Sioux Falls fuel station installs blender pumps

Sioux Falls has blender pumps!

The Kings Mart on the corner of Cliff Avenue and Benson Road here in Sioux Falls is just a little more than a mile from the POET headquarters. They had the new pumps installed Jan. 11, and I stopped by recently to top off my tank and see how the transition is going.

This, folks, is the future of the fuel station, and this is one big step closer to an open fuel market. People can pull up to the station and choose for themselves: E0, E10, E30 or E85.

I talked briefly with owner Doc Wang about the change.

“We wanted a little more business, so I was looking for something different,” he said. “And South Dakota is ethanol friendly.”

The hope, of course, is that someday soon blender pumps will not be “something different;” rather they will be the norm. However, as an early adopter, I’m sure Wang will get an ethanol bump from his purchase.

I’ve never understood the argument that offering higher blends of ethanol will cause mass confusion amongst the general public. People know the difference between regular and premium gasoline today, for instance. No one looks at a pump and assumes each option distributes an identical product.

Wang said his customers have handled the transition well.

“Maybe a couple people were confused at first, but not many,” he said.

The pumps are clearly labeled, and the higher ethanol blends have a yellow handle instead of a black one.

Thanks to Wang for being the first to take that important step. It’s never easy to blaze the trail, but his station will be a model for those that follow.

Technorati Tags: ethanol,blender pump,Sioux Falls,flex fuel,fuel station

EBDI Engine

This 3.2 liter EBDI engine using ethanol can replace the performance of a 6.6 liter V8 diesel engine. In photo with the engine are Gen Wesley Clark, POET CEO Jeff Broin, Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis and Kent Niederhofer of Ricardo. To see a press release about the new engine, click here.

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Jeff Broin at DC Auto Show

Along with Gen. Wesley Clark and Ricardo President Kent Niederhofer, POET CEO Jeff Broin made comments this morning at the Washington Auto Show. You can listen to part of it here.

  
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Company says its ethanol engine is more fuel-efficient - USATODAY.com

At the DC auto show getting ready for the press conference on the EBDI engine technology developed by Ricardo. A story already appeared in today's USA TODAY:  Company says its ethanol engine is more fuel efficient.

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Revolution. Resolution.

A new decade, a new year, a new issue of Vital. The winter 2010 issue of Vital has made it's appearance in mailboxes across the country. With stories featuring the future of ethanol it's sure to be a great read to start out 2010!

Highlights for this issue include a new engine technology that will optimize the use of ethanol and the history of the POET Biorefinery that will become one of the first in the world to produce cellulosic ethanol at a commercial scale.

This issue also rounds out a three-part series on the potential of corn. A Barrel of Corn describes several uses of how corn will go even further to displace the use of foreign oil.

Check out the stories online on the Vital website where you can also subscribe to receive the printed version quarterly.

Arrived in Copenhagen

Finally arrived in Copenhagen. Here's POET CEO Jeff Broin (left) with Fleming Voetmann of Novozymes standing by a car running on E85. The ethanol is cellulosic made from wheat straw at the Inbicon demonstration plant near Copenhagen. We're visiting the facility tomorrow. Note the Growth Energy logo on the car. There are 3 of these running around the city.

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Our ethanol is saving money for South Dakota drivers

Who says you can't do anything about higher gas prices? A new report (pdf) from the consulting firm LECG shows that drivers in South Dakota are saving 11.1 cents per gallon with a 10 percent blend of ethanol. What's more, the state would have saved an additional $47.6 million if all gasoline would have contained 10 percent ethanol. The calculation in the report accounts for both ethanol's lower btu content and its higher octane.

I took this photo in neighboring Iowa, but you can see the same dynamic at work. The higher octane Super Unleaded is 11 cents per gallon cheaper and E85 is priced at almost 80 cents less than unleaded gasoline. E85 is $1 less at the station I filled up at just a few blocks away from our office in Sioux Falls.

In addition to producing ethanol, most of us here at POET also happen to drive vehicles. It's nice to know that our product can also save us - and our state - some money at the pump.

GM's Bob Lutz on ethanol

On the GM Fastlane Blog, GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz posted the transcript of a speech he delivered at the 2008 North American International Auto Show. One of the five topics covered in the speech titled Five Things I think I think was ethanol. Here's the relevant text:

“The best route to a significant near-term reduction in petroleum usage is E85.”

It’s just common sense! As I said, you don’t roll over the whole fleet at once. It takes decades… and the bigger the price disparity between the old ones and the new ones, the longer it takes.

I kept getting the question at the show…if GM is so gung ho on electrified vehicles and hybrids and fuel cells, then why this emphasis on E85? Why the deal with Coskata? They’d ask, “Which of these technologies are you really for?” And I’d say, “Yes!”

As Rick Wagoner said at the show, several times, the answer is we are for all of the above, but ethanol and biofuels are the best near-term solution. Yes, we continue to work on electrically driven vehicles, as fast as we can, but realistically, they are going to take many years to be on the road in volumes that make much of a dent in petroleum usage.

We need to make more of an impact on petroleum usage, more quickly than that. We already have millions of flex-fuel vehicles on the road right now…more than 6 million in the U.S. alone…vehicles that could be running on ethanol, if it were more readily available.

In fact, as Rick said, if all the flex-fuel vehicles that GM, Ford, and Chrysler have committed to have on the road by 2020…were to run on ethanol, we could displace 29 billion gallons of gasoline annually…or 18 percent of the projected petroleum usage at that time.

And if all manufacturers in the U.S. made that same commitment, we could save 53 billion gallons of gasoline annually…or 32 percent of our petroleum usage. Nothing else we can do…gets even close to that kind of impact, that soon. What’s more, ethanol offers a cleaner alternative to petroleum…it’s adaptable to our refueling infrastructure…it doesn’t have to be imported…and it requires little change in that pesky subject I mentioned earlier: consumer behavior. (Emphasis in original).

This is very similar to what our CEO, Jeff Broin, frequently says about ethanol being the only near-term solution to two of the biggest challenges facing our country: dependence on foreign oil and global climate change.

Today, the vast majority of ethanol is E10, or a blend of 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline. E85 a very small percentage of the overall ethanol mix. While other mid-level blends have shown promise and are gaining momentum, all blends of ethanol can help us get to our goal of reducing our nation's dependence on foreign oil. On that, it would seem that POET and GM agree.

Blender Pumps Gaining Momentum

One must wonder if the Optimal Ethanol Blend Study commissioned by the Department of Agriculture and the American Coalition for Ethanol discovered something new; or did it just confirm what many motorists already knew? Yesterday, Steve Miller’s story in the Rapid City Journal touted the growing number of blender pumps in South Dakota. And now today, from the Wichita Eagle, we read about a Kansas Department of Agriculture pilot project designed to allow Kansas fueling stations to install more blender pumps. As blender pumps become more common, consumers have more and more freedom to select various blends of ethanol besides E-10 and E-85. And it appears as though the motorists are confirming the findings of the Optimal Ethanol Blend Study. Or is it the other way around?

Ethanol can increase your MPG

That's the conclusion of a study from the University of North Dakota Energy & Environmental Research Center and the Minnesota Center for Automotive Research at Minnesota State University Mankato. Their study found that many cars can get more miles per gallon with mid-level blends of ethanol than they can with regular unleaded gasoline.

The study used federally approved testing procedures on four 2007 vehicles and found that all four achieved better miles per gallon on mid-level blends of ethanol (E20, E30, E40) than was expected due to ethanol's BTU content. Three of the four vehicles actually achieved better mpg with a mid-blend than they did with regular unleaded gasoline.

Ethanol's lower BTU content is often cited in critiques of the renewable fuel. Critics will say that ethanol may cost less and have fewer harmful emissions than gasoline, but those gains are discounted by the fact that it takes more fuel to travel the same distance.

This study shows that that argument is not necessarily valid. Some cars can actually travel further on a blend of ethanol and gasoline than they can on 100 percent gasoline. Right now, E10 in Sioux Falls is selling for about $0.12 per gallon cheaper than regular unleaded. That means that consumers using a 30 percent blend could get better mpg at a significant cost savings and have fewer harmful emissions.

As ethanol supporters stated in announcing the study, more testing is needed. Soon. Let's hope that consumers have this choice at some point in the near future. To download the complete study, click here.