Ethanol conversion?

I'll have to ask.

And if I drive a little puddlejumper that gets 65MPG on low octane pump gas, I run cheaper than you per mile, AND pollute less.

** Posted from **

Hi,

Well, I guess all that's left is to gather around the campfire and all sing "Kumbaya!"

You pollute less? What were the emissions test results before the switch and what were they after? Were the emissions tested for "new" polluting compounds that could result from the burning of ethanol vs. gasoline?

You cause less money to flow to bad people? Who ARE these bad people?

You get higher torque and higher horsepower? What were the figures on both before the switch, and what are they afterward?

You get a 0-60 time under 12.5 seconds? What was the time before the switch? What was the car rated for when it was new?

What's that funny feeling in my shorts? Surely it's not someone trying to blow greenhouse gases up me bum?

Not to belittle your efforts and whatever interesting results may come from them, but I haven't seen anything that really convinces me you've improved upon your previous lot in life. How 'bout some numbers?

Rick

On May 21, 4:36=A0am, Rick Courtright wrote: =2E...

Rick, I don't have all those numbers. I, like you, approach these matters with a "show me" attitude. Even if I had the numbers, you should not be persuaded by them. It is characteristic of this wonderful medium we are using that you shouldn't trust anybody. You have no way of knowing that I am not a teen-aged boy making all this up for the pleasure of fooling you.

Actually, I am very old, a retired physics professor who is worried about the world my grandchildren will live in. We are not running out of oil, but we are running out of cheap oil. When gasoline goes to $15 per gallon, we won't be driving around very much unless we have an alternative to gasoline. You won't be getting food at your supermarket trucked all the way across the country. You may have to move out into the coutryside to live near a farmer who will sell you part of his crop. Our world is going to change drastically. The population of the US and the world is likely to shrink.

So that is why I am interested in the potential of biofuels to mitigate the disaster that awaits us. I cannot persuade you to use ethanol. I am not that powerful. What I can do is to point you to sources you may trust slightly that will make you willing to try some things for yourself. You will be the best witness to their truth.

First, google "ethanol Brazil" and read their 30-year history. Brazil is requiring gas stations to provide ethanol/gasoline at 24% concentration even for unmodified cars. There are many flex-fuel cars there that can burn E85. Brazil produces ethanol from sugar cane at about 83 cents per gallon. (We could too, someday.) Sugar cane is a much better feedstock than corn.

Next, google "E85 Albany NY". You will see a list of gas stations in the state that sell E85. Notice that there are several sources that an ordinary person cannot buy from; "no public access". That is because the state of NY has fleets of vehicles that run on E85 and they use these depots to keep them running.

Then look online for the acronym NYSERDA, which stands for NYS Energy Research and Development Agency, and you will find, if you look hard enough, that NYS will subsidize you, the gas station owner, with many thousands of dollars to install an E85 pump.

I understand that Minnesota has gone much farther than NY to push for ethanol use, but NY is where I live and what I know more about.

There are some states that have no E85 stations. If your state has none, you may not be able to do the experiment I am going to describe. It is what I did. I'm glad I did.

If your car is no longer under warranty, you may be bold enough to try putting a little E85 into its tank. My experiment found that a concentration of 40% (E40) is too much; my check-engine light came on after 70 miles. I wasn't worried, because I had seen on YouTube a breakdown (by a college lab) of an engine that had run 102,000 miles on straight E85 without any conversion attempt, and it was fine. (Alcohol burns cooler than gasoline, so the threat of engine burnout because of fuel leanness was reduced.)

I just added a few gallons of E10 to reduce the concentration to E29. Within a few miles, the light went out.

You don't have to do this with a full tank, as I did. If you are more cautious, you can try with a smaller amount, as long as you can estimate how much gasoline is in your tank when you add the E85.

I was surprised at how peppy my car seemed to be. It is an old car --

1999 Outback -- but it seemed to be young again and eager to run. I wish I had measured its 0-60 time before, but it was too late. Maybe somone else has a 1999 OB with 150,000 miles on it, well maintained, and will do this measwurement. Otherwise, I'll do it some day. It is not trivial to change fuels, because you always have some of the old fuel left in the tank diluting what you put in.

I didn't expect the improvement in performance, or I would have made the "before" measurements.

Since then I have learned (and you can verify online) that E85 has an octane rating of 104 -- a fuel with higher octane than premium but costing less than regular. If you search around a bit, you will find other people who report an improvement in performance. In fact, 100% methanol is a racing fuel. But even in my old car, the ECU is smart enough to advance the timing a lot so as to take advantage of the higher octane.

You will get lower mpg's, but if the price of E85 is like what I am paying -- 25% less than regular -- you will likely be getting more miles per dollar. We are still in the early days of E85.

Now I have converted my car to flex-fuel with a little box that streches the pulse to the fuel injectors. I am up to E60 now, and the next fill will take me close enough to call it E85. (See Change2E85.com. Their converter is now EPA approved, they say. Their customer service is excellent.) The conversion is reversible, so if I buy a new car, I will move the converter to it.

This post is long enough now. If you are as motivated as I am to solve the liquid fuel problem we are facing, you will take a chance, try my experiment, and draw your own conclusions. You are your best persuader.

Uncle Ben

It's a 928 from 1979. I haven't actually measured its 0-60 time, so I should not have made the hasty claim. But it sure snaps my head back when you floor it.

Ben

According to

928 with std. transmission has acceleration 0-100 km/hr: 5.9 sec.That's 62.1 mph. At constant acceleration that makes 0-60 mph: 5.7 sec

I seem to recall formaldehyde being a 'new' pollutant from alcohol? Not sure anyone knows what that will do, unless the Brazilians have some data. Even IF ethanol is not hugely water intensive to make. IF it has no transportation issues, IF it's 'really' cheaper to produce, etc. It should not require a subsidy from ME to provide experimental fuel to someone else. Let it compete (btw - if there are subsidies for fossil fuels, I'm equally opposed to those) in the open market. I'm just not convinced. Ethanol has only about 65% the BTU per volume as gasoline it CAN NOT be as 'efficient'. Either range or mileage MUST suffer. For the same reason diesel has better mileage than gas - more BTU/volume.

No question it can be made to work, and perhaps cellulosic production will alleviate the food/fuel problem as well as some of the production costs and water usage issues. IT STILL will only be a stop gap measure unless combined as a hybrid (or???) with a technology capable of regenerative braking(compressed air, hydraulic accumulators,electricity). Of those technologies, it's hard to imagine our great grandchildren NOT using electricity as the prime mover for personal autos.

Carl

=2E.. It [ethanol}

In general, Carl, I agree. But there is a chicken and egg problem here. Why offer E85 for sale if there are so few FFV's out there? And why buy an FFV if there are so few places to buy E85. The Brazilian solution to this problem in the 1970-1980 period was dictatorial: require stations to offer ethanol. Today they are energy independent.

That would never fly here. In New York State, they offer a subsidy to stations to install E85 pumps. So here in the Capital District (pop.

1 million +) there are four stations offering E85 and one more "coming soon." In some states there are none at all.

True if you only count miles per gallon as your measure. I get 15% less mpg than on gasoline. But since E85 sells for 25% less than gasoline, I am ahead on miles per dollar: 13% ahead, if you calculate it correctly.

E85 also has an octane rating of 104 -- higher than premium, cheaper than regular. When cars are designed to exploit this, the fuel penalty will be greatly reduced. In turbocharged cars it already is. I find my converted E85 car (1999 OB) runs well and has better acceleration than on gasoline. (Probably from advanced timing.) I enjoy driving it.

In Brazil they make ethanol for $0.83 per gallon. Sugar cane is a much better feedstock than corn. Corn has starch, and you have to convert starch to sugar before you ferment it; sugar cane has sugar to start with. And you can burn the remaining stalks and leaves to generate electricity. Brazil is doing it.

A hybrid running on E85 would be very cheap to run. Let's hope the batteries can be further improved. And we have to build nuclear reactors for the electricity.

If we don't solve this oil problem soon, there is a disaster coming. Oil is never going to get consistently cheaper. New discoveries can push back doomsday, but it cannot be pushed back forever.

Today, oil is up to $134+ per barrel.

Ben

Brazil also has a large supply of *waste* sugar cane.

We in the US make ethanol from valuable food products.

Personally, I think the answer is to eliminate oil power whenever possible, making it available for uses where it truly is the best fuel.

For instance, use as much nuclear power as possible to generate electricity, replacing expensive oil and dirty coal, use as much nuclear generated electric power in public transit, plug-in electric cars, home heating and cooling, etc... and divert the natural gas currently being used to generate electricity to motor vehicle and heating uses.

The other energy suppliers, like wind, tidal, solar, hydroelectric. etc... should also be used whenever practical.

That leaves oil for use in places where absolutely necessary, and corn as food.

=2E...

And make ethanol out of it for $0.83 per gallon =2E....

Right on.

Ben

If only WE had a waste product like that... 8^)

With a cellulose conversion process we could use fall leaves, straw, cornstalks, waste paper,sawdust, forestry waste, the grass cut from the sides of roadways, and all manner of other "waste" along with non-food crops like sawgrass.

** Posted from **

That would be awesome!

Lobby your representatives to encourage them to put money towards perfecting this technology instead of subsidizing corn sourced ethanol.

If Bush and his pirates had put HALF what they are spending on the "war for oil" in Iraq into this research, we would not NEED middle east oil. The Arabs would hate us less, and the rest of the world would not be facing punishingly high food-grain prices (which also translates to high meat prices, bread prices, etc - not to mention the high transport and fertilizer prices caused by the speculation in the oil market.

** Posted from **

Hi,

I agree w/ the concept...

However, in all these proposals we have a HUGE problem, called "politics." And before we jump on the bandwagon of condemning all politicians as evil or anything else that may be the popular "cause du jour," let's look at the definition of the word politics as given me by a poli sci professor many, many years ago: "Politics is the interaction that occurs whenever TWO or more people get together to discuss an issue." Notice when the process STARTS? At only TWO people. What we see at the statehouse level is the end of the line, not the beginning.

Ok, let's apply that locally to the conversion process Clare proposes. It's been tried... what happened?

Here in SoCal we have huge expanses of desert. Most of it is barely habitable without imported water, imported electricity, etc., etc. In other words, any "development" is an artificial environment created on a basis of being supported externally. Quite a bit of that land is Indian reservation land. Those of you familiar w/ the institution of Indian reservations in the US may key in on the fact that means the US government itself viewed that land as the worst of the worst when they gave it to the Indians.

The Indians have turned the tables in some areas by building and running casinos. These bring in BIG bucks. But the people who can look past their noses realize the casinos operate essentially at the pleasure of the governmental agencies that COULD take away the right to operate them at any time, and have started to put some of those big bucks into other "on reservation" ventures to make the tribes self-sustaining. I mention "on reservation" as that's an important player in cutting thru certain kinds of red tape.

One of them locally is a bio-mass electric generating station. SoCal generates HUGE quantities of green waste--agricultural, commercial AND personal--and disposal of it has become problematic as the population has exploded. A solution was developed to help use some of it by building this station. Using state of the art technologies, the green waste is dried, pulverized into tiny bits and fed into a burner that works similar to an oxygen-blast oven in a steel mill, the exhaust is "scrubbed" so it's very clean, and the heat created is used to produce steam to drive the electric generators.

Sounds like a win-win, doesn't it? Well, not so fast--let's get back to the good professor and those TWO people. The plant had barely gone online when the lawyers got into the picture. Seems a couple of the non-Indian locals (remember where this plant is: pictures of the local "settlements" are hardly disimilar to pictures of villages in Iraq. To say these people live in a "hole" would be polite) started to complain about the "smell" from the green waste as it was piled up to dry prior to being processed (on their own, or "coached" by outside interests? We'll probably never know for sure.) Then some environmentalist types started to complain of the extra truck traffic bringing that waste in. And on and on: it looked like a cash cow to someone if they just complained loudly enough.

I don't know how these problems were resolved. I do know the plant is still in operation, a fact I'd venture to guess is most likely because it's on Indian res land and the "whiners" don't have the resources to fight this at a federal level, but if it were on anything but "protected" land, I'd predict it would NOT still be operating, IF it had even been built in the first place.

Until we come to grips w/ the fact that everything that "looks good" up front also has some "not so pretty" side effects at the other end, I can't see us coming up w/ the solutions we need in the quantity we need. I've mentioned population controls as being part of that solution. Part of the reason I say that is simply because of the scale we're dealing with. But the main reason is no matter HOW cute the baby looks, it STILL produces dirty diapers!

In other words, there's no "have your cake and eat it, too" in the solutions we're going to need... we go back to that pesky "Law of Conservation of Matter" thing I woke up long enough to hear in that long ago class and what do we find out? Mother Nature will NOT be bested!

Rick

Finally there are some numbers to report -- not from me, an ordinary motorist without a lab, but from a major car company. Saab has produced some interesting flex-fuel cars:

They report that on E85, torque increases 16% and horsepower increases

20%, compared to gasoline. A sporty model, the Aero X, runs on pure 100% ethanol clocks 0-62 mph (that's 0-100 km/hr, the common metric measure) of 4.9 seconds. Top speed is quoted at 155 mph.

These cars are not yet available in the US, I understand, but physics and chemistry are international.

I suppose I am glad to hear somebody is putting some engineering effort toward ethanol (but I will never buy a Saab, ever, even if they weren't so ugly), I think (in the sense that good science is good), but my Subaru was not designed to burn Ethanol and according to my records I keep, not only are miles per gallon down, miles per dollar are down too, so I ask, where are the savings and what benefits do I or the environment receive from ethanol when it is forcing my vehicle to burn more fuel to get the same amount of work done at a higher monetary cost? There are no stations where I live or commute selling anything more than the mandatory E10 which I really wish would just go away. I don't see the cost savings of ethanol, if there really are any, being passed to the consumers here in Oregon but I'm open to being shown them if anybody can.

Uncle Ben, I would enjoy to see about a year's worth of spreadsheet data from the time you installed your conversion kit. It's only too bad you didn't gather it from before as well. And then perhaps a few years from now to know how well the car is holding up as far as drivability issues, etc, that could directly be related to your ethanol use. I drive for a living so if somebody, anybody could finally show me positive data for ethanol in my Subaru that wasn't designed for it, I'm all ears, since for the time being I don't see how I can avoid it.

~Brian

Thank you, Brian for a reasoned approach to our mutual problem of driving economics.

Some of your statements suggest that you are referring to E10. I had the same reaction you did and spent time looking around for E0 (no ethanol).

I am not talking about E10. I think that E10 gives benefit to the environment, but no benefit to the driver. In my 1999 OBW I first mixed E85 and E10 at the pump to give an estimated E30. That gave me some savings AND improved accelaration. I ran that for a few weeks, and everything seemed fine.

Oregon is not being a leader in providing E85. On

you can see how many stations there are by city. I count 1 in Eugene, 4 in Portland, and a scatering of others around the state. But if you live in Portland, the average discount for E85 from gasoline is about 20%. That should compensate you for a considerable reduction in mpg.

Can I assume that your car is younger than 1990 and that it has a control system compliant with OBDII? If so, your milage reduction with E30 or higher should be in the range of 5 to 15%. That will give you a clear savings in mpd.

The benefit to the environment is well documented. There is one study that was trumpeted in the newspapers saying that running E85 will increase smog. But if you read that paper, that result was reached for LA but not Atlanta, and the reason LA suffered is because when smog is already high, NOx emissions actually keep it from going higher, and the ethanol cars had TOO LOW emissions of NOx.

In New York State, the E85 price discount is over 26%, so it is better for me.

To go beyond E30, I had to install a converter, and over the weeks of filling and refilling with E85, I am now up to almost straight E85. I love how the car responds.

You should take courage from the people of Brazil who have been running E15 in unmodified cars for decades or so and have recently moved up to E24. Cars made since 1985 or so in the US have been required to tolerate E10. So manufacturers improved the elastomers and gas tank metals. The results work even with much higher concentrations according to many who have converted old cars. There is a video of the guts of a 2002 car which ran 105,000 miles on E85 without any conversion. It looked clean and undamaged. (Surely its CEL was lit up all the way. The mixture was quite lean, but it did not hurt the car.)

Since I started these experiments and changes only last month, it will be a while before I have a year's experience to show you. But there are people who have been doing this long before me.

Realize that there are strong forces working to prevent adoption of E85, and there is much misinformation on the net about corrosion and other damage. After all, as they say, "turkeys don't vote for Thanksgiving." Exxon/Mobil seems to be an exception. Two of my 4 sources of E85 in Albany are Mobil stations.

It is wise to be cautious with an expensive machine like your car. Check out

for more information. That is who I have been dealing with. The converter I bought there has been approved by the EPA, but California is being more cautious..

If there is more I can tell you, just ask.

Ben

Thank you, Brian for a reasoned approach to our mutual problem of driving economics.

Some of your statements suggest that you are referring to E10. I had the same reaction you did and spent time looking around for E0 (no ethanol) until I tried some experiments.

I am not talking about E10. I think that E10 gives benefit to the environment, but no obvious benefit to the driver. In my 1999 OBW I first mixed E85 and E10 at the pump to give an estimated E30. That gave me some savings AND improved accelaration. I ran that for a few weeks, and everything seemed fine.

Oregon is not being a leader in providing E85. On

you can see how many stations there are by city. I count 1 in Eugene, 4 in Portland, and a scatering of others around the state. But if you live in Portland, the average discount for E85 from gasoline is about 20%. That should compensate you for a considerable reduction in mpg.

Can I assume that your car is younger than 1990 and that it has a control system compliant with OBDII? If so, your milage reduction with E30 or higher should be in the range of 5 to 15%. That will give you a clear savings in mpd.

The benefit to the environment is well documented. There is one study that was trumpeted in the newspapers saying that running E85 will increase smog. But if you read that paper, that result was reached for LA but not Atlanta, and the reason LA suffered is because when smog is already high, NOx emissions actually keep it from going higher, and the ethanol cars had TOO LOW emissions of NOx.

In New York State, the E85 price discount is over 26%, so it is better for me.

To go beyond E30, I had to install a converter, and over the weeks of filling and refilling with E85, I am now up to almost straight E85. I love how the car responds.

You should take courage from the people of Brazil who have been running E15 in unmodified cars for decades or so and have recently moved up to E24. Cars made since 1985 or so in the US have been required to tolerate E10. So manufacturers improved the elastomers and gas tank metals. The results work even with much higher concentrations according to many who have converted old cars. There is a video of the guts of a 2002 car which ran 105,000 miles on E85 without any conversion. It looked clean and undamaged. (Surely its CEL was lit up all the way. The mixture was quite lean, but it did not hurt the car.)

Since I started these experiments and changes only last month, it will be a while before I have a year's experience to show you. But there are people who have been doing this long before me.

Realize that there are strong forces working to prevent adoption of E85, and there is much misinformation on the net about corrosion and other damage. After all, as they say, "turkeys don't vote for Thanksgiving." Exxon/Mobil seems to be an exception. Two of my 4 sources of E85 in Albany are Mobil stations.

It is wise to be cautious with an expensive machine like your car. Check out

for more information. That is who I have been dealing with. The converter I bought there has been approved by the EPA, but California is being more cautious..

If there is more I can tell you, just ask.

Ben