Started burning E85

[Timber]

I have seen reports that claim it takes more gas to ride a bicycle than to drive a car. So to be honest I don't know what to believe? Everything is suspect, it all depends on the source of the facts. I don't trust anyone anymore to know what they are talking about including myself. Their is nothing but fuzzy math out there for information.

 

[timster2]

I have seen reports that claim it takes more gas to ride a bicycle than to drive a car. So to be honest I don't know what to believe? Everything is suspect, it all depends on the source of the facts. I don't trust anyone anymore to know what they are talking about including myself. Their is nothing but fuzzy math out there for information.

I agree. When I was doing these alternative fuel projects, more often than not, it was the agenda that dictated the direction and how the reports were written. In the case of the M100 truck little was written on the project because it was a complete failure. If you think congress has a lock on doublespeak try working with executives of the energy industry.

I have a lot of respect for those willing to use alternative fuels for no other reason but to be greener. Every little bit helps to move us off imported fuels. If no one buys alternative fuels there is no demand no demand no market, no market no production/refining, no production/refining no need for feed crops and it goes on and on. It will take many years for the infrastructure built on gasoline to migrate to other liquid fuels. Tanks, fuel lines, pumps and more has to be compatible. Only recently are these factors considered for new or upgrades to fuel stations. What station owner would invest a hundred grand in a new fuel system only to sell a few hundred gallons a month?

There are a lot of unknowns using E85 and only by racking up the miles in the real world can we know what needs to be addressed for future engines. Ethanol has less lubricity than water; it is in fact a solvent. How this will affect long term engine longevity? Don't know until we try it. Laboratory testing is good for a starting point but cannot replace real world testing.

 

[Timber]

It doesn't cost me any more to run E85 than gas and it's easy to get so it is a no brainer for me regardless of how unpopular it obviously is here. That in itself is the only disappointing thing I have discovered.

 

[Redneck in training]

I used to race boats many years ago. Since the the fuel was "open" we used methyl-alcohol in some engines. There were two reasons for it. It has very high octane number so the compression of engines designed for the Methyl was in the diesel engine range 14 to 16. The second reason was internal cooling by evaporating the fuel in the cylinder. Methyl or methanol has about half of the energy content of the gasoline so there was more than double amount of the fuel ingested in the engine. Evaporating large amount of fuel prevented piston burnout. If only E85 was available then all engines would be designed for E85 and their thermal efficiency could be increased by increasing compression. I guess they will knock on pure 87 octane gasoline.
Speaking about making alcohol. Isn't it more efficient to make it from fruits such as plums, cherries, peaches, grapes etc. I think fruit trees require significantly less energy and initial investment to produce than corn. You can plant them on places where other crop is impossible such as slopes. They don't cause erossion, no machines are absolutely necessary, wood can be reused for energy and other usefull things etc.

 

[timster2]

Redneck in Training, Your correct engines can be modified or designed to take advantage of the specific characteristics of alcohol based fuels. The problems start when the fuel is unavailable for some reason. If your fuel source misses a delivery, closes, pump failure etc. you can't go down the road and just pull into another fueling station and fill up. Not until E85 is available at most every fuel station. Imagine trying to take a cross country trip without a guaranteed source of fuel. If you had an E85 engine that could not take any other blend of fuel you would be parked until you can find another source. That's why they make flex fuel engines that can take whatever is available, however, you can only optimize so much with electronic engine control.

I'm an optimist, if my vehicles could run E85 I would to further the effort. Thinking about it I don't remember running into any E85 pumps in the area. I will have to start looking. A quick Google search shows only 41 Stations across 32 Cities sell E85 Fuel in Pennsylvania.

 

[rsewill]

As far as taxation, it will need to be figured out once alternative vehicles become more commonplace. I think it is a good idea to not tax them until that time to encourage development. Hopefully it will be a value-mileage-greenness user tax. The more your vehicle is worth and the miles you drive and your vehicles eco footprint should determine your tax. Pay the tax at registration time, not at the energy supply source.

I would deemphasize miles and emphasize value and greenness. Right now we all subsidize trucks because roads and bridges need to be built far heavier for them. Trucks also do much more damage to roads. A car traveling 50k miles a year does minimally more damage than a car traveling 5k miles. But heavy trucks do damage every mile they run. Of course we subsidize trucks because we all benefit from what trucks haul.

Toll roads suck because the Escalade driver pays the same as the Focus driver. For the Cadillac driver the toll is just an annoyance, for the Ford driver it is a significant expense.

 

[rambler]

Speaking about making alcohol. Isn't it more efficient to make it from fruits such as plums, cherries, peaches, grapes etc. I think fruit trees require significantly less energy and initial investment to produce than corn. You can plant them on places where other crop is impossible such as slopes. They don't cause erossion, no machines are absolutely necessary, wood can be reused for energy and other usefull things etc.

I like your thinking. I'm a corn farmer, so if I look biased, I just like to discuss alternate energy.

To make fuel, you have to run a plant 24/7 every day of the year. That's the efficient way.

Corn is easy to ship and store, so it fits the production model.

Fruits are seasonal and difficult to store, while you don't need good quality fruit, mold and juice oozing out the truck/storage area would not be good.

Fruits are a lot of sugar, which is a plus. Corn is a lot of starch, needs to be convered so that's a minus.

Here in southern MN you can grow 175-200 bu an acre corn every year, which times 2.8 is 490-560 gallons of ethanol per acre, plus 1.5 tons of high-protien livestock feed left over.

It's going to be real hard to get more efficent than the transport, storage, and yield of corn.

Fruit won't get there - it takes 5 years to estsablish a grove of fruit trees, corn produces every year.... And so on.

There are some small ethanol plants using fruit wastes, and that is a great idea. I'm all for it! But it won't replace corn.The efficiency is not there.

Sugar cane would be more efficient, but cane needs a very special type of climate to grow, and in the USA Hawaii found it more profitable to build hotels and develop that land, and in Florida we just signed a 10 year agreement for the govt to buy out the biggest cane producer and return the cane ground to natural swamp - we value nature more than sugar production.

Sugar beets also are more efficent, but they too like a special type of ground to grow in, near me actually, but they just can't grow all acoross the midwest efficeiently.

So we are left with corn.


Here in Minneosta we have been using a 2 to 5% blend of soybean or rendered lard as a diesel fuel blend. A rendering plant (takes dead animals) is cooking them and squeezing out the oil, turning it into a diesel fuel blend. It is a _tiny_ amount, but it's a good use for something that has little uses in this world. See if anything comes of it, bigger scale. This product is very fussy, it is easy for it to be contaminated if it's not processed enough, messes up the fuel supply if they aren't careful. Animal fat is difficult to turn into a compatable blending diesel fuel.

There are 2 soybean plants that take the oil out of beans to make fuel. Almost all soybeans are run through a press to make bean meal and oil, but these 2 plants were set up special to make fuel, not food-grade oil. This is actually pretty effiecnt, more so than corn ethanol, but soybeans are high-priced enough to make it not so good ecconomically. But we would get sometihng like a 60% energy return above energy costs to make the soy-diesel, double the efficiency of corn-ethanol.

Palm and other oils would be more efficient, but again they don't grow here in the USA, and shipping them in or storing them becomes a problem, all efficiency gets eaten up in those costs.

I guess efficiency is a relative term - you have to use what is available. I think it's great to use waste fruit to create some ethanol, and in fruit growing areas that could make good sense. But in the big picture, that would likely be a small amount and not a steady year-around supply of ethanol?

Good thinking tho. Explore the possibilities.

--->PAul

 

[rsewill]

Rambler, how about switch grass?

I've driven Hwy 60 more times than I care to admit and have seen the ethanol plants go up over time. Nice fertile corn and soy bean area but I would think switch grass would be cheaper to grow and is supposed to have six times more ethanol capability per acre.

 

[varmint]

Someone wrote about not taxing alternative fuel vehicles, to encourage their development. I don't know about other states, but here in Maryland, our Honda Hybrid was purchased without any state sales tax, and certain other savings, like reduced annual parking pass fees, help encourage hybrids. Of course, averaging around 48 mpg over the first 100,000 miles of driving alone makes owning it a good thing, for us. No problems, just regular oil changes. Well, a new set of tires, which was interesting in that the replacements, which weren't "high milage" type tires like the OEM ones, caused the average milage to drop a mile or two per gallon. I keep them well inflated, which seems to help.

 

[Redneck in training]

I was thinking about small DIY production to produce enough fuel to drive to work and back. Every house has room for few trees. I figured it would take about 60 - 100 large plum trees to run my small car 50k miles on pure ethylalkohol.
50 gal mash produces about 4 gal of 96-98% alcohol.