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The Great Ethanol Scam
theodp writes "Over at BusinessWeek, Ed Wallace is creating quite a stir, reporting that not only is ethanol proving to be a dud as a fuel substitute, but there is increasing evidence that it is destroying engines in large numbers. Before lobbyists convince the government to increase the allowable amount of ethanol in fuel to 15%, Wallace suggests it's time to look at ethanol's effect on smog, fuel efficiency, global warming emissions, and food prices. Wallace concedes there will be some winners if the government moves the ethanol mandate to 15% — auto mechanics, for whom he says it will be the dawn of a new golden age."
..if this NY Times editorial is a sign of the times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/opinion/24sun2.htm .
Basically, it says that the ethanol lobbyists are fighting back against the EPA attempting to do its job by actually measuring the effects of ethanol as fuel.
Engines with super-refined fuel always get worse gas mileage.
See, the crude oil is heated in a stack; the tar-like parts stay at the bottom, the lighter fuels find their way up. The thicker stuff at the bottom is MUCH more densely packed with energy- that's where the diesel is. It's 'cruder' (notice it almost doesn't WANT to burn) but it actually carries nore BTU-power per drop. Refine it more, to where it almost wants to burn when ya touch it, and it won't have so much power anymore.
Oil is neat stuff; you might find the Discovery Channel's "Modern Marvels: Oil" episode to be an eye-opener.
And BTW: Rush Limbaugh has been noticing this same thing with ethanol. It's messing up the corn market and Mt Dew now has "Throwback" to make use of the now-cheaper cane sugar as an alternative.
Isn't life wonderful when we just let the government do things? :
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
E85 is actually a great fuel... For cars designed to run on it. The Koenigsegg CCX, for example, will run at 806 bhp in standard gasoline tune, but when you fill the tank with E85, you get 1018 bhp, no foolin'!
Ethanol is a really high octane fuel, which makes engineers quiver with delight, because they can predict, with much higher certainty than low-octane fuel, when and how much of it will detonate. Perfect for those tight tolerances in highly-strung engines.
Honorary mention to the sugar lobby. By blocking sugar imports, a few jobs are saved, and many more are lost as virtually all candy is now manufactured in Canada or Mexico (where sugar is only half as expensive). Other food manufacturers switched to corn syrup, which is subsidized thanks to the farm lobby.
Given the shenanigans that go on in washington DC, I don't know why anyone wants them more involved, in healthcare, banking, wallstreet, automobiles, or anywhere.
Here in Brazil we have been using alcohol as a fuel source for years. When you go to a gas station, it is guaranteed that you will find both a gasoline pump and an alcohol pump. Most cars developed here since 2003 accept both fuels, using an engine technology called FLEX. The only difference is that the alcohol we use is called "Anidro", and it is 99.3% pure, while Ethanol is 96% pure (the rest being mostly water).
Based on this, to subsidize the price of the gasoline here, the government sets an alcohol mandate of 22%. So even if you have a gasoline-only car, you are really using 3/4 gasoline and 1/4 alcohol when you fill the tank. Since the alcohol does attack all parts of the engine that are in contact with it, engines produced for the brazilian market have a special protection layer. And indeed, owners of imported cars here usually fill their tanks with a special "premium" gasoline, that is basically pure and high-octane, to avoid damage. (Guess I don't have to say that gas stations rip you off for that)
If I clone myself, can I call it a thread?
If a girl winks to us, can I call it a race condition?
Crock, eh?
Mechanics have been WELL aware of the problems caused by ethanol (particularly in boat, small engine, and commercial engine applications) for many years, but mechanics don't make public policy.
The 30-percent mileage drop appears to be worst-case, but the mechanical and corrosion problems are very real. I don't own a boat, and I can refit my older rides with ethanol-compatible carb (Holley for the trucks and S&S for for the Harleys) kits , but the MILLIONS of people who own engines too complex to easily refit with pumps, lines, seals and injectors will be screwed if the ethanol content goes up.
I'll make enough dough wrenching on the side off this to update my late model vehicles.:P
Example problems:
http://boatingsailing.suite101.com/article.cfm/ethanol_fuel_problems_for_boaters
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Since gas is measured and sold by volume, it only makes sense to talk about energy density in those terms. Ethanol is 23.5 MJ/L while 87 octane gas is 34.8. Fuel use of E100 seems to be growing. The most widely documented cases of damage due to use as an additive is when it is added to the driver.
Refined corn sugars(LFCS, HFCS) were only ever cheaper because of tariffs on cane sugar, FYI.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
At first, ethanol in Brazilian fuel is nothing more than a subside for northeastern Brazilian farmers
A picture is worth a thousand words.
"life is a joke, and someone is laughing at me"
In Brazil, ethanol fueled cars reached parity with gasoline-fueled ones still in the 1980's. Brazilian gasoline has about 24% ethanol, and properly designed engines work flawlessly. Nowadays, most cars are flex-fuel, i.e., can take ethanol, gasoline or anything mix of both.
The kind of fear-mongering from TFA = not invented here syndrome + troll.
^[:q!
Yeah, I am Brazilian and we have our ethanol program (Pro-alcool) since the 70s. It is true that the Engine needs to be specially prepared to handle ethanol. You can't just put ethanol on a regular gas powered car. In Brazil today, almost all cars run on both Gas and Ethanol. It really does work, and has been working for almost 40 years. Making ethanol out of corn? Newbies!
None of the 4 cars I've owned that have been built in the years 1998, 2000, 2001, and 2004 respectively are built to run on E85. These cars aren't exactly unpopular models as they include 2 corollas, 1 Taurus, and one accord. You are very much wrong if you think that "basically all" US market cars sold in the last decade have been made for E85.
GM has comitted to, by 2012, having it so 50% of the vehicles they sell can accept E85. They haven't reached anywhere near that goal. Honda does not even offer ANY flex fuel vehicles for the US market. The other automakers do, but its still a small minority. Only about 7 million (wikipedia article) out of the what... 100 million or so cars in the US are flex fuel capable.
So it's not even that the "basically all" part of your statement is wrong. It's almost the opposite of the truth. I'd say it's more like "basically none" of the US market cars sold in the last decade are flex fuel vehicles. Only even a minority of those sold this year are.
The problems with ethanol as a fuel are twofold, though neither problem is insurmountable.
First, ethanol will damage and eventually destroy engines that are not designed to burn it, full stop. It deteriorates rubbers and plastics, notably fuel lines, filters, pumps, etc. but also causes lubrication problems with piston rings, valves, and so forth. Most "late model" cars in the US (the cutoff point for "late model" is sort of nebulous at the moment) are designed to handle up to 15% ethanol content in their fuel. It is a safe bet to assume that any vehicle that does not explicitly state in the manual or marketing literature that it is compatible with higher ethanol concentrations (E85, etc.) is not, in fact, compatible. E85 capability is a huge marketing bullet point these days, and aside from a few very new model vehicles from Chevy and especially Ford, American engines will be damaged by high ethanol concentrations. Full stop. No argument allowed, nor required. Many engines can be converted to run somewhat satisfactorily on ethanol, but most of them do not have a factory conversion and must be converted using third party parts with the usual gamut of quality problems that this often entails. Many, many engines on the road cannot be converted to ethanol at all: Truck engines, high performance engines, bike engines, etc. Also, many older engines ("older" as in 15-20 years, still otherwise perfectly viable vehicles, not to mention all of those even older than that) cannot be converted at all.
On the topic of destroying engines, I can provide experience for a sector nobody's thought much about: Small engines. Lawn mowers, chain saws, weed trimmers, and everything else related. In the small engine shop run by my store, we have seen a marked increase in failures of nearly every fuel related part in the power equipment we service. Fuel lines rotting out within a year of purchase, seals going bad, rings seizing, pistons scoring, and filters clogging. I have personally pulled lawn mower fuel filters from units filled with E15 fuel just packed with fibrous gunk the likes of which I had never seen before the ethanol-laden fuel became popular in my area. I guarantee you that if any piece of gasoline powered equipment runs at all on high-ethanol fuel, it will not do so for long.
The second caveat is that ethanol has lousy energy density compared to gasoline. You get less heat and less energy out of ethanol per gallon than gasoline, and there's no way around it. Converted vehicles will get reduced mileage on ethanol as compared to gasoline. Ethanol-only vehicles will have to have larger tanks or just suffer with less range per tank than comparable gasoline vehicles. If ethanol prices closely follow gasoline prices, even in the short term, it will become a much more expensive proposition than most people anticipate. Likewise, our "barrels per day" number will not be directly transferable from gasoline to ethanol - A considerably larger amount of ethanol will have to be produced, pumped, shipped, and sold compared to gasoline today. This will incur additional cost and add additional complication.
In time, these problems will be solved. But it's going to cost a lot, and the one thing Americans have been known to get sore about in a hurry is some government type coming along and demanding that they get rid of their stuff/spend money/buy a new lawn mower/mothball their classic car because of the Ethanol Revolution. Under the theoretical argument that the whole country goes ethanol eventually, I predict a LOT of resistance to the idea, rallied under banners of "taking away our freedom," "admonishing tradition," "from my cold, dead fingers," and so forth. Some of which, admittedly, will be justified. (Though I'd doubt regular old gasoline will go away any time soon, or indeed at all until we run out of crude oil entirely. Motorheads are die-hard types, many of them are willing to spend lots of money, and someone will crop up to meet that demand. On it goes.)
Uh, haven't basically all US market cars for the last decade or more been designed for E85?
No, they have not.
I know even my 1998 Windstar had filters and seals that were E85 compatible, it's not like it adds much cost to make a car E85 compatible.
Great, now are your sensors and injectors? What about the EFI computer? Do you know if the fuel tank and lines were also? E85 is more reactive so basically everything that the fuel comes in contact with has to be corrosion resistant. Your EFI computer also has to know to inject more fuel into the cylinders because E85 has a lower energy density than that of regular unleaded.
Heck here is the midwest winter mixes probably go to 15% ethanol already to combat fuel line freezup.
Fuel line freeze up is a diesel only issue. The freezing point of gasoline is around -120 F, possibly as "warm" as -97 at best depending on the the water content. Gasoline has winter and summer blends due to the change in atmospheric pressures and regulation by the EPA to maintain a specified Reid vapor pressure (RVP) for gasoline. If the RVP of a liquid exceeds the atmospheric pressure it will boil. Obviously this would not be a good thing. Since the atmospheric pressure is lower in the summer the RVP must be as well. In the winter the RVP can be higher, which also tends to make gas much cheaper to produce, with a higher RVP, and is why winter gas prices tend to be lower.
"Brazil runs all of their cars (a lot of old vehicles, I might add) on 100% ethanol."
*Cough* Bullshit *Cough*
According to Wikipedia:
There are no longer any light vehicles in Brazil running on pure gasoline. Since 1976 the government made it mandatory to blend anhydrous ethanol with gasoline, fluctuating between 10% to 22%.[12] and requiring just a minor adjustment on regular gasoline motors. In 1993 the mandatory blend was fixed by law at 22% anhydrous ethanol (E22) by volume in the entire country, but with leeway to the Executive to set different percentages of ethanol within pre-established boundaries. In 2003 these limits were set at a minimum of 20% and a maximum of 25%.[13] Since July 1st, 2007 the mandatory blend is 25% of anhydrous ethanol and 75% gasoline or E25 blend.[14]
You're sort of right -- I assume you're peripherally involved with the use of E85 in the hot rod community, but haven't done it yourself.
From experience, its a pain in the balls to convert an engine to run on it. You lose a lot of horsepower, and you have to basically replace all the fuel lines, rejet the carb (if you can use the carb at all -- E85 is corrosive to aluminum, too).
Where it becomes interesting is when you build a new motor -- you can run a higher compression without having to run 100+ octane fuel, on smaller engines you can turbocharge with higher boost, but you have to do one of the two to get around the fact that you're producing a lot less power.
And you'll never EVER produce more power than gasoline with Ethanol. You can build an engine to burn more of it at a higher compression than you can with standard gasoline, but gallon for gallon you simply can't get more power with it. Gearheads prefer it to 100, or 110 octane because its not $7/gallon, so even if they burn 50-100% more of it, they still come out ahead.