Edmunds.com | Inside Line | Auto Observer Your Account | Help | Directory
You are here:
![[F]](http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com/media/townhall/webxicons/site.gif){kind=small}
Forums
Hybrid Vehicles Ethanol - E85 FlexFuel Is Ethanol good for the environment?
165 messages, Last post on Sep 24, 2008 at 5:25 AM
You are in the Ethanol - E85 FlexFuel Forum. Your Host is pf_flyer
|
Replying to: gagrice (Mar 24, 2005 11:05 am) Yes, at 1.49/gallon, it is more than 25% lesser than gas which sells at 2.1/gallon. dangerous to transport You mean it is toxic. After all gasoline is also dangerous. You might have read the news that an explosion in BP plant in Texas have killed 14 and injured many more. I noticed my mileage on the last trip to Las Vegas in the Lexus So do you mean that CA gas which contains Ethanol gives more mileage.
|
|
|
Replying to: yerth10 (Mar 24, 2005 11:35 am) Ethanol is much more volatile than gas or diesel. My trip back from Las Vegas was with non ethanol gasoline and gave slightly better mileage than I got on the trip over to LV using CA gas. That has been a big cry in CA about the loss of mileage with the 11% ethanol that is added during the winter months. We are guinea pigs in CA when it comes to emissions. They loaded our gas down with MTBE then did the research that found it to be a health hazard. |
|
|
|
|
Replying to: gagrice (Mar 24, 2005 11:05 am) . That's not quite true. CA gas was the most expensive, even when you were using MTBE (oxygenate). The switchover to ethanol didn't make any difference in price. The reason CA gas is the most expensive in the nation is twofold: -high demand (minor factor) -no sulfur gasoline (major factor) It costs a lot of money to make that no sulfur gasoline for California requirements. troy
|
|
|
Replying to: electrictroy (Mar 24, 2005 12:38 pm) |
|
|
|
|
The whole thing with oxygenates is bogus. Adding an oxygenate to fuel doesn't make it burn better. The whole idea is as bogus as the "ethyl/lead helps your car run better" false advertising from pre-1980. troy
|
|
|
Replying to: electrictroy (Mar 25, 2005 5:35 am) I have to agree. I believe that it has been pushed on us to sell ethanol. Companies like ADM have a large interest in ethanol production from seed corn to distilling. A few are making a lot of money on ethanol and all of us are paying for it. |
|
|
Replying to: electrictroy (Feb 08, 2005 9:15 am) I've been using E85 for three years now. It is an outstanding fuel. Fuel economy is identical to gasoline and you get an additional 10% in horse power. The cost of production is now less than gasoline. Pump price is generally 5 to 30 cents less than regular gasoline. |
|
|
Replying to: electrictroy (Feb 09, 2005 12:19 pm) Because modern agriculture is so energy-intensive, it takes about the same amount of fossil fuel energy to produce the ethanol as it contains. The main culprits are agricultural machinery, transport of materials, and most importantly large quantities of fertilizer (produced from fossil fuels). Then there's the energy required to support the distillation process, too. Read Pimantel's latest analysis, where he answers ADM's rebuttal of his original paper. The energy gap narrows, but not entirely. The only flaw in his analysis is that he bases his energy calculations for distillation on the current system which has to produce a very high purity suitable for use as a gasoline additive, whereas a car built to run exclusively on ethanol could run fine on a less costly grade of purity. Ethanol might be made from waste material, thus negating the fossil-inputs argument somewhat. But I think it's more efficient to use crop wastes to produce bio-diesel, so even here, you have to trade off using wastes for ethanol production against the best possible alternative use. Any way you look at it, ethanol just doesn't make sense, energy-wise. |
|
|
|
| but i think ethanol makes sense for our country..i.e. less mid-east oil and more money for our farms...i'd use ethanol or biodiesel if i could get my hands on it here in florida | |
|
Replying to: drpharmdog (May 02, 2005 3:28 pm) Ethanol is plant-based and is essentially liquid solar energy, so there is no net amount of CO2 is released. A large percentage of raw corn fed to livestock is undigested. When the corn is first fermented to alcohol fuel, the grain can still be fed to cattle and is of a higher feed quality. So it's a bit of a mis-conception that that the Corn is being lost as a food and the Farmer is just out there buring fuel to make fuel - The farmer is actually adding a degree of efficency in that, the same fuel used to grow feed before is now being used to make both feed and fuel. It's also a mis-conception that Ethanol is just about Politics and the Rich lining their pockets. You'll find that most Ethanol is produced by Farmers and Farmer Co-Ops, not Big Business. As Ethanol useage increases, it creates more jobs in the good ole USA and has the ablilty to reduce our National deficit. Our hard earned dollars stop leaving the Coutry and stop flowing to Countries in the Middle East. Instead, our dollars begin to flow to the American Farmer, the R&D firms that employ Engineers to research Biofuels, to American Manufactures who produce Ethanol and Bio-fuels, to American Labors who work a 40 hour week for a living. It's common to resist Change and I don't know how Ethanol will finally play out over the long term. I suspect that it will just be one piece of the puzzle used to reduce or dependance on foreign oil. From what I see, I believe Ethanol and Bio-Diesel will play a big part in the transportation arena and I personally believe it will be good for America as a whole. |
|
You are here:
Forums
Hybrid Vehicles Ethanol - E85 FlexFuel Is Ethanol good for the environment?
New? Join Now!
Forum Tools
Search Forums
Browse by Vehicle
Browse by Board
Browse by Topic
Today's Chats
