Why more lies on the amount of"energy"in ethanol or biodiesel?Ethanol engines need higher compression ratios!?

Question

The "most profitable business ever", Exxon\Mobil and other petroleum companies should lose all their tax credits for these lies. Car company engineers know they can make an E-85 engine get better mileage by upping the compression ratios, but they refuse to build it, because they know it would be a cleaner longer lasting engine, and if it lasts longer, then they lose their replacement sales of another auto. Please watch "Who killed the electric car" movie to learn the truth about how they are in cahoots, with President Bush's help, to give the U.S. consumers a more oil dependent transportation system. GM's Greed killed the EV-1, as a former shareholder, I see why Toyota will soon be #1.

It's called foresight! Use it or lose it.

Yahoo, why are helping us be fooled again, by this petroleum propaganda?

Answer 1

Ethanol does have less energy than gasoline, about 25% less.  That means you need about 25% more volume (gallons) to go the same distance, or about 20% more in an E85 blend.

I don't believe burning E85 will have any significant effect on the durability of an engine.  

Diesel and biodiesel have almost exactly the same energy volume.  They ought to, they're all long hydrocarbons.   Same with SVO/WVO.

Biodiesel tends to improve the durability of a diesel engine, because of much better lubricity (lubricating power) on fuel pump, injection pumps and valve seats.

Answer 2

And how about this conspiracy, most people think that our oil reserves are in tank yards. But in actuality the oil they are talking about are estimates in the amount of barrels of oil still in the ground and can be pumped and refined in a certain amount of time.

Therefore all the oil being bought at premium prices from overseas and fought over in middle eastern countries, is to extend the amount of time oil men can stay in business and keep their hands in the pockets of the average man.

In the 1970's President Jimmy Carter passed laws to explore new methods of alternate energy. But of course big interest has to invest in exploration. And most energy based business has an  interest in petroleum.

Answer 3

Another conspiracy theory from Fox Mulder? That being said, if you check recent issues of Popular Mechanics they featured an engine designed in India that runs on compressed air. In researching this on line I also found a compressed air/gasoline hybrid engine. How cool is a zero emissions compressed air engine?

Answer 4

It is true that you can raise the compression ratio on a car that runs ethanol because it has a higher octane rating and that would give you a more powerful engine. The down side to that is that when you increase the CR you also increase the heat (that is where the extra HP comes from) and that creates more nitrous oxides, the brown air that you can see on a sunny smoggy day. Hence the reason you can burn natural gas in the stove in your house, but it can be a polluter in your car.

We run alcohol, methanol, in the dragster with a 16-1 compression ratio, and when we are warming it up it can burn your eyes. That is excessive compression for the street but you can see that even with a lower compression ratio it will just produce less NOx.

I also worked on the EV-1 during the design and development stages, and saw the last public showing of the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car?". At that showing the people that produced it and starred in it were present to answer questions. Even they could not say definitively who killed the EV-1. There were many different people that cumulatively led to the demise of the electric car. GM is preparing a new electric car for release next year called the Volt which is a plug in hybrid that runs soley on the electric motor but when the batteries wear down the generator starts up recharging the batteries. They are doing a better job this time of casting it as the commuter car electric cars are meant to be.

Answer 5

First off, using corn technology to produce ethanol, the entire world supply of ethanol could only replace ~25% of US gasoline consumption.  Secondly, ethanol evaporates faster than gasoline, contributing to more smog.

If you want to get higher compressions ratios, let's get rid of 87 Octane, my car runs on premium--therefore higher compression and better efficiency.  The catalytic converter can put NOx, CO and unburned HCs back to CO2 and N2.

In Europe 91 is "regular" with 93 octane and 97 octane available.  They also use diesel, which is far more efficient.

Ethanol is not a solution, at least not yet.  Electric cars were killed by the fact that you have to recharge them, which takes time.  Not to mention the environmental damage done in manufacturing the batteries.

It is the buyers of hybrids that are being conned, believe the lies of Toyota and the greenies.

Oh, and compressing air takes lots of energy (and creates lots of heat), and that energy has to come from somewhere, so just because the car doesn't pollute, doesn't mean pollution wasn't made somewhere.

"Sell the Prius and buy a Hummer, Save the planet."

Answer 6

As Congress begins work on a new energy bill, a look at the misbranding of corn-based ethanol as the alternative fuel of the future. http://www.youngprogressive.com/energybi...

Answer 7

Get your facts right. The compression ratio needed to burn Ethanol most efficiently (12:1) is far too high to burn gasoline. And because Ethanol is barely available in the US, it wouldn't be feasible to make an ethanol only engine.

Answer 8

please read this to see some truths behind the atrocities on behalf of Ethanol

Global warming is a really destructive situation.

But not half as destructive right now ,as what the USA is planning.

They are insane intending to replace most of the indigenous Forrest's in the world ,with mono cultures for the production of Ethanol,

Non sustainable, chemically grown ,heavily irrigated (with water needed for communities)one specie Forrest's,that have only plagues of insects as fauna which are controlled with pesticides.

Killing all bio diversity,in both flora and fauna ,adding to the destruction and extinction of species ,like nothing we have ever seen before.

All in the quest for alternative energy and to save the Environment ,

The irony here is that the growing eagerness to slow climate change by using biofuels and planting millions of trees for carbon credits has resulted in new major causes of deforestation, say activists. And that is making climate change worse because deforestation puts far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire world's fleet of cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships combined.

"Biofuels are rapidly becoming the main cause of deforestation in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil," said Simone Lovera, managing coordinator of the Global Forest Coalition, an environmental NGO based in Asunción, Paraguay. "We call it 'deforestation diesel'," Lovera told IPS.

Oil from African palm trees is considered to be one of the best and cheapest sources of biodiesel and energy companies are investing billions into acquiring or developing oil-palm plantations in developing countries. Vast tracts of forest in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and many other countries have been cleared to grow oil palms. Oil palm has become the world's number one fruit crop, well ahead of bananas.

Biodiesel offers many environmental benefits over diesel from petroleum, including reductions in air pollutants, but the enormous global thirst means millions more hectares could be converted into monocultures of oil palm. Getting accurate numbers on how much forest is being lost is very difficult.

The FAO's State of the World's Forests 2007 released last week reports that globally, net forest loss is 20,000 hectares per day -- equivalent to an area twice the size of Paris. However, that number includes plantation forests, which masks the actual extent of tropical deforestation, about 40,000 hectares (ha) per day, says Matti Palo, a forest economics expert who is affiliated with the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica.

"The half a million ha per year deforestation of Mexico is covered by the increase of forests in the U.S., for example," Palo told IPS.

National governments provide all the statistics, and countries like Canada do not produce anything reliable, he said. Canada has claimed no net change in its forests for 15 years despite being the largest producer of pulp and paper. "Canada has a moral responsibility to tell the rest of the world what kind of changes have taken place there," he said.

Plantation forests are nothing like natural or native forests. More akin to a field of maize, plantation forests are hostile environments to nearly every animal, bird and even insects. Such forests have been shown to have a negative impact on the water cycle because non-native, fast-growing trees use high volumes of water. Pesticides are also commonly used to suppress competing growth from other plants and to prevent disease outbreaks, also impacting water quality.

Plantation forests also offer very few employment opportunities, resulting in a net loss of jobs. "Plantation forests are a tremendous disaster for biodiversity and local people," Lovera said. Even if farmland or savanna are only used for oil palm or other plantations, it often forces the local people off the land and into nearby forests, including national parks, which they clear to grow crops, pasture animals and collect firewood. That has been the pattern with pulp and timber plantation forests in much of the world, says Lovera.

Ethanol is other major biofuel, which is made from maize, sugar cane or other crops. As prices for biofuels climb, more land is cleared to grow the crops. U.S. farmers are switching from soy to maize to meet the ethanol demand. That is having a knock on effect of pushing up soy prices, which is driving the conversion of the Amazon rainforest into soy, she says. Meanwhile rich countries are starting to plant trees to offset their emissions of carbon dioxide, called carbon sequestration. Most of this planting is taking place in the South in the form of plantations, which are just the latest threat to existing forests. "Europe's carbon credit market could be disastrous," Lovera said.

The multi-billion-euro European carbon market does not permit the use of reforestation projects for carbon credits. But there has been a tremendous surge in private companies offering such credits for tree planting projects. Very little of this money goes to small land holders, she says. Plantation forests also contain much less carbon, notes Palo, citing a recent study that showed carbon content of plantation forests in some Asian tropical countries was only 45 percent of that in the respective natural forests. Nor has the world community been able to properly account for the value of the enormous volumes of carbon stored in existing forests.

One recent estimate found that the northern Boreal forest provided 250 billion dollars a year in ecosystem services such as absorbing carbon emissions from the atmosphere and cleaning water. The good news is that deforestation, even in remote areas, is easily stopped. All it takes is access to some low-cost satellite imagery and governments that actually want to slow or halt deforestation. Costa Rica has nearly eliminated deforestation by making it illegal to convert forest into farmland, says Lovera.

Paraguay enacted similar laws in 2004, and then regularly checked satellite images of its forests, sending forestry officials and police to enforce the law where it was being violated. "Deforestation has been reduced by 85 percent in less than two years in the eastern part of the country," Lovera noted. The other part of the solution is to give control over forests to the local people. This community or model forest concept has proved to be sustainable in many parts of the world. India recently passed a bill returning the bulk of its forests back to local communities for management, she said.

However, economic interests pushing deforestation in countries like Brazil and Indonesia are so powerful, there may eventually be little natural forest left. "Governments are beginning to realize that their natural forests have enormous value left standing," Lovera said. "A moratorium or ban on deforestation is the only way to stop this."

This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ - International Federation of Environmental Journalists.

© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service

Source: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/...