2.9 15% ethanol?

[stegomon]

Watching the news and they say that epa may have 15% ethanol in fuel. We already have 10% up here. How will the 2.9 work with this New fuel?

 

[brokemechanic3000]

It will be bad, any ethanol in gasoline is bad for an engine.

 

[stegomon]

Is it going to blow up my engine?

 

[adsm08]

Blow it up, probably not. But it may not run well, will lower MPG, and it's pretty corrosive, so it will eat the fuel system.

 

[RonD]

No, ethanol won't hurt the engine, E85(85% ethanol) fuel is used in "gas" engines all the time, and outside of larger injectors there are no other engine changes needed, so it won't hurt the engine, for sure.
Henry Fords first cars were sold to run either gasoline or ethanol, just a change in carb settings, he thought ethanol was the future because who would PAY for gasoline when they could make there own fuel at home, lol, it was more of a rural society then and it wasn't illegal to make your own alcohol at home either

Ethanol does present problems to rubber seals and fuel lines used in the fuel systems of some older vehicles, which is where the "ethanol is bad" comes from, but like the "unleaded gasoline is bad" once manufacturers address a problem it is no longer a problem, new engines run fine on unleaded gas now, and if you have been using E10 with no problems with fuel system then E15 won't be a problem.

Ethanol has less "power" per gallon than gasoline, just like gasoline has less "power" per gallon than Diesel.
Diesels get better MPG because of this, and diesel engines are more efficient than gas engines, gas engines average 25% efficiency, diesel 30%.

Ethanol has a higher Octane rating than gasoline so when added to gasoline it helps prevent pinging/knocking, ethanol can also combine with water, gasoline can't, this does 2 things, it helps remove water from fuel system, without "bad gas" symptoms, and prevents fuel line freezing in cold weather since ethanol/water combined has a lower freezing point than water alone.
"Winter gas" has been used for many many years in Northern areas, this was ethanol mix, but with a bad additive that is no longer used.

E15 will also lower emissions which I guess would be the point of going to E15.

MPG will go down slightly because there will not be as much "power" generated when burning E15, vs E10, but won't be much.

 

[adsm08]

Ron, the emissions argument is bullshit. Ethanol fuel doesn't do shit for emissions.

Carbon dioxide is the only thing effected. CO2 is not an environmental pollutant.

Also, ethanol is a net carbon producer. Burning one gallon of ethanol produces less CO2 than a gallon of gas, BUT you need to burn more ethanol to do the same amount of work, so your tailpipe emissions are roughly equal. Now figure that you have to transport more ethanol, so running trucks, to take the cars fueled by it as far, so now your tailpipe emissions are higher for ethanol. Then figure in the amount of carbon made by fermenting and distilling ethanol. Fermenting alcohol makes a lot of CO2. Who would have guessed?

Now I am not opposed to more CO2, it's good for plants, and it is one of the three basics needed for life on Earth. But it's pushed as a "green" fuel because it makes less carbon, which is bull.

It's a good anti-knock additive, but I really wish I had an option for ethanol free.

 

[straycat]

Ron, the emissions argument is bullshit. Ethanol fuel doesn't do shit for emissions.

Carbon dioxide is the only thing effected. CO2 is not an environmental pollutant.

Also, ethanol is a net carbon producer. Burning one gallon of ethanol produces less CO2 than a gallon of gas, BUT you need to burn more ethanol to do the same amount of work, so your tailpipe emissions are roughly equal. Now figure that you have to transport more ethanol, so running trucks, to take the cars fueled by it as far, so now your tailpipe emissions are higher for ethanol. Then figure in the amount of carbon made by fermenting and distilling ethanol. Fermenting alcohol makes a lot of CO2. Who would have guessed?

Now I am not opposed to more CO2, it's good for plants, and it is one of the three basics needed for life on Earth. But it's pushed as a "green" fuel because it makes less carbon, which is bull.

It's a good anti-knock additive, but I really wish I had an option for ethanol free.

This is 100% correct!!!! Also...... Everybody I know who has driven cars for over 30+years had told me that they all noticed they got less mpg when the added ethanol first came out. I do know that everybody in my area that does yard and tree services has said that they cannot use ethanol in any of their equipment anymore. They have to use marina gas to fill up all their gas equipment and this has cause the price of services to raise.

Feed the corn to us and the animals and keep it out of our gas supply!!!!

 

[Mark_88]

Corn is one of the big 5 GM crops and these are bad for our immune system. If we don't burn the crap to get rid of it we will need to either eat it or bury it...
What we need desperately is a replacement fuel or replacement for the ICE (internal combustion) and the primary reason we do not have that, other than it may not be available, is the ones with vested interest in maintaining our dependence on fossil fuels...

We are not likely to see any changes other than ones that make our dependence more pronounced.

With global warming we should be using less oil and other fuels to heat our homes...so less damage...I don't see anyone making any claims of this nature recently...meaning we may be seeing more BS than truth every day.

 

[adsm08]

Well Mark, global warming is a load of shit too.

For one, we have no evidence that 'man made global warming' is even a thing. In fact there is quite a bit of evidence to the contrary but it is suppressed as scientific heresy. What we do have evidence for is long term cycling of the climate from hot to cold, on a cycle of about 500 to 1000 years.

Two, more CO2 in the air is actually a good thing. More CO2 means more plants and bigger ones at that. Record breaking crops, record breaking sizes. Pumpkins the size of cars. Potatoes the size of my head.

Three, I personally cannot believe in man-made global warming. The very notion of it is at odds with Scripture. The Bible says that God is all know, all wise, and the Creator and Sustainer of all things. The notion that such a small shift in a single compound in the air, one of over twenty, could cause the whole planetary ecosystem to come crashing down around us is totally at odds with the concepts put forward in the Bible.

 

[RonD]

The earth has Ice Ages so will have Heat Ages, winter and summer, cycles big and small are what we live in.
Anyone ever wonder how dinosaurs and tropical plant fossils ended up in Canada, lol, cycles.
Man made?
We think we are in control so why not think that, doesn't mean we are right, lol, we just like to think we are in control.
Which is why we are so good at stopping volcanic eruptions, hurricanes and earthquakes, because WE are in control

Yes, plants absorb CO2 to live and if you factor that minus CO2 number in with the production of Ethanol from plants you will see a very low carbon foot print.
Oil's minus CO2 numbers were from millions of years ago so can't be factored in to current environment, so gasoline production and use has bigger footprint.

I guess the best argument for ethanol is that it IS in our immediate control, unlike oil that required quite a long time to be made, and out of our immediate control.
E5 means we use 5% less oil, E10 means 10% less oil, E15 means 15% less oil.
It also means the oil will last 5%, 10%, 15% longer.

Argument against ethanol is that older fuel systems aren't designed to use it, same as the unleaded fuel "thing" I mentioned before, so not a long term issue.

I don't see me, or many others, wanting to give up our portable energy storage uses at any time in the near or far future.
Liquid fuel or gaseous fuel is just too darn convenient to give up.
Batteries are not as convenient, although they are making progress.

Ethanol and synthetic liquid fuel science is fairly new, gasoline was cheap for a long long time, so no funding in that area of research, things have changed, looks like "big business" is getting involved, a good thing.

The Green Morons and Tree huggers only have one point I can get behind, "don't sh*t where you eat", darn good point IMO, to keep it clean, locally and world wide, just makes sense.

 

[adsm08]

Ethanol is still not a viable answer to long term fuel needs.

The best estimates are that if we commit all rural US land to corn production, use all of it for ethanol, and max out potential production per acre, using E100 we might be able to supply 20% of the US's demand.

Ultimately we need a better solution, however the total oil remaining estimate is constantly being revised upward, due to improved retrieval tech.

 

[RonD]

If you are looking at liquid fuel as a one or the other then at this moment in time yes, current ethanol production couldn't match demand, even in 20 years.
But that is not the point at all.

Current crops, methods and production, this is a few years old, from 2006
Yield of ethanol per acre
Sugar beet (France) 714gal
Sugarcane (Brazil) 662
Cassava (Nigeria) 410
Sweet Sorghum (India) 374
Corn (U.S.) 354
Wheat (France) 277

In Brazil they extract the sugar from the cane then burn the remaining cane to distill the ethanol, yielding a gallon of ethanol at a cost of $.60/gal

Corn is simply not one of the best crops to use, but since US produces alot of corn and after sugar is extracted the remaining vegetable matter can be used for cattle feed it is popular here.

Switchgrass, is an on again off again ethanol source, potentially yielding over 1,100 gal an acre, and can be grown on land not suitable for other crops or animal grazing.

But at this time none could replace gasoline, our technology for production of ethanol and our efficient conversion of any liquid or gaseous fuel to energy is lacking.
Internal combustion engine is about 25% efficient with gasoline/ethanol, 30% with diesel/biodiesel.
So a $4 gallon of gas breaks down as $3 to heat the air and $1 to get you down the road, pretty poor performance, gas or ethanol, lol.

But until breakthroughs are made any % of ethanol available and used in place of gasoline will mean the oil will absolutely last longer, doesn't matter how much there is or that "they" keep finding more, there for sure without a doubt is a limited supply on this planet.

The problem with using oil without accepting there is a limit is the same problem socialism has always run into.
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of "other peoples money", that is just a fact, ask the Greeks
Oil is the same, it will run out, doesn't matter when, it will for sure be sooner if used at 100% vs 85%

 

[Mark_88]

Yes, GW is a pile of carp for sure...and the worst part of it is the blatant cash grabs that we are getting whipped with to ensure our slavery. I've long said that the emission testing is a huge cash grab but I've also seen evidence right here in Ontario of improved air quality...

When I was a teenager I got a job working in Toronto. On my commute to work with my friend every morning we would see the haze hanging over the city...almost perfectly in line with the outer city limits...since the introduction of the emission testing and also shipping millions of jobs to third world countries and shutting down major industries...the air is noticeably cleaner.

As for producing a vehicle that burns cleaner and uses less fuel...horses...you can feed horses a pound of corn and aside from all the work they do, produce about a pound of dung that can be directly worked back into the land as fertilizer. Donkeys and cows will also work and just think of the fun kids can have playing a game of pickup dungball hockey (or soccer) on the streets...

And the biggest problem with any system so far is that we are so thinly spread out around the land that travel is an absolute necessity...either that or start building communities that are closer together where every thing can be had within easy walking distances.

That solution is probably the most workable...but we are so accustomed to having our space that it will be a fight to the end to preserve that freedom...

 

[Andy D]

I was in a parking lot of a fire station. They were running a 70s IH forest fire truck. These are the original monster trucks. The exhaust was the like of which I hadn't smelled in yrs. The air quality is way better these days. There are 7 billion humans on earth. Each one of us putting out BTUs just breathing.

 

[RonD]

Well GW(global warming) is real, earth's average temp has increased 1.5degF from 1880 to 2012.
The cause of the increase is where the debate starts.
But that's the "blame game" we humans like to play, to think we are in control, lol.

"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." - The Gilded Age, Charles Dudley Warner(collaborator with Mark Twain for this book, which is why Twain often gets credit for this quote)

We can't do anything about the weather, climate is way way out of our control, and is so complex that even short term predictions are often wrong, watch the weather man(or woman), calling it a "best guess" is being generous, lol.

We can prepare for the worst and hope for the best, that is our only control, and what we do for hurricanes, snow storms and heat waves.

Our best asset is that we are adaptable and greedy, which is one in the same, I am going to invest in those baseball caps with built in fans and make a million bucks