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Originally Posted by wodin
Dennis, there are two ways to convert corn to fuel; one is as you say refining the corn oil into biodiesel. The other is to ferment the sugar/starch in the corn to produce ethanol which is then mixed with gasoline to increase the volume. gasoline pumps here have signs saying that the gasoline may contain up to 10% ethanol.
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True. I'd forgotten that. But that's essentially stretching the gasoline. Alcohol alone doesn't have the caloric energy required, which is why gasoline is used in the first place.
And using corn to produce alcohol to stretch gas has odd economics. IIRC, farmers get tax credits in exchange for doing it, so there's an indirect government subsidy. I suspect growing corn specifically to produce alcohol to be added to gas may not yield enough revenue to make it a viable product for the farmer without that assistance. (And you need to be a big grower farming a
lot of acres to make it the sort of thing you might consider.)
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Although I don't know if it's economical I'd think one could do both with the same corn. First squeeze out the oil, then ferment the remaining mash.
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The oil is likely to be sold as cooking oil. Biodiesel is essentially recycling.
If you are fermenting the mash, motor fuel isn't the only end product. Another popular end product in that case is likely to be a form of whiskey. By US law, for example, bourbon whiskey must have at least 51% corn in its mash bill. And corn whiskey that isn't bourbon has been popular since the founding of the country.
I read a history of bourbon that suggested it originated in a Dutch colony in Virginia. The settlers were unhappy at not having decent spirits to drink. Wine had to be imported from Europe at high cost. The area was not well suited to growing barley or wheat, but they did have corn in abundance. A colony official had seen an account written by a Portuguese explorer on fermenting corn to make spirits, and that's what they did. What we now think of as bourbon likely had roots in that early practice.
Ultimately, the decision on which way to jump is likely economic. Farming is a business, and farmers grow crops for money. What end use pays the best?
There's a local distillery about an hour north of NYC producing corn whiskey, vodka, gin, and (once it's had a chance to age in the barrel a few years) bourbon and single malt whisky distilled from barley. The distillery is an outgrowth of a working farm, and is simply something else they can do with what they grow. They've reached the point where the distillery covers its costs, and are slowly and carefully expanding it to be a source of profit.
I've sampled their wares, and I'm a fan. I'm looking forward to their single malt.
I've been reading a fair bit of history, and one continuing amusing thread has been that one of the first things any culture has done after it settled down in one place and practiced agriculture was learn to produce alcoholic beverages from what they grew. An enormous number of significant events in history had roots in a desire to get sloshed.
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Dennis