Of course, instead of blending EtOH it could be held separately and used as an octane-on-demand additive to prevent knock under high-power conditions.  The downsized, high-compression engines this allows would save far more fuel than is displaced by blended ethanol.

EtOH used as an octane booster can contain even more water than the solvent-extracted input shown here; it can easily be 20% water.  This would require much less energy input than even this new, improved scheme.

Will the fuel systems tolerate EtOH?  I seem to recall that the STCs for autogas use required non-gasohol.

NYT- "More than one-third of our corn crop is used to feed livestock. Another 13 percent is exported, much of it to feed livestock as well. Another 40 percent is used to produce ethanol. The remainder goes toward food and beverage production.Jul 30, 2012"

I see up to date the ethanol portion of the corn harvest is reduced from 40 percent to one-third, but one-third of that corn is returned as high value live stock feed. Feed that is actually contains all the valuable protein of the original corn and added nutrition of natural distillery fermentation leftovers. So, not much here to fret over when using corn first as starch feed stock for ethanol. Also, we must tabulate the coproducts of ethanol production that often go unaccounted for. The vegetable corn oil for example. Non the least the new cellulosic processes that are just getting started to contribute to the ethanol production. These dry grind plants are expected to quickly adapt the very cost efficient process and push ethanol to 3.1 gallons per bushel with additional corn oil. They expect to advance to accepting a portion of field corn stover in future as well that will push production 50% or so.

Notice the Times report that "food" is merely 14% of a bushel if doing the math. Most of that has to be for corn syrup of which is of modern day health concern giver our saturation of commercial food with the sugar. So, fear not of starving. Note the fattening of cattle with corn is under scrutiny as well given the unhealthy fat production profile.

What should be the EPA actions be to decrease environmental and unhealthy vehicle emissions? First given the convenience, cost effectiveness, and current fleet of cars one would presume any motor fuel that minimizes the emission damage these vintage cars produce would be priority number one. Seems higher ethanol blends would come to the rescue on that one and do so at a cost savings. Even our four cycle small engines, especially if the fuel character was consistent and the small engines were actually tuned to proper air fuel mix.

Second I can see no advantage to emissions if comparing an efficient ethanol hybrid as opposed to battery grid power cars. Meaning, both should be receive incentives to proceed at a quicker pace. EPA federal and state should afford battery car incentives to a high efficient ethanol vehicle. Note, that for ethanol to advance and optimize the fuel's natural ability for carbon efficiency, there is a need to drop the gasoline portion. Also, that pure ethanol would require a new range of technology to advance. It's does not require break through technology, just experimenting with typical engineering choices and the experience that proceeds out. Already, Cummings have demonstrated that down sizing, down speeding an E85 vehicle produces more torque than diesel and better mileage than gasoline. Read their test data to gain info that E100 is superior to E85 with efficiency gain. That half sized engines will produce more power than modern day typical engine technology. Were talking of better than diesel torque, higher efficiency, and upon a cheaper engine as compared to diesel. The fuel cost per mile about the same or lower. Emissions much lower. Forget gasoline. The fuel doesn't compete.

In 2015, only 123 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol were required by the EPA (127.64 million RINs generated).  This was about 4% of the EISA requirement.  The shortfall was due to woefully insufficient capacity.  There is no direct translation from RINs to gallons linked on the page or its associated spreadsheet.

For the uninformed, 123 million gallons is less than 3 million barrels.  The USA consumes almost 9 million barrels of gasoline per day; cellulosing EtOH was less than 0.1% of US gasoline-equivalent consumption, and less than 0.05% of total petroleum product consumption.

Whoever thinks cellulosic anything is going to replace petroleum is smoking something strong.

Cellulosic ethanol is in daily production. Soon to be three dry grind plants with the capability. This is low volume production stuff, nonetheless successful application of cellulosic with very comfortable margins. Payback is in months. If all dry grind plants would add the ability and most analysis believe they will, the corn kernel feed stock will produce one additional billion gallons of cellulosic and apparently the industry is planning for those plants to up production to two billion cellulosic gallons. This is good for cellulosic, to have daily production, as the learning curve will never end.

Poet's large cellulosic plant is operational, but without production quantities. This year I believe they finished the commissioning phase. New processes and new equipment will make for a large environment for just about everything to go wrong. They had problems with stover bale dirt, corrosion of pumps, and production bottlenecks. They did run a railroad car of production then shut it down. They claim the process is capable of production, but the current economics of the market make the gallons produced a net loss. I would suppose this is the case for all the stover cellulosic plants. Gasoline goes to $4/gallon, Katie bar the door.

Source ascr-discovery magizine 9/16

The magazine article has a good description of cellulosic ethanol process problems. The major cost of cellulosic fuel is not the feed stock, it's the enzymes. Below, they describe why so much expensive enzyme additive is needed. Also, note that the science is indicating a path of enzymatic hydrolases in which lignin left overs provide an excellent feed stock for the valuable chemical industry.

"A critical question was how lignin interacts with hydrolases to convert cellulose to simple sugars for fermentation into ethanol. Bioengineers knew lignin inhibited enzymatic reactions but not how. Using simulations, Petridis, Smith and colleagues showed that lignin binds to the hydrolase enzymes in the exact location where those enzymes bind to cellulose to cleave it apart, effectively blocking the decomposition reaction".

"scientists Charles Wyman and Charles Cai, who were trying to figure out why pretreatment with a common, nontoxic chemical solvent, tetrahydrofuran (THF), made ethanol production from cellulose more efficient.
So the ORNL-UT team went to work with molecular dynamics simulations. The calculations showed that THF inserts itself between lignin and cellulose, Smith says. “It stops the lignin and the cellulose from sticking to each other and stops the lignin from sticking to itself.” The strategy could prove useful as a way to split off lignin, Petridis adds, which could prove useful as DOE researchers look for ways to use other biomass components to produce energy and other useful products".

errata

I wrote "1983 turbo-charged Oldsmobile F85 Starfire". It should have been "1963 turbo-charged Oldsmobile F85 Starfire". Over 50 years ago!