Ethanol free gasoline

[narf]

So, how much on average do you think it would cost to mod a normal car?

Modifying a normal car to run on E50/85/100 is pretty pointless.

Case in point, two cars running the same Judd V10, one of them on E10, one on E85; stints between refuelling are about equal in length, but the normal car has a mandated 90-liter tank, while the one running on E85 has 110-120 liters (can't remember the exact figure at the moment).

Let's do the maths on both figures then. The 110l tank is 22% bigger, the 120l tank is 33% bigger - let's therefore assume E85 engines consume 22-33% more fuel than E10. E85 produces 22.7MJ/l while E10 is producing 31.5MJ/l. Burning 1.22l of E85 will give 27.7MJ, burning 1.33l of E85 will give 30.2MJ - both ways the increase in consumption is smaller than the loss of heat value would suggest.

 

[Spectre]

So, how much on average do you think it would cost to mod a normal car?


I mean, I'd spend thousands, at least so I can put a fuel in my car that gives me less mileage? Ack.

To do an E85 conversion right, so that you don't have long term problems? Probably about $3-5K.

 

[YF19pilot]

Ah, so much to respond to in this discussion.

Being in North Dakota, there's been a huge push for corn ethanol. Many farmers are switching fields from the traditional sugar beets and wheat/alfalfa to grow corn (and soy beans for bio fuel as well). Then again, $3 corn is a pretty damn good incentive. So, naturally, every pump in the state has ethanol. Though with the talk, I'm wondering if the ethanol facination helped to contribute to my 740's early demise.

So, anyways, the cost of corn ethanol doesn't just effect the price of things that depend on corn, but sun flower seeds and sun flower oil cost more because less people are growing them; sugar costs more because less people are growing sugar beets; wheat and grain costs more because less people are growing them; and biofuels cost more because less people are growing soy.

I feel sorry for the farmers who got out of the sugar beet business to pursue corn. There's a lot of money to be had in sugar beets, and the Red River Valley is one of the few places you can grow them. And farming sugar beets involves "being in the know" of the families who run the plants. I imagine it won't be easy getting back in once the subsidies run out...


On the subject of poor performance in aircraft engines... I have a friend (in Virginia) who flies a Cessna 182. It is rated to run automotive fuels. Then all the local pumps started running E10 without signage. After one flight my friend was forced to switch back to the twice-as-expensive av gas. Engines overheating mid-flight are not fun, from what he tells me.

 

[nist7]

okay, so I am having a similar discussion on a local car forum, and a few posters are asking why is E10 so bad? They concede that there is MPG (though not significant, according to their claims) and that the possible damage done to fuel lines and whatnot are just over-hyped. One poster even claimed that using more ethanol helps USA reduce foreign oil dependence.


Here's some of their comments:

why do you care if its e10 or no ethanol?

Thats what I wanna know. There is such a small difference nobody could tell.....
Id be more worried about water content.

You guys make a good point. We should definitely keep spending our hard earned money on foreign oil instead of keeping the $ here in the states by using ethanol. I use it in my blown mustang and I will NEVER use anthing else. I just dont see the big deal with it being mixed in with our everyday gas though. It might effect your mpg's a little, but not that much. I tell you what, leave all of the ethanol for me. When your foreign countries run out of oil, which they will, guess what? The US will have plenty of renewable fuel. Also, I dont know of another fuel that every vehicle on the road can be converted to with just a fuel filter and a tune. I am still trying to find something bad about ethanol besides the loss in mpg's though. $2.12 a gallon, 105 octane, it doesnt smell that bad and the biggest thing, very very low emissions.

This thread has been a good discussion but I would like to have more technical/scientific of the pros and cons of using E10. As I mentioned in the first post, is it worth the effort/drive to get ethanol free gas? I recently sampled two BP stations which supposedly have ethanol free gas (only their highest octane fuel, 92 and 93 octane). Will post pics later of the results.

 

[Top Geek]

Good for him. I hate the fact that I'm forced to put this potentially-damaging piss-water into my car.

It's still food, even if it's not given to humans. The amount they took out of the feed market for ethanol production purposes has driven the price of raising cattle up, which has raised other prices in turn; such diverse things as milk, other dairy products, hamburger, glue, fertilizer, and leather (always important for bikers) have all gone up as a result of this idiot mandate.

I'll put it to you this way; prior to the mandate, a gallon of milk (3.78L) could commonly be found for less than $2 at retail. As the animal feedstock prices went up, so did the price of milk. It is now averaging just under $3.50, a 75% increase in price in just five years that cannot be explained by inflation alone. Yes, that means that in many parts of the US, a gallon of milk costs more than a gallon of gasoline despite the fact that there is no tax on milk. Other cattle-related foods have gone up in price in similar percentages. That makes it that much harder for my less fortunate fellow citizens to feed their families; the amount of food they can buy for their dollars is more or less halved thanks to this.

Chickens are fed off corn too, so the price for that went up as well. In other words, by taking a food crop, even one only used for animals, out of circulation and burning it as fuel, they have raised the price of food eaten by humans and increased the scarcity of animal feed. Great going.

So, basically...

Eco-pussies pushing pointless crap that doesn't actually help save the planet: 1
Helping solve world hunger: 0

Eco-pussies may kindly go do something anatomically impossible.

 

[Labcoatguy]

The major problem is that all the oil being consumed in the process of corn ethanol production (farming, converting the crop into ethanol, trucking because ethanol can't be piped, etc.) contains more energy than what's actually produced; basically, it's a net loss even before the first gallon of ethanol is burned. Put it another way, for every thermal unit of ethanol burned, more than that amount of oil has to be burned to produce it. This holds true for corn ethanol; sugar ethanol like in Brazil may break even at least, but their climate is suited for sugarcane so it's not something that can be done everywhere. Technology can only go so far in trying to fix an inherently flawed process; at some point, enough people have to realize that it's just not worth it.

 

[Spectre]

On top of that, ethanol damage isn't overhyped, it's a proven problem. The marine engine sector found out about it first, as the ethanol-laced gas doesn't stay stable nearly as long as the regular compositions (90 days vs. 6 months) and it varnishes quickly.

Many links available here: http://www.evinrude-parts.com/boat_ethanol_danger_precaution.html

On top of which, even the EPA has been forced to admit it's a problem: http://www.epa.gov/otaq/rfgboats.htm

More info: http://www.factsaboutethanol.org/2007/11/19/ethanol-and-boat-motors-dont-mix/

There are other reports, too, of things going wrong due to ethanol in cars:

http://www.elementownersclub.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10437

http://www2.highlandstoday.com/content/2008/jun/22/problem-ethanol/

Finally, a simple physics issue. Gasoline and water don't mix when left alone; one floats on top of the other.

http://water.me.vccs.edu/courses/ENV110/lesson20_2b.htm

So in the normal course of driving, you generally won't get water into your engine's fuel supply. Ethanol, however, is both water soluble and extremely hygroscopic - it attracts water like mad. Unless you have perfect fuel tank sealing (and you don't, thanks to evaporative emissions laws) you will get moisture entering the tank and entering your fuel - aka water in your gas.

Gasoline powered internal combustion engines do not run well using water as fuel.

 

[That American Girl]

Quick question: all the signs around here say may contain up to 10% ethanol content. Is it wishful thinking that it's not always E10?

I'm not sure I'd want to buy gas from a company where even they don't know how much is in it. I've seen a few Taurus's like mine with that "flex-fuel" logo thing, and thought I had read somewhere that my car was able to use the fuel, even though I wasn't listed.

Haven't been able to find that list again, so I'm not taking any chances.

And not happy with the thought that if I'm able to keep my car for a few hundred thousand miles more,(a good possibility) that one fill up at a place where I either don't pay attention to the sign, or just don't see the sign telling me that I'm dumping all that ethanol in my car.

And then it's toast.


(dang, those are long sentences...)

 

[thevictor390]

One tank of E10 isn't going to kill anything modern, it's long-term damages that are the potential problem.

 

[Spectre]

Yup, but one tank of the proposed E15 might, and E20 certainly will.

 

[MadCat360]

Aren't new cars built with those kinds of tolerances in mind? Shouldn't they have the appropriate hoses and seals, etc?

 

[Spectre]

Aren't new cars built with those kinds of tolerances in mind? Shouldn't they have the appropriate hoses and seals, etc?

Look upthread - even as late as this year, manufacturers were still saying that you can't run the cars on more than 10% ethanol. And while they may have more resistant hoses and seals just as a precautionary measure, that doesn't take into account the lean-burn issues or the rust generated by higher concentrations of ethanol - most cars still don't have stainless hard fuel lines or high-alcohol-concentration-proof polymer tanks (or stainless steel, for that matter.)

I'm already altering the Series III build plans to incorporate stainless lines, but nobody makes stainless tanks for the car that I'm aware of. I'll have to look into it.

 

[prizrak]

Look upthread - even as late as this year, manufacturers were still saying that you can't run the cars on more than 10% ethanol. And while they may have more resistant hoses and seals just as a precautionary measure, that doesn't take into account the lean-burn issues or the rust generated by higher concentrations of ethanol - most cars still don't have stainless hard fuel lines or high-alcohol-concentration-proof polymer tanks (or stainless steel, for that matter.)

I'm already altering the Series III build plans to incorporate stainless lines, but nobody makes stainless tanks for the car that I'm aware of. I'll have to look into it.

Not to mention that there are a shitload of people running 10 year old cars. I noticed that whenever I go outside of the city where cars are actually used for transportation instead of showing off while sitting in traffic, there is a very large number of cars from the 90's

 

[chaos386]

Just out of curiosity, what sort of additives are the ethanol-free gasolines using in the US? Are they just going back to using MTBE?

 

[Spectre]

Just out of curiosity, what sort of additives are the ethanol-free gasolines using in the US? Are they just going back to using MTBE?

That's why they're only offered outside certain smog zones/metropolitan areas; there's a small loophole that allows some vendors not in those areas to sell un-'reformulated' gasoline; no MTBEs, but no ethanol either - which means no oxygenates. Not a horribly bad thing, though; running on that stuff actually makes cars (in general) produce better emissions numbers as their oxygen sensors become accurate again (instead of being thrown off by the oxygenates).

 

[chaos386]

What are they using as an octane booster, then? Unless these fuels are a *lot* more expensive than their E10 brethren, I doubt they're reaching 92-93 PON without some kind of additive, unless they're allowed a much higher aromatics content (and thus won't be burning as cleanly).

EDIT: Just checked the EPA's website and yup, non-reformulated gasoline has more aromatics in it. They're good as octane boosters, but the problem is that they don't completely burn in a car's engine. If you've got an older car that's just barely passing emissions, make sure to run E10 when you take the test.

 

[Spectre]

What are they using as an octane booster, then? Unless these fuels are a *lot* more expensive than their E10 brethren, I doubt they're reaching 92-93 PON without some kind of additive, unless they're allowed a much higher aromatics content (and thus won't be burning as cleanly).

They were using the MTBE and ethanol as oxygenates, not octane boosters per se. Deleting them brings you back to the base octane of whatever grade you were using before. Yes, I know you can use them as octane boosters, but you can get a higher octane without them, though usually it's 91-92 octane max.

 

[chaos386]

They were using the MTBE and ethanol as oxygenates, not octane boosters per se. Deleting them brings you back to the base octane of whatever grade you were using before. Yes, I know you can use them as octane boosters, but you can get a higher octane without them, though usually it's 91-92 octane max.

Oh, they're most certainly using them as octane boosters, since ethanol and MTBE have PONs of 119 and 110, respectively. If you cut out the 10% of your fuel that was 119 octane, you've got to do quite a bit to make up for that, and in a refinery, that usually means adding more reformate, which has a high octane rating, but is also loaded with poorly-burning aromatics.

 

[Spectre]

I would guess it's either isooctane or toluene. Not sure.