# E85 Fuel



## Darin (Feb 18, 2006)

What are the pros and cons of using this fuel? I realize you have to have a vehilcle that is approved to use it, but have you heard anything good or bad? We don't have stations here in Colorado but I have seen them in North Dakota and Minnesota.


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## ShoerFast (Feb 18, 2006)

Darin

I think that it's a good start, but to milk the idea that vehicles can burn as a FFV (flexible fueled vehicle) is not going to pan out.

To use ethanol best would be to start from the ground up.There just isn't as much heat in alcohol ,Retroing a currant engine will need about 135% more E85 fuel to do the same work.,, It can take a lot more compression , have a lot hotter cams, and much larger fuel delivery ratio, then gas can, and still make emission standards.

Compression ratios of 12 : 1 (or better,,,, like as much as 17 :1) and air fuel ratios of as much as 6 : 1 are more ideal

Corn is going for about $2.10 a bushel right now,,,, burning it in out rides will take some of our addiction on crude off,,,,, but as for me, I hear that we have plenty of domestic oil that we hadn't tapped yet?

If any one thinks that it will help the so called "green-house" effect is in the wrong class,,,,, just fermenting the fuel makes tons of co2.

Any competition is good, having just one fuel (crude) is sealing our price, high. But burning some E85 and some LP or Propane will send a message to the Saudis I'm sure!

Kevin


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## bwalker (Feb 18, 2006)

> Corn is going for about $2.10 a bushel right now,,,, burning it in out rides will take some of our addiction on crude off,,


 Not really as it takes mucho crude oil to produce ethanol.


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## ShoerFast (Feb 18, 2006)

bwalker said:


> Not really as it takes mucho crude oil to produce ethanol.




Bwalker

What would happen to the alingment of the cosmo, if they used ethanol to produce ethanol ?


Sort of like a firewood burning firewood saw?

Kevin


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## skwerl (Feb 18, 2006)

If the oil companies wanted to drill in ANWR, we would be drilling in ANWR. They are just as happy leaving American reserves untapped while they make their money off the Saudi oil. In 40-50 years when the middle East is running out of oil, the oil companies will still have the ANWR oil to sell for continued successful business. If they tap ANWR now, the middle East oil will just go to China or other markets. This is called "Having your cake and eating it, too".

In the meantime, there are plenty of people screaming about 'shortages' to keep crackpot ideas like Ethanol afloat (with heavy government subsidies).


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## bwalker (Feb 19, 2006)

> What would happen to the alingment of the cosmo, if they used ethanol to produce ethanol


 Not possible as it currently takes more BTU to make ethanol than are yielded by the ethanol itself.


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## ShoerFast (Feb 19, 2006)

skwerl said:


> In the meantime, there are plenty of people screaming about 'shortages' to keep crackpot ideas like Ethanol afloat (with heavy government subsidies).




Skwerl Says it best , 
With the Government involvement, or throwing money into the mix thinking it will get better will choke the chicken. 

I know of 2 Ethanol plants very near home, back home in Minnesota.

One is owned by an investment company, they buy distressed corn (moldy corn that cant be used for anything else) They distill using N-Gas,,,,, and would lose money, if it weren't for the grants they run on!

The other is owned by a good friend of my families.

Both are based on early German designs for Gin Distilling,,,,, but the friends of mine use the corn they grow, and the cob it's self to do it's own distilling,,,,, there plant is making money, and everything they run is running on Ethanol.

They installed the plant when there family farm was paid off, and the land started to be more valuable then what it was worth to farm,,,,, in other words, so they wouldn't need to pay tax's.

There are a lot of methods to extract the Ethanol using higher initial cost systems, like using centrifuge and vacuum pumps.

But thinking inside the box will render words like,,,,



bwalker said:


> Not possible



Kevin


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## Kneejerk Bombas (Feb 19, 2006)

bwalker said:


> Not possible as it currently takes more BTU to make ethanol than are yielded by the ethanol itself.


Same with hydrogen. Yet they move ahead with these half baked ideas. 
I'm sure OPEC loves these ideas. For evey gallon of ethanol we want, we need to use 1.5 gallons of gasoline.


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## bwalker (Feb 19, 2006)

> ,,,,, there plant is making money, and everything they run is running on Ethanol.


 Making money in that the have a garanteed market form EPA legislation and government subsidies?
The economics aside, ethanol is a lousy fuel for a variety of reasons.


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## ShoerFast (Feb 19, 2006)

bwalker said:


> Making money in that the have a garanteed market form EPA legislation and government subsidies?
> The economics aside, ethanol is a lousy fuel for a variety of reasons.




There is no doubt that it's a weaker fuel, as I had mentioned in my first post of the topic.
The main drivers behind the idea may have came from someone that had a pencil that grew on a tree,,,,,,, corn is a renewable resource, at current production rates of about 150 - 180 bushels an acre, it could fuel a portion of our rides. If they revamped the process that it takes to distill it!

I got involved with converting there first field tractor to burn Ethanol in 1984 , there wasn't much written about it back then. My math was off when I had the heads milled and found domed pistons from a diesel that fit the hole and rods. The bad math gave us well over 15:1 compression after CC'ing the assembly,,,, it ran way too good!

As it never had the power it had before, it went from a 5 - 16" bottom plow to a 3 - 18", there cost in making the Ethanol was negligible and could run it on the cheep. There were a ton of things that needed to be done as time had its toll with everything the fuel would touch, it did run very clean, stared nicely and they liked it!

But as far as the Government involvement, they were there as the whole proses started,,,, But they milked cows before the still went in,,,,, you cant enjoy a glass of milk with out government subsidies, or have your mommy dress you with out the government subsidies, if your wearing with cotton, booties, tighty Whites or jeans, as the way I understand it, they think American cotton would have been broke years ago. 
Chances are that most everything you will do to day had one thing or another been effected by the government,,, just look at trains hauling freight,,, they should have been broke years ago!

Ethanol is a weak fuel, but it's here, personally, I would be racing propane if NHRA would let me run a pressurized tank down there track, I had easily burned over 10K gallons of propane fuels for road use since 1996,,, running some of the steepest hills and highest roads in America.

I'm guilty of never writing a letter to the EPA legislators, and wouldn't gripe while I'm wearing cotton and dumping milk over my Wheaties, any way. 

Bottom line, in Homer Alaska, it's now illegal to feed the Bald Eagles, as there finding that true Americans don't fair well with handouts,,,, maybe the Liberals (the primary subsidy legislators) could learn something here?

Kevin


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## bwalker (Feb 19, 2006)

Coal will be made into gasoline via the Fischer-Trope process long before Ethanol is used exclusivly as a fuel. The break even point on this process is about $30 per barrel.
Then there are the massive tar sand/shale deposits across the western USA that hold more petroleum than Saudi Arabia and Kuwait combined.


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## ShoerFast (Feb 20, 2006)

Darin

Knowing and doing work for a coulpe people that work for the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden. 
I should be able to get the inside skinny of there impression of Bush's vist on Tuesday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060220/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_energy

Should be sort of intresting?

Kevin


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## Weatherby (Feb 25, 2006)

It doesn't take a 1.5 gallons of gas to make a gallon of ethanol. There was one major article stating this and he left out other energy benefits you get from making ethanol.

Either way, the process is being refined. New fermentation processes are being developed, and other materials other than corn are being used. By no means will ethanol solve our oil crisis, but its a start.

If they were serious about it, the government could force all car manufacters to switch to diesel engines and develope diesel/electric hybrids. They wouldnt even have to bother with ethanol to reduce the amount of middle east imports by 75%. Add biodiesel into the mix and it's even better. Diesel is more efficient and requires less refining. Biodiesel in real world test actually had lower NOX emissions than were found in the lab experiments before anyone trys to go that route.


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## bwalker (Feb 25, 2006)

I do not know about any new process for ethanol production, but Brazil tried to switch over to ethanol and it was a huge failure.
IMO like weatherby said I think it would be much better to switch most of the cars over to diesels and diesel hybrids.How about a tax credit to encourage this? What about coming up with a emmissions laws that take into account fuel economy and emmissions geneated by manufacture of the fuel? Diesel is a clear winner if this was the case, but instead the most efficiant engines we have are villified by the EPA and are actually getting worse economy with each successive set of EPA emmissions regulations.


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## donho (Feb 25, 2006)

*bio diesel*

We have a company here in pittsburgh that collects trimmings/ guts etc from slaughter houses all over the area and renders it down into bio diesel they have I think about ten trucks or so and run most of them on bio plus charge a nice fee for picking up the waste I wonder what they do for road tax?? my diesel benz gets 30mpg and weights in at 3800lbs wished detroit made a car to compare I would buy it !


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## DDM (Feb 26, 2006)

Older diesel engines wont stand up to biodiesel from what i have read.It eats the seals up in the injector pumps.


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## motordog80 (Mar 1, 2006)

*e85*

e85 is equivelent to 103 octain gas not the gallon and an half. The problems are it burns faster and hotter than gasoline.


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## bwalker (Mar 2, 2006)

E-85 is higher in octane, but I do not know about 103. It also most certainly does not burn faster.
It does have much less BTU per lb than gasoline and asa result vehicles run on E-85 burn much more fuel.


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## motordog80 (Mar 2, 2006)

*e85*

you are correct on the btu's, aslo diesel has nearly twice the btu's of ethanol. Because it burns longer. I am correct in saying ethanol burns faster, look up rate of combustion of ethanol... or better yet try it out.


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## bwalker (Mar 2, 2006)

> Because it burns longer. I am correct in saying ethanol burns faster, look up ... or better yet try it out.


Not because it burns longer or faster, but because it has a higher energy content,


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## Kneejerk Bombas (Mar 3, 2006)

Weatherby said:


> It doesn't take a 1.5 gallons of gas to make a gallon of ethanol. There was one major article stating this and he left out other energy benefits you get from making ethanol.



Like what? Huge government subsidies?


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## Patrick62 (Mar 4, 2006)

motordog80 said:


> e85 is equivelent to 103 octain gas not the gallon and an half. The problems are it burns faster and hotter than gasoline.



I am not sure about the hotter part, but it burns way faster. Neet part is that it brings a little oxygen with it.

And what do you suppose they run in funny cars on the drag strip?? 

-Pat


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## bwalker (Mar 7, 2006)

> [And what do you suppose they run in funny cars on the drag strip??/QUOTE]
> Not ethanol. More like nitro/methanol.


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## bc_vickers (Mar 7, 2006)

There is bookuu documentation on the internet about this fellas so their no reason to argue the fine points. The basics are that the large ethanol plants are most certainly subsidized by the govt.. IMO it's so that they ultimately can control them. Also, if cars, or engines actually, were built to burn ethanol or even shine (180 proof) they would use app. 110% more of it but with less smog causing emissions (I can't remember the exact gases!) Probably about the same amount of C02 but you'll have that as long as you're burning anything. This is why it's in almost all gasoline! The main reason why the engine will burn more fuel is that by its very nature alcohol contains a lot of oxygen. The issue comes in when you're trying to "flex fuel" a vehicle, neither purpose is served to it's fullest. To make use of the extra oxygen you need to bump the compression way up (like someone mentioned previously). With that the power will be very similar to straight gasoline. You can also run a turbo with much higher boost pressures if that's your cup of tea.

Is it a net energy loss producing ethanol? That mystery has been throughly debunked after the writer of the sole report was found to have not included key information on the byproducts of production and the increases we've been seeing in yields vs. inputs. Over 200bu./acre across southern MN this fall. Has anyone ever done a similar study on gasoline and whether or not it's a net energy gain? I suspect not as it's heavily subsidized as well. How bout tobacco, how come that's still being grown if we're not supposed to be smoking it? The tobacco farmers are getting more govt. money now than they were before the lawsuits. The truth of the matter is that the government is running both ends of the market in some cases. They've got their hand stretched out waiting for consumers to buy cigs and gas and then take a small portion of that and pay the producers to keep making it. WTH?

What's the solution? Folks that are able or willing should distill some on their own and power one of their vehicles with it. Same idea as small scale solar/wind electric production. Take a car "off the grid" so to speak. It may not have a very high pay back or break even but in the end it'll make me feel better that I'm not supporting some countries harem. After I wrap up my current house projects I plan on taking a crack at this sort of deal. I've already ran E85 through my old D-17 Allis. I just turned the main mixture screw out until she ran nice. A little gunk accumulated in the sediment bowl and that was it.

I forgot, ethanol and biodiesel are solvents that eat certain seals and such. Expect a few issues here and there but it isn't anything that can't be remedied. On a positive note, after you run them for a while your engine and fuel system will be spanking clean.


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