G85 Fuel

Oct 13, 2010 44 Replies

The EPA is considering 15% ethanol in gasoline up from 10% ethanol for car years 2007 and newer...



Well, ethanol is corrosive, has less octane than gasoline, gets less fuel mileage than gasoline, and likely would only be an efficient fuel in an engine with a different operating temperature than current cars. The real purpose of ethanol is to increase oxygen in winter gasoline for a minor pollution benefit while ethanol is dubious in summer gasoline because of the evaporation rate of ethanol.



Also, I think that ethanol makes policy-makers dizzy when they get too close to it.


Oh, ethanol has higher octane than gasoline but that means that ethanol might need higher compression engines to be efficient.

Well, ethanol has less energy than gasoline but higher octane. I'll leave that one for the physicists.

Oh, ethanol has higher octane than gasoline but that means that ethanol might need higher compression engines to be efficient.

Well, ethanol has less energy than gasoline but higher octane. I'll leave that one for the physicists.

================================================= Engage brain before opening mouth. I'll leave that one for the dimwits.

Obviously... did someone accuse you of thinking, then?

| we have any of those here...

We have halfwits, dimwits, nitwits and f*****ts. All we are saying is give thinking a chance.

I wrote to an audience and didn't try to force surprising fundamentals.

The heckler is the dimwit...heckling is not professional exchange.

PolicySpy wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@z25g2000vbn.googlegroups.com:

Never heard of pumping ethyl (and no it's not dirty). Ethyl was commonly used before gas was widely distributed. It's not anything near a solution anyways, there's simply no way to produce enough to replace gasoline.

Troll groups removed naturally.

Are you dead sure this is the real reason? There are several claimed reasons, but the really real reason may be a little more porkish.

"PolicySpy" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@i17g2000vbq.googlegroups.com... |I wrote to an audience and didn't try to force surprising | fundamentals. | | The heckler is the dimwit...heckling is not professional exchange. | | Also, you hallucinate that ethanol makes policy-makers dizzy when they get too close to it.

ethanol is dubious for any reason.

  1. "oxygen" is a bullshit argument - it doesn't contribute to combustion.
  2. it lowers mpg's making you pay more for less
  3. it costs you taxes in farmer price support subsidies
  4. it costs you taxes in accelerated cap-ex write-offs for ethanol producers
5 it messes up your car, particularly if it's older.
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it's a back door subsidy to the the farming states and a front door hand-out to the oil companies. as usual, mom and pop taxpayer gets hosed. write your representatives and tell them you're sick of it.

That G85 fuel, wouldn't gas stations need to buy new gas pumps to handle that G85 fuel? Seems to me a couple of weeks ago I read something somewhere about that, and some gas station owners are ticked off about that. I prefer ordinary Gasoline myself. cuhulin

The more ethanol in the gasoline, the more problems you can expect. And, if G85 gets enough moisture in it, the ethanol will fall to the bottom of the tank in a layer. So expect some extra problems.

I prefer straight gasoline too, but it is hard to find.

The good news is that ethanol makes a really good octane enhancer. 10% ethanol does a pretty good job of getting reasonable octane levels without having to resort to massively toxic stuff like MBTE or tetraethyl lead. So I think the whole G90 thing is pretty good.

I'm not sure if G85 will do that but I am pretty sure once you get around to the 60% point you can run into those issues. But you run into even worse ones with straight gasoline where the moisture precipitates down to the bottom of the tank alone and displaces gasoline entirely.

It has some advantages but in most cases if you are using modern fuel lines, the disadvantages are even greater.

But I think going much over 10% ethanol is going to start running into problems and it won't be economically viable either without a lot of farm subsidies staying in place. Ethanol is more expensive than gas but it's a lot cheaper than lead and MBTE.

--scott

On Oct 13, 5:12 am, PolicySpy wrote: [snip]

Nah. The real purpose of ethanol in fuel is to keep corn prices high in big agriculture states.

"I know! We'll burn food!"

Heh heh. That's a good one. Socks

Nah. The real purpose of ethanol in fuel is to keep corn prices high in big agriculture states.

******* GIVE THAT MAN A CIGAR!!!!!!! I think this is the real reason too. It was a concession to corn farmers and ADM.

It doesnt take much moisture to make the ethanol separate from the gasoline. Admittedly, over a range of water concentrations, the ethanol will couple the water into the gasoline and can be a benefit. Once it settles, you'll play hell trying to get the alcohol back into the gasoline. And whether this happens in a gas station storage tank, or in your fuel tank, it is not a pleasant situation.

"concession"??? it's outright payback!

yeah. "you vote for us/keep on contributing to our campaigns, and we'll ransack the the wallets of the proles for you!" roll the oilco's into that equation and you have a scandal of truly epic proportions.

This physicist is also a gearhead who has a methanol fueled race car in garage.

It is almost a tossup. We are talking a mix of gasoline and ethanol, not pure ethanol. So the octane rating is not super high and the energy content is not super low.

As the previous poster said, one would need to raise compression ratio, but the octane rating of gasohol is not high enough to use the CR used on ethanol-fueled racing engines (IRL cars use ethanol).

Ethanol is not terribly corrosive- but the corrosion factor is why the restriction to post-2007 cars. Methanol is more corrosive yet, and yet one can build a dependable racing car using methanol by using proper fuel lines and gaskets.

So in total I do not see it as a big thing. I have a 2009 Prius. If the

15% gasohol is cheaper than the 10% I'll run it.

Actually Ethanol has higher octane that gasoline.

But still this seems like a bad idea. The was I heard it on the radio yesterday, the EPA is goign to premit E85 for use in 2007 and newer cars. But this means stations will need to create a new category of fuel specifically for newer cars. How many stations are going to want to add another product line? How many people will accidentally add E85 to an older car that can be damaged by it? How long before E10 disappears? I keep looking for stations that sell "pure" gasoline in my area and can't find any that make the claim. NC used to require pumps to be labeled if the fuel included Ethanol - but not any more. So will we end up with E85 pumps with label that say for 2007 and newer cars only? And how long before the labels dissappear?

Ed

care to bet on it being more expensive? afterall, this is a political rort, not a competitive market offering.

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