600 million gallons of ethanol
1945 saw the peak of ethanol production in the United States at a whopping 600,000,000 gallons of ethanol production. Many people do not realize that back then plant matter served as the primary feedstock for all sorts of chemical products, including paint, ink, solvents and fuel. The Once and Future Carbohydrate Economy published by the Institute for Local Self Reliance brings the point home: In the 1820s, Americans used two tons of vegetables for every ton of minerals. Over the next 100 years, that balance would effectively reverse itself.
Not known to many, the American nation has a deep roots in ethanol and biofuel production. By the mid 1930s, common household tems, such as Rayon (made from wood pulp), telelphones, silk stockings, dentures (made from cotton), and a broad range of other bio-plastic consumer items were widely used by Americans. Quoted from the The Once and Future Carbohydrate Economy:
At the end of the 19th century the names of chemical companies and products often contained a form of the word cellulose, a living chemical consisting of a long string of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen molecules (thus the word carbohydrate). The name of one of the country's largest chemical manufacturers, Celanese Corporation, was a contraction of "cellulose" and "the easy feeling" of wearing acetate apparel.
Ultimately what killed the carbohydrate economy was the incredibly weak prices of oil. In the 1940s, oil sunk under 1 dollar a barrel and effectively wiped the carbohydrate economy off the map.
The The Once and Future Carbohydrate Economy is some of the best reading on ethanol that I've come across...I highly recommend it. In case you don't have the time to read the whole piece, I've clipped one more section on the history of gasoline and ethanol that's a must read (in fact, read on).
It's a fascinating segment:
After World War I, car companies introduced high-compression engines. Existing fuels caused knocking, a result of uneven combustion. The industry feverishly sought an anti-knock additive. Ultimately, it narrowed the choice to two: ethanol or lead. Ethanol would require 10 percent of the gas tank. To achieve the same effect, lead needed less than 1 percent. The car companies, unsurprisingly, chose lead, and stuck to it even after outcries from the public health community about the effects of leaded gasoline.In the 1970s, as part of its air quality efforts, the Environmental Protection Agency phased out leaded gasoline. Oil companies again could have substituted ethanol. Instead they chose to reformulate gasoline to increase the proportion of aromatic chemicals like benzene, toluene, and xylene. Then, in the late 1980s, the nation discovered these chemicals were carcinogenic and imposed limits on their use. The oil companies again could have switched to ethanol. Instead they chose MTBE, a product made from natural gas-derived methanol and isobutylene, a byproduct of the refinery process.
In the late 1990s, the nation discovered that MTBE was polluting ground water. Nineteen states began to phase out MTBE. So long as the Clean Air Act's oxygenate requirement remained, highly polluted urban areas had only one alternative: ethanol. The phase out of MTBE is the primary reason US fuel ethanol consumption has doubled in the last three years.
More on the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in upcoming posts on HemperFi.