Ethanol use in gasoline...facts and fiction?

[ZR1Vette]

Many states use a blend of ethanol and gasoline at their pumps...and here is the PR from the American Coalition for Ethanol:

Every major automaker in the world approves the use of
E-10 Unleaded (10 percent ethanol/90 percent ordinary unleaded gasoline) under warranty. Ethanol adds two to three points of octane to gasoline, helping improve engine performance. Ethanol helps keep fuel injectors clean—and it lowers the levels of toxic exhaust emissions.
Ethanol is an alcohol that is used in gasoline—resulting in a cleaner-burning fuel with higher octane. Ethanol is currently blended into more than 50 percent of the nation’s fuel supply.

Corn is the primary feedstock for ethanol production. About 20 percent of the nation’s corn supply went into ethanol in 2007—some 3.0 billion bushels. Ethanol can also be made from other grains such as sorghum as well as from “biomass” sources such as corn cobs, cornstalks, wheat straw, rice straw, switchgrass, vegetable and forestry waste and other organic matter.

and

For every barrel of ethanol produced, 1.2 barrels of petroleum are displaced.

Of course the spin from ACE would only be positive leaving out a few issues such as (1) early fuel injectors [such as found on the MY 90 & 91 ZR-1s] are ethanol intolerant requiring replacement of injectors with ethanol tolerant versions and (2) higher % ethanol reduces mpg and on a 25 mpg car can be 1-2 mpg reduction...higher on premium performance cars. NOW... for the fiction part... ever seen the stickers on pumps that note "ENRICHED WITH 10% ETHANOL" and you assume you are getting no more than 10% blend. Not so... was discussing effects of ethanol on the early ZR-1s with a causal friend who is a franchise owner of a local Exxon/Mobil station and he gave me a bit of a shocker news... some local Exxon/Mobil stations in the Northern Virginia area tested the ethanol content of the gasoline at the pumps and at his station came out 19% ethanol and at two stations in the Dranesville area 40% .

He said stations have absolutely no control over ethanol content from the distributor so many (like he just did) have upgraded their storage tanks to include a separate ethanol tank so they can blend at the pump. The trend is to have ethanol blends between E10 (10 percent ethanol) and E85 (85 percent ethanol) due to the installation of ethanol “blender pumps.” These special fuel pumps allow consumers to choose which ethanol blend they prefer, including E10, E20, E30, E40 and E85 – or whatever blend of ethanol and gasoline the station owner chooses.
To create these blends, the blender pump automatically combines the appropriate percentages of E85 and unleaded gasoline. For example, an E20 blend uses 24 percent E85 and 76 percent regular unleaded.

Also now to a bit of economics... if gasoline is sold as 10% ethanol meaning 90% petro based and we see a direct correlation cost per barrel sweet crude to cost per gallon gasoline... where do we see the cost of ethanol which is cheaper than gasoline... OK we pay (example only) $3.00 per gallon of mid grade which contains "10%" ethanol and lets say we calculate cost of 1M gallons which is $3M. Now make that 10% ethanol 20% ethanol which means 10% more gasoline is displaced which would be 100,000 gallons and at $3 per gallon that comes to an extra $300K minus cost of ethanol at $.88 per gallon [$88K x (20%)] thus $282K to someone and it ain't the consumer.

Just something to ponder... do the math for 30% and 40% and numbers get better. These are all round numbers and are not exact... just used as an example