An ethanol pipeline in the works?

on Jul 20 in Pipelines, Politics tagged by Trevor Hicks

One of the many drawbacks of our government mandates to produce ethanol is the fact that ethanol cannot be transported via the existing pipeline infrastructure.  This gives it the opposite property as I discussed regarding natural gas that it can only be shipped in batches via tankers.  This not only increases the cost of delivering ethanol to market, but it vastly worsens its EROI or the amount of energy that must be “invested” to access the energy it returns.

The Chicago Tribune reports that

The nation’s largest biofuels producer and a Tulsa-Okla.-based pipeline company are expanding the route of a proposed $3.5 billion dedicated ethanol pipeline into South Dakota, the companies said Friday.

Magellan is the pipeline company working to solve the pipeline issue:

Magellan has been working with the Association of Oil Pipe Lines for years on how to transport ethanol through a pipeline, said spokesman Bruce Heine.

Heine said the biggest challenge is stress corrosion cracking, in which ethanol tends to cause internal cracking of carbon steel pipe more so than gasoline or diesel.

Magellan thinks the solution will be a combination of potential additives to help protect the pipe and the use of different welding techniques.

So what is the best response to something that has the potential to make an awful policy less bad? On the one hand, if I assume the terrible policy of ethanol subsidies and mandates to be perpetual then I should welcome any development that reduces the harm of these policies. On the other hand, a reduction in the cost of the policy makes it that much more difficult to overturn. On balance I think I should be happy, I’m too cynical to think that the corporations feeding at the government ethanol subsidy trough can ever be displaced so I’m happy that the cost they’re imposing on the rest of us will be reduced if this project is successful.