Posted on 09/21/2008 5:58:34 PM PDT by From The Deer Stand
On a recent trip to the Black Hills, I discovered a way to get better mileage. Whenever I was able to buy gas with no ethanol in it, I got a full 20 percent better mileage.
I put this to a calculator and found that using gas laced with ethanol caused me to use 17 percent more gas.
So, we pay taxes to support the ethanol industry; we pay more to use ethanol because of poorer mileage, which also causes us to put more hydrocarbons into the air — not to mention the pollutants put into the air distilling the stuff.
All of this brought to us by the same government that wants to take over our health care and is quickly nationalizing the business world. Isn't socialism wonderful?
Barry Kuenkel, Cumberland, Wis.
Do we know how ethanol affects engine ‘health’?
Yup. Generally you can get anywhere between 10-20% better mileage with gas without ethanol in it.
When I used to visit my mom about an hour north of where I live, there were two gas stations left in the city that were selling gas without ethanol in it. They finally caved in. There is so much pressure put on stations to sell gas with ethanol in it, even if you are not in a county where epa regs require its use.
Pisses me off. It’s more polluting than just gas, when it comes to groundwater contamination. Food is for animals and people, not gas tanks.
I'd like to know this also.
We got a bunch of knee-jerk idiots running the country.
They do more damage then good.
Ethanol has less lubricity (slipperyness) than gasoline.
However E10 has been used here in Indiana for 20+ years and I don’t think there’s any noticeable change in engine life.
E85 is a different story. You need to have a compatible fuel system to run that stuff. Only recently has it been priced cheap enough (around here) to compensate for the fuel econ loss. I’m guessing enough distilleries are now on line to bring the price down.
well it’s alcohol. It burns hotter so the engine runs hotter. It isn’t great for seals and o-rings and stuff like that. It also can be really hard on two-stroke engines, like boats and such. Gums up the works.
It also has the tendency to separate out from gas, since it is alcohol and water.
I hate ethanol. I am a proud new Mazda Miata (MX-5) owner. Ethanal causes a big drop in my mileage, and it also seems to cause performance issues. I don’t want AlGore taking away from my fun in driving the most popular sports car of all time....
Thanks!
In older engines (pre-1990 IIRC)it can cause problems with the fuel system because it degrades certain types of plastic and rubber, but in modern cars it’s harmless. As a fuel additive ethanol is pretty good because it’s the cleanest oxygenator and octane booster available, but the downside is that anything more than 5% ethanol content will noticeably increase the fuel burn because a gallon of ethanol has 30% less energy than a gallon of gasoline.
It also takes 1.3 Barrels of oil to produce 1 barrel of ethonal not counting the land it takes to grow it.
If you like $4/gal Thank Congress.
Pray for W, Palin and Our Troops
On vehicles not designed for ethanol, its use can cause gaskets and seals to deteriorate
The scary thing is Minnesota has passed a law mandating E20 as soon as it is approved by the EPA.
I recently sold my Dodge Caravan which has a flex-fuel engine. I tried E85 exactly one time. Performance as well as economy dropped significantly. So much so I never tried it again.
The worthless Congress gave us low flush toilets that use more water due to the need to flush more. Congress can not do any thing right these days.
Ethanol has 1/3 lower energy content than gasoline.
So in addition to losing 1/3 your mileage, you’re also 1/3 down on power and torque.
And it’s corrosive, so anything rubber or plastic (aluminum too, I believe) will wear out. And that’s not pre-1990s cars; many in the mid-90s experience this, on up through 2000.
What will we do when our engines are all screwed up?
We used to fix our own vehicles. Now with all this new crap we need diagnostic machines which most people don’t know how to operate.
Gone are the good old days when with a quick trip to the junk yard you were on the road again.
Yeup-my car-daily driver has dropped noticeably. About 20%. Ethanol added.
I am rather fond of ethanol, “shaken not stirred.”
Here is a Consumer Reports article from 2006 abouth ethanol. So I guess the mileage hasn’t changed in two years.
98 & earlier cars should NOT use ethanol.
Ethanol gas absorbs water faster & goes stale faster in 60 days. Which SUCKS because I do NOT use my Sea-doo that often.
But it should make “Sta-bil” stock go through the roof. ($11.99/qt.) 1oz. of Sta-bil into 1gal. of ethanol gas.
We have these ridiculous stickers here on our gas pumps that proclaim "Enriched with 10% Ethanol". What a load of crap. Every time I see one I want to cross out the word "enriched" and write "diluted".
Some years back, when they use metal gasoline tanks on cars, they used to put a lead plating on the inside of the tank to prevent rust. In the state I live in, they tried an experiment with ethanol added to the gas. In about a year, thousands of cars started having serious problems. The ethanol had reacted with the lead, it formed a sludge and then got carried through the fuel system to close the jets and small passages in the fuel system, it also got into the engine and made a mess too. They stopped using it and had to repair lots of cars. It’s now 25 years later, thank god today’s cars use plastic gas tanks.
ping
Alcohol and driving doesn’t mix.
“The ethanol mandates that have been foisted on American taxpayers are not just fiscal insanity, they are immoral. Congress has created a system of subsidies and mandates that requires the U.S. to burn food to make motor fuel, at a time when there is a global shortage of food and no global shortage of motor fuel.”
....and drumroll please.....
(snip of above below)
“So, where did the claim that ethanol is more energy efficient originate? I believe it originates with researchers from Argonne National Laboratory, who developed a model (GREET) that is used to determine the energy inputs to turn crude oil into products (4). Since it will take some amount of energy to refine a barrel of crude oil, by definition the efficiency is less than 100% in the way they measured it. For example, if I have 1 BTU of energy, but it took .2 BTUs to turn it into a useable form, then the efficiency is 80%. This is the kind of calculation people use to show that the gasoline efficiency is less than 100%. However, ethanol is not measured in the same way. Look again at the example from the USDA paper, and lets do the equivalent calculation for ethanol. In that case, we got 98,333 BTUs out of the process, but we had to input 77,228 to get it out. In this case, comparing apples to apples, the efficiency of producing ethanol is just 21%. Again, gasoline is about 4 times higher.
OK, so Argonne originated the calculation. But are they really at fault here? Yes, they are. Not only did they promote the efficiency calculation for petroleum products with their GREET model, but they have proceeded to make apples and oranges comparisons in order to show ethanol in a positive light. They have themselves muddied the waters. Michael Wang, from Argonne, (and author of the GREET model) made a remarkable claim last September at The 15th Annual Symposium on Alcohol Fuels in San Diego (5). On his 4th slide , he claimed that it takes 0.74 MMBTU to make 1 MMBTU of ethanol, but 1.23 MMBTU to make 1 MMBTU of gasoline. That simply can’t be correct, as the calculations in the preceding paragraphs have shown.
Not only is his claim incorrect, but it is terribly irresponsible for someone from a government agency to make such a claim. I don’t know whether he is being intentionally misleading, but it certainly looks that way. Wang is also the co-author of the earlier USDA studies that I have critiqued and shown to be full of errors and misleading arguments. These people are publishing articles that bypass the peer review process designed to ferret out these kinds of blatant errors. I suspect a politically driven agenda in which they are putting out intentionally misleading information.
One of the reasons I haven’t written this up already, is that 2 weeks ago I sent an e-mail to Wang bringing this error to his attention. I immediately got an auto-reply saying that he was out of the office until March 31st. I have given him a week to reply and explain himself, but he has not done so. Therefore, at this time I must conclude that he knows the calculation is in error, but does not wish to address it. In the interim, ethanol proponents everywhere are pushing this false information in an effort to boost support for ethanol.
Look at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture claim again: "the energy yield of ethanol is (1.34/0.74) or 81 percent greater than the comparable yield for gasoline". If the energy balance was really this good for ethanol and that bad for gasoline, why would anyone ever make gasoline? Where would the economics be? Why would ethanol need subsidies to compete? It should be clear that the proponents in this case are promoting false information.”
Here in Missoula, MT (aka Berkeley of the Rockies) we can only get ethanol-laced gas during the winter months. Lower mileage means use more of it — but it sure makes our liberal state Gubmint folks feel real good.
While I have absolutely no evidence for this, I have always believed the requirement for ethanol in gasoline was a result of the farm and agribusiness lobby. They are making an absolute killing. Is there any other commodity which has a guaranteed market no matter how much is produced?
15% increase in mpg in my Land Rover when I fill up with ethanol-free gas. The engine seems to run quieter too, not sure if it’s my imagination or not but it just seems smoother.
The Government’s plan for ethanol - and you guys and gals ain’t gonna like it any better than I do!
The Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program of the Department of Energy
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/
Biomass Program Multi-Year Program Plan (PDF, 19 MB) at:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/biomass_program_mypp.pdf
This document outlines the Department of Energy’s strategy for research, development, and deployment of various biomass technologies through 2017.
Notice that the plan virtually ignores everything EXCEPT ethanol, although according to their weekly newsletter they are funding research into oil from algae (mentioned ONCE, on page 14) which I believe is a far more promising alternative.
Got no choice here in San Francisco Bay Area. I've got several old cars, they run okay as long as I use them at least once every six months. The gas does go bad, so I try to retank at least twice a year. A 1966, 1968 and a 1970. They used to have more power in the old days than with the ethanol gas in use now.
Ethanol does not have near the same anergy that gasoline does.
The real big problem with ethanol is it is not just democrats pushing it, it is republicans as well. Lots of them are behind it, because it’s big business. In my state we’ve got repubs who go along with it because they have close relatives who OWN ethanol producing plants. Total conflict of interest.
I am sick of the ‘oil crisis’ whang, and think the election is, or should be, more about who we are sending back to congress to represent us. I would like to see a list of these losers who have voted for all this nonsense of taking good food and trying to make alcohol out of it. We all know that it is costing more to produce this junk than it is selling for, and we as taxpayers are subsidising it. C’mon, somebody has this voting info, and we deserve to see it posted for every state so that we can vote these bastards out. I have had it!
I am sick of the ‘oil crisis’ whang, and think the election is, or should be, more about who we are sending back to congress to represent us. I would like to see a list of these losers who have voted for all this nonsense of taking good food and trying to make alcohol out of it. We all know that it is costing more to produce this junk than it is selling for, and we as taxpayers are subsidising it. C’mon, somebody has this voting info, and we deserve to see it posted for every state so that we can vote these bastards out. I have had it!
Much of this occurs at the state level. Lots of state representatives and senators vote state sponsored support of ethanol projects and handouts because it’s good for their state economy, their relatives’ wallets, big donors’ pockets, etc.
Missoula -aka the People’s Republic? :) Thanks for the info!
A former Madisonian (as in the Missoula of the Driftless area)
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