[from occupied ga]

Research findings released today indicate that mid-range ethanol blends—fuel mixtures with more ethanol than 10% (E10) but less than 85% (E85)—can in some cases provide better fuel economy than regular unleaded gasoline, even in standard, non-flex-fuel vehicles

Hmmm Fuel with less energy will do more work. makes sense to me (as long as you repeal the first law of thermodynamics - something that Kongress has done with the CAFE standards.) Maybe that's how they found that you can get more work out of less energy. They ran the study after Kongress repealed the first law.

[Red Badger]

My theory:

The ethanol doesn’t burn but turns to “steam” instead creating more force than the gasoline alone...............

Just a thought......

[roaddog727]

” Hmmm Fuel with less energy will do more work. makes sense to me (as long as you repeal the first law of thermodynamics..”

THat’s assuming you get complete combustion of the fuel source which we know not to be the case in internal combustion engines.

Perhaps at a lower BTU content the fuel combination becomes more efficient as the data suggests.

[Oberon]

Hmmm Fuel with less energy will do more work. makes sense to me (as long as you repeal the first law of thermodynamics - something that Kongress has done with the CAFE standards.)

There are more dynamics at work in a piston engine than the first law. For example, if the ethanol enables the engine to burn the fuel mixture more completely than it does the straight gasoline, you could conceivably get more energy from the ethanol mixture. Not that the gasoline has less BTUs in it, of course, but that you just aren't harvesting all of them inside the cylinder where they can do useful work. We know there are unburned hydrocarbons left over in a straight-gas engine, because something is left to light off the catalytic converter.