Summary
Today's condition of the production of ethanol looks as it is not cost effective. Ethanol itself has some problems in the process of combustion in the internal combustion engine (ICE). But this is today. When the ethanol producers start providing market with desireable volumes of the fuel, the situation will be improved. Needless to say the USA and the rest of the world urgently need new sources of energy.
Analysis
If we recall development of any new products, we will see several stages: expensive, then affordable, then improved, then affordable and improved.
Let us take microwave ovens as an example: it was around $1000.00 when it originally hit the market, then the profits allowed more R&D, new materials were developed and now we have a simle microwave under $100.00 a piece. Most fancy and big one (soon to be remote controlled via the internet) costs about $400.00
Any product goes through these transformations. With rapidly rising energy needs, new methods of ethanol production will be developed, new crops of the raw materials will be raised by the farmers (as of now the government pay farmers NOT to grow wheat, corn, and other agricultural products; a prime farming land is sold to developers to build residential communities), and new coatings for internal combustion engines will be developed. Let us add that car companies may modify the design of the above said engines to burn ethanol in a more efficient way, just low NOx burners, as an example. So let us welcome the efforts to have new fuel and support its further advancement.
