In Michigan they closed the bars and dine-in restaurants, and craft distilleries are using their excess alcohol to make hand sanitizer.
This was in my little town's paper this morning. It was an e-edition, so I couldn't copy it, and it's a pay site, so I just took some screen shots. Sorry.
Anyway, the ethanol plants are working with the University of Nebraska to produce sanitizer.
York1 John
Murphy SidingThis afternoon I read that because of COVID-19, ... economy...blah blah blah, Poet was temporarily shutting down 3 ethanol plants, including the one at Chancellor, S.D., 25 miles down the line. Our gas prices are currently about $1.69. I saw gas last week in N.W. Iowa at $1.56 a gallon. I know that ethanol thrives when gas prices are high.
There's a lesson in this somewhere. Throughout the United States, ethanol is now a 'key' health material, one of the better viral disinfectants (at about 78%) -- yet is unavailable even to essential businesses without a great deal of under-the-table convincing and haggling. Even isopropanol has become a scarce and likely price-gouged material.
And yet we hear there's no point in continuing to produce it, even though I suspect the output of at least one of those plants could easily be sold into the current market at what are likely the highest margins in many years for industrial alcohol.
Makes me wonder who is setting the policies/incentives and watching the logistics in this evolving 'situation'. (Meanwhile people volunteering to help with ventilator fabrication get no offers ... but it seems there's plenty of demand fabricating better corpse-handling machinery. It would be hard to make this stuff up.)
Meme recently seen on FB: How many weeks per gallon are you getting?
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
We usually see 2-3 trains during the day on BNSF past my place of work. Today there were 3 between 8:00 am and 11:00. All three were long unit trains of empty ethanol tank cars heading back to their home planets. There are half a dozen ethanol plants within 50 miles of me. This afternoon I read that because of COVID-19, ... economy...blah blah blah, Poet was temporarily shutting down 3 ethanol plants, including the one at Chancellor, S.D., 25 miles down the line. Our gas prices are currently about $1.69. I saw gas last week in N.W. Iowa at $1.56 a gallon. I know that ethanol thrives when gas prices are high. Is ethanol in trouble?
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
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