Is this possible to do aftermarket? I understand that converting a car to run alcohol fuels is just a matter of beefing up the materials in the fuel system since alcohol fuels are more corrosive, and tweaking the ECM. I' m thinking that ethanol and methanol will become commonly availabe within about 4 yrs.
geronimo wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
All the rubber components need to be changed to handle the highly corrosive effects of ethanol. This is well beyond anything the home user will be able to afford to do. You want an E85-capable car? Sell the Corolla and buy an E85 vehicle ready-made.
But don't act too soon. I think you'll find ethanol to eventually suffer the very same fate it did in the 1920s, and for the very same reasons. What's that quote George Santayana is famous for?
Maybe this is the doom you refer to. There's a store here called "Mileage Master". It should be obvious from the name that the store sells nothing but BBQ grills, accessories, cookbooks and propane. During the 1973 oil embargo, the owner decided to get into the NEXT BIG THING: Cars that would run on propane or natural gas or whatever the idea was. I guess it wasn't such a next big thing. The owner says the business lasted about two years in that incarnation, supported only by refilling propane tanks.
"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote in news:Hf0%j.6382$ snipped-for-privacy@fe103.usenetserver.com:
The lesson to learn here is the one taught by a superbly run company that is solidly grounded in the realities of a real world, though one that's a minor player in the oil business: Exxon.
Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson has stated in no uncertain terms that conventional petroleum will continue to be the world's primary source of energy for at least the next 80 years.
Petroleum is safe, cheap, and efficient like nothing else is. And this in spite of the fact that 85% of the world's oil supply is directly controlled, produced and sold by governments.
"Tegger" ...
"Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it," from Reason in Common Sense, the first volume of his The Life of Reason.
I wish I could comment on your Ethanol opinion since I talked to a billionaire in a related oil/gas business about 2 months ago but I have Ethanol stock so I have financial interests to protect : ( .
Jeff makes some excellent points here. In addition to what he said, the energy cost for producing a gallon of ethanol from grain is the energy equivalent of about 1.5 gallons of ethanol. Ethanol doesn't have the energy density of either gasoline or diesel so you will burn more of it per mile. Also, if you are going to get the most out of E85 fuel, you need a much higher compression ratio than you can run using straight gasoline.
As Jeff said, don't buy stock in ethanol producers.
Jack
Jeff, read "Energy Victory" by Dr. Robert Zubrin. He is a brilliant engineer. Sure, if the CEO of Exxon has his way, we will be dependent on gasoline forever. Today it costs about an additional $150.00 to produce a flex-fuel car...that's all. The oil companies will lobby HARD against any initiatives to mandate that all cars manufactured be flex-fuel, you can bet on that. OPEC willl lean hard on their bought-out lackeys in govt. also to vote against any such mandate. But there is a reason why race cars swtitched to alcohol fuel years ago. Yes, a tank full of ethanol or methanol has to be about 40% bigger to go the same distance as gasoline, but alcohol fuels for race cars are far superior both in performance and from a safety standpoint. Brazil did not find it hard to produce cars that run great on alcohol fuels, and Brazil has been 100% energy independent for a number of years. They switched to 100% alcohol fuel, derived from sugar cane. THe president at the time just made a decree that all gas sations will install pumps for alcohol, and that was what they did to jump-start the convesion from gasoline to alcohol fuel. We could produce alcohol fuels here from any number of crops that are not in the food chain. In the case of methanol, it can be produced from ANY biomass at all. Also we have enough coal and natural gas reserves in this country to last for hundreds of years, and through a steam reformation process, either coal or natural gas can produce methanol. Back in the 80s a lady engineer with Ford Co. (after the first Arab oil embargo) perfected a small car engine that ran on pure alcohol, and there was a state agency in Ca. that ran a large fleet of these vehicles with great success. Now there is an engine design that is far simpler, as a special sensor to detect how much alcohol is in the fuel ahead of combustion is no longer required. Hydrogen power for cars is a total hoax, one that the Bush administration has bought into...but alcohol-fuel cars is a technology that works very well, and we should convert all US vehicles as soon as possible, as this will destroy the power of OPEC, before they suck all the wealth out of this country. It will also stop Saudi Arabias' funding of world-wide Muslim terrorism, by de-funding them.
On Thu, 29 May 2008 00:06:14 GMT, Retired VIP wrote:
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