Are you serious?

 

If American auto manufacturers and our govt had any brains, they would be adopting sequential/variable turbodiesel technology. BMW already has and those motors are putting down huge torque, 6 second 0-60 times, and getting 35+ MPG. Ethanol is bull**** and a deadend policy.

http://autospeed.drive.com.au/cms/A_2544/article.html

As usual, our energy policy is being driven by special interest. In this case, corn/grain producers, who see $$$$$$ in ethanol. Also, state and local governments want to make damn sure we don't start buying less "gallons" of fuel because their tax revenues are based on unit volume.

If our government had any true concern about the consumer vs. serving their cronies, they would be following Europe's lead. They are used to paying $7-8/gallon, so they know what conservation is about. They live it.

 

About a third of the fuel Brazilians use in their vehicles is ethanol, known in Brazil as "alcohol." That compares with 3 percent in the United States. All gasoline sold in Brazil contains at least 26 percent ethanol, but motorists driving flexible-fuel cars have the option of filling up with pure ethanol, or E100, which currently is selling for about half the price of the blend.

Use of pure ethanol will rise sharply as carmakers in Brazil such as General Motors and Volkswagen make more flexible-fuel cars. Half the new vehicles sold this year will be able to use either pure ethanol or the blend, according to the Sao Paulo Sugar Cane Industry Union.

In the United States, the sugar-cane industry has had little incentive to diversify into ethanol production because import quotas support U.S. sugar prices far above world levels. Expansion of sugar cane acreage beyond Hawaii, Florida and the Gulf Coast is limited by the need for a long, frost-free growing season.

 

I guess I should clarify, yes it has a higher octane so thus it can be tuned higher, but the e85 itself isn't causing the increase, its actually decreasing your power output as you stated. Adding octane booster to normal gas will yield the same result, but with more power. That being said, I still think ethanol is a good filler to lower our consumption, just used at 10% rather than 85%. The idea that it takes as much energy to make ethanol as it provides isn't exactly accurate depending on which group you cite. You also are using a different source of energy to provide this. There is no way to get free energy from nothing, its just converted from one form to another. The technology has to start from somewhere. In theory, you could do ethanol conversion using strictly solar power and then it would be a good source, but the economics is what liimits it.
Edit: go see Nismo G's original post he was referring to, he thinks that ethanol burns faster or hotter and thats why it puts down more power, thats why I stated he was wrong. He is also talking about E3, which is straight ethanol, while this discussion is about E85

 

The BMEP [~torque] is extremely closely related to the BTU per gallon of the fuel you are burning.

The purpose of ignition advance is to set up the peak pressure so that it occurs at 14-16 degrees after top dead center to extert the most turning pressure on the crank via the rod angle.............Before or after this narrow range the torque goes down.

Octane and advance allow this fine tuning.

In general efficiency has to do with BTU per gallon/pound

 

Exactly. Efficiency advancement is key to any true conservation policy. Diesel fuel has about 135000 BTU/gal vs 125000 BTU/gal for regular gasoline. The oxygenated/ethanol junk is probably around 120000 BTU/gal.

If the goal is to use LESS volume of the limited resource to get from point A to point B, then a thinking man would not adopt a strategy that would lead him to use MORE volume.

A modern turbodiesel is capable of 40-50% better mileage than its gasoline equivalent. And the stuff doesn't have to be refined as much, nor would we have to use more energy to ferment, distill, store, transport any ethanol "filler". And if you wanna be a real "green" guy, you could blend in some biodiesel at 10% to say you're doing your part to save the planet.

The whole ethanol thing is a farce and a further fleecing of the public. They don't want to reduce usage volume at all.

 

Not in your wildest dreams is conventional gasoline STILL 120,000 btu, over the past 10 years it has declined and declined and declined..............112,000 or worse.

To maintain profitability and lower the quanity of imported oil gasoline btu has been THINNED. Not just via oxygenates but in the chemical blending of components.

Since we buy using gallons we never notice the decline in MPG from thin gasoline .....................use 3-5% more.

All energy is really priced in BTU because that tells you how much work it can do...........ever notice diesel which is much cheap to refine cost more because it contains 10% higher BTU.

http://www.chevron.com/products/prod.../fuel_economy/

in the middle graphs show MPG vs BTU tests for various types of gasoline

http://www.chevron.com/products/prod...enrgycon.shtml


Gasoline Gallon Equivalent (GGE) Table

Fuel Type
Unit of Measure
BTUs Per Unit
Gallon Equivalent

Gasoline, regular unleaded, (typical)
gallon
114,100
1.00 gallon
Gasoline, RFG, (10% MBTE)
gallon
112,000
1.02 gallons
Diesel, (typical)
gallon
129,800
0.88 gallons

Liquid natural gas (LNG), (typical)
gallon
75,000
1.52 gallons
Compressed natural gas (CNG), (typical)
cubic foot
900
126.67 cu. ft.
Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG or propane)
gallon
84,300
1.35 gallons

Methanol (M-100)
gallon
56,800
2.01 gallons
Methanol (M-85)
gallon
65,400
1.74 gallons
Ethanol (M-100)
gallon
76,100
1.50 gallons
Ethanol (E-85)
gallon
81,800
1.40 gallons
Bio Diesel (B-20)
gallon
129,500
0.88 gallons

Electricity
kilowatt hour
3,400
33.53 kwhrs

http://www.nafa.org/Content/Navigati...quivalents.htm

 

here in indiana we have e85 everywhere...it's a big thing. they advertise the 15% lose in mileage. they don't try to hide that fact. our e85 is actually the same, if not a couple cents higher than regular gas.

the main reason people around here use it is the environment. less pollution is really the only benefit for it. also, we are getting a new refinement plant in my small hometown so that adds a bunch of jobs for people along with more business for our farmers.

e85 is NOT an economy fuel, it's only an alternative fuel that produces less environmental hazard and it's renewable.

 

Yep, I saw that too... Cars running on normal water, air, solar... amazing ****!!!

 

Less pollution is very debatable as the ethanol creates new compounds [ALDEHYDES] which seem to be worse for enviroment...........not to mention the additional farm land fertilizer runoffs and all the extras from just growing more.

One major problem [with E10] is that the O2 sensors are fooled into enrichening the mixture to compensate for the 3-4% oxygen in the ethanol molecules. It's not just the lower BTU but the richer fooled mixture.

 

Manufacturing ethanol requires far more energy to make than drilling for regular dino fuel and the environmental implications/impacts are greater because of the polluting energies used in the process. I'm an environmental consultant/engineer and know a good bit about this subject. IMO, ethanol is probably the biggest farce our government has come with for this decade. It is strictly lobbyist driven.

A like Q45tech aluded to, we don't know much about the environmental impacts of these new compounds in ethanol. Years ago the government mandated the use of MTBE in gasoline. MTBE is nasty stuff and is water soluble. So when tanks leaked at the MTBE got into the groundwater, it's nearly impossible to remediate the water. Our clients spend a lot a money trying to clean up MTBE contaminated fueling stations and fueling terminals. I can see ethanol creating similar issues. Maybe not in the GW, but in the air.

 

Most of us don't mind 10% [20 proof] ethanol in our drinks..........it's the fact that corn prices have doubled since the ethanol addition. This hits everyone in the food pocket and they don't realize it yet...........A triple whammy since corn can no longer be exported cost effectively.

Once you build a corn ethanol plant it is very expensive to convert to some other input source [switch grass, etc] so these plants will be self perpetuating and need subsidies forever or jobs will be lost.

$2.20 ethanol follows the price of corn and corn follows the demand.
Food Animals eat primarily corn or they did until the prices doubled.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/30/news...anol/index.htm

The problem is that ethanol has always been more expensive to produce and transport and blend with gasoline than just the gasoline alone.

Currently the government provides a subsidy of ~~ 50 cents per gallon to incentivize production for blending...........so taxpayers are hit everyway without realizing it.

 

For a long time ethanol was selling for alot less than regular gasoline, but since the demand has increased and so has the price to a point where its not a really good option. The only reason I advocate a 10% blend is not for the economics, but rather as a relatively harmless way to curb some of our use while other fuel sources are developed. At a 10% blend, mileage is only slight decreased, and price is about the same, in fact alot of places already blend it without most consumers knowing it.

 

oh, and biodiesel FTW!