[Finnster]

@ Luc: What I meant is that if the US switched a lot of the gasoline usage to EtOH, it would overwhelm world EtOH supplies. From the figures I saw, the US and Brasil produce ~4B gallons of EtOH a yr each. The US consumes ~400M gallons of gas a day. IE, we would burn thru the world supply in less than a month.

From the US perspective, we spend a lot of (tax) money, and have a huge corn lobby, building and protecting a(n inferior) corn-based EtOH supply.

From Brasil's view, they've spend decades building pure EtOH based transportation and economy. If left unchecked, the US could piss thru a lot of it very quickly, forcing prices up. As Red pointed out, EtOH burning engines have to be specially designed, so it would not be easy or cheap for Brasil to switch to a petroleum fuel supply to replace the lost EtOH.

I'm not suprized Brasilian EtOH is much cleaner than US corn based EtOH as the starting material is so much cleaner (ie pure sucrose sugar.) Corn would have a lot more complex sugars and starches, as well as plant oils, chaff and other crap that would have to be processed, refined and distilled out.

@Red, I saw some of that too. Where EtOH is a bad lubricant, and more readily washes away lubricating oils as well. I think it burns hotter as well, IDK. I know it changes octane ratings too. Lots of problems to deal with.


BTW, you can drink ethanol just fine. Everclear is ~95% EtOH, tho I wouldn't drink that. ;) Methanol's the bad sh!t, and will make you go blind if you drink it. One more reason Nitro fuel is so bad!