Whats the deal with E85?

[Halon]

I thought ethanol only used a part of the corn, allowing farmers to still use the unused portion to use as feed.

[tehehodi]

Only the starches and sugars from corn's seed, or kernels, are used to make corn ethanol. After they ferment in water and enzymes, the liquor is distilled to produce ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol draws from an entire plant, which may be corn, sugar cane or other local crop. The majority of American ethanol is corn ethanol, which uses only the corn kernels.

Read more: What Part of the Corn Plant is Used to Make Ethanol? | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/facts_7507085_part-plant-used-make-ethanol.html#ixzz22yhFEpyR

[JET]

Yes, the leftover part is called DDG or Distiller's Grain. You can't feed at a 100% ratio to cows, but last I heard they were going 50% of it. My brother is a pretty big farmer (1400+ acres) and he said the goverment totally fudged the numbers for the planted acres of corn this year. That coupled with the drought is going to lead to a monstrous shortage.

If you have some extra money to invest, get some corn! I went up to Grand Forks last weekend and they appear to have been flooded in all the spring rains we got, their stuff is green, but most is not close to normal height. It was pretty dry around Alexandria area too for about 20 miles, 1/2 of the fields looked dead.

[Kracka]

I watched a story on KARE 11 about the chicken farmers wanting the gov to stop the ethanol subsidy because there wont be enough corn to feed their chickens, and they showed a guy talking but in the background jessica sneared at him because it was a factory farm and not free range. and she made the comment, "If he would move to a free range method he wouldnt need as much corn to feed them as a lot of it is wasted due to the chickens trampling and shitting on their feed."
Saw a story even earlier about the price of milk going up because of corn shortage, to which i say STOP FEEDING THEM CORN and use grass instead.
Tom, the majority of livestock is fed on a grain/grass blend depending on the season and current climate conditions. This year, due to the widespread drought, has taken a significant toll on non-irrgated grains and grass growth. This has increased the demand for the grains (including distillers grains). I know you have your opinions, but I do have good information, this is what I do day in and day out.

The American petroleum industry could not handle a widespread lift on ethanol blending requirements since it would require significant costs and time associated with retooling all the refineries since they'd have to refine differently in order to meet the octane and oxygenate requirements without ethanol.
I thought ethanol only used a part of the corn, allowing farmers to still use the unused portion to use as feed.
Correct, we sell off what's called distillers grains to farmers as feed at a discount vs. corn; win-win for them and us.

[Kracka]

Yes, the leftover part is called DDG or Distiller's Grain.
DDG would be "dried distillers grains", there is also "modified" and "wet". Moisture content is approximately 12, 40, and 65% respectively.

I also want to add that American ethanol is made from not only corn, but also wheat starch and sorghum/milo. For example, only about half of my plants' production is from corn (yellow corn #2 to be exact).

[EclipseGST]

We ran into huge issues with E85 on Vassil's car. Shane was tuning it last week and it was knocking like crazy at 30psi and 7* of timing which should never happen on E85. Did a fuel test and it came back at 70% The stations here in Winona are all still E70. Called the companies and they said they dont care what the ratio is as long as its at or above the minimal E70 and its actually cheaper for them to run E70 so they never changed it from the winter blend.

Pretty nice of them! Assholes!

[Shane@DBPerformance]

I have been seeing a lot around 80%, which isn't much different than most years. I rarely have ever seen real 85% the last 5 years. But this year a lot of stations still seem to be on E70, which is causing some problems.

[Murlo26]

I have been seeing a lot around 80%, which isn't much different than most years. I rarely have ever seen real 85% the last 5 years. But this year a lot of stations still seem to be on E70, which is causing some problems.

Time to start mixing our own I guess :)

Actually, probably easier to rock E98...consistency ftw.

[Kracka]

You guys need to buy it by the truckload and split it up yourselves, I could give you a great deal on ~7,800 gallons of E98 :)

[Murlo26]

You guys need to buy it by the truckload and split it up yourselves, I could give you a great deal on ~7,800 gallons of E98 :)

7800 you say...what is that one train car or something?

How much per gallon? ;)

Maybe you could just "lose" 7800 gallons, like it fell off the back of a truck type thing.

We need to convince a local gas station to carry E98 I think. Like a race fuel place, then we can just go there to fill up smaller tanks and store enough for weeks at home.