Rawr256

I have a paper I have to write for my 500th english class I have taken in my school career and have decided to write it on the use of Ethanol as a gas. Curious as to what all of your opinions on it are and any sort of source you might have to back it up. I know that WA state has passed a 10% blended gas law and have seen my own mileage drop, but at the same time I hear that Brazil runs entirely off of the stuff.

Opinions? Thoughts?

HitmanLSX

I know gas mileage suffers but it also, supposedly has a cooling effect. Plus E85 is almost like 110oct I think or close to it. A lot of Midwest guys are converting their lsxs over to it. But yes it requires more fuel and stoich is 9.6. So gas mileage will suffer.

I wish there were more e85 stations in Washington. I'd convert my cars to run it. Besides I'd rather support our farmers than foreign oil.

Poik

Miles per gallon may suffer, even though miles per gasoline gallon equivalent may remain the same. There is less energy in a gallon of ethanol than a gallon of gasoline, so more of it needs to be injected. There is ~82,000BTU/gal in E85 while gasoline is ~115,500BTU/gal. If we had it up here I would definitely be running it in my daily driver, since the cost per mile will remain about the same, but you will be running on closer to 104 octane (lots more timing and boost!). I'm hoping they build out the stations that carry it in the next few years.

The gas mileage thing should only affect your range. If you get half the gas mileage on a fuel that costs half as much (hypothetical) but has the octane of race gas, theoretically you should be happier . In reality you should only see a 30% or so increase in fuel consumption.

Crisisman

iTrader: (1)

I was reading somewhere that the Solstice drift car runs on E85. It sucks down the gas, but nets more power because they can add lots more timing for the turbo.

It really depends on your application. If you're a budget minded commuter then it only makes sense if the price at the pump is lower by at least as much as the drop in mileage.

Don't forget to include in your paper the unintended consequences of increased ethanol production. More fuel = less food = higher food prices for all.

LT1-DAN

I heard that it can damage small engines like lawn equipment, boats, and it's not good for cars that are more than 5yrs. old. It can also clog up fuel filters and deteriorate rubber fuel lines.

HitmanLSX

https://ls1tech.com/forums/fueling-injection/602091-how-run-your-ls1-e85.html

good thread about running E85

Ackattack1

iTrader: (7)

Back when I was in college I wrote about a 20 page paper on using E85. This was back in 1999 when ethanol was just coming around. Too bad I don't have a copy of it any more. Back then gas was ~$1.30/gal and E85 was $2.50/gal....so it didn't make much since then.

I think if you have a car set up to run specifically E85 you can get mileage just slightly less than gas (rather than ~50% less). You'd have to be running high compression and timing to get the most out of it.

I know back then there were a lot of cold weather testing, cause it doesn't vaporize as well as gasoline in cold air, so in Minnesota/Michigan they were using block heaters over night.

A common complaint or negative people like to argue is that it takes nearly as much energy to make it as you produce. To me that's ok, cause it's still reducing our dependency on foreign oil.

Another one that back then I would have never thought of is the effect on food prices. Corn is used in a lot of what we eat (directly and indirectly).

There are also new (as in since '99) ways of making ethanol like switchgrass and some other plant material, which wouldn't have the economic impact on food supply.

AndreS

iTrader: (6)

there's only so much field space... just like spending money, field space can be used to produce food or energy.... can't spend your money twice, can't have two crops on the same field at the same time. follow basic economic theory.

we need to stop subsidising fallow fields... paying farmers not to grow crops. especially wealthy ones like ted turner(he's not even a farmer but he's getting $$ for his fields not producing) and the like. then get the government out of the free market as much as possible.... every time the gov't gets involved in anything the price goes up.

stop pointing fingers at oil companies, start pointing them at the ever-growing government bureaucracy.


additionally, of the large 'windfall' profits, 42% was paid to the government. then every employee at the oil company paid taxes too, at an average of 25%. according to some politicians, we need to tax the oil companies more, & take away what profits were left after taxes. the company will make the same amount, taxes or not. so if you add more taxes to the company, fuel prices will increase. following this logic, if you want lower fuel costs at the pump, lower taxes on the oil company. that way they can make the same profit, and still pay the stockolders.

sorry for the rant.

Rawr256

That is one of the points I was wanting to kind of touch on with the paper. Ethanol isn't only made with corn like it is shown on TV but can be made from other plants like mentioned above, switchgrass and sugar cane. Brazil I guess has been doing a lot of E50 gas with their sugar cane that they harvest but something like that would work for them easier than some place here in the states. I was wondering what kind of effect weather could have on it all. You don't know for sure that you will get the same weather this year you had last year and in some cases could result in wasted energy/space/time to try to produce a fuel. I am no farming expert but if the temps get into the freezing temps don't the crops generally just die and have to be torn up and replanted?

The more I am reading on it the more of a negative effect it can have if not controlled correctly or advanced great enough. I know one aim is to be able to get the same mileage off of E85 as straight gasoline, but this would only apply if you bought a new car... the rest of the people that don't have funds for a brand new car are essentially screwed getting crappy mileage... just imagine how pissed car collectors would be if all they could find was E85.

NWDragRacer

Great research paper on the Ethanol Mandate

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Ene...ent/wm1925.cfm

Mr.MartyStone

iTrader: (12)

You can make ethanol from almost any crop...hell they can make ethanol from the left over hops from breweries. I will do my part to keep those wasted hops coming!

crazylane

iTrader: (19)

Have any of you ever driven a flex fuel vehicle??

OSUBraden

You may want to check out the latest news about allergic reactions that are occurring with Americans after they either breathe in or come in phsyical contact with ethanol products. I'm not certain what exactly causes the allergic reaction, but they are finding people that cannot breathe and cannot visibly drive when around or in a car using ethanol. Kind of scares me as I have 'plant' allergies like most Americans.

Steve in Seattle

This is one reason why BioDiesel makes more sense than EtOH. The naturally high octanes of both fuels make it most efficient to use boost (turbo) instead of NA (even high NA compression ratios are less than optimal for diesel).

The upside of course is that diesel/biodiesel have ~10% MORE energey density than gasoline (while E85 is 30% LESS dense than standard petrol)... meaning more MPG. some may argue that carrying/injecting more E85 can compensate for the energy density deficit, but this leads to the spaceship conundrum.... At a certain point you have to carry so much fuel for a trip that a large segment of the fuel is used just to transport the extra weight of the fuel itself. Energy density is a VERY important issue for long-haul vessels like semi's, ships, and trains who don't want to/can't afford to stop and refuel constantly.

Beyond the lost MPG from EtOH, we also have the emmisisons problems. EtOh is a 2-carbon molecule with a very low boiling point, and as a result, a high vapor pressure. E85 emmissions from gas pump nozzles and the occational bad gas cap lead to INCREASED hydrocarbon emmissions in the atomosphere. Promoting the filling of tanks (or any gas pump use) at night when its cooler out can help cut down on this, but can't elliminate it.

Formulating gasoline to have LESS energy density, and MORE evaporation during filling just makes NO sense... unless you're a farmer giving kickbacks to sell corn for EtOH production.

Even if EtOH could be created in the MASSIVE volumes required to replace all gasoline with E85, we're probably going the WRONG way down that road.


Solutions are various, but biodisel is a near-term solution. As are hybrid vehicles with regenerative braking, cyclinder deactivation engines (LS4 ), and the holy grail: electric vehicles with PERFORMANCE to compete with gas, and the battery technology to make "fill ups" possible/easy (currently a major issue).

If cars and light trucks can get onto the electric grid, we'll be WAY ahead. Hello clean nuclear energy. Then I can rock one of these windshield stickers: "POWERED BY FISSON".

cruisinxx7

Ethanol has a few advantages, as previously described in this thread. But the downsides are at least as numerous.

It was mentioned earlier that ethanol has an impact on food prices, which is true, at least circumstantially. Soybeans and corn that previously went to the supermarket are now going into gas tanks, rasing the prices of food based on those crops. Since their growth is also subsidized, farmers switch from growing wheat, rice, and other grains to growing more maize (as it is more profitable under subsidy), raising the prices of bread and even more foods. It also impacts the cost of raising animals who feed on those grains, and, combined with increasing wealth worldwide (wealthy people tend to eat more meat), the price of beef and pork also rise. Ethanol factories also consume an immense amount of water, something like 500 gallons a minute to make 50 million gallons of biofuel a year for the boiling and cooling processes, which will make water around those factories scarce. By the way, those subsidies also cost taxpayers about $7 billion a year.

You may have also heard that the government is going to require the average fuel economy car markers' fleets to something like 35 mpg by 2020. The problem is that they rate ethanol-based models' mpg unusually high--much higher than they are actually capable. One possible unintended side-effect is that car makers will throw more ethanol-based models into the market instead of investing money into alternative fuels that are practical and inexpensive enough to replace oil straight up, thus slowing research in alternative fuels.

E85 pumps are also extremely rare--changing that would be very expensive and unlikely to happen without more subsidies. Even then, biofuels still have to be transported by trucks that run on diesel, meaning no one is safe from rising crude oil prices