Corn ethenol is a scam, it takes more energy to distill it than you get back burning it. Also, industrial alcohol was still legal to distill during prohibition, it was just required to be denatured by adding enough poison to kill people getting drunk on it. A full ban on distilling like this guy claims would have wrecked the economy. And there was also an exemption for prescription-only "medicinal" alcohol back then.
Between that and how concerned modern Model A owners are about ethanol in gas messing up their antique engines, pretty sure this guy's wrong. Turns out the water content in ethanol makes it very corrosive and the early engines had some parts coated in a shellac that ethenol would dissolve. Rockefeller was a cunt, but not for the reasons stated.
Corn ethenol is a scam, it takes more energy to distill it than you get back burning it. Also, industrial alcohol was still legal to distill during prohibition, it was just required to be denatured by adding enough poison to kill people getting drunk on it. A full ban on distilling like this guy claims would have wrecked the economy. And there was also an exemption for prescription-only "medicinal" alcohol back then.
Between that and how concerned modern Model A owners are about ethanol in gas messing up their antique engines, pretty sure this guy's wrong. Turns out the water content in ethanol makes it very corrosive and the early engines had some parts coated in a shellac that ethenol would dissolve. Rockefeller was a cunt, but not for the reasons stated.
https://www.fordbarn.com/forum/showthread.php?t=117064&showall=1