Roll back the ethanol mandate

Waterbury Republican-American ^ | October 20, 2010 | Editorial

[I Buried My Guns]

There was a thread a few weeks ago that had a link to a site that listed the locations of stations selling pure, non-ethanol gas througout the United States.

[xzins]

was it methanol?

[Myrddin]

What I have learned is not to leave fuel in any of these machines for more than a few weeks , even if it is mixed with 2 cycle oil and fuel stabilizer. NEVER leave any fuel in over the winter(or summer with snowblowers). Drain the bowl of the carburator and run them dry.

I wish I had that much control over my life. I pulled the carbs on my Yamaha XT250 and TW200 and cleaned them up in the Spring. They ran great. All ready for Summer. Too bad. I was sent to San Diego on July 5th. The bikes have been sitting unused in the garage. All of them. My F150 truck too. All full of ethanol tainted gas. I can't do a thing about it until I can go home. It will be Winter by then. No way to use the machines with snow and ice on the streets.

[Myrddin]

The real issue is that millions of currently owned vehicles are not capable of running on 15% ethanol, yet the EPA is allowing it. Who will pay to fix the damaged vehicles? Are the farmers and ethanol producers ready to absorb a massive class action suit?

[xzins]

I fully agree with you. I read that and wondered how anyone could be so stupid.

Then I remembered....Obama administration + bureaucrats = stupid.

A tried and true formula sure to rival Einstein some day. :>)

[gogogodzilla]

If we were serious about an equal substitute for gasoline that would be sourced from domestic supplies...

...then we’d be converting our coal into gasoline through coal gasification. We have coal in the same abundance as OPEC has oil, so we’d not need to import coal to do this.

The BTUs of the substitute would be equal, as it *IS* gasoline. And we wouldn’t be taking food out of the mouths of the world’s starving. Furthermore, it wouldn’t be draining the Midwest’s aquifer (the aquifer is draining much faster than the rate of replenishment now).

And we wouldn’t be poisoning the Gulf of Mexico with all the fertilizer runoff draining from the Mississippi.

[american_ranger]

Bio diesel mixed with heating oil?
Get ready for algae growing in your oil tank and clogging your furnace.

[rockinqsranch]

"Sunoco Green E15 will be blended at Sunoco’s fuel facility in Marcus Hook, Pa., which provides high-performance race fuel to NASCAR teams at no cost to them.

If I go to read the article at the link you provided will I learn if Sunoco is one of the Ethanol producers the American taxpayers are subsidizing?

[nomad]

Now wait a minute,to be accurate, depending on what is used to contain it during the fermentation and distillation of the mash, the leftover from corn based ethanol production can be a fairly high protein animal feed, due not only to the corn by product but the yeast residue.The trick is to use only food grade plastics,pure copper(#1) or nonmagnetic (food production grade) stainless steel in everything that touches the mash from fermentation to distillation(glass such as Pyrex works too).Metals other than those two can cause metallic oxides that can be poisonous in the liqueur, (note to would be moonshiners)I`d imagine the same is true for the residual mash materials.

[nomad]

Now wait a minute,to be accurate, depending on what is used to contain it during the fermentation and distillation of the mash, the leftover from corn based ethanol production can be a fairly high protein animal feed, due not only to the corn by product but the yeast residue.The trick is to use only food grade plastics,pure copper(#1) or nonmagnetic (food production grade) stainless steel in everything that touches the mash from fermentation to distillation(glass such as Pyrex works too).Metals other than those two can cause metallic oxides that can be poisonous in the liqueur, (note to would be moonshiners)I`d imagine the same is true for the residual mash materials.

[nomad]

Sorry for the double post.

[RipSawyer]

When I check mileage my car (a 2004 model) gets at least fifteen percent lower MPG on ten percent ethanol than it does on straight gasoline. I don’t know just why this is but I know it happens. This means that I am burning MORE gasoline when I use ten percent ethanol and the ethanol is just wasted. How does this reduce oil imports?

[Cold Heart]

pure-gas.org

[xzins]

A gallon of ethanol, if I recall correctly, has 2/3 the BTU of a gallon of gasoline. (I think a gallon of gasoline has 2/3 of diesel, too.)

10% ethanol should, if my memory is correct about the 2/3, mean that 10% of your gasoline gets 2/3 the btus. Therefore, instead of 100% of your btus, you’re getting only about 95%.

I also thought that ethanol has higher octane, so that’s what enabled them to remove lead from gasoline. That could be pure folk lore, though, for all I know about it.

[woodbutcher1963]

I still add fuel stabilizer to all my small engine fuel. All of my small engines have carburators.
However, you can still drain the fuel out of the tank and disconnect the inline fuel filter and drain the lines.
The biggest problem I have found is gelling and then plugging the jets.
Rubber fuel lines are cheap to replace, carburators get expensive.

[ZirconEncrustedTweezers]

“I also thought that ethanol has higher octane, so that’s what enabled them to remove lead from gasoline. That could be pure folk lore, though, for all I know about it.”

That part IS true; IIRC, E85 has an octane rating of about 105.

[RipSawyer]

All I know is that AMOCO lead free gasoline was available fifty and more years ago and it was available in the standard octane ratings. Mandated lead free gas precedes the ten percent ethanol by many years.