Use of ethanol in Chrysler products

On this one point (i.e., if all you're looking at is power potential and turn a blind eye to the economics), might the answer be that the greater power is obtained by pumping more volume thru? In other words, maybe you can get the power by using more of it (assuming you have the capability of burning a higher concentration of it than gasoline), but of course this further hurts the economics of using it.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my adddress with the letter 'x')

Reply to
Bill Putney
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So to be fair, that, by definition, means that you own stock in ADM, right?

Don't be ridiculous. There are concentration thresholds - oh - and don't forget time of exposure. Thru the early 90's, fuel systems were designed - yes designed - to handle up to about 15% ethanol. Whats the % content in beer, and how long will it be in that keg. And at what temperature?

A car manufacturer worries about problems that develop in the fuel system after 2 or 3 years exposure. How long are you letting your beer sit in that plastic cup and what's the % content of alcohol?

Is that not by a higher volumetric flow rate - IOW you might get the power, but what happens to the mpg and per-mile cost?

See others' cpmmentrs about artificial subsidies. Why do you (intentionally?) ignore that factor?

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my adddress with the letter 'x')

Reply to
Bill Putney

You can't ignore that ethanol is an oxygenate, and as such, there will always be oxygen left over.

Reply to
aarcuda69062

Alcohol at 4-6% concentration is a lot different than alcohol at 85% concentration, so that proves nothing.

Reply to
Matthew Russotto

You've put your finger right on the shell game being played here. The discussion about ethanol restarts whenever gasoline prices increase; it is a discussion rooted in fuel economics. Blinkered ethanol proponents would like very much for us not to realise that the "extra power potential" they crow about (or, since it's the same thing, the ability to "make up for the lost power") comes at a very steep penalty in real terms of miles per gallon.

DS

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

You read it on the interweb; it must be true. They don't let people put up self-serving or false stuff on the interweb.

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

The big oil company's *what*? You forgot a noun. Or perhaps you're one of these idiots who thinks that the purpose of the apostrophe is to provide helpful advance warning of an impending "s".

Any company that loses sight of its customers' best interests soon goes out of business. Witness GM.

...and even more power and even better economy on gasoline, which contains more energy.

So you dispute the existence of heavy Federal subsidies for fuel ethanol in the US?

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

yeah, OK.

corrosive.

Right... like beer is 85% ethanol and sits in the keg or cup for years at a time.

mileage.

Nobody's disputing that an engine optimized for ethanol can make good power. that's not the issue.

economics

Still haven't addressed the issue that ethanol has fewer BTUs per unit volume than gasoline, I see.

When ethanol costs less to produce and distribute on a *per BTU* basis, people will start using it.

nate

Reply to
N8N

Does this somehow advance your argument? I guess it is supposed to run me down some? Very clever, you certainly put me in my place.

GM's going out of business? Don't think so stern.

Only true if the gasoline has the same octane as ethonol. You do realize I'm comparing ethanol to pump unleaded not racing fuel.

Don't know. Don't care.

Reply to
Rick Blaine

It'd sure be refreshing if you posted something you actually had a clue about, stern. I know you know next to nothing on the subject or you would bring up the very real drawbacks of using ethanol. None of the detractors so far has mentioned any of the real problems with ethanol other than the corrosiveness of the fuel. I'm done here, none of you here has any real interest in the subject all you're concerned with is spewing forth your uniformed bullshit opinions.

Reply to
Rick Blaine

It's such a pity you're forced to read my posts. How do you cope?

Ah, yes, those bollocky mysterious very real drawbacks of using ethanol that *only* you know about. Mm. I'm sure you're refraining from elucidation only because you've been unable to find worthy ears, as it were, in this forum. Good of you.

which, actually, doesn't exist.

Would that it were so. You've said the very same thing and flounced off to sulk...how many times has it been, Rick, over the years? I've lost count.

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

You, uh, don't get out much, there, do ya?

...says the man who claims to have an overspanning knowledge of the subject, and a deep interest in it.

G'night, Gracie.

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

My opinions wear no clothes. 8^)

We were just discussing the inferior energy content (to get the same power, the mpg and any chance of economy has to go down, so I don't think we only brought up one thing.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my adddress with the letter 'x')

Reply to
Bill Putney

Do we have to quote every post before making a response? Seems like all I am doing is scrolling to the bottom of massive threads for a two sentence comment. :)

Reply to
THOR

Anyone who disagrees is either close minded and

Or simply understands that a fuel that takes almost as much energy to produce as it releases when burned can never be a viable primary fuel source...

Reply to
Steve

What crawled up your backside and rotted your brain? Its not a "bullshit opinion" that *thanol contains about 60% as much energy per unit volume as gasoline, which itself contains significantly less per unit volume than diesel fuel. Any nitwit can look those numbers up in a CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, and it follows DIRECTLY from those numbers that in order to produce the same amount of power, you have to burn more gasoline than you do diesel, and more *thanol than you do gasoline.

It has nothing to do with the "power potential" of the fuel at all. Hell, nitromethane (the fuel used by Top Fuel dragsters) contains less energy per unit volume than *ANY* of the fuels we've been discussing by a huge factor, but that doesn't prevent dragsters from producing thousands of horsepower from 500 cubic inch engines! They just have to burn a LOT of liquid fuel- in fact the air/fuel ratio is so low that they run right on the edge of hydraulically locking the cylinders all the time.

So sure, you can get the exact same horsepower out of an engine optimized for *thanol as you can out of a similar engine optimized for gasoline, but a) the *thanol engine will burn nearly twice as many gallons per unit time at the same power level, and b) some of the changes needed to fully optimize the engine can't be realized if the engine management system must be able to operate on either gasoline or

*thanol.
Reply to
Steve

Electronic engine management systems are able to sense percentages of gasoline and either methanol or ethanol, I don't know if they can differentially discern ethanol from methanol and either from gas accurately. Certainly spark and fuel can be varied accordingly, but compression ratio cannot. Optimizing an engine for high alcohol fuels means running a higher compression ratio, which can slightly compensate for the lower heat energy of alcohols, but not enough to make a colossal difference.

Methanol is quite corrosive unless fuel systems entirely fabricated from certain plastics, stainless steel, or certain high energy metals are used. Race cars using methanol usually are purged of fuel in storage.

It's not a huge challenge to build a hobby vehicle running on ethanol or methanol if you want to tinker, IF you don't need to meet emissions regs. There is a E85 vendor in my area and he has several street rod, drag racer, etc customers, and a guy with a Alfa Romeo powered vintage road racer with Webers that buy it all the time.

Reply to
calcerise

If I were rebuilding an old car I would make it a 100% alcohols-proof fuel system. The old tanks can be sloshed with a compound that is alcohol-proof, you run stainless or Monel fuel lines, and use an alcoholproof electric fuel pump and carb or aftermarket EFI. Eventually we will have alcohol blends, like it or not.

Reply to
calcerise

Steve - there IS one thing you are not taking into account. The thermal efficiency of a gasoline engine is abyssimal. A lot of "power" goes out the exhaust pipe, and a lot more out of the radiator. If more heat could be kept in the engine and converted to actual useable mechanical power,a lot more horsepower hours could be produced by a gallon of any fuel.

Gasoline has several limitations - the largest being it's octane rating. Run a gasoline engine too hot and the fuel detonates - and kills the engine in short order. Keep the expanding gasses in the cyl long enough to convert more heat to power, and the engine gets too hot. Force feed the air into the engine, or run higher compression ratios (which also get more power out of each unit of fuel burned) and you are back into detonation again.

An Ethanol powered engine - like a propane powered engine, has the advantage of a motor octane rating in the 130 range - allowing enhanced valve timing, higher compression ratios, advanced ignition timing, and a hotter running engine - all of which increase the specific power output of the engine for the same amount of fuel burned.

If a gasoline engine is 33% thermally efficient and gets X number of HP hours per gallon of gasoline burned, and an ethanol engine can run at 66% efficiency, even with only 60% as much energy per gallon, the ethanol engine will produce (2X)x.6, 0r 1.2X HP hours per gallon of ethanol. Granted, you might not get 66% efficiency, but even at 50% you get (1.5X)x.6, or 90% of the power you would get from the gas engine.

And IIRC, Ethanol is better than 60% as "powereful" as gasoline.

Reply to
nospam.clare.nce

You are sort of right. But you haven't looked at the numbers.

Direct injections now coming into existence solve this problem for gasoline engines; allowing high compression.

You don't know how to calculate thermal efficiency. The difference is much smaller than you imagine and wrote above. I doubt that it even approaches 5%. Thermal efficiency is defined as the difference between initial and final temperature. In both cases above, the final temp Tf (outside temp) is the same. Combustion (initial) temp Ti is directly related to compression ratio (we're measuring the amount of work extracted by the gas expansion).

Unfortunately, the temperatures are measured in degrees absolute (Kelvins) so the combustion temp difference between the two is quite small - 50K or so - so the difference in efficiency is small: Ti/(Ti-Tf).

Most thermal power are no better than about 40% efficient; internal combustion engines (gas, diesel, whatever) are less.

Floyd

Reply to
fbloogyudsr

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