Goose, a 10% blend is there for 2 reasons - adding octane to the fuel, & making it a somewhat cleaner burning fuel (the ethanol boosts the O2 in the burning process, which reduces some bad pollutants, tho it does slightly raise some mild pollutants.)
It has little to do with adding to milage. Your fuel would cost more, OR it would pollute more, without the E10. Some engine configurations do the same, some do a bit worse on E10. You happen to have one of the 'worse' models. But on the whole, many do the same for milage, and so there is some small boost in energy supply. But really not the point of E10 - it's for octane & air quality.
E20 or E30 the fuel likely burns in a smoother, even front, & the engine becomes more efficient. Even tho it has less btu to work with, the increased efficiency allows it to gain mph.
E85 engines are designed primmarily as gasoline engines, which can burn up to E85. Thus they are optomised for gasoline, & loose mpg on E85. If they were designed specificly for E85 with higher compression & other refinements they could easily keep up with a regular gasoline engine on mpg. Ethonal burns more smoothly like a diesel engine, a strong long burn front with good power. Gasoline explodes in one bang, slapping the piston with a strong short blast. The high octane could be used with much higher compression, which always makes a more efficient engine.
However, we get to the chicken & the egg - no one will buy an E85 only vehicle uless there are thousands of pumps; and no one would put up thousands of pumps unless there were dedicatd cars to use the stuff.
So, the current compromise of E85 flex vehicles, hopefully it will mature the industry and get both the chickens & eggs out there. No they are not the most efficient, because they are not optimised for all the strong points of ethanol fuel. A dedicated E85 engine would show a lot of positive energy from the whole ethonal equasion. If we could get there?
As to food vs fuel, every bu of corn going to ethonal still produces 17+ lbs of animal feed gluten. Here in Minnesota we export 1/2 of our corn crop out of the state. Even with the ethanol plants we have. I'm pretty happy to have local buyers. Depending on the Missisppi river to thaw, or the rail cars to haul grain trains across the Rocky Mountains makes for _very_ low grain prices here. Any local sale is a good thing, I'm happy to keep the grain & the jobs associated with it local. No shortage of food or feed 'here'.
Compared to the 1960's, corn should sell for $7.00 off the farm if it kept up with other basic staples. It just crossed $4 today for me. Sure has a ways to go yet before it is 'high priced'. Much of the increase in grain prices is from the cheap dollar - our grain looks cheap to other countries, even if it looks high to some of us within the USA. The Asian Rim is growing rapidly & importing grains when it used to export. Their production of grain has not kept pace - their efforts have been on industrial expansion. Soon they will refocus on ag production, and again will be exporting. This is just an ebb & flow.
Penty of room for differing opinions, and ethanol fuels are not all honey & roses. Don't mean to imply it is the savior of all problems.
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Today's Featured Article - Third Brush Generators - by Chris Pratt. While I love straightening sheet metal, cleaning, and painting old tractors, I use every excuse to avoid working on the on the electrics. I find the whole process sheer mystery. I have picked up and attempted to read every auto and farm electrics book with no improvement in the situation. They all seem to start with a chapter entitled "Theory of Electricity". After a few paragraphs I usually close the book and go back to banging out dents. A good friend and I were recently discussing our tractor electrical systems when he stated "I figure it all comes back to applying Ohms Law". At this point
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