E85
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Is this a proper alternative for fuel?
>Don't give me that conservative bullshit "hurr durr global warming and climate change is liberal bullshit" and "hurr durr we are never going to run out of gasoline"
Both of those statements have been proven false so none of that bullshit
fine if the fuel system and engine are made for it.
>>14724297
i dont mind burning corn.
Makes more power, but you need more of it.
Well it uses metric fucktons of corn for a fuel that has very high natural octane but much lower energy density and is still partly gasoline. It's awesome for BEWSTIN but gets shit milage that probably isn't worth its lower cost. Also that land could be used for other food or that corn could be used to actually Feed people. Plus ethanol is hydroscopic so you can't let it sit for long.
The problem is in how it's made.
Whereas we have alternative production capabilities for regular oil, which can be made into fuel, for which we don't need stupid amounts of agricultural area.
Neither is particularly good, but Ethanol takes up way more valuable space.
>>14724297
Given that a significant amount of most crops are lost in transit, ethanol is a good use of the stuff that spoils in the railcars.
Problem is that some farms may stop producing food corn altogether if ethanol turns out to be more profitable. At that point one has to wonder what were losing.
>>14724330
>>14724332
>in america 80% of americans consume 1 lbs of corn daily
>in america
>america
Its a simple solution, take the corn out of american diets and use that for fuel so we can take care of obesity and our fuel problem
>>14724330
>that corn could be used to actually Feed people
we already have more than enough in food crops to feed literally the entire world.
Question: you know how Pennzoil made engine oil out of natural gas that contains no Dino oil? Could we do something like that for liquid fuel? Not like lpg, I mean liquid under atmospheric pressure only not under several hundred psi.
>>14724297
E85 is superior to gasoline
It has a lower energy content, but to counteract that, you can burn more of it. To add to this, it also has a higher latent heat of vaporisation, pulling heat out of the intake air, which is especially useful in forced induction applications. It also has a higher raw octane value up to 110 depending on the blend.
In he end, MPG goes down, $ per mile traveled stays the same, you need a system that'll take it, but it makes more power. For performance applications, it can even surpass methanol, which has powered drag cars since the fifties. It's only downside is that it heavily strain agriculture.
>>14724330
Dollars per mile, it's just as efficient. There are fuel stabilisers to counteract the fact that it's hygroscopic.
i go out of my way to avoid it
>>14724430
it's also ridiculously corrosive, and to get the same miles per tank you'd need a much larger tank which creates more weight which drops mileage. shit ain't superior
>>14724332
>corn takes up loads of space
>Coal/Fosil fuels
>hundreds of years of living and consmuption of others
>millions of years to produce
>complains about some acres of corn
It was fine at start when they introduce it.
but now when that gas price is the same as the regular ones. it's not even worth it
Diesel could be a thing as well.. sad you have to pay 200% more taxes then regular gas ones
fuck sweden
>>14724454
50kg's has a small effect on gas mileage, which can be compensated by a slightly lower price of E85, but that depends on where you live. Some countries heavily subsidise ethanol-based fuels, it's cheaper to run there.
>>14724297
>>Don't give me that conservative bullshit "hurr durr global warming and climate change is liberal bullshit" and "hurr durr we are never going to run out of gasoline"
E85 is heavily damaging to the environment because of pesticide runoff from the vast fields of corn needed to produce it. The delta of the Mississippi has a growing deadzone because of these vast amounts of pesticides.
E85 also requires government subsidies of corn to be competitive with gas. Even with these subsidies E85 is more expensive and few people bought it. It's a waste of taxpayer dollars because it doesn't return on the investment. This also contributes to the use of high fructose corn syrup as a substitute for cane sugar because of the constant oversupply of corn and the restrictions on importation of sugar. I'm getting off topic now though.
In all regards E85 a complete failure.
>Both of those statements have been proven false so none of that bullshit
We will eventually run out of oil, not in our lifetimes, but when it does run out we will certainly not be using E85 as a substitute. It's a dead end.
>>14724507
Too bad, because it's a good fuel im itself, especially with the government incentives it's a cheap alternative to high octane racegas.
>>14724297
In the long run no. It requires land to produce the crops needed and that same land is also required to produce food. As the population grows it'll be a choice between feeding the world or producing fuel
>>14724458
Yes. But that might be too big of a concept for you, considering how you think no further as to the point you can use to shitpost.
Besides, I was not talking about fossil fuels or coal.
>>14724370
Just think how much actually good food is thrown away every single day. It's beyond insane.
>>14724535
You were bitching about space/time
considering the alternative takes far longer and more space.
>>14724322
>makes more power
Uh, no. Fuck off libtard
>>14724542
>considering the alternative takes far longer and more space.
Except it doesn't. The alternative I'm talking about. It's not fully viable for sustaining mass fuel consumption, but it can be there quick. It's just that no big name wants to invest in it yet, so no other money is following either.
>You were bitching about space/time
To grow corn purely for use of fuel. We are already wasting away far too much space for stupid shit nobody needs for ages.
>>14724511
That's the issue though. If it requires government subsidies to compete that's a huge weakness. It should be able to "stand on its own two legs" in the market. If it can't compete it will go extinct and be replaced by something better.
I'm a fan of Darwinism. When oil is no longer sustainable or suitable for general consumption entrepreneurs will capitalize on that and make something better or revive something that's already been made but was before it's time.
Imagine nuclear fusion cars or something.
>>14724550
E85 is pretty widespread in tuned tarbo cars though. You would have a point if you were talking about energy density, but many tuners use E85 and not because of some green shit either.
For what it's worth, the Koenigsegg Agera makes more power on booze than petrol
>>14724561
No big name wants to invest because it isn't worth investment.
>All these murians complaining about corn when sugar cane exists and its easier to produce ethanol out of it
>>14724561
>no body needs for ages
I'm fine with needing it now and dropping fossil fuels.
Simply for the added power output.
>>14724598
There are import restrictions on sugar cane in America all based on "infant industry" bullshit. Keeping American Sugar afloat wastes millions every year when cheap sugar imports are literally 90miles off the coast of Florida.
>>14724574
As a consumer, I'm a fan of cheap high octane fuel.
>>14724613
Congrats. Perhaps there's a better way to get high octane fuel than weak and wasteful E85.
>>14724621
Better sure, but not cheaper, and not available at every pump. Certainly not as easily to detect blends and octane on the fly.
>>14724637
Well you have to understand that supply of fuel type is dependant on the demands of John Q. Public. Most people want "cheap gas" not "high octane fancy stuff". That's what you will get and high octane fuel will be expensive because not as many people drive cars worth filling it up with high octane. It's all about elasticity.
Without government subsidies E85 would be stupid expensive for you and anyone else that would want it. It was so stupid expensive that even the government realized how little payoff it have. Farmers planted far more corn than necessary instead of products typically demanded. It was a neat experiment but ultimately fruitless.
Anyway that's just how the market works. If more people wanted high octane fuel you'd see more efforts put into reducing its price and improving its utility.
>>14724675
True, without government subsidies, E85 would be shit. It is though, so in the meantime, it's high octane that's available at the pump. If it grows big enough to kill the planet, it's too expensive to continue subsidising it anyways.
>>14724550
Technically you're right, it doesn't make more power per molecule, but because it combusts so much quicker, you can dump far more of it into the cylinder. Also cooling effect
Is E85 bad for a 15 year old car? I assume it could corrode the fuel lines. Its quite a bit cheaper than gas in California.
>>14724821
E85 is bad for any car that is not specifically made or modified with it in mind
>>14724352
>take care of obesity and our fuel problem
Why don't you just cut out the middle man?
Render down the fat people who contribute nothing to society, and use the resultant energy-rich mass to run engines on.
> Ethanol as a fuel
Better than oil, which is a finite resource. Renewables are the future, because cheap oil WILL run out. Alcohols are the future of internal combustion.
> Corn ethanol as fuel
It's basically subsidy inertia. HFCS is falling out of favour, and the 'heartland of america, breadbasket of the free world' farmers are heavily invested in corn infrastructure and dependent on government subsidies. The only way to switch from politically incorrect HFCS without fucking over industrial farmcorp interests is by pandering to the eco lobby with renweable biofuels.
> What else to use
Anything other than corn. Stop the corn monoculture, and stop flooding Africa with food aid as well. Kick the subsidy habit. Let food prices normalise to what the farmers can make a profit on, and wages will increase to match because people won't work for less than it costs them to live.
For the ethanol, you can ferment anything that will decay. Food waste, biomass from the crops that isn't the desired crop, maybe even crops grown especially for turning into ethanol that are more efficient than corn.
Modern farming is very inefficient. If we need to support fuel AS WELL as food crops for a still-growing population, it needs another revolution. The initial agricultural revolution made industrialisation possible. Mechanisation made more of it possible, and is still making it easier. The next revolution has to be political and economical.
In the short term, conversion kits because alcohol rots stuff designed for gasoline. Maybe start converting industrial diesels over to it as well, since less of their mass is tied up in fuel and tankage, and big engines use a lot of fuel.
As a woefully uninformed undergraduate engineering student I've got to put my two cents in.
E85 has a higher octane then similarly priced fuels. No it's not 105 like idiots will parrot to you as they fill their cars up with booze, but it's higher than 91 and that means it can be used in higher compression engines.
Higher compression engines are intrinsically more efficient than their counterparts if everything else is constant. One hurdle that high compression engines face is that consumers have historically had to pay for "premium" gasoline to run their cars. This extra 20 cents a gallon is enough to turn most people away from the concept and has therefore left high compression engines as the domain of performance motorists. This means that the greater preponderance of motorists are using less efficient technology and wasting large amounts of a non-renewable resource due to an economic hurdle.
E85 is less fuel dense than gasoline. From some back of the envelope calculations I found that it takes ~1.4 gallons of E85 to have the same energy as 1 gallon of gas. Meanwhile the price of E85 is 82% of the price of regular gas. This results in a discrepancy of ~10% between price and energy density, but this is probably due to the use of ethanol (~15%) in addition to regular gas mixes.
E85 is economically viable, and I imagine would usher in an age of higher compression engines and turbos for the average car. Have a picture of an anime
ethanol contains about half the energy content of gasoline, so to make the same power you need twice as much fuel.
Also ethanol contains oxygen, which further alters the equilivence value.
The specific heat capacity of ethanol is higher than gasoline, so it does have a better cooling effect.
The main way ethanol allows power increase is through the higher octane value.
Because as we all know thermal efficiency = 1/compression ratio, and with ethanol you can run higher compression. Whether that be static or dynamic.
E85 is a compromise. Multiple people on here have noted that ethanol has a high octane rating, so higher compression engines can be made, but flex fuel ruins that entirely. If we used E100, pure ethanol, than we could make engines that are more efficient, and probably have similar gas mileage numbers to current gas cars, but they wouldn't be able to use gasoline.
I'm more interested and excited to see what happens with some of the next generation of biofuels, specifically isobutanol. It's more expensive now, but, in theory, is easier to produce, since more of the plant can be used in production. It also has a higher energy density than ethanol and doesn't have as many issues with corrosion. An unmodified gas engine will run on at least B25.
The problem with new biofuels is that you can't really have a 3-fuel system. Current ethanol sensors can handle isobutanol, but need to be recalibrated, so everything that uses ethanol would then need to be converted, which will probably cost too much for it to be done quickly.
>>14725288
>E85 is a compromise. Multiple people on here have noted that ethanol has a high octane rating, so higher compression engines can be made, but flex fuel ruins that entirely.
What is tarbo
>>14725306
If I'm correct, most cars don't have a variable boost limit that references the ethanol sensor. It should be possible, but it would have to be quite a setup. Obviously it would have to have electronic boost control, and the boost maps would match the complexity of most fuel maps. Tuning for it sounds like it would be an absolute nightmare, but I haven't had the chance to work with any really fancy/ oem quality ecu's, so maybe they have figured it all out.
E85 is shitty for anything but cheap race gas.
Ethanol has a SHIT shelf life, it packs less BTUs than gasoline, and it's not as eco-friendly as the corn lobby wants you to think. There are other ways of making ethanol for fuel use, but they don't do away with the other disadvantages. Also, the ethanol mandate is pointless and has done nothing but negatively affect carbureted vehicles such as motorcycles and shorten the storage life of regular pump gas.
Ethanol: all or NONE, get that mandated 10-15% SHIT out of our pumps!
>>14724507
>Even with these subsidies E85 is more expensive
Never not once have I seen E85 more expensive than gasoline.
>>14725592
If you count up the MPG it gets pretty pricey
>>14725306
what does E85 do for turbo engines? does it let people run more boost or do people actually make more power with same levels of boost vs normal gas?
yes i am idiot
>>14725772
Well, both, in a way. First, looking at a non-turbo car, you can make more power with e85. You need to add more gas because it is less energy dense, but because of how the chemistry works out, you should be able to get a bit more power.
Now the turbo-specific reasoning, e85 has a higher octane rating than pump gas. This makes knock easier to avoid, so you can add more boost. Once again, you would need to add more gas if you were to do so.
The problem with the comment you replied to is that a turbo doesn't change how much boost it supplies by itself, it needs a boost controller. Its much easier to set up a turbo to run on either gas or e85 than it is to run on flex fuel. And I would bet that manufacturers just set a boost limit to what would be safe to run with gas and leave it.
>>14725193
E85 actually has between 102 and 105 octane, and when you add it's high latent heat of vaporisation (drawing heat out of the intaje air), it's functionally identical to something like a 110-115 octane fuel in forced induction applications.
It hasn't ushered in a new age if technology in South America, where it's been dominating the market for years now. It never will. It'll remain the domain of the green and the turbo guys.
>>14725368
Electronic boost control is really eady to implement, both aftermarket and factory.
Tuning is easy. You basically calibrate for 0 and 100% ethanol, and vary the fuel/timing map in between those points depending on Flexfuel sensor readout.
>>14725537
Shelf life matters very little in a DD, but I agree that you should be able to pick your ethanol content. 0% should always be available, as should 100%. ideally, they'd automatically blend it at the pump depending on the mixture you want (50%,85%,90%,0%,etc.).
>>14725772
Ethanol has a higher latent heat of vaporisation. Basically, per cc you inject, it draws more heat out of the intake air compared to regular gasoline, which is pretty hot in forced induction applications. This means you can add more boost pressure for the same temperature.
To add to this, ethanol has lower energy per unit than gasoline. This means you have to inject more of it to get a good air-fuel ratio. Injecting more means it draws even more heat out of the intake air, meaning you can add more boost.
Finally, ethanol has a higher raw octane value than gasoline. This means, again, that you can add more boost.
Especially the first two are nice, because they'll lower your intake air temps, which are high in forced induction applications, putting you at risk of knock and pre-ignition. Even with an intercooler, you'll see ethanol lowering the tempartures. All in all, ethanol seems to be made for boost. More boost means you can add more fuel for a given air-fuel ratio, and it's combusting the extra fuel that gives you more power.
