Wednesday, April 26, 2006
The Pinto That Guzzled Alcohol and Water
Reading that Congressman Mark Kirk was using a Route 14 Mt. Prospect filling station as a backdrop to publicize himself and E85 fuel reminded me of my run for congress in 1980.
I had been approached by two Elgin inventors. (I represented Elgin west of McLean Blvd. in the 1970’s.)
Herb Hansen and Dale Pate, then a sergeant on the Elgin Police Department, had figured out how to make a car run on 85% alcohol and 15% water.
Really!
I was running for the U.S. Senate then. (Talk about ambitions exceeding one’s ability to marshal resources. I later decided on a Kamikaze run against my incumbent congressman Bob McClory. I carried McHenry County; he carried the larger counties of Lake and Kane.)
I remember driving a Buick to Lawrenceville in Southeast Illinois for a speaking engagement set up by my friend, former State Rep. Roscoe Cunningham.
The Buick gave me trouble, so I traded it for a Pinto, which the two inventors converted.
That little Pinto only stalled on me once. Fortunately, I was coming home from a congressional candidates’ night, driving east on Route 120 and was within walking distance of the farmhouse at the Northwest intersection of Rt. 120 and Charles and Greenwood Roads. I had it towed home to Woodstock.
That was 1980 and we had lived through the energy crisis of the mid-1970’s. I had become convinced that ethanol was the wave of the future, but I didn’t know that future would be so far away.
Ford was producing cars in Brazil that ran on pure alcohol. The big problem was that squeezing out the last 1% of water from the ethanol was very expensive. I figured that the Elgin men’s carburetor would solve that problem. 99.9% purity was not needed.
It did have the side effect of smelling like a brewery, however.
Now, Kirk has idea I had a quarter century ago:
Kirk’s apparent answer is to subsidize stations that will put in the 85% ethanol, 15% gasoline pumps. That was passed into law last year.
Subsidies have existed for ethanol production for decades now and the fuel is still not competitive. State government even had a still run by prisoners at Vandalia for a while.
I recently read a quote from an ethanol producer saying that it was getting more efficient all the time. His was countered by a quote from an oil producer noting that if ethanol production got too efficient, the price of oil would just be cut.
In 1980, besides that Cook County Route 14 station, the only place I could find to buy ethanol was FS. Fortunately, McHenry County’s operation was in Woodstock, where I then lived. So, when I came back from a campaign appearance, there was a handy place to fill up.
I had been approached by two Elgin inventors. (I represented Elgin west of McLean Blvd. in the 1970’s.)
Herb Hansen and Dale Pate, then a sergeant on the Elgin Police Department, had figured out how to make a car run on 85% alcohol and 15% water.
Really!
I was running for the U.S. Senate then. (Talk about ambitions exceeding one’s ability to marshal resources. I later decided on a Kamikaze run against my incumbent congressman Bob McClory. I carried McHenry County; he carried the larger counties of Lake and Kane.)
I remember driving a Buick to Lawrenceville in Southeast Illinois for a speaking engagement set up by my friend, former State Rep. Roscoe Cunningham.
The Buick gave me trouble, so I traded it for a Pinto, which the two inventors converted.
That little Pinto only stalled on me once. Fortunately, I was coming home from a congressional candidates’ night, driving east on Route 120 and was within walking distance of the farmhouse at the Northwest intersection of Rt. 120 and Charles and Greenwood Roads. I had it towed home to Woodstock.That was 1980 and we had lived through the energy crisis of the mid-1970’s. I had become convinced that ethanol was the wave of the future, but I didn’t know that future would be so far away.
Ford was producing cars in Brazil that ran on pure alcohol. The big problem was that squeezing out the last 1% of water from the ethanol was very expensive. I figured that the Elgin men’s carburetor would solve that problem. 99.9% purity was not needed.
It did have the side effect of smelling like a brewery, however.
Now, Kirk has idea I had a quarter century ago:
What is holding back the use of alcohol to fuel cars is its availability.I have often wondered why the corn growers did not open a string of filling stations in the outer reaches of the Chicago metropolitan area with one near Chicago and pay people to drive to and from work on the major expressways in cars with signs saying they were powered by alcohol. The stations would be expensive, but the cars would be cheap advertising.
Kirk’s apparent answer is to subsidize stations that will put in the 85% ethanol, 15% gasoline pumps. That was passed into law last year.
Subsidies have existed for ethanol production for decades now and the fuel is still not competitive. State government even had a still run by prisoners at Vandalia for a while.
I recently read a quote from an ethanol producer saying that it was getting more efficient all the time. His was countered by a quote from an oil producer noting that if ethanol production got too efficient, the price of oil would just be cut.
In 1980, besides that Cook County Route 14 station, the only place I could find to buy ethanol was FS. Fortunately, McHenry County’s operation was in Woodstock, where I then lived. So, when I came back from a campaign appearance, there was a handy place to fill up.
