Posted on 06/16/2011 6:46:47 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
You made a statement...and I asked you for a source. I can’t see why you would not post a source???
Startron has one, Seafoam has some stuff that works as a cleaner but isn’t great long term, and there’s Sta-bil to keep a tank from going bad over the long term.
None of which, however, keeps the ethanol from eating fuel lines, vacuum petcocks, rubber seals or most of the other parts in small engine and motorcycle fuel systems (bikes did not get widespread fuel injection until very recently.)
Farmers are “subsidized” for growing corn, and gasoline distributors are “subsidized” for using ethanol. Ethanol producers don’t need or get a federal subsidy, but that doesn’t stand in the way of religious belief.
Thanks to all who answered my question.
Don’t know how to direct post to all of you at once.
“6. Detroit, never failing to exhibit their crass stupidity and ignorance of fundamental engineering, just wants to shove ethanol into cars as tho it is gasoline. Detroit takes no effort to use ethanol as what it could have been - a huge booster of engine efficiency.”
They actually did make a number of E85 models and still do.
The problem is that ethanol contains about half the energy per gallon as gasoline (if I recall correctly, it’s been a long day) so even if you ran an engine on E100 (100% ethanol, you will *still* get decreased fuel economy even if you did in theory have the capability to make more power.
You also didn’t mention the nasty problem that while complete combustion of ethanol is ‘clean’ in that it results in only carbon dioxide and water vapor, it does *not* combust completely in any internal combustion engine and instead it produces:
Higher levels of ground-hugging ozone.
Significantly raised emissions of *formaldehyde* and other aldehydes such as acetaldehyde - fun things you *really* don’t want to be breathing.
In addition, the ethanol produced from corn does not lower emissions nearly as much as promised. Even using E85, which is 85% corn ethanol and 15% gasoline will only net a 17% pollution reduction. If you use 100% cellulosic ethanol (made from stuff that is not corn), you get an 85% decrease in pollutants.
‘Bout time someone started wading into all of these supposed “green energy” projects that the Feds have been underwriting to the tune of Billions a year for years.
Some of the States have been bleeding money into supposed “green” projects, and that is finally coming to a screeching halt as well. Oregon’s legislature recently woke the hell up, and passed new legislation that significantly restricts the amounts of money that Contractors were qualifying to receive for installing wind turbines.
Oregon found out that most if not all of the electricity being generated is contracted for the next decade to California.
Bonneville Power Administration is playing merry hell right now because the rivers are all at or just below flood stage with seasonal snow melt just starting after record snowfalls in the mountains, and every time a new, wet, windy storm blows through the Pacifist Northwest, BPA has to shut down the wind turbines because they cannot dump water over the dams any faster, and the turbines instantly overload the transmission lines.
In approving wind and other “alternate” energy projects, they cannot by law be compared to hydroelectric projects because the cost difference is so vast that none of the “green” projects would be any where near cost efficient.
Most of the wind turbines are being imported lock, stock and barrel from overseas, and the only jobs created are for the truck drivers who deliver the turbine assemblies, and the crews who install them. Once operating they require little maintenance and few long term jobs.
This has been a vast, dark joke, and we are only beginning to see the cost of our own folly for allowing this all to go through.
More consequences for losing an election.
I can’t take credit for it, it was explained by NVDave. All in all, I thought it was a pretty understandable explanation.
I'm a huge fan of South Dakota and Thune. I have family ties there. If you look at the Nays it's bi-partisan. The states like mine (Illinois) and states like South Dakota have corn, lots of corn.
In college I learned in Poly Sci 100 that politicians pander to their states. Hence earmarks.
If you mapped out the Yay's and Nay's it would be Yay's (no corn), Nay's (lots and lots of corn).
Good! That will put the House on the spot. ;-)
Good, now cut the Hollywood film subsidies and tax shelters. They keep harping about raising taxes on the rich, then they should have no problem if DC eliminates their tax shelters.
Cellulosic ethanol is even less economically feasible than corn ethanol. If you hate corn ethanol subsidies, be prepared to bend over for cellulosic ethanol subsidies.
A lot of hype in the cellulosic ethanol show. The science falls drastically short of the dog and pony show. This is a huge scam being foisted on the taxpayer.
It all depends on how that ethanol is produced. If it comes from bio-distillation (currently subsidized), then that ethanol will consist of 96% ethanol and 4% water. If it comes from ethylene (not subsidized), then it will have no water in it.
Yes, by about five to seven cents per gallon.
Eliminate the tax credit, the producers close the ethanol plants, and just stop producing the 10% of our fuel that is ethanal. The supply of liquid fuel is thus reduced by 10%. Of course these billions of gallons would then have to be be replaced by gasoline made from additional imported oil.
The 14 Senate Repubics that voted Nay should be targeted in a primary when they are next up for reelection.
Both Kansas senators voted Nay. Lugar too. He needs to go.
I’m sick of GOP congressmen that protect the log rolling crap for money.
We are broke. Stop the spending, period.
If ethanol is so great, let it compete in the free market.
If the GOP can’t stop this crap, or repeal the incadescent light bulb ban, or reverse other ridiculous crap the public hates then throw them out too.
Cowards. I’m supposed to believe them on entitlement reform when they can’t even do the simple things in the budget?
Anyone who thinks that spending cuts are functionally, economically, and morally equivalent to tax increases has rather muddled thinking.
I'd love to see the ethanol blends go away. When I bought my car, it got 310-315 miles per tank of gas. Now that the only gas available is diluted with ethanol, I get around 265 miles per tank. I don't remember that diluted gas was any cheaper than pure gas back when there was a choice... am I paying the same to get less? Someday, when I have the time, I will sit and calculate exactly what effect the ethanol has, as far as price, energy content, and pollution.
But the fuel blenders HAVE to buy Ethanol. Suppliers can raise their prices - and the buyer has to pay it.
You will always have suppliers for a mandated product - even if they have to charge more for the product.
Unless there are no buyers, fuel blenders, left - very unlikely.
The only drop in ethanol production that I can see from this is due to less demand for fuel due to higher prices.
Make sense?
A simpler way to put my point is:
Whoever loses the subsidy raises their price by an amount equivalent to the subsidy, and keeps on trucking. Business-wise it zeroes out.
Their customers have no choice but to keep buying.
Detroit’s version of making an “E85” engine doesn’t involve boosting the compression ratio or extraction ratio of a piston engine.
Ethanol has a much higher octane rating than straight gasoline. Pure ethanol octane would be about 130. IF (and that’s a big IF, when Detroit is involved) you’re a savvy engineer (as, say, the guys at Ferrari are), and you’re presented with E-85 where 85% of your fuel has an octane rating of 130 or so, and you have a resulting fuel octane of 96 or so, you jack up the compression ratio of the engine (and thereby also increase the extraction efficiency) of the engine.
Most gasoline engines are running between 8.5:1 to 9.5:1. At the higher end, they need the higher octane fuels.
Now, if you could jack up that ratio to about 12:1, you’d see a significant improvement in efficiency. This is NOT news to engineers. The engineers at the Oliver Tractor Company (the “other” green tractor in American ag history) did a test after WWII where they increased the compression ratio of their engines to about 12.5:1 and were rewarded by a 25% improvement in fuel efficiency. Back then, the increase in octane wasn’t going to come from ethanol, but rather aromatic hydrocarbons (eg, toluene and other stuff) in aviation gasoline. The avgas used by those warbirds in WWII was way up there in octane - like 110+ for the high boosting pressures.
Well, the oil companies said “no way” were they going to produce octane levels up there for the general consumer market in the 50’s, and the Oliver project was dropped, rarely heard from again. But even back then, engineers knew that higher octane could enable higher compression ratios and higher extraction ratios... but you needed to be assured of the higher octane fuel. If you didn’t have the high octane fuel and you put in low octane fuel, you’re going to destroy the engine reasonably quickly from pre-detonation.
The engineers at Ferrari, however, remembered something about the Carnot cycle, engine history and they put out a prototype version of their 430 Spider in 2008 that increased HP, torque and decreased fuel consumption on E-85. This isn’t rocket science. This is tractor science. ;-)
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/01/14/detroit-2008-ferrari-fills-in-details-on-f430-spider-bio-fuel/
Remember, not all the BTU’s you put into an engine in fuel get converted to mechanical energy. If you can increase the efficiency of the conversion of potential heat in the fuel to mechanical energy, you could make a car get higher mileage, even tho the heat content of a fuel is lower.
For example, if someone would get their head out of their posterior and use compression-ignition engineering (ie, diesel cycle) in an engine fueled with gasoline, you’d see an increase in fuel efficiency.
Toyota and Mazda are using Miller/Atkinson cycle engines in their research and in their high-mileage hybrid designs. Those make normal gasoline burn more efficiently, and could be taken even further with E-85 and the resulting higher octane.
Where’s GM? Nowhere with this idea.
As for ozone: The burning of E85 doesn’t produce ozone directly. The burning by-products of E85 that contribute to ozone are aldehydes, which are then formed into ozone by sunlight and the ambient conditions. In warm conditions, the production of ozone from E-85 combustion is only slightly elevated - but in cold temperatures, it goes up significantly. Burning E85 in a place like Denver in winter is a sure fire way to make it look like LA in August.
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