10% Ethanol in Gas

I hear a lot of people up in arms about the addition of Ethanol to gasoline. Many places do it just in the wintertime, others do it year round. One of the gas stations in my little town even has a bunch of "100% REAL GAS - NO ETHANOL" signs up all over the place. With all the whining and crying about "people putting water in the gas[sic]", I've honestly never noticed a difference in operation or efficiency.

My guess is that Ethanol earned a bad reputation (1970s, maybe?) when cars used to be carbureted and timing advanced with mechanical weights and such. However, modern cars with EFI and its associated arsenal of sensors simply adapt to whatever difference it makes, but many people are still stuck with the 'ethanol sucks' mentality. True?

Reply to
phaeton
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My car still uses a carb and mechanical timing control. However, I have not noticed any particular problem with ethanol-laced fuel.

The real problem is that the benefits of ethanol are dubious, and the conversion of crops to fuel production is causing food prices to go up.

Reply to
Roger Blake

I'm not anti or pro ethanol.

Here's what I know/read/been told as to why some people like/don't like it:

You know how some cars just don't like certain brands of spark plugs? Some cars just don't seem to like ethanol.

Ethanol has a higher octane rating, so, in theory, you could make more power from it. Ethanol has less energy per unit volume than gasoline, so, in theory, you get worse fuel economy, but not always: http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:kxYYXxNR684J:

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I liken it to comparing vodka and rum. They're both alcohols you drink, but they're definitely not the same thing. Ethanol is NOT gasoline, so running a car designed for gas on ethanol may or may not work out 100% perfectly.

Lastly, the production of ethanol has caused the prices of corn to rise due to increased demand. There's just not enough land to grow it. I looked into this a couple of years ago, and IIRC I needed to grow either

2 or 20 acres of corn just to provide enough ethanol for my own use. Even if it's only 2 acres per person, that's 600 million acres of land for 300 million people worth of ethanol.

Ray

Reply to
news

My car gets 10% less mileage on 10% ethanol.

Reply to
Paul

I notice a slight decrease in mileage but ethanol sucks for numerous reasons. It is an irrational approach to energy independence which puts the burden on the tax payer and lines the pockets of agribusiness.

Reply to
Frank

The largest negative for me is my motorcycle does not have closed-loop mixture control, so at 10% ethanol its jetted too lean, stalls, and generally runs like crap.

I can rejet to adjust, but if I get gasohol at one gas stop, and 'pure' gas at another, its never going to be right.

Dave

Reply to
spamTHISbrp

10% ethanol is good. Yes, it slightly reduces the total energy of combustion a little, but it prevents knocking and it's much less hazardous than the other popular anti-knock additives like MTBE and lead.

Also, realize that ethanol dissolves a lot of rubber formulations. Run pure ethanol in your car and you'll find hoses and seals going bad right and left. A lot of people had that experience trying pure ethanol back in the seventies, too. Of course, back then it wasn't quite so bad since there weren't anywhere near as many hoses and seals to replace....

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

Ethanol is more corrosive than gasoline, and can dissolve some plastics used in gaskets and O-rings. Really old cars with copper seals and cork gaskets were okay, as well as newer cars that have ethanol-safe components in fuel system. I think the problem was in sixties and seventies vintage cars.

To me the big thing about ethanol is that it takes a lot of energy to make it, and some mfgs use petroleum to make it, in which case it doesn't save petroleum imports by that much. It has only a negligible improvement in greenhouse emissions.

There ARE process fuels other than petroleum that CAN be used to make ethanol. To me those tax breaks should be predicated on using non- petroleum process fuel.

Reply to
Don Stauffer in Minnesota

Yes, thinking about ethanol as a petroleum replacement is silly. It just doesn't work out, costing more to make than you get out of it.

But ethanol is a hell of a good petroleum _additive_ and a big improvement over other octane improvers.

Folks are working on that, but there's no commercial production. But I would agree with you.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

Not true. See Brazil. And even if you use corn (not as cost effective as sugar cane), most people who say it doesn't provide a net energy benefit ignore the fact that the residue left over after you make ethanol is a high quality animal feed, in some way superior to the original corn. And if/when a process for making ethanol from grass / wood chips / whatever is commercialized, ethanol will be relatively inexpensive.

Ed White

Reply to
C. E. White

Heard an interview with a farmer who also is a partner in an ethanol plant. He said it took 1 gal of fuel to produce 1.3 gal. Now keep in mind that gasoline also has related refining costs. He also said he was looking into switching to switch grass. The bio-fuels industry is in its infancy and its bound to get more efficient as time goes by.

Mitch

Reply to
Mitch

You get 1.3 gal of ethanol AND you have almost as much animal feed as if you fed the corn directly.

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

I saw another interesting article about the impact of the ethanol fuel lunacy going on. So much more cropland is being converted to corn to support the craze that the amount of nitrogen-rich fertilzer entering the Mississippi River has jumped significantly in the last couple of years (corn "leaks" more fertilizer into runoff water than other crops do). Cutting to the chase, the result is that the Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" of severe oxygen depletion (which drives away fish and kills shellfish that cant escape ) off the coast of Louisiana and Texas is expected to grow significantly over the next couple of years.

Thank you ever so much, "environmentalists." But I have no doubt that they'll find a way to put the blame on something other than the corn surge due to ethanol....

Reply to
Steve

Not applicable. The US is at a different latitude than Brazil. Besides, even Brazil's ethanol craze has a huge negative impact in that rainforest is being clear-cut to make room for more sugar cane fields. Not a good trade, IMO.

Reply to
Steve

You mean like municipal waste treatment plants?

Now as for crop land being converted to corn...converted from what? There is very little crop land in the Mississippi river system that isn't already devoted to either corn, cotton, or wheat. All of these crops get similar amounts of nitrogen fertilizer. The only crop that is routinely grown in these areas that doesn't get a lot of nitrogen fertilizer is soybeans, and soybean prices are even better than corn prices. In my area, people are switching to soybeans and away from corn because of the high cost of nitrogen fertilizer. I personally plan to plant less corn next year and more soybeans. Soybeans require less labor, less fertilizer, and less water. Given the current price differential, soybeans are far more profitable (at least for many farmers).

I am not sure that ethanol is the answer, but I also think that the anti-ethanol lobby is lying through their collective teeth. I know who is funding the pro-ethanol lobby. Who is funding the anti-ethanol lobby? I'd say follow the money......Who stands to loose the most if ethanol displaces a significant amount of foreign oil?

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

One more thing you should factor in is that unadjusted corn prices are still below the peak years of 1974 and 1975. If you adjust corn prices for inflation, they are still historically very low, despite the ethanol craze. More land was devoted to corn in 1974 than was devoted to corn in 2007, more nitrogen was applied to corn in 1974 than in

2007, and yet you are blaming the increase in nitrogen run-off on corn. Hmmmmm

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

Who knows, but they'll find something that they aren't responsible for and then lobby to shut it down.

They GET similar amounts, but the claim is that much more runs off from corn than the others and winds up in the river.

I don't know that there IS an anti-ethanol lobby, per se. I certainly can't make it add up to being a winner just by balancing energy in/energy out and considering the amount of cropland displaced for more corn. Too bad we CAN'T really use sugar cane, but the climate is what it is. Hey, maybe if we can get a little more global warming going, we will be able to grow sugar in Iowa! :-p

Reply to
Steve

Yes and that is pretty much the only reason that the politicians are behind ethanol. The other additives are cheaper but having additives that poison children or give people headaches don't make politicians popular.

-jim

Reply to
jim

Steve wrote in news:NaqdneWRfLX4OvfanZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@texas.net:

That is not proven to be true at all. Nitrogen runoff from corn has dramaticly dropped per acre in the last 10 years as nitrogen use per acre has dropped as better research and cost of nitrogen has changed. what really chafts my britches is town and city people fertilizing there worthless lawns with 10 times the amount of fert. I use per acre. My crop has value, your lawn is worthless other than the O2 it produces. Also more pesticides are dumped on lawns at a incorect rate that most all the farms. KB

Oh yea sign me up. I could stand some heat about now. KB

Reply to
Kevin Bottorff

Funny you should say. "They" say that won't happen, and yet the same thing happens in my case with two cars. Haven't had real gasoline in the third car yet. so can't say if it's unanimous.

Reply to
clifto

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