Good news: E15 in trouble

It will hurt out local economy in the short term but in the long term it allow farmland to reach its true value and will allow us to gain more ability to export more crop. I guess this means we are losing our cheap race fuel. Check out my buddies video of the Ford GT he is building using pump ethanol.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4UOm_5K1Xg[/ame]

 

RI f*&ing P

 

EVERYthing about "E-ANYTHING" is wrong at every turn.


We little people crushed E10 here in Germany a while back. it is a bit difficult to get here now. ONLY ONE pump of 8 or however many at a gas station sells that mauspiss instead of the other way around about 9 months ago.

We Never EVEN made it to E15.



BUT the Govt got even as they fined the Gas Companies for failinig to sell the min of E10 required under the law and passed that "Tax" along to us little people.


So we ACTUALLY cleaned the air buying ONLY E5 as opposed to the GOVT'S lie about E10, but got screwed ANYWAY.

When you "win" against BIG GOVT, you still "Lose."

 

Locally here about 60% of gas stations sell "E-85" which varies between 70 and 85% Ethanol. The price for a gallon of "E-85" this morning $2.69 a gallon versus $3.19 for gasoline. The octane usually tests between 107 and 116 depending on the blend. The race fuel at the track is 110 octane and cost $6.99 a gallon this past summer. I am not a fan of being forced to buy E-10, I try to avoid it in my older cars and my 308, but for racing my Mustang the E-85 is a cheap racing fuel and alot of guys are modifying their engines and running it. As far as the acids I have yet to notice any valve errosion after 10 years of using it. We are more concerned about oil wash down so we run heavier oil and change the oil more often.

 

Well, on a BTU basis, you're probably overpaying for E-85 relative to "gasoline"; generally E-85 would have to be approximately 30% cheaper as it has approximately 30% less energy per volume, so parity would be E-85 at $2.23 / gallon on an equivallent energy basis.

Proper octane rating for E-85 is heavily disputed, and in many ways meaningless as a comparative tool, but a value generally accepted by automotive engineers is 96-97 octane.

E-85 works as race fuel for you not because it has more energy, but because you're able to burn more of it and thus make more power. (Your engine's primary limit is air flow - it's an air pump - and for a given mass flow of air, you can achieve more power by burning more E-85 than you can by burning "gasoline".) Also, you're probably not fully able to make use of the high octane rating of the 110 race fuel, so E-85 gets you more power at lower cost for that power.

E-85 is very interesting from an engineering versus economics standpoint, particularly as it relates to pragmatism versus dogmatic ideals. The broad economic impact is staggering and potentially nearly disasterous. But the potential transportation benefit of smaller and lighter weight power plants producing higher specific power are enticing. But the durability and materials engineering problems to realize those power plants are both concerning and expensive. (And the same may be said about EV's and plug-in hybrids....)

Imposing policy to force this complex set of competing issues to sort itself out into the dogmatic ideal form was an expensive error of government! But I believe that ultimately we will see wide-spread adoption of road-going alcohol fuels - hopefully lead in this direction by pragmatic marketplace decisions following technology and engineering advances, rather than dictated by more dogmatic policy. In particular, conversion of methane (natural gas) to methanol (blended to M-85 with gasoline) or syndiesel is a very likely long-term future, and holds great promise in terms of costs and benefits....

 

Nitromethane is only 1/4 to 1/3 as "springy" as gasoline.

Yet can net you 8,000 horse power due to how much you can burn (about 8 times more)under the right conditions.

 

You are correct in that ethanol has about 30% less BTU's then gasoline.

your numbers are low. My numbers came from the research my senior design group did as an undergrad for Automotive engineering.

We do make more power because we are able to burn more of it but we are also able to take advantave of the mechanical properties i.e. compression, spark timing, boost and since it is an oxygenated fuel you get a small chemical supercharging effect. Race fuel typically has a smaller BTU content then 87 oct. fuel (albeit not as low as the ethanol) but its the mechanical advantages that make it deireable for power. The same argument could be made for Gasoline vs diesel.

No argument. I am not an advocate for the Govt to mandate anything on the people. I believe it is a dirtier fuel to produce and the arguments that they used to force it on the public were bold lies but for a race fuel it is cheap and easy to get here and allows me to drive my modified sreet/strip car around without having to keep a supply of $7/gal fuel around.