Ethanol in my gas tank?

Huh? Is gas with ethanol unusual down there?

I've used 10% Ethanol almost exclusively in Miatas for 10 years and various other cars for many, many years before that. During the winter, you can't buy anything except 10% Ethanol around here. I think there are other ways to meet the gasoline oxygenation regulations (e.g. MTBE). But, AFAICT, everybody here (Minneapolis) sells 10% Ethanol.

OTOH, if you bought E85, you might have problems -- I don't think Mazda is selling any E85 compatible engines yet.

Yes.

No.

Dunno.

What's to like or not to like about it? It's fuel, plain and simple

Yes.

Absolutely not.

For what? Did they force you to pump it into your car?

Ethanol in large concentrations is known to be corrosive to some metals (including aluminum) and solvent of some gasket, hose and adhesives used in automobiles. However, the common 10% blend used to oxygenate fuel is apparently nothing at all to worry about, particularly in modern auto, like a 2005 Miata, sold in North America.

Dana

Thanks for the replies. Ethanol may be common here, I don't know - I do know I've never see a sticker on a pump before declaring that it's going into my tank.

Yes

Don't worry, the government is taking care or you.

Yes, you need to hate all the oil companies, probably your neighbors too, since Houston is a major oil center and some of them derive their livelyhood from oil.

"tooloud" wrote in news:LRc0g.100495$oL.10956@attbi_s71:

They probably charged too much, I know I paid ten cents more per gallon today than I did 4 days ago... that's probably a good reason to hate them isn't it? ;-)

What about the lobby for switching to 100% ethanol? There's not enough arable land to grow that much corn, even if we stopped growing all other crops, and didn't use corn for anything else.

I have used E-10 for the life of my 2001 miata and have no problems at all, period!

Paul

Actually the acerage required to fill our present energy need is only equal to about the area of the state of Nebraska.

Regards

And that's using current starch/sugar-based technology. Actually, the Brazilian experiment uses sugar cane--apparently it gives higher EtOH yield per acre. There is also currently being technology developed to use cellulose--I guess pre-digestion by bugs, followed by yeast fermentation.

Eric Lucas

The environmental costs of commercial sugar cane production are in the same league with Big Oil. Maybe worse, considering agrichemicals, habitat loss, and the carbon effects of burning the waste.

Hi Lanny

just a thought, but isn't burning the waste carbon neutral? as all you are doing is releasing the carbon capured by the plant as it grows. The released carbon then being recaptured by the next seasons growth ??

Does it have to be cane ? How about using Sugar Beet? No need to set fire to the plantation before harvesting and it grows in cooler climates than the cane.

regards

Boz

The sequestration of carbon in living plants is an important moderator of the greenhouse effect. If forests weren't cleared (and the slash burned) for canefields, there would be significantly less CO2 in the atmosphere.

Is that practice still widespread? When I was in Queensland a while back talking to people who did cane harvesting, they said that burning off the leaves wasn't done much anymore.

I'm not saying it's a great thing environmentally, but the original post commented that the corn that would be required to replace fossil fuels in the US would be far more acreage than we have available. I was just saying that if you re-cast the equation with sugar cane/beet or cellulose, land usage changes considerably. And, by the way, the most effective way of using cellulose for this application is probably softwood forests, which helps deal with some of the habitat and deforestation issues.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of this approach is that, in 30 years, a country that is roughly 2/3 the size (area and population) of the US has used it to achieve energy independence from the political instability of the Middle East. That, and the fact that, unlike hydrogen, it is an approach that would be easy to phase in using current distribution infrastructure.

You may carp about how Brazil did it, but in that time, what have we (the US) done to help the situation, besides somehow deciding it was a good idea for everyone and his brother to drive really unnecessary, really huge, really gas-guzzling behemoths.

Eric Lucas

Sarcasm noted, with total agreement. The ONLY way out of this is drastic global reduction of fossil fuel use.

I hope you saw Nova tonight, Eric, or can catch a rerun. Basically, the full effect of global warming is apparently being masked by global dimming--up to 30% of solar energy is being blocked by manmade particulate pollutants in the air. But wait, there's more...particulates are going down, while greenhouse gas emissions are still rising, so instead of the formerly-predicted 5C rise by 2050 we may see 10C (18F). Better rethink that beachfront property purchase--one model has the entire states of Florida and Louisiana disappearing beneath the waves by

Someone should prop the First Moron's eyelids open, Clockwork Orange-style, and make him watch this Nova episode over and over until he gets it.

An interesting show. And very scary. But I found myself challenging them on many of the points as it aired. To be fair they answered many of them as it continued. But I still wonder how well accepted this dimming theory is? And if, as they said, it suggests that the computer models for global warming were perhaps 50% off, admitting that their models are highly assumption-limited, why should we believe a further retuned model might not turn out to be

I guess the main takeaway message I get is that their is still a fair amount of uncertainty, though we obviously are having an effect. Better to err towards (true) conservatism *and do something about it*!

But can we seriously get a collective will and do something in 10 years? Sorry, I fear no chance.

Best bet may be to intentionally USE global dimming as a remedy. Find non-toxic particulates and seed the upper atmosphere to create more clouds to reflect more light to balance global warming. A very scary proposition given the likelyhood of us getting it totally wrong and the law of unintended consequences ...