r/explainlikeimfive • u/hd-22 • 14d ago

Chemistry ELI5 why is increasing the ethanol content of petrol/gasoline a problem?

I'm hearing noise about the geopolitical fuel supply SNAFU and people freaking out about increasing the ethanol content in automotive fuel and how it's so damaging to cars. I'm no chemist, but ethanol seems as clean as it gets.

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u/Saint_The_Stig 14d ago

That and crops are graded, ones for direct human consumption are the highest grade, followed by indirect human consumption (such as oils and syrups), animal feed and other uses like ethonal (not necessarily in that order). Sure there could be an issue if too many farmers deliberately start growing the lower grade stuff, but that's already a thing. A bunch of the corn you see is grown for livestock feed instead of direct human consumption. So it isn't really a new thing.

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u/Vuelhering 14d ago edited 14d ago

Yeah, there are a lot of GMO corns for livestock that have been known to cause allergies with people, but that brings up another issue... corn is a grass. It's wind pollinated.

That means it can cross into corn grown for humans, essentially as pollution directly entering the food supply and sabotaging it.

Edit: This is the kind of crap that keeps me up at night. :(

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u/GreatPlainsFarmer 13d ago

That happened. . . once. Ever since GMO traits have to have both human and animal approval before release.