JoeSixPack wrote:

"Steve Spence" wrote in message
...
JoeSixPack wrote:

You get almost as much heat from burning the corn stover that's left over
after you've separated out the corn kernels. Why you need to burn the
grain itself is a mystery to me. Why not grow a crop more suited as a
fuel? Something with tiny seeds and a lot of stalk. Leafy spurge for
example is a very hardy weed that contains a good deal of oil and has
been used in the past as a heating fuel.
I'm burning the oil, not the actual kernels. Corn can produce biodiesel,
ethanol, and animal feed all from the same bushel.

Corn is rarely grown for it's oil.

I'd extend that to say corn is never grown solely for its oil, but corn
oil is a significant product--where would MickeyD be w/o it, for
example?

Q. What can be extracted from a bushel of corn?
A. The wet milling process yields approximately 31.5 pounds of starch,
which can be further processed into 33 pounds of sweetener or 2.5
gallons of ethanol. In addition, 13.5 pounds of corn gluten feed, 2.5
pounds of corn gluten meal and 1.6 pounds of corn oil can be extracted.

A typical kernel of corn has 7-7.5% oil content.

The extractable oil is in the germ and that seems a little high to me,
but in the ballpark, certainly.

Other crops are far better for this, such as oilseeds like canola,
which has 40-50% oil content. The remainder of the seed is a high-quality
animal feed. Where optimal conditions exist, canola can produce 500Kg of oil
per acre, or 17,000 gallons of crude canola oil per square mile. The vast
majority of available acres are far from optimal, so a much lower yield
figure is reasonable.

Using a realistic yield of 10,000 gallons per sq mile, the economics are
still a long way from feasible, compared to other fuel options. The
production costs alone for a square mile of canola is approximately $25,000
US. Add to this, estimated processing and distribution costs of another
$25,000, and the net consumer price for a typical gallon of biofuel canola
oil is likely to exceed $7 US. I'd say we have to experience a lot more
petroleum price increases for this to be a feasible alternative.

At present, production costs for corn ethanol are lower than the going
price for gasoline and one would only expect that to continue to favor
alternate fuel sources in the long-range future. Last I saw was
something around $1.20-$1.30 for the raw material. Processing costs
were on the order of $0.30 iirc, so net delivered cost is something in
the near $2/gal range--significantly less than $3 gasoline. I know
processing costs have escalated some owing to higher energy costs, but
don't have any new data to know the overall impact.

Some area stations had E85 at nearly a full $1 less than regular
unleaded...

While I expect there to be a significant drop in oil prices to near
pre-Katrina prices and probably approaching $40/bbl again for a short
time in a year or so, the $30/bbl days are gone forever in all
likelihood.