Ethanol – Production of Ethanol Fuel

So it has been almost a month since my last post and fortunately I had a reader bring up some negative gas mileage effects of ethanol.

Does Ethanol Lower Gas Mileage?

There are a lot of studies and plenty of people that believe that ethanol lowers gas mileage. Consumer reports did a great study over this and after interviewing 50 experts and running one test on a Chevy Tahoe FFV they found that the gas mileage was lowered by 27% by running on E85. At the time of this study a gallon of e85 was $2.91 per gallon. A 27% fuel economy penalty means that the consumer would have paid $3.99 per gallon of regular gasoline. So in this particular example it appears that e85 does have a negative effect on fuel economy and e85 prices do not help the consumer when gas prices are $4.00 per gallon. However, as gas prices increase and technology is improved will the same consumer see a net gain by using e85?

The American Coalition for Ethanol did a pretty intensive study on smaller vehicles and found that higher blends of ethanol fuel actually increase gas mileage. The Coalition tested compact 2005 Ford, Chevrolet and Toyota models. The conclusion showed that different blends of ethanol gas generate significantly different results.

• E10 lowered mileage by 1.50%
• E20 lowered mileage by 2.25%
• E30 lowered mileage by 5.10%
• E10AK increased mileage 1.70%

The coalition finally concluded that anecdotal evidence shows that E85 does not lower gas mileage by the estimate of 30%.

After reading both of these studies, I am still positive that ethanol will be key in reducing our need for foreign oil and gas. Ethanol in its current state today will not survive in my opinion. However, I firmly believe that there will be improvements in technology and the production of cellulosic ethanol to help ethanol become a mainstream fuel. The Citizen’s Coalition for Distilling Ethanol in Barrie have an interesting spin on ethanol blends and fuel efficiency.