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Has the Ethanol Threat Manifested In the US?
Five years ago today, we mentioned here what was characterized as "The Great Ethanol Scam." According to the central story in that post, the ethanol in gasoline was (or would be) "destroying engines in large numbers," and the only real winners with a rise in the use of ethanol as a gasoline supplement would be auto mechanics. An increasing number of cars are officially cleared for use with E15 (15 percent ethanol), and a growing number of E85 vehicles are in the wild now, too, though apparently many of their owners don't realize that their cars can burn a mixture that's mostly ethanol. When I can, I fill my car with no-ethanol gas, but that's not very easy to find (farmer's co-ops are one handy source), so most of my driving over the past decade has been with E10 fuel. I seem to get better mileage with all-gas, but the circumstances haven't been controlled enough to make a good comparison. What has your experience been? Have you experienced ethanol-related car problems, or were the predictions overblown?
My God, someone's after the BOOZE?!
Well, scam or not, we can't have that sort of behaviour. It was bad enough when we ran out of vermouth, without this sort of nonsense....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
2012 honda insight runs the e10 fine but gets better mileage using 0% ethanol gas from the local marina, ive had to rebuild the fuel system on my 65 datsun van because of the ethanol eating the hoses.
For example: the dual fuel engines that can burn gasoline or methane, where because of the design compromises for the two fuel convenience, neither fuel operates at optimal function.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I firmly believe that E10 is a total scam. Anecdotally, doing pure highway driving, I get 8-10% less fuel economy with E10 than E0 (pure gasoline), so what's the point? This has been consistently the case with the last 3 cars I've owned (V8 RWD, turbo I4 AWD, regular I4 FWD). Losing 10% fuel economy for the privilege (more accurately, the forced subsidy of corn growers in many states) of driving E10 makes no sense to me. Just water down my gasoline by 10%--same effect but water is cheaper than ethanol...
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
Ethanol is a lose/lose/lose situation all the way around here in the US:
1: The corn used to make ethanol causes higher fuel prices, either directly or indirectly because feed for livestock is up in price, so ethanol takes food out of people's mouths.
2: E-15 voids car warranties, and ECMs can tell if E-15 is put in and throw a code that can't be cleared by a ScanGauge, but only by a dealer.
3: Gasoline has a very shitty shelf life. I used to be able to store gasoline for a lawn mower for 1-2 years. Now, even with fuel preservative, even six months may be pushing it, and can clog up the carb or cause a bad reaction.
4: As an RV-er, the #1 cause of generator malfunctions is bad gas. This was not an issue 1-2 decades ago, but when looking at a used motorhome, the first thing you have to do is rebuild/replace the carb unless the previous owner either ran the generator every so often, or fogged it, with OnaGard fogging spray.
Then there is the E85 scam. It has significantly less MPG than regular gas... but the cost difference makes it not worth getting. The only advantage it gives is that with a Flex-Fuel engine that can adjust fuel/air ratios, it burns hotter so you get 5-10 more horsepower.
If the US had plants like Brazil did that were by products of growing, I'd champion ethanol, but as it stands right now, people are starving due to E-10, so anyone who has a shred of ethics can't champion this.
Corn ethanol is an EROI disaster. This is big-agra, some of the same people that ram HFCS into everything and spam tons of research trying to exonerate added sugar as the culprit in the obesity epidemic. Subsidize corn. We love it.
"I seem to get better mileage with all-gas." You seem to have forgotten that the energy density of ethanol is lower to the point that aircraft will never under any circumstances use it. 42MJ/kg vs 30MJ/kg. Per liter it's even worse. You're not getting better gas mileage.
The thing is, ethanol has a lower energy density per litre (or gallon, if you are metrically challanged) than does gasoline, just as gasoline has a lower energy density than diesel fuel.
You get better mileage out of diesel than gasoline, and better mileage out of gasoline than ethanol, all things being equal. Laws of thermodynamics aren't to be bypassed. No amount of "clever" can change the basic fact that gasoline holds more energy than ethanol.
However, and this may count for something for you, as it does for me, ethanol releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that was taken out of the atmosphere to grow the crop that led to the ethanol. There is no net increase of CO2, as there is with fossil fuels. Of course, a cynic might point out (and I might be one) that the carbon in the fossil fuel was also in the atmosphere at one time, to the tune of no less than 1500 ppm in the Carboniferous period.
Using ethanol isn't for getting better mileage, it's for reducing carbon footprint, the amount of carbon added to the atmosphere when you go down to the corner store to buy a six-pack of beer. The beer, btw, doesn't add carbon to the atmosphere, because like the ethanol that's in it, that carbon came -out- of the atmosphere when the crops to make it were grown.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
The poor plants, having to fight continuously for every ounce (or milliliter, if you are Imperally challenged) of carbon dioxide that they need in order to sustain their very existence. And you begrudge them the potential bountiful feast of our releasing the pent-up food supply that lies underground, cruelly kept from the innocent plant life for thousands, perhaps millions of years.
You plant-haters are all alike, every one of you.
Brazil is considered one of the world leader in ethanol, the country with the most successful alternative fuel program, one of the cheaper (if not cheapest) ethanol technologies and, by using sugar cane, one of the most energy efficient. All cars here can easily handle up to E40, and most cars can handle any mix of gas and ethanol. Oh, and the flex fuel technology for any kind of mix? Mostly developed here also.
That all being said, I don't use pure ethanol. We are not able to find pure gas here, because of local laws (the government mandates the ethanol level), but I avoid it as much as I can. Even with everything we have in our favor here, it is still most expensive, and the overall car performance is not as good as with gas. For ethanol to be a cheaper option for the consumer, its price on the pump has to be no higher than 75% of gas.
There is, however, another side of the coin. Gas is a limited resource. We need to develop alternative fuel technologies, and right now ethanol is the best, if not only, viable option. The technology is getting cheaper everyday, and improving a lot. As someone who saw the so called birth of the car ethanol, in the 1980's, I can see how much that changed.
Last, but not least, gas with some ethanol in it does pollute less. I remember seeing some time ago some studies regarding E20(ish), and the number was impressive.
All told, it is an important technology, it is not a scam or a threat, but it is still improving. Luckly, we still have the luxury to choose, so we can say no. That won't last, tho.
morcego
Once again you have posted an "Ask Slashdot" article in a different section than where it belongs. Some of us regulate what articles we see by section and would appreciate it if you would at least try to get it right.
Thanks.
Fnord666
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
I fill my car with no-ethanol gas, but that's not very easy to find (farmer's co-ops are one handy source) </quote>
Priceless.
YMMV
but with motorcycles, ethanol has continually given Carbs troubles by promoting gas that gets all sorts of bacteria growing in it within a week due to the ethanol being a great thriving place for it.
I hate ethanol and it ruins motorcycles really quickly :(
Have you tried a fuel drying agent? The bacteria is growing because the ethanol absorbs water and gives it a medium to grow. Straight petrol products do that too, at a lesser extent.
Time Bomber the Book coming soon.
I have a "new" 2013 Mazda 3. Ethanol is said to have 3% less energy than gas, but I've observed that when I use "may contain up to 10% ethanol" gas that I get a 10% or more drop in mileage($) contrasted to when I drive the extra mileage and pay more for "pure gas". So what that tells me is that I (and the planet) would be better off if the alcohol wasn't in the gas at all and they just sold me 9/10 of a gallon of gas for what they are charging me for gas adulterated with ethanol. I wouldn't have to haul the extra useless alcohol around, I would have more space in my tank for gas, and if we didn't waste food and energy to make and transport ethanol, the world would have more food and just maybe corn prices wouldn't be so high.
In theory 9/10 of a gallon of gas without alcohol added should cost even less than a gallon of the mixed crap, since you would save all the costs of the alcohol. But in reality pure gas is hard to find and end up commanding a premium price.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Like dissolves like. Polar materials dissolve in polar solvents, such as salt in water, nonpolar materials in nonpolar solvents, such as oil in gasoline. There is this term matched "cohesive energy density," and some materials, like PVC, have very few solvents, with correct parameters, like tetrahydrofuran, that dissolve it extremely well, and almost nothing else works.
Your rubber must be of a more polar nature, that is made to resist nonpolar gasoline, such as nitrile rubber, but that also means it's less resistant to polar solvents, like ethanol. Most rubbers are nonpolar, like the stuff on your tires, (unvulcanized) styrene butadiene, or epdm, or butyl rubber, they completely disintegrate in gasoline, but they would resist ethanol pretty well. There are of course rubbers that resist almost everything, such as teflon-type fluorinated rubbers, but now you're talking something like $15-20/lb of material compared to say $3/lb for nitrile rubber. I don't know what the actual pricing is these days, I used to know a decade and a half ago when gas prices were still near $1/gal, and correspondingly plastic and rubbers were cheaper. For conduits actually polypropylene/polyethylene should be ultra cheap and resist both gasoline and ethanol, as these crystalline plastics have no solvents whatsoever at room temperature, but they are not rubbery, not resilient, so we're really talking the seals and O-rings here, that should be small and possible to make from very high cost materials, like fluorinated rubbers.