Posted on 10/20/2010 11:08:08 AM PDT by Graybeard58
Think fast: What ingredients were in the gasoline you bought last time you filled up your tank? Pure gasoline? A mix of gasoline and ethanol? What percentage of each? The one thing for sure is you probably didn't buy diesel, since you'd still be at the gasoline station, waiting for a tow truck, if you had.
Chances are, the gasoline you bought was 10 percent ethanol, a fuel derived from corn. Ethanol reduces fuel economy and damages engine components. Your car would run better and more efficiently with pure gasoline, and its engine would last longer.
It also would pollute less, not only because tailpipe emissions would be lower, but because a switch to pure gasoline would eliminate air pollution from growing corn, converting it to a motor fuel and transporting it to sites where it can be mixed with gasoline. Intensive corn production also pollutes waterways; pesticide and fertilizer runoff from cornfields, even more than last spring's BP oil spill, are blamed for "dead zones" in the Gulf of Mexico.
Madness? Absolutely. But in a twisted, political sort of way, federal support for ethanol production makes sense.
Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it will let retailers sell fuel comprised of 15 percent ethanol, a 50 percent increase from previous allowable levels. It is expected retailers will be told to place prominent labels on pumps dispensing this fuel because it can damage pre-2007 engines, especially small engines.
Mistakes assuredly will be made, as signs are placed on the wrong pumps or fuel is placed in the wrong tanks. Fuel with 15 percent ethanol "will get into products it shouldn't, and there'll be lawsuits," said Kris Kiser, executive vice president of the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute.
Noted The Wall Street Journal, in its Oct. 18 editorial "The Ethanol Bailout": "Maybe for the first time in history, Exxon and the Natural Resources Defense Council shook out on the same side of an issue — in opposition."
The Journal's editorial board and others believe the EPA made this change under instructions by its political masters in the Obama administration, who figure a sop to the ethanol industry will help endangered Democratic lawmakers from the Corn Belt in the Nov. 2 elections.
It's not an irrational calculation. Big Green won't vote Republican, and Big Oil won't vote Democratic anyway, so nailing down Big Corn's backing won't cost the Democrats support from other major constituencies.
In a time of remarkable advances in private transportation, the ethanol boondoggle stands as a disturbing distraction. European automakers are making great strides in clean-diesel technology, the Japanese continue to improve their gasoline-electric hybrid systems, and firms on all three continents are developing all-electric cars for the mass market. And what is ethanol contributing to this mix? Worse fuel economy, more smog and water pollution.
If the Republicans take over Congress after the Nov. 2 election, abolishing the ethanol mandate should be on their short list of reforms.
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.
was it methanol?
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.
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. :>)
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.
Bio diesel mixed with heating oil?
Get ready for algae growing in your oil tank and clogging your furnace.
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?
Sorry for the double post.
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?
pure-gas.org
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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