What is the point of having E-85 fuel compatibility ?

Question

it's only 15% less in cost but 30% less efficient

Answer 1

30% less fuel efficient than what?

I have noticed that all the people claiming anything like that, are comparing 98% or greater ethanol with less than 98% methanol.

The reason why I say this, is the personal experience of a friend, who is an engineer that owns a farm, showed this to be accurate. During the 80s fuel spike he ran most of his farm equipment off homemade ethanol.

He realized that if refined to a high purity, which requires far more energy than refining it only to 93-95%, not only was less ethanol made per bushel of grain, but it also was less efficient.

But by refining it to only around 93% more ethanol was available, it retained more power, and it made the process much cheaper.

Now when I see these scientists who claim that it is far more expensive than methanol, because of distillation, along with chemical methods of refinement to increase purity making it far more expensive than methanol, I am pretty confident that they are talking about refining it to far better purity than 93%. since it can be distilled to 93% without use of chemical methods of moisture extraction. Now when you compare pure ethanol to not so pure methanol, keeping in mind that removing nearly all H2O, and other alcohols, to obtain the purity most are speaking of, ethanol will appear far less efficient, if for no other reason than the fact you are removing many other alcohols that are combustable, to refine it to such purity.

You should check out what the acceptible moisture content is for methanol in gasoline, and you'll notice something odd.

Now I won't argue that ethanol isn't slightly less efficient than methanol, but when it comes to small and mid-sized automobiles used for transportation rather than shipping large amounts of material, a person shouldn't be able to notice much of a difference if the acceptible moisture content of gasoline remains the same for ethanol.

One other thing to keep in mind, is that blended fuels have the ability to retain more moisture without the resulting power loss of higher moisture content in unblended fuels. This alone should push down the refining costs. Whether you and I, will see any benefit from that, is another story.

also, what scientists, do you think the automobile industry gets the data they print in your manual, from? Might it be the same organizations that set oil and fuel standards, which are nothing more than the oil industry regulating itself for consitancy?

Answer 2

Cite your source, please -- I find that hard to believe.  Saab has made a car that runs on 100% ethanol and is rated for 400 brake horsepower and gets roughly the same mileage as the Ford Mustang GT500.  Besides, one of the reasons E85 isn't that much cheaper is because it's not widely available.  If the Big Three really got on board and started producing a lot of E85 vehicles, you'd see a lot more gas stations selling E85 for a lot less.

Answer 3

With my hot rod backround:

The stoich air:fuel ratio for gasoline is 14.7:1, wereas the stoich for pure alcohols is around 9:1.  You will need more alcohol per unit of air for a clean burn as compared to Gasoline to yield the same HP.  I'd imagine e85 is closer to 10:1 or 11:1, but your still pumping a higher volume of fuel into the motor to match the air intake.  Otherwise you need to physically restrict the volume of incoming air to prevent the otherwise happy gasoline tuned motor from leaning out and detonating.  

Now the cost issue is just as complicated.  Without the same level of infrastructure that the oil companies have, E85 production cannot meet demand yet.  Here in cornland, the first E85 pumps were almost a dollar cheaper than regular gas.  Now demand has spiked it to only a few dimes cheaper.  On the other side of the coin...this increased demand has almost doubled corn prices.  Which will effect a whole slew of food industries: notice the price of milk recently?

But all in all...I'd rather have my money going towards Midwest Farmers than Mid-East Sheiks

Answer 4

Well, using E-85 is not only cheaper, but it gives us an alternative. I don't know about everyone else, but i don't like being controlled by foreign oil companies, and if we used more ethanol we wouldn't be so dependent. Also, it is cleaner for our environment to burn E-85. If there is a market for it, then they will develop more efficient engines to run on E-85.

Answer 5

E-85 is a stopgap measure. It will help bridge the transition from gasoline to ethanol. It's actually a very practical means of building the infrastructure we will need when we eventually go to E-100. And always remember that our current methods are not the ones we will be using years from now. Corn is one of the least efficient ways of getting ethanol. Switchgrass is only one of the better alternatives.

E-93??? I'm gonna remember THAT!!! Cool!

Answer 6

heat forces the piston down.

heat is measured in btu's.

1 gal of gasoline contains more btus than 1 gallon of alcohol (ethonal OR methonal).

so you WILL burn more alcohol than gasoline to get the SAME work (horsepower).

in the mean time you create MORE pollution.

why? alcohol contains an oxygen atom which helps it burn cleaner, BUT you have to burn more to get the same amount of work. gain a penny by spending a dollar.

furthermore we do not have enough cropland to "grow" our way to oil independence. there is already a corn shortage affecting food prices.

couple that with pesticide/herbicide pollution, increased water useage,soil errosion, and increased fuel use to power farm equipment, is the enivroment really gaining?