I'm personally wouldn't advocate the use of any ethanol fuel in any carburated 2-stroke motor as it seems that it's actual consistency of the blend is not very reliable and jetting problems usually occur.
GMP I'm not looking for an argument here by defending ethanol production as it has some major disadvantages, other than once you factor in the "brewers mash," the byproduct of making ethanol, and feed it to livestock, the true hydro carbon efficiency of the whole process becomes value added.
Not to far from here (western Minnesota) we have an ethanol plant that uses left over steam energy from a neighboring coal fired powerplant to make ethanol. That combination, along with livestock eating the brewers mash, makes for the most cost efficient producing ethanol plant in the country.
Another thing to keep in mind is that ethanol production is a stepping stone to methanol production which should be more energy efficient in producing alcohol and may well find it's way into our fuel tanks in the next 10 to 20 years.
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Steve Berkner
I've attended 21 Six Days as a working Photojournalist
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