Has the Ethanol Threat Manifested In the US? 432
Five years ago today, we mentioned here what was characterized as "The Great Ethanol Scam." According to the central story in that post, the ethanol in gasoline was (or would be) "destroying engines in large numbers," and the only real winners with a rise in the use of ethanol as a gasoline supplement would be auto mechanics. An increasing number of cars are officially cleared for use with E15 (15 percent ethanol), and a growing number of E85 vehicles are in the wild now, too, though apparently many of their owners don't realize that their cars can burn a mixture that's mostly ethanol. When I can, I fill my car with no-ethanol gas, but that's not very easy to find (farmer's co-ops are one handy source), so most of my driving over the past decade has been with E10 fuel. I seem to get better mileage with all-gas, but the circumstances haven't been controlled enough to make a good comparison. What has your experience been? Have you experienced ethanol-related car problems, or were the predictions overblown?
Compromise is implied by multipurpose (Score:5, Insightful)
Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Corn ethanol is an EROI disaster. This is big-agra, some of the same people that ram HFCS into everything and spam tons of research trying to exonerate added sugar as the culprit in the obesity epidemic. Subsidize corn. We love it.
"I seem to get better mileage with all-gas." You seem to have forgotten that the energy density of ethanol is lower to the point that aircraft will never under any circumstances use it. 42MJ/kg vs 30MJ/kg. Per liter it's even worse. You're not getting better gas mileage.
Comment from a Chemist (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, ethanol has a lower energy density per litre (or gallon, if you are metrically challanged) than does gasoline, just as gasoline has a lower energy density than diesel fuel.
You get better mileage out of diesel than gasoline, and better mileage out of gasoline than ethanol, all things being equal. Laws of thermodynamics aren't to be bypassed. No amount of "clever" can change the basic fact that gasoline holds more energy than ethanol.
However, and this may count for something for you, as it does for me, ethanol releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that was taken out of the atmosphere to grow the crop that led to the ethanol. There is no net increase of CO2, as there is with fossil fuels. Of course, a cynic might point out (and I might be one) that the carbon in the fossil fuel was also in the atmosphere at one time, to the tune of no less than 1500 ppm in the Carboniferous period.
Using ethanol isn't for getting better mileage, it's for reducing carbon footprint, the amount of carbon added to the atmosphere when you go down to the corner store to buy a six-pack of beer. The beer, btw, doesn't add carbon to the atmosphere, because like the ethanol that's in it, that carbon came -out- of the atmosphere when the crops to make it were grown.
For those who usually get "irony" wrong.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Priceless.
Re:Comment from a Chemist (Score:5, Insightful)
So, how much fossil fuel is used to grow & harvest the corn? And then there's the whole "distill it" part. Not sure how much energy is used to distill corn liquor as opposed to gasoline....
Re:Comment from a Chemist (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:My parents took our Canadian car to Florida (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Comment from a Chemist (Score:5, Insightful)
NOT ok if your car is new (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a "new" 2013 Mazda 3. Ethanol is said to have 3% less energy than gas, but I've observed that when I use "may contain up to 10% ethanol" gas that I get a 10% or more drop in mileage($) contrasted to when I drive the extra mileage and pay more for "pure gas". So what that tells me is that I (and the planet) would be better off if the alcohol wasn't in the gas at all and they just sold me 9/10 of a gallon of gas for what they are charging me for gas adulterated with ethanol. I wouldn't have to haul the extra useless alcohol around, I would have more space in my tank for gas, and if we didn't waste food and energy to make and transport ethanol, the world would have more food and just maybe corn prices wouldn't be so high.
In theory 9/10 of a gallon of gas without alcohol added should cost even less than a gallon of the mixed crap, since you would save all the costs of the alcohol. But in reality pure gas is hard to find and end up commanding a premium price.
Re:ok if your car is new (Score:4, Insightful)
Sadly the stats don't agree with your anecdotal story.
Canada has required a minimum of 5% ethanol in gas since 1999. Typically you'll see 15% ethanol. The percentage of original vehicles that have survived long term has gone up. Especially on the 12 years and up vehicles which the survival rate has gone up as much as 14%. http://www.fleetbusiness.com/p [fleetbusiness.com]... see page 7.
why are you answering like that? fleet cars are _new_, furthermore cars have gotten better in the last 20 years, much better longevity than the cars made in the 20 years prior to that. point was that old cars need expensive reworks to fuel systems, which costs hobbyists a lot of money.
even that wasn't the real actual point: adding ethanol is corporate welfare(for farmers) which makes ABSOLUTELY NO FINANCIAL SENSE WHATSOEVER. it's stupid, could just as well pay the farmers for nothing and skip using the energy for making the corn and refining the corn into ethanol.
making the ethanol is not free and it just serves as a tool to create demand for corn so that the corn farmers don't go hungry - that's why it's % and that's why the only nations to go pure % have done so out of necessity(embargos and shit).
Its still a boondoggle (Score:4, Insightful)
It's amazing driving through the country side and view the castles that have erupted on the plains. These palatial residences funded by federal corn / ethanol subsidies - aka - our tax dollars. Often paired with massive motorhomes providing winter escape in a level of opulence previously unknown to agrarian workers.
From a pure energy perspective, ethanol has only 2/3 the BTU of gasoline.
76,000 = BTU of energy in a gallon of ethanol
116,090 = BTU of energy in a gallon of gasoline
Even vehicles rated to run ethanol should expect a 20%-30% decrease in fuel economy. I personally have experienced this. I drove with a coworker in a 2012 chevy truck rated for e85. We drove a 200 mile road trip (1 way) on trip there we used ethanol, on the trip back we used gasoline. True to form the return trip experienced more that 1/3 increase in fuel economy.
throw in the fact that ethanol must be distributed via semi-trucks and can't be piped (its too corrosive), it is usually distilled with propane, (an inefficient fuel in itself) and the reality is ethanol consumes more energy than it contains. Ethanol is a negative energy source. A Purdue university study came to that conclusion. Of course multitudes of ethanol funded studies have attempted to debunk that fact...
http://slashdot.org/comments.p... [slashdot.org]
to answer your question, yes, ethanol is a boondoggle. unfortunately lobbyists have taken away our choice and in many states we no longer can choose pure gasoline.
Re:ok if your car is new (Score:4, Insightful)
"Drying" fuel can also mean removing precipitated water, sitting at the bottom of the fuel tank by pulling it into the fuel, and burning it off. But it can also pull water from the air into the fuel, which is an undesired effect.
Re:ok if your car is new (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, governments were worrying about that sort of thing as early as 1875 when Wisconsin offered a prize for a vehicle that would be a "cheap, practical substitute for the horse and other animals". http://www.wisconsinhistory.or... [wisconsinhistory.org]
That is one of the roles of government, to look ahead at potential problems and find ways of mitigating them before they become a problem.
Hopefully, because of the various government actions being taken today (from biofuel to electric cars to renewables) we won't have to worry about it.