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Originally Posted by 123gts
I agree there are lots of problems with how ethanol is made in the USA it starts with over production of corn and corn subsidies.
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Even though I'm from Brazil, I'm actually favorable to corn-based ethanol. Sure it would be better to diversify the feedstocks, but since the distillation-dried grain has a higher concentration of protein over the raw grain it's still highly valuable as a cheaper alternative to soy-based products. It's also a good alternative to provide a certain degree of stability to ethanol prices when the sugarcane is out of season.
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Yes hydrous is illegal at the pump because it isn't denatured. you can add things like methanol to hydrous ethanol to make it denatured. If you take ethanol after it has been distilled and try to mix it with gas it will not mix.
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Not sure about the denaturation, but here we mix hydrous ethanol with gasoline and there is no problem.
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Brazil is doing things right when it comes to ethanol.
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Actually some things are done wrong nowadays, no wonder the cost of running on ethanol here is not advantageous in most of the country anymore. As I mentioned before, there's an enormous dependence to sugarcane as the main feedstock, and it leads to the production becoming concentrated in fewer states such as São Paulo, Alagoas and Pernambuco. Well, since almost every state has at least a handful of cachaça distilleries (I'm just not sure about the Northern states), and many other traditional alcoholic beverages made out of other feedstocks, it doesn't seem impossible to get the ethanol production less centralized. For example, sometimes grape-based ethanol is imported from Italy, so why not using the mashed graoe leftovers from wine production here in Rio Grande do Sul to brew ethanol fuel?