Rubbish Aidan, If they are doing it t6o save CO2, & if it saves CO2, surely they should use it to generate their own power on the ethical basis alone.

If it is an economic proposition to produce it, they should use it to power their process, & become more profitable.

Of course they want mandates to make us use the junk, because first of all it is harmful to much machinery, & secondly it is uneconomic to use as a power source.

It is very similar to wind, a catastrophe caused by foolish people with a religious dogma, & used by the smarties to rip off the public.

Unfortunately I have discovered that most ethanol in Australia actually comes from wheat starch, which is not such a great idea, the energy return is to low and it is a waste of a useful food resource.

Quote Hasbeen

"if that were true ethanol factories would be stand alone facilities, using only the fuel they produced to power their process, rather than being connected to the grid."

They do something like that in most modern ethanol plants based on sugar cane by burning the bagasse waste to make the power to run the plant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagasse#Fuel

As regards using it in a car engine it needs to be designed to use the fuel, there are a wide range of vehicles in Australia that can use E10, but most manufacturers don't seem to bother labeling the cars as such. Despite the fact that pure ethanol is twice as expensive as petrol, there are certain advantages to using it, such as a fuel additive instead of MTBE, it allows engines run at higher compression ratios, it raises the octane level of the fuel, and it could reduce the amount of petrol we have to import into the country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methyl_tert-butyl_ether

Hasbeen, businesses don't run on an ethical basis alone. And unless the purpose is demonstration or proof of concept, there's no advantage to actually closing the loop. If going off grid doesn't actually save any CO2, the ethical case for doing so is illusory.

An ethanol blend isn't at all harmful to most petrol engines. Its higher octane rating makes it technically advantageous.

Wind power isn't a catastrophe, it's a sensible way of generating electricity. What's not sensible is the way it's funded, but that's not catastrophic.

And pretending it's anything to do with a religious dogma instead of posting a rational objection really shows you've lost the argument.

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warmair, AIUI MTBE isn't used in Australia.