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Hybrid Vehicles Ethanol - E85 FlexFuel The Inconvenient Truth About Ethanol
921 messages, Last post on Oct 07, 2009 at 10:53 AM
You are in the Ethanol - E85 FlexFuel Forum. Your Host is pf_flyer
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Replying to: fezo (May 10, 2009 7:38 am) |
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I am a Mecahanical Engineer, having specialized in vehicle performance, whether it be economy, crash-worthiness, roll-over, stability, etc. for over 28 years. PLEASE believe me when I show the comparison information below: 1. Consider performance of gasoline as a standard of 1.00 for all the following (100% if you like) 2. Ethanol has a heating value between 0.65 and 0.75 that of "gasoline" (for those who care heating value measures useable ENERGY content), but that also translates into an efficiency of 65% to 75% that of gasoline. Alcohol won't GO as far given the same volume, PERIOD. It's a fact of chemistry, and is not subject to legislation or wishes. 3. A ROUGH idea of the fuel mileage of e85 (containing 85% ethanol and (maybe) 15% gasoline) can be roughly calculated according to: E85 mileage = 0.15 x 100% + 0.85 x 75% = 0.745, or a mileage value 74.5% that of gasoline (that is, 25.5% reduction in distance covered per gallon of E85. 4. Bear in mind that the above is close to a "high" estimate, since alcohol absorbs water, which cools the combustion flame resulting in lower values. |
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Replying to: cvs20 (May 24, 2009 1:49 pm) When one gets down to it, that IS a factor, plus the fact that most engines can burn a certain mixture of ethanol without modification. Burning pure ethanol is another story though, and we need a better source first, since corn ethanol takes about as much energy to produce as it produces itself.
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Replying to: cvs20 (May 24, 2009 1:49 pm) Engine optimization also is involved. I've tested four cars on interstate highways and discovered that E10 reduces gas mileage by about 10%. It appears that you can drive the same distance whether the ethanol is in the tank or dumped on the ground (although maybe the quality of the 90% gasoline portion is the problem).
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Replying to: pafromfl (May 24, 2009 8:38 pm) When all the corn stills go broke and close it will be more people in the Midwest out of work. It happened in the last big recession in the late 1970s and early 80s. They shut down over 90 Corn ethanol plants. How many will go down this time around? |
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Since the intro of ethanol, mileage on my vehicles, and anyone else I know who carefully monitors the mileage of their vehicles, is down a solid 8-10%. Couple that with all the news stories I've seen recently about a world food crisis, and it would appear to be utter insanity to want to add MORE ethanol to fuel, but we have a bunch of people that want to do exactly that. To quote a closing line for one of my favorite movies of all time, The Bridge on the River Kwai... Madness... madness!
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Replying to: pf_flyer (May 25, 2009 6:17 am) Well, let's say it's madness to convert food into ethanol. If we had a non-food source it would be a better idea. |
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Replying to: bpizzuti (May 25, 2009 6:33 am) Well, let's say it's madness to convert food into ethanol. If we had a non-food source it would be a better idea. Not a better idea if the idea is to cut down on use of oil. Exactly how much oil/gas am I saving when a 10% blend of ethanol reduces my mileage by 10%, because that's how much my mileage dropped instantly with the introduction of 10% ethanol into my area and it has stayed there. Let's see, the math could be tricky. Just for an example with round numbers, assume I had a 10 gallon tank and was getting 30 miles to the gallon. So I use 10 gallons of gas to go 300 miles. Now fill up with a 90/10 gas/ethanol mix (and remember that on most of the pumps around here it says UP TO 10% ethanol) and my mileage drops to 27 mpg. So to travel the same 300 miles I have to use 11.11111... gallons of gas/ethanol blend. Since 90% of that blend is gas, I'm using the same 10 gallons of gasoline that I was before. I save no money as the price at the pump didn't drop a cent with the introduction of ethanol. I'm not cutting back on my use of gasoline so throw the emissions argument out the window. And we've managed to affect the commodities market to boot. I think I'll stand by my madness claim. I didn't even have to pull out the claim by some that the "right mix" of ethanol and gasoline actually increases mileage. 
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Replying to: bpizzuti (May 25, 2009 6:33 am) Why are we putting so much effort into a product that instantly takes 10% value right off the top? If all the effort that has been put into ethanol had been put into biodiesel, we would be well on our way to oil independence without creating a food crisis. Biodiesel/diesel almost doubles the MPG over E10 and does not require the use of food crops. |
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of ethanol blends is that it reduces the amount of oil we need to import and doesn't require any mechanical changes or technology development and improvement to make use of (even though it carries less energy than the oil we WOULD import, we don't need as much as before, or we wouldn't if we weren't a bunch of idiots buying v8 SUVs to carry one person and no cargo, heh). Granted that's the only benefit, but it can be used as a stopgap while we work on, say getting more natural gas engines and conversion kits out there. Of course if they DO manage to convert waste, woodchips, or switchgrass to ethanol, and it uses up less energy to create and convert than it generates when burned, then it might be viable to get more E100 engines out there. Key word, "if." Biodeisel is a good one too...to be honest it's a better idea for commerical. Trains and semis would be able to run it as-is. We still need to find the right car alternative, and there's still competition (natural gas, ethanol, hybrid, EVs, ethanol-burning hybrids, hey how about an NG hybrid?) mostly because of concerns with producing the stuff. Of course, one of the downsides of ethanol is some group of idiots (a group usually concentrated in Washington DC) gets the bright idea of converting food into fuel, so that, while we starve, at least we can haul our boats, right? |
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