Effects of Ethanol fuel

I keep meticulous records on everything I do to my cars, including where I fill up, brand and octane of the gas I use, when and what kind of oil, transmission fluid, etc. used, all that good stuff. If I run Citgo 87 octane, I get 20-21 around town and 25 on the highway. When running Enmark

SC Tom

"C. E. White" wrote in news:neednQHahZQUzovVnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

as much as I am for ethanol, the btu difference is about 65% not 85. KB

I would invite you to come and drive my truck. There is a very noticeable power loss with E85.

It's like night and day.

Spdloader

I was wrong when I quoted 85% for ethanol. Still, E10 should have around 96.5% as much energy as pure gasoline. I wouldn't expect a mileage decrease of more than 3% or 4%. This is too small a decrease for people to reliably measure without keeping a logbook and averaging the results over many tank fulls of each type of fuel.

As for the correct percentage for ethanol - I guess the correct number depends on who you ask and whether you mean per gallon or per pound....but the EPA agrees with you. However there are numerous different claims as to the energy content of ethanol, gasoline, and e85. If you pick the right values for gasoline and ethanol you can come up with ethanol having as little as 61% as much energy as gasoline per gallon or as much as 78% as much energy as gasoline per gallon. The pro-ethanol people like to use 78%, the anti-ethanol people like to use 61%. Probably 65% is a reasonable number.

ethanol energy content = 75,700 to 84,600 Btu/gallon gasoline energy content = 109,000 to 125,000 Btu/gallon E85 =~ 80,000 to 94,190 BTU/gallon

If you look at the EPA fuel economy results for Flex Fuel vehicles, they list the fuel economy on gasoline and on E85. In general the difference in mileage reflects the expected decrease based on the difference in energy content of the fuels (where E85 has about 75% as much energy as gasoline). I would expect similar results to be the case for E5 and E10.

Ed

Do they specifically state that they *do* contain ethanol or that they *may*? I've noticed a lot that indicate that there's a possibility.

Murphy says their fuel definitely contains ethanol, Crown says it may (at least the station I stopped at). The Murphy station actually had some silly label that looked like an ear of corn tie wrapped onto the hose near the filler nozzle. The Crown label was less obvious (and faded, indicating that it was old).

Ed

"C. E. White" wrote in news:481762cf$1 @kcnews01:

in my own experience, this is all true in real life, except where 87 octain gasahol is used instead of 89. the 87 "can" be some nasty stuff. KB

I don't know how it works where you live, but around here 89 octane ("plus") gasoline is almost always auto-magically created at the pump by blending 87 octane ("regular") and 93 octane (premium) gasoline in the pump. There is no separate 87 gasoline delivered by the truck. In my opinion, 87 octane is the biggest rip off you can buy. Costco doesn't even bother to sell it.

Regards,

Ed White

I dont agree with the rip off aspect, but then I remember the days of Sunoco blends where you moved a selector lever on the side of the pump for the grade you wanted, and then the fuel was blended.as it was delivered. Same principal with blended scotch whiskey ; ). And around here I often see three lines feeding three tanks in the ground from the tankers. Costco and wally world by in volume and as such get a discount and realize

Whitelightning

Some intresting numbers. However there seems to be a discrepancy between what the real world drivers experience and what those numbers imply they should. Could it be that chemical reactions happen based on molecular weight and not by volume. I don't want to look it up but what is the btu of ethanol per pound vs that of Gasoline. Perhaps the story is there. I do my fuel burn calculations in aircraft based on pounds per hour not gallons. They are different. My own experience is that after I leave California and burn gas from say Arizona, my MPG goes from

"C. E. White" wrote in news:4818ae80 @kcnews01:

Here in Iowa you have reg unleaded that is 87 octain and then 89 octain 10% ethanol and then reg premium at 93. But in Minnesota they have some 10% ethanol that is 87 octain and that may or may not be crap gas. I have had both 87s at ok and horrible. KB

Ethanol has less energy than gasoline, so it will deliver lower fuel mileage.

I have the same in an '07.

The adverse part of the performance is that ethanol gets about 20-30% LESS mileage than gasoline (it puts out less power). Given that (where I was buying it) ethanol is about 10-15% cheaper, I was still making a losing deal when running ethanol but ..running "greener"

It's going to be almost as fun to watch the whole ethanol thing blow up in the eco-loser's face as it is the global warming thing.

david wrote in news:481ecf62$0$5698$ snipped-for-privacy@roadrunner.com:

this blame the ethanol for food prices is pretty poor thinking at best. The amount of corn in that box of flakes has changed about 8 cents worth, BUT the price of labor and expecially transprotation cost due to the oil prices is very much higher. so put the blame where it really is, the high price of oil. KB Also the yield rate of ethanol from corn now is a net gain not a loss.

So the price increase from $3 a bushel three years ago to over $6 a bushel today has nothing to do with the price of food? Not to mention that farmers are dropping wheat and sugar beets to grow corn instead so the price of wheat flour as more than doubled as well. Its not just corn flour, its corn oil, and corn syrup a popular sweetener used in almost everything. and yes the cost of oil which drives up transportation cost from the mill to the end user. Transportatiin costs from the farmer to the grain silo as well as for farm equipment is on the farmer and out of his profits, nether of which he has control over.

Whitelightning

I have a Ranger V6 Flex Fuel and have a similar experience. I picked up some ethanol in PA (H. C. Rinear Station) at $2.50/gallon. They said some vehicles do worse on E-85 with regard to MPG and some are better - depends on tuning (I think compression as well). The truck ran smoother at idle, still had the same power, and MPG dropped from 22 to 21 on a trip back to Virginia. In Virginia I pay $3.07 per gallon and it does not run as well as the PA ethanol. Mileage on the last tank was 18, but a lot of around town driving. I have a long trip scheduled in June and will run out the tank at freeway speeds and see what the VA ethanol will do.

I am suspecting that there are variations in production of the fuel - would be interested if anyone has any information on this.

If there were more ethanol stations, ethanol cars could be built with high compression engines to take advantage of the 105% octane ratings of the ethanol - gas engines cannot handle this high compression on 8 7 octane fuel.

An earlier poster had a good point on the overall efficiency of ethanol production (energy used to convert corn to alcohol + Govt subsidies). Similarly, what does it cost to refine oil to gas. Better yet, what does it take to generate the electricity used to charge an electric car.

I think there is some interesting work to be done regarding energy policy.

The advantage of electic cars is that they do not have an idling motor at stop lights. You can also shift the pollution output to a power plant outside the city where you live and the car is no longer putting out pollution in the city.

There are additional costs to using energy besides just the cost of production.