You gotta give those crazy corn-into-fuel kids credit: they don’t give up. Whereas you and I might think, well, if we can’t make a go of this thing with 50 cents a gallon blender’s credit and a federal mandate requiring someone somewhere (especially government-paid someones) to buy billions upon billions of gallons of the stuff, and the legislature of every state that even thinks about farming in our pocket, and the majority of the U.S. Congress and the President of the United States in our corner, then fuck it. Time to move on and get a real job. But no. Ethanol makers who’ve hit the so-called blending wall appear out ot prove themselves wrong (“no one ever died defending a corn field”). First, they’re opening stations with a choice of E10, E20, E30 or E85. it’s the first step on the way to legislating motorists to use E20 or above, obviously. Which will make them no friends amongst motorists whose cars are not so happy on anything ethanol-related. in fact, KOB4 reports that the Albuquerque Police Department’s new, E85-fueled Chevy Tahoes and Crown Victorias are experiencing fuel pump failures. Back to "regular" unleaded for now. Meanwhile and in any case, the ethanol boondoggle continues. [hat tip to HarveyBirdman]
Despite temperatures of -6 degrees F. yesterday morning on my commute and -8 degrees F. this morning on my commute, with 6 gallons of “real” 100% gasoline in my 11 gallon tank, my 2008 Prius MPG is already improving. I hope.
My first tell-tale sign is that I’m down 2 bars on the fuel gage at 64 miles instead of down 2 bars at only about 50 miles on the prior full tank of E10.
I’ll have to wait until I can run this tank dry(er) and then put in more 100% gas over a few tankfuls, but I’m already somewhat encouraged.
Fuelling ANY amount of E20, E30 or E85, by the way, will VOID YOUR NEW CAR WARRANTEE unless you are running a flex-fuel vehicle.
I’ve heard many stories about ethanol fuel being disasterously bad, even for supposedly flex-fuel vehicles “Detroit engineered” for the stuff.
If it weren’t so catastrophically tragic, It’d be hilarious.
In the meanwhile, food prices for the food pantry that I volunteer at (as well as food that we all have to buy in order to live) have skyrocketed over the past couple of years, well beyond the supposed “official inflation rate”.
Burning our food to get to the shopping mall is a bad idea.
First, the Albuquerque Police department needs to go back to the manufacturers (Ford, GM) of the defective fuel pumps and ask them to solve the problem.
High content ethanol blended gasoline present some different problems to the fuel system. One of them is that ethanol has a lot of moisture content and the fuel system must be durable in its presence. it is my understanding that ethanol cannot be delivered by pipeline because of corrosion problems with the pipe.
People perhaps died not being able to be nourished by the output of the corn field.
The whole ethanol story is a lesson in attempting to replace oil. It’s not easy.
The idea that you can substitute oil for something that is this disastrously subsidized is just unthinkable. If a fuel will be successful, it has to be commercially viable on it’s own.
Ethanol is corrosive. Flex-Fuel cars require special parts. The biggest problem, is that plastics in a fuel system cannot by petroleum derived, or else gasoline would dissolve them. The “chemically resistant plastics are way more likely to become dried out, and brittle from ethanol. It is a loose loose situation. Also, you cannot remove metal parts completely from the fuel system. Metal parts are still needed somewhere, an nobody has created a successful plastic engine.
Regular cars don’t have parts that can withstand ethanol. Even E10 will increase failure of fuel system components. If E20 ever gets pushed in, parts will fail constantly.
There are good uses for ethanol – especially after it’s been aged in an oak barrel for several years.
Maine just switched to E-10 in November it has proven disasterous to the snowmobile industry this season. Hundreds of sleds have suffered engine problems from this ethanol blend. We are hearing that E-10 has a shelf life of 10-30 days before separation between the gasoline and ethanol occurs. Once this happens, the ethanol sinks to the bottom of the tank and the engine draws a higher blend of ethanol vs gasoline and causes pre-detonation issues with two stroke engines. Ethanol also readily absorbs moisture thus increasing water contamination in gasoline (water is also lethal to two stroke engines). Traditional dry gas additives that would solve water absorbtion problems, won’t work with ethanol. There are new additives on the market (K-100 is one that I use) that is formulated to stabilize the fuel and help remove/ prevent water absorbtion. This will be a problem for two stroke engines going forward (i.e. snowmobiles, chainsaws, outboard engines, weedwackers, etc). Any possibility that they increase the ethanol content to E-20 would be disasterous!
About the only case you can make for ethanol is as a replacement for MTBE. That’s it.
Until we’re making net-energy-positive biofuels from organic waste, stuff like this just exacerbates the problem.
@ MBella: “The biggest problem, is that plastics in a fuel system cannot by petroleum derived, or else gasoline would dissolve them.”
Sorry, but this is wrong. High-density polyethelene is the most common plastic used in fuel tanks, and it’s most certainly manufactured from petroleum (specifically ethylene, butene, hexene, and octene).
First off…why do all these many layers of municipal donut-chompers and “security-types” need Fing 4.6L V8s anyway. Most of these things spend their days idling with the heat or AC cranking, on wet or snowy roads theyre worthless. They have this invention since Bonnie & Clyde Im told…its called the RADIO. Surely a motor can be installed that sucks the taxpayers $$ at only 30mpg instead of two tanks a day.
Then…why are we burning high BTU diesel fuel to cultivate and transport low BTU ethanol? The reason that diesel is more expensive is that its THE go-to “heavy-lifting” fuel for most trains, trucks, tractors and some cars on the planet and has unrelenting worldwide demand. Ethanol OTOH will always run into the price problem of relatively abundant gasoline. So we really should be making BIODIESEL, with its lubricity and cetane improving(and possible renewable jet fuel) properties the priority.
Then Senator Obama(and many others) was made aware of this many years ago…the corn ethanol hoax needs the stake-thru-the-heart once and for all.
Well fred diesel, I’m afraid that you’re not going to see any CHANGE along the lines that you are hoping for since the ethanol backers funded a lot of money to ensure their candidate got the President’s oval office. So natch, now you/we can’t “expect” him to actually reneg on a “deal” to support ethanol, eh?
Just follow the money, my friend, and you generally see just who runs what and how and why.
This whole “real gasoline” vs. E10 issue is a charming mix of junk science and urban folklore. There is no such thing as “real gasoline” as imagined here.
Mr. Magoo:
How would you define “real gasoline”? I define it as a petroleum distillate consisting of short to medium chain hydrocarbons (e.g. hexane, septane, octane, etc.). “Real gasoline” may also contain additives in trace amounts to improve lubricity and lessen potential damage from contamination. Ethanol on the other hand is an alcohol not an alkane or alkene as you would find in “real gasoline.” It’s energy density is significantly different. At a molecular level this can be attributed to the lower energy derived from breaking the oxygen-carbon bond in alcohols versus the hydrogen carbon bond in alkanes and alkenes as well as the different densities (kg/L).
Lumbergh21 :
“Mr. Magoo:
How would you define “real gasoline”? I define it as a petroleum distillate consisting of short to medium chain hydrocarbons (e.g. hexane, septane, octane, etc.). “Real gasoline” may also contain additives in trace amounts to improve lubricity and lessen potential damage from contamination. Ethanol on the other hand is an alcohol not an alkane or alkene as you would find in “real gasoline.” It’s energy density is significantly different. At a molecular level this can be attributed to the lower energy derived from breaking the oxygen-carbon bond in alcohols versus the hydrogen carbon bond in alkanes and alkenes as well as the different densities (kg/L).”
How much ethanol may this “real gasoline” contain in normal pump blends?
Fuel made out of food is just plain stupid. That said , alcohol is not a bad fuel if it could be made and sold at a gasoline btu equivelent price. All the bad things could easily be overcome, race cars have used 100% alcohol for years, and of course Brazil. A car designed for 100% alcohol would have a much higher compression ratio and therefore more power and milage.
All the bad things could easily be overcome, race cars have used 100% alcohol for years, and of course Brazil.
Ah, Brazil. But of course one candidate repeatedly said (in the debates and on the stump, even in Iowa) that he wanted to drop the import tariff on sugar ethanol and let in sugar, and one candidate said that making us dependent on Brazilian sugar ethanol would be as bad as being dependent on oil, and that we musn’t allow foreign sugar to compete with corn ethanol and domestic sugar cane and sugar beets.
That latter candidate won the Presidency, so I wouldn’t expect any change on this any time soon.
Well said, Lumberg21.
Gasoline is gasoline. Ethanol blends are – ethanol blends.
“Sir, would you like a little arsenic in your water? It’ll only be at 10% volume.”
“Um, no thanks. I prefer water.”
I agree that government subsidized and mandated corn ehtanol is a boondoggle, but adding some ethanol to gasoline is useful as a way to boost its octane rating. The main problem is tendency of ethanol to absorb moisture. The water can corrode pipelines and some fuel system parts.
I like the idea of the process Coskata uses to make ethanol. http://www.coskata.com/Process.asp They talk about using a wide variety of politically correct sources of carbon to make syngas to feed their bacteria, but I bet coal is the cheapest feedstock. Imagine politically incorrect coal being laundered to become ethanol “biofuel”. This coal to ethanol process is the reason to tolerate some level of E-85 stupidity. The problem is an alternative fuel experiment has been forced onto the market too soon, using expensive food as the feedstock, with way too much government intervention to force us to buy it.
Butanol (a 4 carbon alcohol) is pretty much a drop-in substitute for gasoline, which would mean we could at least have fewer issues with gasoline powered cars.
Have a peek for yourselves. http://www.butanol.com
Assuming that we decide we have to eat food, I mean.
Obviously, bio-diesel is also preferable to ethanol (2-carbon) alcohol mixed fuels.
Needless to say, it was the Federal Government choosing winners (Ethanol, and ethanol producers) over losers (Butanol) – these imbeciles won’t ever learn that Central Planning did not work well for the Soviets. Why do they suppose it’ll be better for us?
George, wouldn’t it make more sense to make clean gasoline out of coal, as the South Africans do now? (SASOL). They got the technology from America, which we snagged as War Reparations from the Nazi Germans (because “we” won in North Africa and the Nazis didn’t have a choice but to make motor fuels from sources they had in Germany).
Mere speculation, of course, but I’m one of those who believes that the main reason ethanol is being pushed is because Iowa is the second step on the road to the White House.
Sure, let’s break everyone’s cars.
Mere speculation, of course, but I’m one of those who believes that the main reason ethanol is being pushed is because Iowa is the second step on the road to the White House.
Isn’t that a pisser? States like Texas, California or New York which always vote a particular way are taken for granted, while swing states like Iowa or Florida get way, way more influence then they really deserve.
Much of what’s wrong with American politics comes from kowtowing to lynchpins. Rather like Quebec and Canada, really.
The Oklahoma legislature doesn’t get things right very often, but I give them credit for requiring gas pumps that dispense ethanol blends to have notices (warnings) to disclose that fact. Now I can tell which stations to avoid. It’s pretty easy to tell which stations to patronize: usually they have big banners or signs saying they sell “100% gasoline.”
Manufacturers, AAA and other auto-related entities should be lobbying all over to require ethanol disclosure. With the current political situation, it’s probably futile to ask for a requirement for at least a minimal availability of unadulterated gasoline.
“Robert Farago:
(”no one ever died defending a corn field”).”
They did at Antietam in the Civil War.
menno:
You keep hyping butanol but it comes from….fossil fuels and corn. It’s not better than anything other alternative fuel.
And I hardly think your gas gauge is accurate enough to be drawing conclusions from.
How much ethanol may this “real gasoline” contain in normal pump blends?
I would say anything greater than 0.5% would make it just what you called it, a “blend.” Less than that, I would have no problem calling it an additive. I take it that you feel you have the intellectual high ground though. Maybe your a corn farmer, I don’t know. But, I don’t think that anybody I have seen posting on this board has any trouble identifying the difference between “real gasoline” and an ethanol blend. Take it however you want it, but their is no disputing the fact that engines designed to run on gasoline operate much more efficiently running on pure gasoline than they do running on an ethanol blend of any percentage, 5% through 100%. IF it were truly economically feasible to produce ethanol for fuel, then the use of high compression engines designed to take advantage of the stability of ethanol would be a viable replacement for gasoline engines; however, the use of ethanol in gasoline engines is simply foolish and wasteful.
Lumbergh21 :
“I would say anything greater than 0.5% would make it just what you called it, a “blend.” Less than that, I would have no problem calling it an additive. I take it that you feel you have the intellectual high ground though. Maybe your a corn farmer, I don’t know. But, I don’t think that anybody I have seen posting on this board has any trouble identifying the difference between “real gasoline” and an ethanol blend. Take it however you want it, but their is no disputing the fact that engines designed to run on gasoline operate much more efficiently running on pure gasoline than they do running on an ethanol blend of any percentage, 5% through 100%. IF it were truly economically feasible to produce ethanol for fuel, then the use of high compression engines designed to take advantage of the stability of ethanol would be a viable replacement for gasoline engines; however, the use of ethanol in gasoline engines is simply foolish and wasteful.”
I’m just asking a simple question. This “real gasoline” you speak of: How much ethanol do you suppose it contains?