Ethanol fuels, pump price isn't the only cost

[weekendrider]

Finally after years of suffering in silence. Rushing to make design changes to accommodate
mandated fuel changes, the industry is fighting back to inform the consumer.
Good on 'em.
http://opei.org/ethanolwarning/

 

[ridgerunner1965]

good link and very true. about all we have here is e10.i religously use lucas fuel stabilizer for ethonol fuels along with a dash of marvel mystrey oil. i have 3 bikes and several chain saws and small motors.all seem to work fine with this mixture.

another tip is to keep all your tanks FULL if a engine is going to set for any length of time.even a week or two.the alky fuel seems to go bad worse in small amounts such as a mostly empty tank.

the marvel oil seems to keep my tanks from rusting as well.

i also like to use a dose of HEET once or twice a year to get any water lurking in the crevices of your tank back in suspension and on out the exhaust.im sure we have all seen rusted out tanks from water setting in the bottom corners.

 

[RatyXS]

It is a joke, only looks decent on paper. It burns less efficient and in turn you have to buy more, burn more. So it doesn't do shit for the eco as said. Its al BS..

 

[650Skull]

It is a joke, only looks decent on paper. It burns less efficient and in turn you have to buy more, burn more. So it doesn't do shit for the eco as said. Its al BS..

That is a simplistic statement, true to a point because of the less energy produced then more of the fuel is used to compensate for that loss.

As for the environment and conversion rate it depends on what source of plant matter is used to make the fuel. Corn is, and always has been a poor converter, especially as fossil fuels are need to be consumed for the conversion, and because of the protectionism of govt tariffs, corn been favorably looked upon by the growers especially as they are in a win win situation. Because of the money to be made by the farmers, they stopped growing white corn creating food shortages.. Now there is a question about the affects of the carbon being removed from the soils and corn may actually may be more harmful to the environment than fossil fuels. (source)

Sugarcane ethanol on the other hand is very good. The conversion rate is quite high, it is not depleting a food source, and the by product, (bagasse), is used to burn and heat the boilers required for the conversion of the cane.

I was reading one blog, (source), where there is some thoughts that sugarcane is worse for the environment because of the carbon footprint from burning off the cane before harvesting. I know here in Australia that practice was phased out years ago so there is no need to burn off. There is some residual burn of from the overshoot of wast that misses the bins when harvesting. Minimalistic in the greater picture

 

[weekendrider]

If you want to look at some of the different choices/crops for ethanol look at the Jerusalem artichoke.

 

[650Skull]

Seems the a major problem is the invasive properties of the artichokes and the short growing season and being confined to a certain latitude.

Interesting plant and has a lot of use.

 

[weekendrider]

VERY invasive. We did plant some as a trial.
Won't do it again.

 

[650Skull]

Roundup is supposed to be about the only thing to kill it.

It certainly has the potential to produce a lot of fuel per acre if the problems can be solved.

 

[weekendrider]

In 1983 a processing distilation plant was built in Hydro, OK just for this. The commitment from farmers was lacking though and it went belly up.

 

[LuckyLeprechaun]

A couple years ago I was thinking about building an engine meant to run off of E85 specifically. I thought I would share some of the info that I picked up along the way from both local sources and online.

E-fuels will go bad faster than pure gasoline in our bikes because ethanol slowly absorbs water out of the air. Ethanol being water soluble will pull and hold water out of the air. Because of this E-fuels are actually only recommended for fuel injection systems because carbureted systems are not truly sealed systems. Also, with our bikes being almost 40 years old, the rubber gasket around the fuel cap is probably not in the best shape and isn't making the best seal which allows air, and therefor water, to get in the fuel. When I was looking at building my E85 engine I was HIGHLY recommended to run fuel injection because it's a sealed system, whereas a carbureted system would not be and the fuel would go bad more quickly.

E-fuels will run less efficient in a normal vehicle because as stated, ethanol has less power per amount as compared to gasoline. However, it also has a higher octane rating. While I never found an actual octane rating for E85, almost everyone agrees it's higher than the octane rating in even premium gasoline. I saw estimates from 105-150. What this means in the real world is that these fuels can be used in high compression engines, and higher compression engines are more efficient. So even though the power of E85 is lower than of straight gasoline, you could run it in a much higher compression engine, which would make more power per amount of fuel, thereby helping to negate the fact that the fuel has less power. The problem with this is that if you raise the compression ratio too high to run E85 efficiently, there's a good chance you wouldn't be able to run normal gasoline in the engine. You would need at least premium and possibly have to add octane boost on top of that. This leads to the problem that car manufacturers encounter, they can't raise the compression to run E85 efficiently, because a vast majority of people will not run it, and it would make it so they couldn't just fill up with regular gas.

Now all that being said, I am not for or against E-fuels as this is about the extent of my knowledge on them. My point is that all the factors should be taken into consideration.

 

[goodgollyjosh]

When I was building carbs professionally, I was tuning the gas carbs to around 12.0 -12.5 AFR at WOT, the E85 carbs to 9.7 - 9.8, and the methanol carbs to 5.0 - 5.5. Quite an increase in fuel flow. Nothing compared to Nitromethane though. Typical AFR on top fuel stuff is around 1.5-1.7. Almost as much fuel as air. As mentioned, you will notice the BTU's drop in these fuels as the AFR's get lower but the total output get's higher and higher because you can cram so much more fuel in the cylinder.

Not a fan for fuel economy though when it comes to E85. I have not seen the ability to increase the timing and compression negate the fact that the system runs richer than gas...as mentioned. Good thread.