, compared to gasoline's 124,800 BTU. So about 1.56 gal. of E85 takes you as far as 1 gal. of gas.

This inefficiency was illustrated in their comparison of driving a Honda Civic (gasoline) versus a Ford Taurus FFV (E85 ethanol) from New York to California.

Honda Civic (87 octane Gasoline)
Raw Materials consumed: 4.5 barrels of crude oil
Fuel Needed: 90.9 gal.
Cost: $212.70 at $2.34 a gal.
Economy: 33 mpg

Ford Taurus FFV (E85 Ethanol)
Raw Materials consumed: 53 bushels of corn and a half-barrel of crude oil
Fuel Needed: 176 gal.
Cost: $425.00 at $2.41 a gal.
Economy: 17 mpg

That is a lot of corn. It also would need to be refueled more often and returns a lower efficiency at more than double the cost. If we complain about gas prices now, just imagine if we used E85...

It also does not seem possible to realistically produce enough corn:
One acre of corn can produce 300 gal. of ethanol per growing season. So, in order to replace that 200 billion gal. of petroleum products, American farmers would need to dedicate 675 million acres, or 71 percent of the nation's 938 million acres of farmland, to growing feedstock. Clearly, ethanol alone won't kick our fossil fuel dependence -unless we want to replace our oil mports with food imports.

I know I would much rather be dependent upon other nations for oil than food.
Also, if the world were to make the switch to ethanol, most countries don't have the area to produce the corn they would need. I see there being outside resistance to switching to E85.

Just from what you've posted I'd tend to think that Popular Mechanics article is a bit biased against E85. They compare an FFV Taurus to a Honda Civic? Great, let me compare a gasoline motorcycle to a diesel Excursion. Oh gee the gasoline motorcycle got better mileage, obviously gasoline is better. A Civic is frickin small has a 1.8L, and gets 38-40 highway, a Taurus is midsize with a 3L and gets 27 when gas powered. That alone shows me that whoever organized that "test" wanted E85 to look bad - if they wanted to be more fair about it they could've used an FFV Taurus vs a gas only Taurus, because it's not like they couldn't find a Taurus that runs on gas...

Not to mention the FFV Taurus has a compression ratio that's friendly to regular 86-87 octane gasoline. E85 has an effective R+M/2 antiknock rating of 100-105. And of course fuel economy (and power) goes up with the compression ratio.

Gothicaleigh -

Some of the points of the PM article are valid, but are based on existing conditions. Other points they make are weak.

1. At an 85/15 mix, our dependance of foreign oil would be over. At that ratio we'd have enough domestic supply to power our cars for hundreds of years. The first taps we turn off should be the middle east. Let 'em drink their crude.

2. The acres of farmland noted in PM is from the Dept of Agriculture, and represents the acres under tillage each season. The amount of available land is more than double that. The US government pays farmers subsidies not to plantmany millions of acres to prevent over supply. In addition, there are hundreds of thousands of idle farms in the midwest and plains, because it simply doesn't pay enough to feed a family.

3. No one knows what the price of ethanol will be once the science evolves. No one knows what sort of engineering magic Detroit may still have up it's sleeve. But can you imagine the next generation of cars burning ethanol, getting 25-50 miles per gallon, and the fuel is $1.20 a gallon?

If we limit ourselves to our present knowledge, standards, and technology, we're guaranteed to be stuck in the same rut we've been in since the 1970s. E85 may not be the right answer - but it does offer potential.