E85 Fuel

[Darin]

What are the pros and cons of using this fuel? I realize you have to have a vehilcle that is approved to use it, but have you heard anything good or bad? We don't have stations here in Colorado but I have seen them in North Dakota and Minnesota.

 

[ShoerFast]

Darin

I think that it's a good start, but to milk the idea that vehicles can burn as a FFV (flexible fueled vehicle) is not going to pan out.

To use ethanol best would be to start from the ground up.There just isn't as much heat in alcohol ,Retroing a currant engine will need about 135% more E85 fuel to do the same work.,, It can take a lot more compression , have a lot hotter cams, and much larger fuel delivery ratio, then gas can, and still make emission standards.

Compression ratios of 12 : 1 (or better,,,, like as much as 17 :1) and air fuel ratios of as much as 6 : 1 are more ideal

Corn is going for about $2.10 a bushel right now,,,, burning it in out rides will take some of our addiction on crude off,,,,, but as for me, I hear that we have plenty of domestic oil that we hadn't tapped yet?

If any one thinks that it will help the so called "green-house" effect is in the wrong class,,,,, just fermenting the fuel makes tons of co2.

Any competition is good, having just one fuel (crude) is sealing our price, high. But burning some E85 and some LP or Propane will send a message to the Saudis I'm sure!

Kevin

 

[bwalker]

Corn is going for about $2.10 a bushel right now,,,, burning it in out rides will take some of our addiction on crude off,,

Not really as it takes mucho crude oil to produce ethanol.

 

[ShoerFast]

Not really as it takes mucho crude oil to produce ethanol.

Bwalker

What would happen to the alingment of the cosmo, if they used ethanol to produce ethanol ?


Sort of like a firewood burning firewood saw?

Kevin

 

[skwerl]

If the oil companies wanted to drill in ANWR, we would be drilling in ANWR. They are just as happy leaving American reserves untapped while they make their money off the Saudi oil. In 40-50 years when the middle East is running out of oil, the oil companies will still have the ANWR oil to sell for continued successful business. If they tap ANWR now, the middle East oil will just go to China or other markets. This is called "Having your cake and eating it, too".

In the meantime, there are plenty of people screaming about 'shortages' to keep crackpot ideas like Ethanol afloat (with heavy government subsidies).

 

[bwalker]

What would happen to the alingment of the cosmo, if they used ethanol to produce ethanol

Not possible as it currently takes more BTU to make ethanol than are yielded by the ethanol itself.

 

[ShoerFast]

In the meantime, there are plenty of people screaming about 'shortages' to keep crackpot ideas like Ethanol afloat (with heavy government subsidies).

Skwerl Says it best ,
With the Government involvement, or throwing money into the mix thinking it will get better will choke the chicken.

I know of 2 Ethanol plants very near home, back home in Minnesota.

One is owned by an investment company, they buy distressed corn (moldy corn that cant be used for anything else) They distill using N-Gas,,,,, and would lose money, if it weren't for the grants they run on!

The other is owned by a good friend of my families.

Both are based on early German designs for Gin Distilling,,,,, but the friends of mine use the corn they grow, and the cob it's self to do it's own distilling,,,,, there plant is making money, and everything they run is running on Ethanol.

They installed the plant when there family farm was paid off, and the land started to be more valuable then what it was worth to farm,,,,, in other words, so they wouldn't need to pay tax's.

There are a lot of methods to extract the Ethanol using higher initial cost systems, like using centrifuge and vacuum pumps.

But thinking inside the box will render words like,,,,

Not possible

Kevin

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

Not possible as it currently takes more BTU to make ethanol than are yielded by the ethanol itself.

Same with hydrogen. Yet they move ahead with these half baked ideas.
I'm sure OPEC loves these ideas. For evey gallon of ethanol we want, we need to use 1.5 gallons of gasoline.

 

[bwalker]

,,,,, there plant is making money, and everything they run is running on Ethanol.

Making money in that the have a garanteed market form EPA legislation and government subsidies?
The economics aside, ethanol is a lousy fuel for a variety of reasons.

 

[ShoerFast]

Making money in that the have a garanteed market form EPA legislation and government subsidies?
The economics aside, ethanol is a lousy fuel for a variety of reasons.

There is no doubt that it's a weaker fuel, as I had mentioned in my first post of the topic.
The main drivers behind the idea may have came from someone that had a pencil that grew on a tree,,,,,,, corn is a renewable resource, at current production rates of about 150 - 180 bushels an acre, it could fuel a portion of our rides. If they revamped the process that it takes to distill it!

I got involved with converting there first field tractor to burn Ethanol in 1984 , there wasn't much written about it back then. My math was off when I had the heads milled and found domed pistons from a diesel that fit the hole and rods. The bad math gave us well over 15:1 compression after CC'ing the assembly,,,, it ran way too good!

As it never had the power it had before, it went from a 5 - 16" bottom plow to a 3 - 18", there cost in making the Ethanol was negligible and could run it on the cheep. There were a ton of things that needed to be done as time had its toll with everything the fuel would touch, it did run very clean, stared nicely and they liked it!

But as far as the Government involvement, they were there as the whole proses started,,,, But they milked cows before the still went in,,,,, you cant enjoy a glass of milk with out government subsidies, or have your mommy dress you with out the government subsidies, if your wearing with cotton, booties, tighty Whites or jeans, as the way I understand it, they think American cotton would have been broke years ago.
Chances are that most everything you will do to day had one thing or another been effected by the government,,, just look at trains hauling freight,,, they should have been broke years ago!

Ethanol is a weak fuel, but it's here, personally, I would be racing propane if NHRA would let me run a pressurized tank down there track, I had easily burned over 10K gallons of propane fuels for road use since 1996,,, running some of the steepest hills and highest roads in America.

I'm guilty of never writing a letter to the EPA legislators, and wouldn't gripe while I'm wearing cotton and dumping milk over my Wheaties, any way.

Bottom line, in Homer Alaska, it's now illegal to feed the Bald Eagles, as there finding that true Americans don't fair well with handouts,,,, maybe the Liberals (the primary subsidy legislators) could learn something here?

Kevin

 

[bwalker]

Coal will be made into gasoline via the Fischer-Trope process long before Ethanol is used exclusivly as a fuel. The break even point on this process is about $30 per barrel.
Then there are the massive tar sand/shale deposits across the western USA that hold more petroleum than Saudi Arabia and Kuwait combined.

 

[ShoerFast]

Darin

Knowing and doing work for a coulpe people that work for the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden.
I should be able to get the inside skinny of there impression of Bush's vist on Tuesday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060220/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_energy

Should be sort of intresting?

Kevin

 

[Weatherby]

It doesn't take a 1.5 gallons of gas to make a gallon of ethanol. There was one major article stating this and he left out other energy benefits you get from making ethanol.

Either way, the process is being refined. New fermentation processes are being developed, and other materials other than corn are being used. By no means will ethanol solve our oil crisis, but its a start.

If they were serious about it, the government could force all car manufacters to switch to diesel engines and develope diesel/electric hybrids. They wouldnt even have to bother with ethanol to reduce the amount of middle east imports by 75%. Add biodiesel into the mix and it's even better. Diesel is more efficient and requires less refining. Biodiesel in real world test actually had lower NOX emissions than were found in the lab experiments before anyone trys to go that route.

 

[bwalker]

I do not know about any new process for ethanol production, but Brazil tried to switch over to ethanol and it was a huge failure.
IMO like weatherby said I think it would be much better to switch most of the cars over to diesels and diesel hybrids.How about a tax credit to encourage this? What about coming up with a emmissions laws that take into account fuel economy and emmissions geneated by manufacture of the fuel? Diesel is a clear winner if this was the case, but instead the most efficiant engines we have are villified by the EPA and are actually getting worse economy with each successive set of EPA emmissions regulations.

 

[donho]

bio diesel

We have a company here in pittsburgh that collects trimmings/ guts etc from slaughter houses all over the area and renders it down into bio diesel they have I think about ten trucks or so and run most of them on bio plus charge a nice fee for picking up the waste I wonder what they do for road tax?? my diesel benz gets 30mpg and weights in at 3800lbs wished detroit made a car to compare I would buy it !

 

[DDM]

Older diesel engines wont stand up to biodiesel from what i have read.It eats the seals up in the injector pumps.

 

[motordog80]

e85

e85 is equivelent to 103 octain gas not the gallon and an half. The problems are it burns faster and hotter than gasoline.

 

[bwalker]

E-85 is higher in octane, but I do not know about 103. It also most certainly does not burn faster.
It does have much less BTU per lb than gasoline and asa result vehicles run on E-85 burn much more fuel.

 

[motordog80]

e85

you are correct on the btu's, aslo diesel has nearly twice the btu's of ethanol. Because it burns longer. I am correct in saying ethanol burns faster, look up rate of combustion of ethanol... or better yet try it out.

 

[bwalker]

Because it burns longer. I am correct in saying ethanol burns faster, look up ... or better yet try it out.

Not because it burns longer or faster, but because it has a higher energy content,