Alcohol Mixed Gasolone... WHY?!?!

ADM

Where's the proof that it lowers gas mileage? I have run ethanol blend gasoline in my vehicles over the years (13 vehicles in 10 years including import/domestic/exotic cars) and have noticed no measurable difference in gas mileage between blend and regular petroleum based gasoline.(just for the record I track nearly every fill for gas mileage.) The main reason I use ethanol blend (usually 10% blended with 90% regular gasoline) is that it offers me increased octane for a lower price, in fact if I want 93 octane or higher street legal fuel I have to buy ethanol blend where I live.

Another potential advantage is that (and this is a guess, not a carved in stone fact so someone feel free to correct me here) ethanol would be able to withstand colder temperatures before icing up the gas line than would petro based gasoline (yes, it gets that cold in ND/MN/MT/Canada, etc...)

Liberals don't look at all the effects of what they do. They don't anticipate things like that as there's no incentive for them to do so. If it accomplishes their initial goal but creates 10 new worse problems, they're happy and will pass more legislation to "fix" the 10 new problems (and create a whole set of new ones beyond those) - job security for the politicians by keeping problems around so we will "need" them to save us from "catastrophe".

IMO... 8^)

Bill Putney (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with "x")

It is the new political science. Alcohol does lower mileage (look at it as partially burnt hydrocarbon) and does not increase octane at a supposedly decrease in pollution. US was pressed by alcohol producers and farmers to legislate an oxygenate requirement for gasoline to decrease pollution. MTBE actually does a better job and also raises octane but it was discovered that trace in water causes off taste. Too much alcohol in gasoline will separate. You need to inventory various grades of gasoline and this means separate pipelines and tanks. Production of alcohol for fuel is probably negative energy intensive since you must farm the land, carry grain to alcohol production, etc. Gasoline would be cheaper without oxygenates. California, home of many environmentalists, was petitioning EPA to get rid of oxygenate requirement because refinery's can make gasoline with the environmental requirements without oxygenates. Frank

The largest agricultural company in the U.S. They make a lot of money producing alcohol to sell as a fuel.

I think race cars burn methanol. They also add nitro methane. You have to engineer around the fuel similar to what happened with Freon replacement in air conditioners. Methanol may be cheaper than gasoline because of the tax situation. I believe they have cars in Brazil that run entirely on ethanol. George Olah, Noble prize winning chemist, has been toting methanol for fuel cells. Frank

If the idea SOUNDS good, it must BE good, right?

That's the problem with many (most?) environmentalists. They have no background in science or engineering so they latch on to these ideas that actually cause more harm than good.

"Hydrogen is a clean fuel!" Sure, but where do you get it? It may be plentiful in the universe on average, but here on earth where we live it's not. "You can get it from water!" Sure, by splitting water, which requires you put in as much energy as you get out even if you could do it with 100% efficiency. "Let's use ethanol!" The money made from ethanol production comes from tax subsidies and it doesn't save the planet because the energy you put into making it exceeds the energy you get out of it, even without counting the sun's contribution. Once you pump the water, drive the tractor, and take it to market you've used up more fossil fuel than the ethanol will replace. It's a net loser on paper, but it LOOKS like you're saving the planet and that's all that really matters, right?

-DanD

Thank God that conservatives DO though. Iraq is proof of that.

Yeah, I kinda wonder that about hydrogen too. However, it IS clean in the sense that it burns very cleanly in the car and the facility that manufactures hydrogen can also be very clean. In terms of the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere, maybe not. Although making hydrogen with solar-generated electricity is pretty effective use of solar, because it doesn't matter that the sun doesn't always shine. Not that there's gonna be enough solar to manufacture that much hydrogen anytime soon.

Also, burning gasoline is incredibly inefficient. Hydrogen- generating plants and hydrogen burning fuel cells can be extremely efficient.

Even if neither ethanol nor hydrogen is that much more efficient than gasoline, it still may be a good idea, for political reasons, if it helps to reduce our reliance on mid-east oil.

John

Excellent example, John! When you look at *all* of the consequences of going in vs. not going in (there's no option in between), I'm very glad we went in.

Funny - you don't hear a peep about human rights violations around the world from liberals anymore - they apparently have no problems with a country's leader dipping live people into acid vats or into tree grinders - sometimes head first, sometimes feet first, as the whim strikes them. I guess that's what "progressive" means.

Bill Putney (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with "x")

That makes me wonder about fuel cells. For a long time I've seen al those "energy efficent" and "clean burning" slogans attached to it. I'm no expert. I do know, however, that to build a fuel cell, you need to get pure 02 and H2 and compress both. It seems to me that both processes require quite a bit of energy. So I am trying to understand what kind of net energy efficiency are fule cells purport to possess?

DK

Well yes, actually there WAS an in-between option, kinda.

That option would have been to build an international consensus to go in, instead of doing our best to piss off all the allies we've had for the last 100 years or more by making stupid and arrogant pronouncements. And then going in all alone, arguably illegally, and certainly doing a great job of squandering all the good will this country has built up over the last century or so and especially the sympathy after the Sept11 attacks. And if we HAD done it that way, we'd have a bunch of other countries helping us to clean up the mess we made, instead of flailing about at doing it all alone. Even many people who supported the war (with or without international consensus) cannot believe the incompetence we've brought to the reconstruction job.

John

You can only believe that if you believe that the UN resolutions and the UN itself are irrelevent (and maybe that's the point, eh?). 12 years and how many (apparently meaningless?) resolutions?

And then

No - we'd still be playing meaningless games doing exactly what the murdering Islamists would have wanted us to do. Feel-good solutions with no progress whatsoever. If I have a choice between the so-called good will of the French or the safety of my family, guess which one I will choose every time. BTW, did you hear about the French town making an honorary citizen of a cop killer that they refuse to extradict back to the U.S.? Sorry - I don't need their good will.

, instead of

Only idiots would have expected a cakewalk. Check the history of any war on the time for re-establishing order after it's over. There are always chaotic events that are predictable only in the sense that they will happen and will not be predictable. That's the nature of war.

Bill Putney (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with "x")

Also, we're growing food for CARS not people, plus it can't compete if it wasn't SUBSIDIZED AND it produces FORMALDEHYDE when burned.

your tax dollars at work.

Carl

libertarians: the >

THANK YOU! i'm a pretty avid environmentalist, but i'm also a scientist, so i'm always fighting with the other environmentlists. I've always hated the ethanol in gas solution to a non-problem. It reduces gas milage, ruins fuel filters (collects water), and takes way more energy to convert corn into ethanol than you get out of it by burning. (btw - the ideal solution, imho, bio-diesel, but that's a whole different topic). way off topic - you have the people afraid of nuclear power, however WAY more radioactive waste is put into the air by burning coal than ever is release in the lifetime of a nuclear plant.

mike

Yeah, they cut down the rainforest to grow food for cars.

Carl

Frank Logullo wrote:

You mean like in Vietnam?

-DanD