Slashdot Mirror
Is E85 Dead Now?
twdorris writes "With a stoichiometric ratio far lower than that of gasoline (much lower than the price difference), buying the E85 ethanol fuel blend instead of gasoline was already hard to justify. Unless you raced your car on a track where E85 provided a great alternative to race fuel, it really didn't make financial sense. And there are other reasons not to buy E85, too. Like the impact corn-based ethanol is having on food prices or the questionable emissions results (PDF). So, now that the ethanol subsidies provided by the U.S. federal government are scheduled to end this summer, it's going to be even harder to justify E85 (at least in the U.S.). This change will basically make a gallon of E85 cost the same or slightly more than gasoline. With so many things working against it, are the days numbered for readily available E85 at your local gas station? And should it have ever even been made available to begin with? How much did all that government-backed R&D and tax credits cost us for something that was pretty clearly questionable to begin with?"
Does that mean that we'll go back to having gasoline actually be real, 100% honest-to-God gasoline too?
I come from a family of farmers, some of which have taken advantage of the high price of corn. Well, around Christmas they were talking about two things. One is the serious disregard for pollution standards from most (they said more than just those caught and fined) ethanol refineries. And also the negative effect it has had on farmland in their area. The second was that many refineries were shutting down as these subsidies came to a close (my dad pointed out two abandoned as we drove along) and as a result some farmers had bought up land at high prices expecting the recent price of corn to continue. They had figured they would be getting $6 or $7 a bushel and there was a lot of talk that since the refineries were going down and production was already juiced that this was going to lead to a lot of farmers losing money in these purchases. From what I gathered from folks who have been doing this for many decades: this will be a very painful learning experience for everyone involved and this seems to be the sentiment whether the wind blows right or left.
My work here is dung.
A lot of the racers are putting turbos in their cars, running e85 and getting great horsepower AND gas mileage. It works great for them. However, most americans hate it because they get no increased hp in their car, and the price offset doesn't justify the worse gas mileage. Then theres the whole CORN IS FOOD. To which I say, there's enough corn in my food already
The E85 manufacturers and the agriculture companies that grow corn have a lot riding on this, and are quite good at influencing Congress. There's a very good chance that they will successfully lobby to extend this subsidy.
That's a shame, because the subsidy was originally intended to support this fuel alternative for a short time in order to give it a chance to become economically viable. Well, it's had that chance and the results have been a disaster.
It's no secret that Ethanol production is no greener than petroleum fuels. There are other corn based products that are propped up artificially as well.
Hard to figure why the government subsidizes it so much. I'm sure someone will say, is there a huge corn lobby? Who pays them?
Even though it cost less than standard gasoline, it came at a reduced gas milage. I did the math and at the cost in my area, it was more expensive per mile than regular. Maybe in other areas that was different, I dont know.
For engines that can handle it, E85 is a nice alternative to gasoline because it does give a tad more horsepower. However, even with the included subsidies, it was still not worth using because of the MPG difference compared to plain gasoline.
However, being forced to use gasoline with ethanol in it results in more energy lost in making of replacement engines and parts than it saves.
Ethanol is an enemy of small engines. It is hygroscopic, which means the engine has to deal with water sucked in, and gas + water makes a nasty acid (nicknamed "gacid" by mechanics) that destroys engines. Of course, this stuff is not covered by any warranty, so your new car that gets ethanol damage, the owner is stuck with the bill.
Of course, you can add Sta-Bil to the gas tank to help combat the ethanol's effects, but gas additives get expensive.
I just hope that ethanol goes away except for the occassional E85 pump, just for the sake of lawn mower, generator, motorcycle, and boat owners everywhere. The carbon savings from not having to keep purchasing new engines will more than make up for the difference in pollution.
I have been using E85 in my race car (a 1995 Dodge Neon) for a couple years now and love it dearly. I will be devastated to see it go.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bj9JhD4YGs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmlyPU3h3Fg
... that E80 stuff.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
We did get a real market sample of what the public does with a new technology, how the subsidies affect the pricing and incentives, as well as a realistic idea of what a change over from oil might be like. This should help us understand how changing pumping situations for a nation (E85 can still run on the same pumps, so it was much cheaper than implimenting a new/more efficient tech like hydrogen). We know how many Americans will adopt and how early they will.
This was just a tester for better tech down the line. As for the price to corn, how much do we pay farmers not to grow it?
Let's not forget that ethanol fuels destroy engines, lower gas mileage, and drive farmers into bankrupcy.
This was never something for the environment. It was always another subsidy for farmers and Big Oil.
When E85 first came to gas stations in my area, it was SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than regular gasoline. However, it took less than 6 months for the price of E85 to slowly creep up and come within 5 cents of a regular gallon of gas. On my way to work this morning, E85 was a whopping 3 cents cheaper than Unleaded at the gas station by my house.
E85 has not delivered on ANY of its hype.
Its not good race fuel either since they tend to screw around with the blend throughout the year. Many race vehicles are either have a carb or closed circuit fuel injection, neither of which compensate for the seasonal changes.
E85 is wonderful fuel for my RX-7 I LOVE it.. I am able to produce 700+HP from a 1.1 litre engine as opposed to only 545HP with 93octane. And the engine feels damn cool to the touch. And its MUCH cheaper than race gas. I just wish there were more stations to fill up when I am driving it on the street.
E85 will make perfect sense once petroleum is removed from the distilling process. Ethanol will be one of many methods to "store" solar energy. It's still going to continue to be important in the internal combustion field. Current marketplace E85 doesn't make much sense, but it is a stepping stone. It's not a dead end technology, it's just one that requires a good amount of energy to to expended on its manufacture. Eventually, the price of this energy will decrease.
Often in Error, Never in Doubt.
[q]How much did all that government-backed R&D and tax credits cost us for something that was pretty clearly questionable to begin with?[/q]
It can't be easy having 20/20 hindsight. I mean it's not like any project of this magnitude has proponents and opponents, with both parties eagerly just waiting to go "I told you so."
It was worth a shot. We could as well have ended up with someone discovering a super algae or yeast or whatever (I don't fucking know, something bioengineered) once we went down that road. This time we didn't, don't be a fuckbag about it. No one likes a fuckbag.
Cheers
... it drives up the price of high fructose corn syrup.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
All things being equal, I'd rather our fuel come from within the USA than outside. But I'll be the first to admit I hate seeing "flexfuel" on the back of all of those giant trucks and SUV's like it makes any difference. 99.9% of the population fills them with gasoline anyway.
Maybe with those subsidies gone, we can concentrate on better alternatives such as electric vehicles, natural gas, compressed air, and maybe someday (crossing fingers) hydrogen.
lets switch to switchgrass please. You don't need to waste food or farmland for switchgrass, it grows in many difficult conditions and is cheaper to manage by far. It also has better energy energy content by far.
They alway tried to hide the amount of corn and the energy required to make ethanol. It never was a cost-effective solution.
even if there is no other reason to product E85, if it causes pause in oil-rich countries that hate us and our freedoms, but want to gobble down our money while it's still good, hell yes, go E85.
if the US would build the appropriate pipelines to use the ND/MT/WY oil from the Bakken and other formations, where we have three Saudi Arabias worth of oil availiable for the fracking where there are no earthquake zones, we wouldn't even need to think about E85 or other alternatives to oil for a good hundred years.
as it is, we need to use everything we have to get away from using... everything we have... and build an alternate energy system in this country.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Ummmm did the author of this do NO real homework...or do they just have a personal axe to grind against E85?
While the end of the subsidies may sound bad...the $0.45 per gallon US subsidy loss was also complimented by a dropping of the US import tariff of $0.54 per gallon.
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-01-09/end-us-ethanol-tariff
All this does is stop local protectionism and might actually result in a net DROP in e85 prices.
What about bio-butanol? Could you mix that with gasoline? It may smell, but it has a higher energy density than ethanol. Is it more economical?
I know diesel engines have a lousy reputation in North America, but I firmly believe hemp based bio-diesel is a FAR better alternative than E85. Most importantly, hemp seed based bio-diesel is a net-positive energy solution, requiring less fuel to farm the hemp and process it into bio-diesel than you end up producing (kind of a critical point for any product to succeed in the energy markets.)
Some go so far as to claim that hemp bio-diesel is carbon negative. I'm skeptical about that, but it would be interesting to test the theory.
Unlike ethanol corn, hemp produces a great deal of fiber suitable for textiles and paper as a side-product, even if the main purpose of the crop is bio-diesel. Levi's jeans used to be made exclusively from hemp-fiber denim, not cotton. I've read claims that hemp based paper out produces poplar tree paper production by a factor of nearly 4:1, though again, I've not seen a study to prove that claim.
Most important of all, hemp is literally a weed and will grow almost anywhere, allowing the use of low-grade farmland instead of taking away from food-crop acreage.
But it's nothing new. The pro-hemp community has been screaming this "nonsense" at the top of their lungs for decades while the cannabis drug war drowned out their good points about hemp farming.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I was one of many to write papers on it and why it really didn't fix anything. It was never even a band-aid.
But the refineries were built anyway- solely because of government money. It absolutely never would have happened naturally if there wasn't government money to be made.
For a few of us who race or can brew our own ethanol (sans road tax), this stuff is still great.
Have gnu, will travel.
Without subsidies the law is still a problem... The law requires an amount of ethanol be blended into the nations fuel supply, but we're not using enough gas to safely reach those legal levels with E10 alone. E15 and E85 help meet the EISA law's requirements. Ethanol will not go away until EISA is fixed.
The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 ...
(EISA) (Pub. Law 110-40) requires the motor fuel supply to contain 36 billion gallons of ethanol and
advanced biofuels by 2022 (known as the renewable fuel standard (RFS)). For instance, this year
requires 11.5 billion gallons of renewable fuels to be used in our nation’s fuel supply.
Here is where the "blend wall" comes into play. The nation consumes approximately 145 billion gallons
of gasoline each year and approximately 120 billion gallons are subject to the RFS ethanol
blending formula. Even if every gallon of gasoline included in the RFS were blended with 10 percent
ethanol, refiners would hit the "blend wall" around 12 billion gallons. Refiners are expected to hit the
ethanol "blend wall" between 2011 – 2012 (at current ten percent ethanol blended consumption).
http://www.pmaa.org/userfiles/file/Legislative/2009/.../BLENDWALL.pdf
We've seen that getting ethanol from corn kernels is not a good way to go about storing solar energy.
We've yet to see whether cellulosic ethanol plants work out as hoped, or not. If CE plants are able to cost effectively generate ethanol from cellulose-rich plants (like switchgrass, industrial hemp, etc), then there might be a future for ethanol as a biofuel, but not corn ethanol.
As a plant, it just takes too much energy to grow the corn, transport it, and you get too little energy back.
Ethanol is very feasible, just not he way we make it in the states. Sugarcane produces far more ethanol per weight than corn does, and it does so with much less manufacturing. However, the USA has a massive pre-existing investment in corn. Thus the issue.
Since it never made sense, I always thought E85 might have been a political red herring, distracting laws and investments from real solutions, as the hydrogen cell was depicted in a documentary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F#Hydrogen_fuel_cell
E85 was a bad joke from the start. If you consider the amount of oil it takes to water the corn, fertilize the corn, then harvest the corn, then process it to get your ethanol, its a huge losing proposition from a purely environmental position. It also profoundly screws with the food markets, and puts the poor around the world on precarious footing towards starvation.
The people it benefits are the big moneied corporate agribusinesses. It makes grain less available, jacks up the price of corn commodities, and in short makes a bunch of greedy buggers even wealthier.
You want to use a sane fuel? Oil from Algae, is sane. Ethanol from bullgrass is sane. Ethanol and methanol from sewage and organic waste is sane. By all means, turn refuse and societies byproducts into fuel and fuel additives. Just get food out of the equation.
There's been some talk over the past decade about cellulosic ethanol. I believe there's a couple demo plants being constructed a few places in the country. From my understanding, you could just as easily use cellulose from hemp as from switchgrass or trees.
So, you could take the seed and make bio-diesel (and, perhaps, lubricating oils - not sure if the hemp seed oil would be any good for lubrication or not?) for diesel engines, and cellulosic ethanol from the rest of the plant (which accounts for what, like 99% of the plant mass)?
Because of that last bit, I suspect you would get far, far more ethanol from the plant, per acre, than bio-diesel from the seeds?
In all these years of E85 hype, there's only been a handful of places I could actually get it. The only two within a 45 minute drive on the interstate are both on military bases which I'd need a military ID in order to get on base, much less purchase there. The others are so absurdly far that I'd have wasted more in gas getting there and back than I'd be saving.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Even Scientists from Ag departments of California universities have known that looking to corn-based fuels is a bad idea. Look at this report from Professor Tadeusz Patzek, A Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley:
Excerpts:
Why Corn Ethanol is Unsustainable, Let Us Count the Ways:
4.
Approximately 99% of U.S. corn is fertilized, requiring more fertilizer than any other crop.
Nitrogen fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides are all made from fossil fuels, as is the diesel
fuel, gasoline, LPG, natural gas, electricity, transportation and irrigation used to grow and
transport the corn.
7.
Because ethanol is a toxic and hazardous substance, its use is regulated by OSHA, DOT,
NFPA and NIOSH. Ethanol must be handled with extreme caution because it can enter the
blood stream from breathing the fumes, or by penetration through the skin or mouth. Exposure
can irritate the eyes, nose, mouth, and throat. As such, protective clothing, including gloves
and splash-proof chemical goggles and face shields should be worn by anyone coming in
contact with ethanol.
8.
People are advised not to eat, smoke or drink where ethanol is handled, processed, or stored
since the chemical can easily be absorbed. Moderate exposure can cause headaches, eye
and skin irritation, nausea, and drowsiness, whereas higher levels of exposure (over 1000 parts
per million over an 8-hour period) can cause shortness of breath, genetic mutations, damage to
the liver and central nervous system and unconsciousness. Exposure to ethanol levels of over
3300 ppm can result in death.
9.
Ethanol land requirements: Approximately 50 gallons of ethanol are produced per acre of
corn. Thus 2.8 billion acres of land would be required to generate 140 billion gallons of fuel
used in the USA annually, which is more than 5 times all of the cropland that is actually and
potentially available for all crops in the USA.
10. ...8,360 gallons of water are needed per equivalent gallon of
Ethanol water requirements:
gasoline in the form of ethanol. 140 billion gallons of gasoline are consumed in the USA
annually, times 8,360 gallons of water = 1.17 trillion gallons of water needed to grow and
process enough ethanol for the U.S. economy.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
While we need to find alternatives to fossil fuels (I care not about our reason - pollution, economics, or national security - any one is good enough for me) we won't get at the right solution without good old garage projects in a DARPA-style grand challenge. Only after we've had several designs on several aspects will we be able to get an improvement. Just look at all the effort and ingenuity into Pumpkin Chunkin!
Currently closed-loop steam looks like it might get a resurgence due to fuel indepenence, lack of stoichiometry, simpler design.
We currently need contests in:
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
This the same kind of crap as Medicare Part D, where the federal government is not allowed to negotiate bulk drug prices with the pharmaceutical manufacturers. The Veterans Administration gets bulk rates, and their costs are significantly lower.
Every big financial sector is in on this game. SOPA/PIPA anyone? The mortgage meltdown and the bank bailout. This is endemic corruption, where all the big players rewrite the rules so they automatically make a profit. Even Jamie Dimon, head of JPMorgan-Chase said he had a "right to make money". That's not capitalism. He has a right to engage in business, and make money if he is successful, and loose money if he doesn't. What we have now is a rigged game, and it not so slowly destroying the US economy.
Why is Snark Required?
Goodbye Dublin Dr. Pepper, hello sucrose-based not-outrageously-priced Dr. Pepper nationwide.
OK, maybe Dr. Pepper, Coke, and Pepsi won't want to damage their nostalgia market,* but at least Jones Soda and other sucrose-based sodas can be cost-effective with Coke/Pepsi/Dr. Pepper if the big boys are forced to pay more for the corn syrup.
*Coke distributes "Mexican Coke" in some markets at a high mark-up. Dr. Pepper distributes "10-2-4" Dr. Pepper in some markets in glass bottles at a high mark-up, with occasional "limited time only" sales in cans and large bottles at relatively small mark-ups. I haven't seen Pepsi do this but you can get "Mountain Dew Classic" at a non-outrageous markup.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
E85 is one of those "We do not need to change"-technologies which suggest that we can go on the way we did until now. But the truth is, we cannot. So it would be best to cancel stupid food-based gasoline replacements. And we should not go to other plants for the same reason. We need to much valuable agricultural space for that. The best is to A) reduce energy consumption and b) use electric energy for locomotion.
I have a propane powered car. In Ontario, I pay 64 cents per litre for a fillup, which would be $2.42 a gallon. Gasoline here is $1.20 a litre, or $4.54 a gallon. That makes running on propane a good deal. Taxes don't explain all of it, because the difference in taxes on auto propane vs. gasoline in Ontario is 10 cents a litre (propane sold for your BBQ/heating your house is even cheaper, as 5 cents a litre of taxes are removed).
I've checked propane prices in the US, and I see that it's around $3.30 a gallon. What gives? Gas taxes are far higher in Canada than they are in the US, so it can't be that. It can't be trucking distance, because cities bordering the US are only 70 cents a litre. I'm wondering, because I'll be running the car on gas while I'm in the US, since the propane is carbureted and the gas is fuel injected, plus gas gives you about 15% more energy per litre, so it would cost a lot more to run on propane there.
Is the US subsidizing gasoline or something?
(I've noticed that in the US a lot of people get Natural Gas [CNG] and Propane [LPG] confused, so I'm just noting here that no, you CANNOT run an LPG car on CNG. It's like putting diesel vs. gasoline).
So no, no thanks, no ethanol in my gas if I can help it. Ethanol is corrosive to car's fuel systems. Most manufacturers told congress that many cars on the road today will start breaking down even with E15. The cars made for E85 will be ok.
I know this is conspiracy-theory territory, but I'm fairly convinced the car companies/oil companies created E85 and meant for it to fail miserably so that they could say "Hey look, we TRIED to make Alternative Energy cars but nobody wanted them!"
My "proof" of this is two-fold. First, there are hardly any... in fact I don't know that there was ONE 'regular' flex-fuel vehicle. I mean family sedan, compact, you know... CHEAP car for the Masses. The smallest cars I found were like Crown Victoria - BIG sedans that are usually made for fleets. I don't need or WANT a car that big. I eventually got a Honda Civic, I was looking for that form-factor car.
Second, and this is the big one. I was willing to consider SUVs so I looked around and there was a Jeep that was flex-fuel. I forget which one. But it was NOT their smallest SUV by far.
So I go to a Jeep dealer and am immediately attacked by a sales shark. I say "I'm interested in the Jeep Monstrosity" and he starts drooling because I just asked about a $40K car and says "Yeah, we have one right here." And then I go "I understand there's a flex-fuel option".
It is important to understand that the flex-fuel version of the Jeep Monstrosity costs a lot MORE than the non-flex-fuel. We're talking $47K instead of $40K.
This should make a sales-shark happy. VERY happy.
Instead, he ACTIVELY tries to talk me into the CHEAPER, non-flex-fuel model, by telling me all the things that are WRONG with E85. "Oh you know it costs more in the long run. It'll ruin the engine. E85 gets lower mileage. It's a lot more expensive."
Seriously. A cat sales-shark tried very hard to get me NOT TO BUY a MORE EXPENSIVE CAR because it could take E85. If that's not proof that SOMEthing is wrong, nothing is.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Now they just need to remove the other oil subsidies and exploration payoffs. Tax the gas and oil for military security too.
E85 could still live on if Brazil can produce it, or if Mexico can switch to sugarcane and switchgrass production.
They just need more rental cars and hybrids that can take it.
Chuck Grassley is from Iowa. And is very powerful. As are Monsanto et al. There's the impetus of your E85 right there.
And that is when governments jump through all kinds of hoops to give a special interest group subsidies while trying to work within a 'market'.
Look, food is essential to life. If the governments want to provide some kind of subsidy to farmers, just be up front with it and do it. People somehow want the government to provide free education and free healthcare... a little bit to help out farmers doesn't seem out of whack to me.
It's better than artificially driving up the cost of food.
In Canada, it seems every few years the government actually pays farmers to cull their herds of pork. The meat can't be given to people believe it or not because that is considered a 'subsidy'.
Just let that sink in for a second.
If they're going to support farmers anyways, why not just admit you're subsidizing them, and then people can have cheaper food. Wouldn't that be more productive?
We can argue about the free market and other systems all we like, but at the end of the day we don't live in one. And it seems we jump through hoops to pretend some markets should operate completely within a market, while others linger with significant or even complete government protection.
>My car is relatively newer and I *hate* when gas stations are forced to use E10 (10% ethanol, ie. Winter fuel). My mpg drops by 10% - 15%.
That's bullshit. You're only adding 10% of a *FUEL*. If you added 10% water, and it still ran, you'd expect an approx. 10% loss in efficiency. You could mix in kitchen oil (which will burn) and if you could get it past the injectors, you wouldn't expect a loss anywhere near that.
Even if E-10 were 25% less efficient than gas (it's not), at 10% blended in you'd see an approximate 2.5% loss.
Damn, people are stooopid. It's math and science, people, not whatever prejudice you've majnaged to convince yourself of. Just measure the amount you drive and the gallons of fuel consumed, and divide-- and be suspicious of extraneous factors, such as warming up or using more gas due to bad weather in winter.. It's *so* simple.
It's just pinin' for the Fords...
/ sorry. I'll go stand in the corner now.
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
There are plenty of places in Texas where you can get "Heritage Dr Pepper" which is made with cane sugar. The Dr Pepper plant in Temple/Belton area creates the sugar Dr P. In fact, most "Dublin Dr Pepper" of the last few years was rebadged Temple sugar Dr P.
the next push to keep ethanol in gasoline is coming from the natural gas folks (Celanese, T. Boone Pickens etc) who can get ethanol from all of the ethane (5-15% of what comes out) and propane from the shale fields
big start up cost (billion per plant) but low marginal cost ($1.50/gallon or less)
Is there something wrong with you, or do you just like puff-puff-puffing away in your wheezy gutless petrol-engined vehicles?
Get a diesel.
You're missing all of what actually happens inside the cylinder during a combustion cycle.
If ethanol burned at exactly the same rate as the other components of gasoline with just a lower amount of energy released then you might be correct. Besides ethanol having lower energy content when burned it also BURNS SLOWER due to the higher octane rating, octane being the measure of the rate of controlled burn and detonation resistance during a combustion cycle. This slower burning lowers the peak cylinder pressure and moves it to a later time in the the power cycle so you can't even extract the same ratio of mechanical energy from the ethanol burn. Normally the ECU would advance the ignition timing with knock detection to extract more power from the fuel, but it can't as the gasoline portion of the mixture will have pre-ignition issues. All in, E10 is a bad idea, you probably would be better off running 10% water, then you would have excellent pre-ignition control from the heat absorption of the water, just like the guys doing water injection for forced induction.
Question: Of the top 10 global manufacturers of cars in the world, how many have or have announced an electric car?
If you answered "All of them" then you'd be correct.
Of the top 20 global manufacturers of cars in the world, how many have or have announced an electric car or at least hybrid with an electric drive of some sort?
Answer: All of them.
Now the question is, why? Do they sell well... no. Every major consumer electric car built yet has been a failure sales wise.
Are they reviewed well? Again, no. Versus a normal car every electric car so far has been cumbersome, heavy, short ranged, and a pain to use in one way or another versus a normal everyday gasoline powered auto.
So why is just about every car manufacturer on the planet spending millions and millions of dollars researching electric cars, and even going so far as to put out products they know are probably going to fail in terms of sales?
The cost equivalent of one gallon of gasoline using electricity is a little over a dollar in the U.S. In other words, for the same amount of power electricity costs only about a third as much as a gallon of gas.
Now, electric cars still have problems, as stated. Two of the big ones are low power storage, and thus range; and low power output, and thus longer charging times and lower horsepower. However, battery technology is one of the hottest R&D topics in the world right now. Laboratory tests have shown batteries, batteries it may be possible to scale up to high volume manufacturing, with up to ten plus times the power storage and much higher power input/output potential than current technology offers.
In other words, quite soon, probably within the decade electric cars will be able to offer the same or better range and equivelant horsepower to today's automobiles, and with a price of fuel that is a third or less of unstable, polluting, and seemingly ever more expensive gasoline. Goodbye gasoline, you've been fun! But not that fun.
Just like the current war on HFCS (HighFructoseCornSyrup) which is now in practically everything you buy off a store shelf, the farming industry was bought and sold down the river (and subsidized) to produce non-edible corn for use in E85. Plenty of folks saw straight through this from the get go (because they had a modicum of intelligence, and did some research) and came to the same conclusions 10 years ago, far ahead of E85 being pushed down
the collective public throat. Now, it's a failed technology that should have never gotten any attention. As a country, we should have been working in producing better diesel engines and fuels, or working on regular engines to tweak out more gas mileage and efficiency. It was hyped by lobbyists of a very powerful industry that no longer produces food for human consumption, even though we have more kids going hungry each day than at any other time in our history. Our attention is spread too thin amongst new gadgets, new diets, new foods that will do wonders - all to see those promises come crashing down. Next up to bat - the soda pop industry and the findings that diet soda causes diabetes and does nothing to really keep you on a diet *the biggest sham in the world*
While most of the commenters think this is a good thing, I will be shedding a tear if E85 goes away.
Ethanol is the most promising alternative fuel judging by the ease that it can make it to the market and to potential to be as green as possible.
Ethanol as a fuel should lower food prices. This claim is based on the fact that we do not eat the corn that we grow, most of it is fed to animals. A bi-product of making ethanol is high quality animal feed, since ethanol production only uses the starch and adds protein in the form of dead yeast. By making animal feed based ethanol we get to use the crop twice, talk about sustainable. If we turned all of the animal feed corn grown every year into ethanol, we could offset our gasoline consumption by 10%. Using the crop twice means that farmers can sell corn for more money, ethanol producers can offset costs by selling the biproduct and beef farmers (the biggest corn consumer) can spend less on feed because it is a waste product, ie cheap fuel and food.
If we harvested corn stover and ran the tractors on stover powered gasifiers (this technology already exists), we could eliminate the harvesting fuel cost (reducing the carbon foot print of the fuel) and the biochar from the gasifiers can be added to the soil to reduce the fertilizer usage and act as a carbon sink (think carbon negative fuel).
Moving beyond corn, if the corn industry could start to think of itself as an animal feed/fuel industry, we could move to more effective crops. Enter sunchokes, which can make the same amount of feed per acre and 5 times the amount of ethanol. So using the current crop size, we could make 50% of our gasoline needs.
As far as lower gas mileage, in the 6 years I have been tinkering, researching and using ethanol as a fuel, I am 100% certain that the bulk of the mileage decrease attributed to ethanol is poor design, possibly intentional poor design. Every study I have ever seen has brake specific fuel consumption for ethanol as a fuel in a low compression otto cycle engine no more then 5% less than gasoline. However, these studies tend to optimize timing and air/fuel ratios, which doesn't happen in practice when you put E5 or E10 in your 1998 honda civic, and I'm sure it doesn't happen in a FFV. But this is all moot, because if we had an auto industry that was motivated to make high mileage vehicles, they would be producing E85 only cars, with fuel vaporizers, high compression and high timing advance to get the most bang for your fuel buck and be making E85 cars that get 50 mpg and put out 200 hp. Which would do wonders for the fleet average because a 50mpg ethanol car is the equivalent to a 70mpg gasoline car. That being said, if our national fleet was on average 50mpg E85 cars, the 50% gasoline offset by making animal feed sunchoke ethanol, would be 100%. So, no we do not need to cover the country in corn to get rid of gasoline as a transportation fuel, we just need to be smarter about how we use our resources.
So I for one with be wearing black the day that E85 dies, though I will continue to work to make E98 a reality.
E85 always has limited distribution in the United States. See the follolwing map http://www.greentechmedia.com/images/wysiwyg/research-blogs/blend-wall-visual.jpg. Flex Fuel vehicles sales needed E85 pumps and E85 pumps needed flex fuel vehicles. Most of these pumps are in the rural US.
The US is currently close to the E10 blend wall (we have the capacity make all the ethanol to include in all our gasoline that is 10%) this limits the construction of new ethanol plants. It also limits the construction of new non-corn ethanol plants because the current plant as the existing plants control marginal capacity with existing established plants.
Additionally we are exporting ethanol to Brazil and importing ethanol from Brazil to meet advanced blender credits. http://cornandsoybeandigest.com/energy/us-importing-exporting-ethanol-and-brazil
This is all the result of short sighted incentives. The entire US ethanol market is a mess, however sugar cane shortages in Brazil will keep American corn farmers happy for at least a year. And ethanol plants are now planning to sell off the oil portion of the distillers grains in an attempt to put more to their bottom lines. http://sdcornblog.org/archives/tag/corn-oil
E85 was and still is a bad idea not because of the use of ethanol as a fuel but because the blend is not selectable at the pump. Ethanol is a great fuel but nothing but pure race engines are designed to use it to it's potential.
Got Code?
Ethanol is not a net loss of energy --- producing it from corn is. What you need is biofuel based synthesis from switchgrass and other useless biomass, not wasting valuable farmland/corn for corn-based ethanol.
Isn't this a moot point? The subsidy is going away, but NOT the requirement! The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, specifies how many billions of gallons of "renewable" fuels have to be used in the US every year (as compared to petroleum-based products). This has the net effect of forcing us all to buy ethanol, regardless of its actual benefits/detriments, as the fuel manufacturer's are required to blend it in to meet federal requirements. Beginning this year i believe, the requirements stipulate more gallons of ethanol than is even produced per year, resulting in massive fines they will be paying, driving up the cost of our fuel even higher for no benefit (other than government spending). Score one for the bureaucrats.
'Cause I use ethanol everyday -- and have my reasons.
But what for? My AC post won't be seen (ironic, huh?) and some trolls do register to ply their trade.
Kinda /. won in making desist from posting -- and I won because I do want to remain Anonymous -- even if I know I'm trackable.
(Not to mention the obnoxious port scans... what is this for? Do they fear a joke?)
My family goes to the drag strip every weekend and we recently switched our '68 Firebird 455 from using racing fuel to E85. It basically runs the same, maybe a bit faster and it also runs colder. However as compared to racing fuel it eats up E85 about twice as fast so the price difference equals out. Pretty easy to convert it too. I would suggest anyone who has a amateur drag car to try it out - especially if your cooling isn't up to the task like ours are.
Sheesh, I thought this was about ,a href="http://www.enlightenment.org/">Enlightment!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Even if E-10 were 25% less efficient than gas (it's not), at 10% blended in you'd see an approximate 2.5% loss.
Damn, people are stooopid. It's math and science, people, not whatever prejudice you've majnaged to convince yourself of. Just measure the amount you drive and the gallons of fuel consumed, and divide-- and be suspicious of extraneous factors, such as warming up or using more gas due to bad weather in winter.. It's *so* simple.
Indeed it is science. One extra variable to consider though is octane rating.
As I understand it, ethanol is commonly used as an additive in gasoline to raise the octane rating but not typically up to 10%. When e10 is mandated, in order to maintain the same octane rating in the overall blend a producer may use a lower grade of gasoline. So it is possible that 90% of a liter of pure gasoline would have more net energy than a whole liter of e10 at the same octane. In the parent's vehicle, this might matter.
Posting AC, as I have embarrassingly little time to research this.
It's "Pepsi Throwback" or something-rather, and unlike coke it's not high mark-up. Last time I bought a bottle of it, it was the same price as the normal stuff. There's also a "Pepsi Natural" (I think), which is a different formula and IIRC is a limited-time thing.
Ethanol production does not need to come from corn. For every one part of energy we put into it's production using corn we generally get less than two out according to National Geographic. Sometimes there is a net loss.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/10/biofuels/biofuels-interactive
On the other hand, ethanol made from sugar cane yields roughly 8 parts energy for 1 part used. (8:1) Brazil is going crazy for ethanol and it is saving them lots of money while reducing dependence on fossil fuels. On the other hand, rain forests are being cleared to grow sugar cane.
Whew. Hopefully the cost of white lightning will come back to earth, and be more available across the street. Imagine all these morons burning good 'shine. ;-)
I don't think E85 was from oil companies, they could get methanol from gas overseas cheaper. Stick to Monsanto, Cargill, ADM, and BP (for the ingrained recklessness and criminality), you'll do fine.
Weight or energy says it all. Propane is about 4.25 lbs/gallon and gasoline is about 6.1 lb/gallon. Propane is more hydrogen rich, so 5-10% more energy per lb. Propane in the US tends to be overpriced local monopolies. Fuels need to be priced by the lb, kg or GJ (gigajoule~MMBTU).
Anyone who uses the word "hemp" is instantly branded a hippy.
We can't know for SURE, but my 2000 model year, carbureted motorcycle starting having problems not long after E90 became mandatory in this area. And a year later, after spending LOTS of money, in three different shops, nobody could seem to fix it. My conclusion is the alcohol ruined the carburetor. A year later, I got rid of it.
So since it does little to nothing for the environment, costs as much or more, raises food prices, attracts water into gas, and sometimes RUINS older engines, can we finally get rid of it???
See Subject.
I am guessing that it was Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) that benefited from E85 most. They have some pretty beefy lobby power and the every day average joe certainly did not benefit from it. Not only is E85 not as efficient but it is rough on engines. Let the subsidies expire and pursue hydrogen as the alternative fuel.
Sounds good to me. Maybe the government will stop subsidizing it and people will go back to growing corn for eating.
Perhaps in the future, instead of coming out the gate with statements like "that's bullshit," you'll put a bit more thought into your position. It's okay to say things like "I'm not sure that sounds right" and ask questions. Instead, you've come out swinging with a bunch of assertions that you didn't bother to back up, and you finished with an elitist attitude that appears rather unfounded.
Unfortunately, you're wrong, at least as far as I've seen firsthand with respect to controlled tests using a variety of vehicles with a series of different fuel blends. By controlled, I mean both track testing and simulated "real world" tests covering hundreds of miles in identical vehicles, each running a different blend under the same environmental conditions. The GP's assertions are well within the parameters of results I've seen.
Please go have a beer.
n-octane has an octane rating of about -10. However, 2, 2, 4 - trimethyl pentane (an isomer of n-Octane, sometimes called isooctane) has an octane rating of 100. Generally, the more branches and methyl groups a molecule has, they higher the octane rating. Small molecules of fuel also tend ot have higher octane ratings. Molecules with alcohol groups on them don't usually have octane ratings much different from a similar non-alcohol bearing group, but they tend to be liquids are useful temperatures and pressures. Both Ethane and Ethanol has an octane rating of about 100 (depends on the method used to measure it).
None of this has anything to do with they amount of energy you get out of a gallon or a kilogram of such a fuel. Diesle fuel has a higher energy content that gasoline per gallon (and per kilogram) and has a much lower octane rating (15-25).
True, you can get the old recipe, but unless it's in one of those time-limited promotions, you can only get it in certain size bottles and only at a hefty premium.
My hope is that if the wholesale price of sucrose and corn syrup are about equal, or better yet if sucrose has a price advantage, the big-name soft drink vendors will just go back to the old formulas and drop the "novelty premium" many currently charge.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
ArcherDanielsMidland, and Senators from Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, Dakotas and Minnesota
Back oh so many years ago, it was a pretty broad group of special interests that pushed ethanol for mixing with fuels (either E85 or to meet oxygenation or octane ratings without MTBE). We even heard how "green" it was.
Now, you ask who supported it and you hear crickets chirping.
Magically no one ever supported it and everyone thought it was a terrible idea from the beginning. ;)
Oh, but it'll still be around. The blends are now mandated by law. E85 was a minor demand compared to the N% ethanol required in many of the environmentally mandated blends.
The real hoot is the requirement for cellulosic ethanol this year when there simply isn't enough of it to meet the requirements due to it not being so straightforward to scale up.
But, regardless that it doesn't exist, we're on track to start collecting fines for it not being in the blends.
You can't make this stuff up. No one would believe it in anything more serious than Catch 22.
That is like grinding up phone books for ink given how poor corn is for ethanol production compared to the other options. Try actually using something GOOD for ethanol production like switchgrass which gives a much higher yield per harvest and more harvests season and grows in a more varied climate.
Then we can make an actual comparison, but using one of the worst possible manufacturing processes to make something and doing comparisons isn't a proper comparison.
I don't feel like I had a choice about E85 - all 3 pump grades (5 at some stations) were E85, all stations in my county were E85, if I wanted to get away from E85, I think I might have been able to pay $6/gallon for 100 octane Sunoco Race Fuel or possibly bootleg some Aviation gas, but otherwise, there was no choice involved.
About bio-fuels, a nice and accessible study, while being a masterful show of guestimate kung-fu
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/the-biofuel-grind/http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/01/16/1924219/is-e85-dead-now#
I like eating corn. Enough is wasted as gas and cattle feed.
I never got why E85 was used as gas either. A car that gets 30mpg on gas may only get 22mpg on E85, that more than offsets the 50 cents less per gallon.
How Petroleum Benefits at the Taxpayer's Expense
Big Oil vs. You
Democratic bill to end oil subsidies is defeated in the Senate
Actually, you can't just run ethonol in a regular car engine, even with the correct fuel lines. The stoichiometric ratio of Ethanol is so wildly different than that of gasoline (9 vs 14 or so, IIRC,) that if you attempt to run it in an engine lacking the appropriate fuel maps, you are almost certainly going to end up with a dangerously lean condition. Extreme over-heating, detonation, and component failure are the likley result.
Flex Fuel vehciles must also have the appropriate sensors and fuel maps to handle ethonol.
Ethanol is just the latest in a long line of failed "policies".
In my lifetime, the US, the most powerful & advanced military in the world, has never won a war! Over 20 years I've watched the US government destroy the space program, destroy the housing market, and destroy the public education system. Even the most solar friendly administration in history managed to destroy the US solar market in less than three years. Simply amazing. Granted, European leaders are working just as hard to screw up everything they touch as well, lol.
I think almost every kid in America would get behind it, if you made it from SUGAR BEETS LOL. But, I'm sure those are used for sweeteners, not fuel. There would not be an "energy problem", if regulators, enviro nuts would shut the h*ll up and let companies pump it out of the ground without all of the red tape.
The E85 manufacturers and the agriculture companies that grow corn have a lot riding on this, and are quite good at influencing Congress. There's a very good chance that they will successfully lobby to extend this subsidy.
The direct subsidy is ending, but the requirement for 10% ethanol in gasoline *is not*. So, they'll make slightly less direct money, but the market prices will just be driven up further on the corn and feedstocks, because of the market distortion by the fuel requirement.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
yeah, how could anybody expect to see nonlinear behavior from a complex system like a highly-tuned, modern internal combustion engine.
idiots
... You can more easily mod the stock FI mapping without having to replace with higher-flow injectors due to their already being enlarged to handle the less-energy-dense ethanol. So, if you have a flexfuel vehicle that you want to, say, drop forced compression into, you may not need to replace the stock injectors or fuel pumps to increase fuel delivery. I would think that flexfuel Corvettes would be an awfully good platform for such mods, with LS blocks that already have an ecosystem of mods.
Also, as ethanol is more corrosive to gaskets and lines than gasoline, those parts are more robust and longer-lasting than those in traditional fuel lines and couplings.
Additionally, there are ways of producing ethanol that don't involve burning food, and perhaps methanol would also be usable in such a vehicle. Methanol can be generated by atmospheric CO2, water, and a power/heat source such as solar or thorium LFTR. Me, I'd rather see a flexfuel SOFC or on-vehicle reformulator plus fuel cell that would enable the use of liquid hydrocarbons to be more efficiently converted into power to drive an electrified powertrain. HC fuels are very good at carrying lots of H2 at STP reasonably safely, there's an infrastructure already in place to support it, and if we can get tank-to-wheel efficiency to the ~50-60% range instead of ~20-30% (or lower) then it'd be a big win.
This is complete and utter bullshit and tells me that the "Professor" who wrote that study is an ignorant fool. Ethanol is NOT poisonous. METHANOL is poisonous. If the professor doesn't even know the difference between ethanol and methanol, it means thee are doubtless other massive faults in his report.
I agree with most people here that creating E85 from e.g. corn or palm trees is nonsensial and is just a result of lobbying be certain people. However, another way to create E85 is by processing or recycling cooking fat and by processing biowaste. The technology is already there and that would make a lot more sense than corn fuel. "For some reason" this is still not done to a great extent. I know that at least here in Finland St1 (a local energy company) is pushing forward this technology of creating bioethanol. See http://www.st1.eu/index.php?id=2883 and no, I don't work there. ;-)
Making fuel out of food is always stupid. It didn't make any sense 20 years ago and it still doesn't today.
End the biofuel subsidies for everything except cellulosic ethanol. Maybe someday we can feed waste chips into a digester and get auto fuel out. But making fuel out of food is a sin.
--
BMO
It's not *that* simple. You have to remember the engine efficiency. They are never 100% efficient and burning something they were not optimized for might cause a significant loss of efficiency. If I remember correctly, modern cars run at 30% efficiency at best. So, a drop of a few percent would have a high impact on the mileage. So, to drastic drop in mileage is possible but needs a more thorough investigation.
On the right, people like to provide corporate welfare through "defense technology", on the left, they try to provide corporate welfare through "environmental technology". The current round of this insanity is anti-terrorism and the buildup for Iran (right) and global warming (left).
Not to mention the moonshine and bourbon shortage this E85 fiasco will cause!
If we are going to be serious about ethanol fuels, we need to forget corn as the primary biomass source.
The biomass source, processing, and fuel delivery have to be cheaper than petroleum before it will be a realistic alternative.
Maybe offtopic, but I would rather see more focus on doing away with internal combustion for power.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
the key component: water. IIRC, most US corn production is not dry land, but irregated, so add in the energy required to pump water we really can't afford (deeper and deeper wells, chasing rapidly dropping water tables).
Is E85 dead now? It was stillborn. Everyone with an ounce of common sense said it was a bad idea from the start. But a bunch of enviro-nut jobs from the urban core said it was a way to save mother earth.
10+ billion in subsidies to ethanol. Gone.
Higher Food Prices.
I'd be curious to search /. for all those pro-E85'ers in the past and see where those hypocrites are now...
"Wait we just need to switch to a different crop!!!", oh God here we go again...
Most farmers don't like ethanol subsidies. Ethanol subsidies drove up the price of corn, which in turn drove up the price of land to record highs per acre, which in turn drives up the cost to farmers growing anything except corn. And if all you can grow is corn, that really screws up your crop rotation, increasing every other cost.
If you're a farmer not growing corn, you hate ethanol subsidies. At least, that's what I've heard here in the midwest.
I8-D
I was born in Brazil and ethanol there from sugar cane was always 50% cheaper than the cheapest gasoline (you know that ethanol for cars exists there for tens of years right?). Now that almost all cars produced in Brazil can run on gasoline OR ethanol (just put whatever you want there), people started to use ethanol more and the ethanol price has risen up to the gasoline price. Therefore, it it is not related to production costs at all, it is only market demand that is controlling the price.
Technically it would depend on his current gas mileage with E10 and what he got with his normal fuel. If he got 10 mpg because he drives a big suburban and it dropped to 9 mpg isn't that a 10% decrease in gas mileage?
On the other hand you are right about the weather conditions and warm up times skewing the numbers a bit that most people don't even think about. Let alone just engaging your vehicle in 4x4 drops your gas mileage a few MPGs just being on in normal conditions.
I love those kinds of claims. I did the math and the actual number is in the 3-4% mpg loss range, and for some anecdotal evidence I even filled up my car with some non oxy fuel once and saw similar numbers. Ethanol has about 66% of the energy of gasoline by volume so by displacing 10% of the gasoline with ethanol you would expect to lose 3-4% (it won't be exact because of different burn characteristics) in mileage if your vehicle was running correctly to begin with. For a typical vehicle this is .5 to 1 mpg difference. At those levels you can have a greater impact by how you drive the vehicle or by what weight oil you are running.
Time to offend someone
While saying "stoichiometric ratio" might make you sound cool, it has nothing to do with energy density and only has to do with optimal mixing rate between fuel and oxygen.
Higher price per gallon also has nothing to do with price per mile, which is really the important part.
This headline made my head hurt with stupid.
And ethanol just f*cks the cars. And these days its price is high.
Alcohol is for drinking, not for motors.
Cold air is denser, and causes the engine to run richer, i.e., inject more fuel into the engine. This gives you a bit more power, but at the expense of fuel efficiency.
This is complete bullshit written by someone who has no idea how engine fuel systems work. Any fuel-injected vehicle sold in the last 20+ years uses a mass airflow sensor which provides the correct amount of fuel, no matter the ambient temperature or pressure. There are various styles, but the most common is a hot-wire based sensor. Porsche and others used a vane/flap-based sensor in the 80s before switching to hot-wire sensors. Mechanical fuel injection systems used a sensor plate linked to a metering valve.
Further, EFI is closed-loop because of the O2 sensors - O2 sensors have been in cars since the 70's. In vehicles made since around the mid 90s there are two; one before the catalytic converter, and one after. The sensor detects the amount of unburned oxygen in the exhaust, and thus the fuel mixture ratio. The engine computer modifies the mixture based on the sensor's output; computers made starting the very early 90's kept track of those measurements to adapt to air leaks and whatnot over time.
Please help metamoderate.
New research suggests ethanol produces more energy than it takes to produce due to newer crop production methods and methods for converting corn into ethanol. See: http://deltafarmpress.com/university-study-shows-ethanol-fuel-efficient
I know the link is from a farm-based website but it was done by a researcher I trust.
Production of ethanol from other sources may be even more efficient.
The whole problem with using ethanol from corn is that it's just not sugary enough - distilled alcohol = sugar plus water plus yeast basically. So you just need more sugar for the energy you expend in the farming.
See Brazil - they use a ton of ethanol fuel, which they produce by farming sugar cane.
We could just use any crop that isn't necessary for humans to survive (food staples like corn etc). How many obese Americans could do with less sugar in their diet?
The energy cost-to-production ratio for corn ethanol is barely above 1, and the same ratio is closer to 9 for sugar cane ethanol. So almost 9 times more energy is produced than invested for your ethanol fuel just by changing the crop from corn to sugar cane.
What about other sugary crops that people don't necessarily have to eat to survive, like sweet potatoes, beets, etc?
That's bullshit. You're only adding 10% of a *FUEL*. If you added 10% water, and it still ran, you'd expect an approx. 10% loss in efficiency. You could mix in kitchen oil (which will burn) and if you could get it past the injectors, you wouldn't expect a loss anywhere near that.
NO, you're the one full of bullshit. You're operating on the incorrect assumption that the only (or worst) effect a contaminant will have is to not burn. Stoichiometric ratio changes, burn speed (flame front speed) changes, etc.
Ethanol has a completely different stochiometric ratio from gasoline; it's more like 9.7:1 for E85, versus 14:1 for gasoline. That 10% ethanol requires twice as much oxygen to burn than the gasoline it replaced.
Ignition timing is based off a lot of factors to provide ideal burn, because it's a BURN, not an explosion (that's called detonation, and it cracks/blows bits of your engine when it happens.) A flame front travels from the spark plug outwards in a designed way, and it takes time to do that - it's not an insignificant amount of time relative to motion of the engine, especially at higher RPMs. Depending on the mixture, temperature of the gas/fuel mix, engine speed, and more - the engine computer decides when to fire the spark so that the burn is appropriately timed. When the burn is timed can dramatically affect torque generated and the kinds of emissions produced, because the pressure in the combustion chamber is always changing. A fuel mixture burned at one pressure burns differently from another - different temperatures, and thus different kinds of emissions output.
There's more. Rich mixtures burn slower and cooler; lean mixtures burn faster and hotter. Slower burns are less efficient, faster burns moreso. However, lean mixtures tend to blow/melt things, so everyone tries to avoid lean running if at all possible. Flame front speed will be dramatically affected by contaminants and additives.
If you put 10% cooking oil in your car's tank and managed to get them into a homogenous mix, you'd be lucky if the car started at all. If it did, the fouling of the spark plugs, valves, and catalytic converter would take minutes, if that.
Water? Well, aside from the fact that water and gasoline literally don't mix: the water would cause almost instantaneous rusting of the fuel pump, fuel pressure regulator, and fuel injector pintles.
Please help metamoderate.
The entire idea behind Ethonol was obviously flawed from the get-go. So much so that I honestly believe someone should go to jail for this. How many millions of dollars were lost? How many extra people starved to death worldwide because of increasing food prices?
Uh, ok, now you're spewing very complex BS. I'll give a short response.
Of course cooking oil can burn in an engine, and does all the time. No one said anything about tank. Google it ;0
While stochiometric ratios etc DO matter, I don't think they matter in practice as much as you think. Replace "water" with "mixing filler with no fuel value" if you'd like, if that makes you happy. My point is to establish the theoretical MAXIMUM loss, while having already conceded that there may be some loss based on a variety of factors such as those you mention.
I find it absurd that anyone would advocate for ethanol as a fuel source. Its lifecycle carbon footprint is enormous. If the federal government had invested the R&D dollars they put into corn, into bio-diesel we could be sitting in a much better place.
There are several universities that are developing photobioreactors to incubate algae. The algae strands are genetically engineered to grow in a variety of temperatures, so if you are growing algae in a cold environment a different strand is utilized than if you are growing in a hot environment. The algae only needs sunlight, water and good old CO2. The process can be accelerated by pumping exhaust gases from CO2 intensive producers into the incubation environment.
The fatty lipids are mechanically separated out of the algae using a centrifuge and used to produce bio-diesel. A byproduct if the bio-diesel production process also happens to be ethanol. The "mash" that is left over after spinning the algae in the centrifuge is a potent fertilizer. The resulting bio-diesel and ethanol is net carbon neutral as all the co2 which is released when it was burned was removed from the atmosphere to grow the algae.
Presto, entirely green petroleum fuels. It is SOO simple. How can anyone be so uninformed as to believe that ethanol is viable. Yes, I will miss running E85 in my high output turbo vehicles, but its not worth the impact to the planet.
I don't get the point of your little lesson. I was assuming we all were aware of how modern engines dynamically adjusted the rate of fuel flow.
The sensor detects the amount of unburned oxygen in the exhaust, and thus the fuel mixture ratio. The engine computer modifies the mixture based on the sensor's output;
Exactly. This illustrates my point. Denser air has more oxygen, which causes the engine to inject more fuel into the mix.
Modern engines account for this and attempt to keep the intake air temperature within a certain range, but when the outside air temperature swings between temperatures of 100 degrees in the summer and 20 degrees in the winter, as it does here, the intake air temperature ends up varying wildly.
Between the summer and winter extremes, the intake air temperature (as reported by my cars computer) varies by at least 60 degrees (F).
I'm not sure how much of an effect this has on overall fuel economy, but it is a factor.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
First of all, I don't don't like e85 or whatever they sell here. But the reality is that in the state of Maryland, as far as I have found, you cannot find anything except gasoline laced with 10% ethanol.
You are right that it is hygroscopic, but all that means is much like if you add water to gas, you lower the octane rating. 3 year old gas these days (with ethanol) is virtually unburnable.
Does it "ruin" small engines? No, not really. If that was true, no small engine would last longer than a year or two, and I promise you I have small engines running (with some ring wear) after 20 years, burning nothing but e85.
If you pour in old gas these days, the tractor/mower/blower will belch black smoke, it will ratttle, and you *think* its ruined, but only because its running so badly. Drain the tank and carb, fill it with fresh gas and you're good.
Now, if you leave old gas in the carb, it will basically block the passages in the needle valve. But this happened before the invention of e85, so this is nothing new. Don't leave gas in the carb for years and the problem is solved.
Finally, Sta-Bil, a complete waste of money and effort. First of all, Despite the name, it doesn't stabilize anyting. Adding it to your gas won't make it last longer, won't change the chemical properties of gas.
The other bad advice people give is "drain the tank and carb". No. Wrong. Bad advice. Keep gas in the carb and in the off season run it for 10-15 minutes on the weekend. It will cycle the gas through it.
Find one independent test (not a recommendation, an actual test) that says "Sta-Bil is better at 'X' and 'Y' and helps with 'Z"". You won't find such a report because it doesn't exist.
Small engines are tough. They have to be or people would be throwing out their lawnmowers each year.
Maybe it's just the area I live in (central Florida), but I've NEVER seen a gas station selling E85. Every gas station here sells the "up to 10% ethanol" stuff. Is it really so readily available elsewhere?
This boondoggle is entirely due to the powerful farm lobby and that mostly benefits large industrial farm companies. We need to end the Agricultural Department as Ron Paul suggests.Why should farming be any different than other industries know that all farmers have internet tech, futures trading, and other modern things?
You're missing an important point. Denser air has more oxygen, so less air is allowed into the cylinder. This increases pumping losses at part throttle, although the effect is likely small. The main point was that the engine does not run richer as you originally stated since the O2 sensor balances the fuel input to the air input.
Denser air has more oxygen, so less air is allowed into the cylinder.
My apologies if I was wrong on that point. I guess "rich" was the wrong term, as it implies that there is an imbalance in the fuel/air ratio. What I meant is that higher oxygen content in the air require more fuel to bring the FA ratio into spec.
I assumed that the volume of air taken into the engine remained constant, relative to the temperature, and that the engine adjusted the fuel rate to maintain the proper ratio, and reading up on MAS I see that wire based ones can detect air density differences.
Anyhow, the losses we all see in cold weather are probably more do to higher friction, rolling resistance and longer time to warm up.
Interesting discussion I found:
http://www.automotiveforums.com/t922693-do_cold_air_intakes_really_work_.html
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Ok, I see what you mean about hot wire based MAS. Even my old '94 Ranger has one. I remember it detonating at high load when it got dirty. Now after reading up on how the closed loop systems with hot wire based MAS work, I know exactly why it was detonating.
I was under the impression that the volume of air coming in remained constant.
You didn't have to be an asshole about it.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.