A speaker at this new session, titled "At the Blending Wall: The U.S. Ethanol Quandary," Prof. Frank J. Dooley at Purdue notes that the new study uses DOE and EPA data to determine that the U.S. is at the "blending wall" or the saturation point for ethanol use. Without new technology or a significant increase in infrastructure, he predicts that the country will not be able to consume more ethanol than is being currently produced.
"We can't get there with ethanol," the study's authors insist, pointing out that there just aren't enough flex-fuel vehicles that use an 85% ethanol blend, or E85 stations to distribute more biofuels. According to EPA estimates, they explain, flex-fuel vehicles make up 7.3 million of the 240 million vehicles on the nation's roads. Of those, about 3 million of flex-fuel vehicle owners aren't even aware they can use E85 fuel. There are only about 2,000 E85 fuel pumps in the U.S., and it took more than 20 years to install them.
"Even if you could produce a whole bunch of E85, there is no way to distribute it," Prof. Dooley and the other study authors explain. "We would need to install about 2,000 pumps per year through 2022 to do it. You're not going to go from 100 per year to 2,000 per year overnight. It's just not going to happen."
And even if the fuel could be distributed, E85 would have to be substantially cheaper than gasoline to entice consumers to use it because E85 gets lower mileage, the authors say. If gasoline is, say, $3 per gal, E85 would have to be $2.34 per gallon to break even on mileage.
The EPA just recently increased the maximum amount of ethanol that can be blended with gasoline for regular vehicles from 10% to 15%. But Dooley and the other authors say that even with rapid, total implementation in all states, the blending wall would be reached again in about four years.
Dooley says that advances in the production of thermochemical biofuels will be necessary to meet the Renewable Fuel Standard. He said those fuels would be similar enough to gasoline to allow unlimited blending and would increase the amount of biofuel that could be used.
"Producing the hydrocarbons directly doesn't have the infrastructure problems of ethanol, and there is no blend wall because you're producing gasoline or other drop-in fuels," he notes. "If that comes on and works, then we get there. There is significant potential to produce drop-in hydrocarbons from cellulosic feedstocks."
The new Session 17 is set for Tuesday morning, March 15, at 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. Joining Prof. Dooley and other speakers on alternative pathways for fulfilling the RFS mandate, Prof. David Bransby at Auburn University will provide "A Review of Cellulosic Hydrocarbon, Drop-in Replacement, and Infrastructure Compatible Fuel Technologies."
More information on the BioPro Expo program is available online, as is information on the co-located International Bioenergy and Bioproducts Conference (IBBC).
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