Reaps on June 25, 2008 at 1:03 AM

Do you believe that 240 volts is better than 120V? Or do you understand that you need to use what the equipment is designed for? My car’s motor has been designed for 87 octane, so that’s what I buy. Most cars sold in America have motors that are designed to burn 85 octane. And then there are different ways of measuring octane ratings, so if your country uses a different rating method, the numbers aren’t even comparable.

I live in the middle of ethanol land.

It’s spoken about on a regular basis that ethanol blends affect your mileage – the E10 blend here is higher octane (93 compared to 89) but drops my mileage (2004 Jeep Cherokee)by 1.3 miles per gallon. Heck, the founder of the company spoke about it at the grand opening of a nearby plant.

The E10 blend here costs 10-12 cents per gallon less than the non blended lower octane gas.(due to a tax rebate) E85 is 1.30 less than regular non blended gas – it drops the mileage on the truck(2006 Ford Sport truck)by 3.9 miles per gallon.

It all comes out in the wash – not worse, not better, just an alternative that’s made in the US and not imported from our “friends” in the middle east.

I think the best I ever saw during my trip across the states was something like 93, with 85, 89 and maybe 91 being the most regular. I can see why fuel additives are so popular over there

The worst-rated fuel we have here is the ethanol-blended mix, and even that has a 91 rating to start with.

My question might come across as a ‘we foreigners are better than you’, but I really am genuinely puzzled, as opposed to being patronising

any thoughts? (hint, think history)

The Ethanol lobby denies that the mileage is affected that much, but everyone ignores the fact that they’re lobbyists and swallows it.

The Gov decided that Oregon is going to be on the leading edge of fighting global warming and just to make sure that we are, he has used executive orders (royal commands) to force everyone to comply. The democratic process can only be allowed when the outcome can be guaranteed.

That’s the Democrat way.

Problem is, ethanol is water-based and will rust pipes, unlike oil.

Ethanol is water based? What on earth does that mean? (Besides the fact you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.)

How much corn does it take to make a gallon of ethanol?

1 bushel of corn (~52 lbs at ~14% moisture) will make about 3 gallons of E100. (E100 is about 97% pure ethanol and 3% gasoline. Drink it at your own risk!) And you also get about 17 lbs of high protein cattle feed.

Why is ethanol better than gasoline? Because the Saudis can’t shut down the source of ethanol.

DING!!!!! Most of the anti-ethanol hysteria is so wrong as to be funny if it weren’t so scary. OPEC has a LOT to loose if crude oil is not the (THE!!!) raw material for transportation fuel. Try growing corn in a desert. The western world has a lot to loose by letting the Saudis have the monopoly on our transportation fuel raw material (crude oil). We need to drill for our own oil. We need ethanol from corn (today, now!) and tomorrow we need ethanol from corn and (fill in the blank with your favorite whatever) and we need methanol from coal (a very clean and cheap manufacturing process). We MUST break OPEC’s grip on the industrialized world’s transportation fuel raw material. Or else we need to learn Arabic. Captain Ed? You want to point us to Mecca and lead our prayers?

http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShow&showID=1926#7

We’re not running out of oil. And lots of natural gas to be had too.

auzerais on June 24, 2008 at 8:13 PM

LOL When people start talking to me about ecectric cars I ask this simple question: Where does all this electricty come from? I wish I could discribe all the looks I get, The best response is a look of MY incredable stupidity and they will say–well, you just plug it into the outlet… lmao

A time or two I have tried to explain that we do not have the generating capacity or the infastructer to deliver that power. But, they normally have no clue what I am talking about.

Yeah, but Hollowpoint how do you lower the compression ratio when there is no ethanol to buy?
tarpon on June 24, 2008 at 7:47 PM

Well, now yer getting all practical on me. The assumption is that ethanol would be widely available, with cars dedicated to run on it (also world peace and free bacon for everyone). With a flex-fuel vehicle, you can’t run the same compression ratios you can with ethanol and so lose some of the power and efficiency gains.

I suppose it’s possible to design an engine with a variable compression ratio, but that might be pretty tough to pull off. An alternative would be to use a turbocharger instead of higher compression- ethanol burns cooler in addition to the higher octane; varying boost depending on fuel would have about the same effect as changing compression ratios.

I’m not suggesting we all convert our cars to ethanol- only that it does have certain advantages in addition to it’s disadvantages.

Ethanol is the shuck, the 68 million acres to drill on is the jive. Shuck and jive, tell me no lies.

Obama campaign song, Jive Talking, by the BeeGees.

I still say Comrade Obama is a post turtle.

Ethanol is grotesquely inefficient… it’s not just inefficient to produce (and competes with food stocks), but it’s inefficient to run. Sure, it is more efficient at 12:1 than at 9:1 compression – but it’s still not more efficient than gasoline, which is the point.

And no, the power difference between 9:1 and 12:1 isn’t “substantial,” it’s minor for street-driven engines – you can get a lot more power out of a race engine that way, but street engines are designed to be reliable, durable and cheap – oddly, race engines are none of those things. The horsepower bump might be 8-10 percent.
Merovign on June 24, 2008 at 6:30 PM

Ignoring for a moment the production costs (monetary and otherwise) of ethanol, there’s no question that ethanol- particularly in a higher compression engine- is more efficient. A properly built gas engine could be made at 12:1 without reinventing the wheel- some modern car engines run at 10.5:1 from the factory using 91 octane.

True, going from 9.5:1 to 12:1 only gains about 6% more horsepower in a 200 horse engine, this is in addition to the 10% power increase due to lower air/fuel ratio. Still- a 16% increase in power for the same displacement engine is nothing to sneeze at. That’s an extra 32hp in a 200hp engine of the same displacement. Assuming a 3.0 liter gas engine, you could reduce displacement to around 2.5 liters and get about the same power output.

Anyone who says differently has their own power shortage.

Well I feel so much better now that has been settled and the microphone is turned off.

/sarc

Might want to check that. E85 is 105 octane. Most places where you can still straight petrol the octane is 85, E10 with 90% same petrol content and 10% ethanol is 87.

Will do, Sinner. Thank you- I’m never always right, but I can easily be wrong :)

And no, the power difference between 9:1 and 12:1 isn’t “substantial,” it’s minor for street-driven engines – you can get a lot more power out of a race engine that way, but street engines are designed to be reliable, durable and cheap – oddly, race engines are none of those things. The horsepower bump might be 8-10 percent.

Too much processing cost, too much land, too much fuel wasted (even a 1:1 ratio means you’re not gaining anything – you have to add the cost of the production of gas to the ethanol, which they don’t because of subsidies. And the ratio isn’t 1:1).

But we’re doing it anyway, because it’s easier to do something wasteful than it is for the govt. to keep its grubby hands off the market for five minutes. (sigh)

In order to have “oxygenated” gasoline that would reduce CO and NOx emissions without MTBE, some states mandated use of ethanol in gasoline, which is equally soluble in water but much less toxic (since people drink it).

It shouldn’t be surprising that ethanol in gasoline reduces mileage. The heat of combustion of ethanol is about 26.8 kilojoules per kilogram, as compared to 44.3 kJ/kg for gasoline. Since ethanol is denser than gasoline (0.787 kg/L for ethanol, 0.690 kg/L for gasoline), the difference on a volume basis is less (21.1 kJ/L for ethanol, 30.6 kJ/L for gasoline, or about 31% less for ethanol). If the engine burns both gasoline and ethanol with equal efficiency, a blend of 90% gasoline/10% ethanol should get about 3% lower mileage than with pure gasoline.

Interestingly enough, blending MTBE in gasoline causes less power loss than ethanol–its heat of combustion is 35.2 kJ/kg or 25.8 kJ/L, or about 15% less than gasoline.

A blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline would have a heat of combustion of 22.5 kJ/L, or about 26% less than that of pure gasoline. An engine burning mostly ethanol would tend to run cooler than a gasoline engine, which would probably reduce its efficiency.

If we figure in the fossil fuel cost of planting and harvesting corn, and converting it to ethanol, plus the lost food value, ethanol from corn is a huge energy loser, although the subsidies are good for buying votes in Iowa. Without the subsidies and mandates, ethanol would disappear from gasoline, corn prices would drop, as well as meat prices for any livestock which eats corn. Instead of “growing fuel”, we are basically burning food, which could be exported to hungry Third-world countries, which would improve our trade balance and prop up the value of the dollar, thereby reducing oil prices!

It makes sense to end ethanol subsidies and mandates, but can anyone who proposes it get elected in farm country?

One other problem is cold weather starting- alcohol doesn’t do so well here; some sort pre-heating system would likely be required for pure ethanol in cold weather environments.

Hollowpoint on June 24, 2008 at 5:52 PM

You aren’t BSing there! A couple years ago we were running the car at Medford, OR and it got cold over night. The next morning we went to fire the car and I couldn’t get it fired. We run mechanical fuel injection so you have to squirt fuel down the butterflies of the injector to get it to fire. No matter what I tried I couldn’t get it to fire on methanol and it was only about 50 degrees. I finally got some regualr gas and squirted that in the injector butterflies and it fired the first time.

Some dopey gal on O’Reilly last night said that her goal is a network of ethanol pipelines across the country, with which O’Reilly agreed. Problem is, ethanol is water-based and will rust pipes, unlike oil. So there’s another problem with ethanol: it takes oil/diesel to deliver it by truck.

Ethanol cannot be transported easily by pipeline because it absorbs water. Put a mix of ethanol and water into your car and it will really hate you. That is why ethanol is trucked out now, and with the cost of diesel, is even less cost effective.

Another hoax from our loving Congress. No wonder people call it “the Swamp”…

The mileage problem with ethanol is not due to how much power it can be used to produce but its heat content, as one poster spelled out.

The physics book says, all other things being equal, it takes a the same amount of energy to move a car from A to B regardless of the fuel you use. If you have a high heat content fuel (diesel), you need less. Low heat content fuel, (ethanol or John Murtha brain cells) it takes more.

Increasing compression ratios is easier with ethanol because it has a higher flash point than gas. A higher ratio tends to be more efficient, but the basics are against equalizing or overcoming the lack of heat content in ethanol compared to gas.

The greenies can dream all they want, but you cannot beat the physics book in some regimes…comparative heat content being one of them.

Forget the fact that mechanics, the one who know cars, say otherwise, what do they know? The global-warming fear mongers are today’s sages who know what’s better for us than we do.

Afterimage on June 24, 2008 at 5:33 PM

True, ethanol (methanol even more so) has less BTU/Gal… but makes more power and can be run at higher compression ratios, which increases efficiency and thus even more power. Yeah, I know you know this already.

Point is- a car dedicated to using ethanol (or methanol) could use a significantly smaller displacement engine to generate the same amount of power, though it would require slightly stronger and heavier internals to handle the extra compression (12:1 in production form maybe?). Do that, and the difference in fuel use becomes much less pronounced. Many V6 engines could be replaced with 4 cylinders without significant (if any) loss of horsepower or torque.

Also true that ethanol (with methanol being worse) can wreak havoc on seals and fuel lines not designed for it, but I’ve little doubt that this could easily be overcome.

One other problem is cold weather starting- alcohol doesn’t do so well here; some sort pre-heating system would likely be required for pure ethanol in cold weather environments.

Hollowpoint on June 24, 2008 at 4:48 PM

We can always break it down for them. Won’t be hard.