The Great Ethanol Scam 894
theodp writes "Over at BusinessWeek, Ed Wallace is creating quite a stir, reporting that not only is ethanol proving to be a dud as a fuel substitute, but there is increasing evidence that it is destroying engines in large numbers. Before lobbyists convince the government to increase the allowable amount of ethanol in fuel to 15%, Wallace suggests it's time to look at ethanol's effect on smog, fuel efficiency, global warming emissions, and food prices. Wallace concedes there will be some winners if the government moves the ethanol mandate to 15% — auto mechanics, for whom he says it will be the dawn of a new golden age."
May be the beginning of the end.. (Score:5, Informative)
..if this NY Times editorial is a sign of the times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/opinion/24sun2.htm [nytimes.com] .
Basically, it says that the ethanol lobbyists are fighting back against the EPA attempting to do its job by actually measuring the effects of ethanol as fuel.
Sugar cane not corn (Score:4, Informative)
If you've spent any time in Brazil, you will see that ethanol is just fine for internal combustion engines. They've almost exclusively used ethanol for the last ten years. Now maybe there's an argument about "flex fuel" but that is just a transitional fuel type. Once we can import environmentally and economically friendly sugar cane ethanol it won't be a problem any more.
Re:Ethanol is just stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Engines with super-refined fuel always get worse gas mileage.
See, the crude oil is heated in a stack; the tar-like parts stay at the bottom, the lighter fuels find their way up. The thicker stuff at the bottom is MUCH more densely packed with energy- that's where the diesel is. It's 'cruder' (notice it almost doesn't WANT to burn) but it actually carries nore BTU-power per drop. Refine it more, to where it almost wants to burn when ya touch it, and it won't have so much power anymore.
Oil is neat stuff; you might find the Discovery Channel's "Modern Marvels: Oil" episode to be an eye-opener.
And BTW: Rush Limbaugh has been noticing this same thing with ethanol. It's messing up the corn market and Mt Dew now has "Throwback" to make use of the now-cheaper cane sugar as an alternative.
Isn't life wonderful when we just let the government do things? :
Not news. (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, so using a fuel different from the fuel specified by the manufacturer can destroy your engine. I don't think that's news. Ethanol is corrosive to plastic and rubber. If the pumps are spitting out higher than 10% ethanol, the chain of responsibility is pretty damn clear. Sue the gas seller.
Anyone who has done ethanol conversions for internal combustion engines (ICEs) can tell you that the conversion requires replacement of plastic and rubber hoses in the fuel system with stainless braided hose. Obviously if the system isn't originally designed for more than 10% ethanol there will be problems.
But the problem isn't with ethanol per se. While it doesn't contain as much energy per liter as straight gasoline, that never stopped gasoline from taking off in favor of diesel's increased energy per liter. Ethanol makes fuel octane ratings go through the roof, which means you can tune the engine to run leaner under acceleration. Even running under boost you can often run leaner than 12 AFR with E85.
I don't agree with the subsidies from the corn lobby, but attacking ethanol because "it destroys engines which weren't designed to run on ethanol" is frankly a stupid tack.
Makes a decent turbo fuel (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the increased effective octane of E85 means that it is much more detonation resistant than pure pump gas. That means you can run a lot more turbo boost than you'd normally be able to get away with on a "street" fuel.
You have to increase injector size quite a bit to offset the lower energy per volume, but with all the extra air crammed into the motor at high boost values, the net result is a metric assload of power from a freely available fuel.
Making 500 HP out of a turbo 2 litre street motor is entirely doable running this fuel. I had to run 118 octane C16 race fuel (at $10 US / gal) to get similar performance.
DG
Re:E85 (Score:5, Informative)
E85 is actually a great fuel... For cars designed to run on it. The Koenigsegg CCX, for example, will run at 806 bhp in standard gasoline tune, but when you fill the tank with E85, you get 1018 bhp, no foolin'!
Ethanol is a really high octane fuel, which makes engineers quiver with delight, because they can predict, with much higher certainty than low-octane fuel, when and how much of it will detonate. Perfect for those tight tolerances in highly-strung engines.
Ethanol was always a scam, even before Ed Wallace (Score:2, Informative)
It takes more water, soil fertility, and work (energy, human labor) to produce the stuff than you ever get back out of it as useful work. It's a scam in the same sense that batteries and electric vehicles are a scam.
Re:it's not ethanol itself (Score:4, Informative)
Uhmm the REASON it's destroying engines is because of design decisions that work for gasoline that DON'T work for E85. 85% ethanol as far as I've been lead to understand REQUIRES Stainless fuel system/valvetrain parts in order to avoid excessively wearing an engine (in addition to being conductive, something that may not be appreciated in fuel-cooled fuel pumps.) This, along with differing fuel maps is the reason ford/gm had seperate vehicle packages for 'flex fuel' vehicles for so many years, and why even nowadays not all cars can/should be run on it.
It's not simply a matter of being 'inferior' fuel for automobiles, it's a matter of inferior engines being forced to use a fuel they can't handle (much like trying to retrofit a gas engine block for diesel instead of building a much more robust diesel oriented engine from the ground up...)
Re:E85 (Score:5, Informative)
Honorary mention to the sugar lobby. By blocking sugar imports, a few jobs are saved, and many more are lost as virtually all candy is now manufactured in Canada or Mexico (where sugar is only half as expensive). Other food manufacturers switched to corn syrup, which is subsidized thanks to the farm lobby.
Given the shenanigans that go on in washington DC, I don't know why anyone wants them more involved, in healthcare, banking, wallstreet, automobiles, or anywhere.
Alcohol as fuel source. (Score:5, Informative)
Here in Brazil we have been using alcohol as a fuel source for years. When you go to a gas station, it is guaranteed that you will find both a gasoline pump and an alcohol pump. Most cars developed here since 2003 accept both fuels, using an engine technology called FLEX. The only difference is that the alcohol we use is called "Anidro", and it is 99.3% pure, while Ethanol is 96% pure (the rest being mostly water).
Based on this, to subsidize the price of the gasoline here, the government sets an alcohol mandate of 22%. So even if you have a gasoline-only car, you are really using 3/4 gasoline and 1/4 alcohol when you fill the tank. Since the alcohol does attack all parts of the engine that are in contact with it, engines produced for the brazilian market have a special protection layer. And indeed, owners of imported cars here usually fill their tanks with a special "premium" gasoline, that is basically pure and high-octane, to avoid damage. (Guess I don't have to say that gas stations rip you off for that)
Re:Sounds like a crock ... (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, sweet Jesus that's a moronic post.
Let's spell this out:
1. Ethanol damages fuel systems.
2. Our current methods for producing ethanol are not efficiency winners.
3. Ethanol has lower energy density than gasoline.
4. The pro ethanol lobby is unnaturally strong.
5. You are posting at below-average quality ***for slashdot***.
Re:Sounds like a crock ... (Score:5, Informative)
Crock, eh?
Mechanics have been WELL aware of the problems caused by ethanol (particularly in boat, small engine, and commercial engine applications) for many years, but mechanics don't make public policy.
The 30-percent mileage drop appears to be worst-case, but the mechanical and corrosion problems are very real. I don't own a boat, and I can refit my older rides with ethanol-compatible carb (Holley for the trucks and S&S for for the Harleys) kits , but the MILLIONS of people who own engines too complex to easily refit with pumps, lines, seals and injectors will be screwed if the ethanol content goes up.
I'll make enough dough wrenching on the side off this to update my late model vehicles.:P
Example problems:
http://boatingsailing.suite101.com/article.cfm/ethanol_fuel_problems_for_boaters [suite101.com]
Re:Sounds like a crock ... (Score:5, Informative)
Since gas is measured and sold by volume, it only makes sense to talk about energy density in those terms. Ethanol is 23.5 MJ/L while 87 octane gas is 34.8. Fuel use of E100 [indycar.com] seems to be growing. The most widely documented cases of damage due to use as an additive is when it is added to the driver.
Re:Sounds like a crock ... (Score:2, Informative)
Hate to burst your bubble, but E85 is 85% ethanol. And it's quite apparent that you know nothing of math or energy density. The energy density of ethanol is about 26 MJ/kg whereas the energy density of gasoline is almost twice that at about 45 MJ/kg. So to answer your last quesion, you'd most likely get less than half the mileage out of your car if you used E100 (100% ethanol). BTW E0 is 0% ethanol, ie pure gasoline.
there are more important factors than energy density here, for instance pure ethanol has an octane rating of ~116 allowing much higher combustion chamber pressures prior to detonation netting a power gain over what can be achieved with gasoline. granted the car needs to be designed for this, through higher compression piston, higher boost levels, and/or modified ignition timing.
theres a reason that ethanol is used in some drag leagues, and its not because of lower power output :)
Re:Ethanol is just stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Refined corn sugars(LFCS, HFCS) were only ever cheaper because of tariffs on cane sugar, FYI.
Re:Just give me an electric car (Score:3, Informative)
Ya know why they were affordable? Because they were leased, at a loss, from the manufacturer.
Re:Sugar cane not corn (Score:5, Informative)
At first, ethanol in Brazilian fuel is nothing more than a subside for northeastern Brazilian farmers
A picture [wikipedia.org] is worth a thousand words.
There are problems with ethanol. (Score:2, Informative)
Ethanol attracts moisture. A stabo additive is required.
It attacks fuel lines. This spring I had to change out the fuel lines in all my lawn equipment. The line trimmer had (was cheaper) to be replaced.
It's a nightmare for the marine industry. Not only attacking the fuel lines, but the internal fuel tanks also.
Needless to say, I've learned my lesson. I go out of my way to purchase fuels that don't have ethanol mixed in.
Maybe in the future everything will be ethanol tolerant. But that day isn't today.
Re:Ethanol is just stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Umm, the American Ethanol Debacle is not a product of government
Sure it is, the only reason the industry had a chance was because of big government subsidies. It was always a money loser, but the government saved them.
Re:Living in Iowa... (Score:4, Informative)
I have mentioned this before, but it strikes me as wasteful in modern car engines that the engine is run hot enough to cause the burning of nitrogen.
The greater the thermal differential between the input and output sides of a heat engine, the more energy you can extract from the fuel. Run the engine significantly cooler, and you may decrease some emissions (and increase others) but you'll lose some conversion efficiency.
Re:Ethanol is mandate in CA (Score:3, Informative)
And Texas. Only interesting because we're the third largest state by population and the largest producer of oil. Also the 9th largest economy if California (8th largest) and TX were their own independent nations (again).
Re:Ethanol is just stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, no, using any food crop for fuel is a bad idea. This ensures that the 3rd world are always starving by removing food crops for consumption and replacing them with crops that go into rich 1st world nations' cars.
Case in point, I recently visited south western Thailand, while flying into the area and driving around you notice that there are NO rice fields, vegetable patches, or even grazing land for animals. It has all been converted into palm plantations for bio fuels. The palms are unable to be used for food due to being bred purely for the oils - no fruit, nothing.
On top of this, the amount of workers drops to almost 0 when running a palm oil farm - you only need workers at harvest and planting time which can be up to 5 years between. You do not need anyone to tend to the plantation at all during the growing cycle. So you end up with one person/family owning and profiting from the land while the rest of the village/region starve and/or live in poverty.
I am an environmentalist myself, but I will never agree with ANY bio fuels being used. This doesn't solve the issue at hand, which isn't the supply of fossil fuels, but the effect of any combustion fuels. Driving the price of food up in under developed nations to satisfy your own desire to feel warm and gooey inside is inexcusable.
Re:The "energy loss" is a red herring. (Score:3, Informative)
People concerned with corn ethanol are worried that the liquid ethanol that comes out of the process contains less energy than the liquid petroleum that goes into the process
Yeah, but corn ethanol isn't where the future is. It's cellulosic ethanol. Besides, the vast amount of energy for corn ethanol is in distillation and you don't need petroleum to do that. You could make a still out of solar power, or gasp, coal.
Re:Ethanol is just stupid (Score:2, Informative)
Hydrocarbon fuels from soy are no more of a "magic bullet" than hydrocarbon fuels from corn-derived ethanol. As a crop, soy is no better for the land and soil than corn. Do some research about the huge increase in GM RoundUp-Ready soy crops, owned of course by Monsanto. Then have a look at what these crops are doing to to the Argentinian ecology.
There is no single solution to our fuel woes, and no one crop to supply all our biofuel. As any ecologist knows, mono-crops are generally Bad in a multitude of ways. Ethanol itself is not the problem, but the source of the ethanol should not be tied to one crop, or group of crops, that happen to have a strong political lobby. Note that this crop will vary from country to country: Corn in the US, sugar cane in Brazil and Australia, soy in Argentina.
Biofuels can potentially also come from non-food crops, as has been mentioned on SlashDot many times in the past. For example, algae, cellulose (everything from lawn clippings to paper waste) and hemp.
And of course YMMV but I have found ethanol blend to have no ill-effects on any vehicles I have driven, which are mostly high-mileage Japanese and European cars, from 2 to 20 years old. I actually make a point of running a tank of ethanol-blend through my car if it has been in storage for over a month, in order to dissolve any water that has condensed in the fuel tank.
Re:Modern Marvels: Secrets of Oil. Another junk st (Score:3, Informative)
Take ethanol from corn. This makes large conglomerates lots of money in terms of short term profits. It does not help the small farmer or the small processor as the good times do not last long enough to pay for the capital costs.
Such talk also helps solidify the corn culture of the United States, a culture that has cost the tax payer maybe 5 billion a year in doll payments to the conglomerates and farmers. This means that even though corn may not be the choice that a free market economy would make, it is the choice that the command driven economy is forced to make. Therefore alternatives like sugar cane, which the US used to grow, and maybe even switch grass is priced out of the command economy.
So what is next. Getting oil from shale, something that business would like to invest in, if only there was some stability and possibility of profit. So what does the business press do, publish stories about how the ethanol is a scam and we need to go back to oil, which we have plenty of if only the government would stop regulating the corporations so they will be able to innovate. We are told that it is cost effective to extract the oil at current prices, but we just need a push. Maybe move dole payments from corn to shale? Not likely. Probably ask for new dole payments for shale
Re:Don't blame me, (Score:5, Informative)
In Brazil, ethanol fueled cars reached parity with gasoline-fueled ones still in the 1980's. Brazilian gasoline has about 24% ethanol, and properly designed engines work flawlessly. Nowadays, most cars are flex-fuel, i.e., can take ethanol, gasoline or anything mix of both.
The kind of fear-mongering from TFA = not invented here syndrome + troll.
Re:Don't blame me, (Score:5, Informative)
Ethanol exhaust kills most engines (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ethanol is just stupid (Score:1, Informative)
Somalia is not government free. It has many competing dictatorships.
Re:Ethanol is just stupid (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ethanol is just stupid (Score:5, Informative)
The U.S. govt is owned and operated by large corporations who are in the process of looting the treasury by insisting on subsidies: corporate welfare. The govt didn't "save" ethanol - the ethanol lobby simply got on the gravy train. Given the political importance of Iowa in presidential elections, and the over-representation of low population rural states in the Senate, (Wyoming gets the same as NY, CA, TX, etc.) and the importance of certain politicians from those states on key committees, the ethanol lobby had an easier time pulling money than a crackhead could stick up a 7-11 for twenty bucks and a bigGulp.
You have it exactly backwards: Govt didn't save the ethanol industry. the ethanol industry simply muscled their way in and grabbed the cash. Government isn't the problem here - it's the LACK of government that's the problem. It's the spinelessness of the Democratic party that's always on its knees blowing their donors, and the corruption of the Republicans doling out billions to their frat brothers.
RS
misleading (Score:3, Informative)
Some good points, but most of the cited evidence of damage relates to either:
- concentrations of ethanol greater than they were supposed to be
- putting ethanol-blended fuel into something that wasn't designed for it
That's not a good argument against all use of ethanol blends, but does go against mandating all octane-ish fuel be blended.
Re:Brazilian Ethanol [Re:Don't blame me] (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ethanol is just stupid (Score:5, Informative)
The difference is, when a government program fails, the solution is never terminating the program, but instead giving the program more money.
Re:Ethanol is just stupid (Score:4, Informative)
Newsflash: Freddy and Fanny are Government-Sponsored Enterprises, not free market entities!
Re:Brazilian Ethanol [Re:Don't blame me] (Score:5, Informative)
GM has comitted to, by 2012, having it so 50% of the vehicles they sell can accept E85. They haven't reached anywhere near that goal. Honda does not even offer ANY flex fuel vehicles for the US market. The other automakers do, but its still a small minority. Only about 7 million (wikipedia article) out of the what... 100 million or so cars in the US are flex fuel capable.
So it's not even that the "basically all" part of your statement is wrong. It's almost the opposite of the truth. I'd say it's more like "basically none" of the US market cars sold in the last decade are flex fuel vehicles. Only even a minority of those sold this year are.
Re:Don't blame me, (Score:3, Informative)
It's just a huge tax subsidy, and always will be unless and until there is some huge genetically engineered solution. And once that happens, the fun part comes when they make a mistake and wipe out a good part of the food chain. Try containing a successful genetically engineered mistake! I dare ya!
I suppose it could work in an economy 1/14th [wikipedia.org] the size of the US. But here, we're going to need a much better, bigger solution. Syngas could be the answer. This is the idea of taking all of our organic waste, you know, plastics, food scraps, whatever, cook them and then turn it into ethanol. But that would have to be a lot of syngas.
I'd include a good citation on the syngas, but I'd have to search for the article I read, which would take time - sleep is a higher priority at the moment.
Re:Ethanol is just stupid (Score:1, Informative)
Unfortunately, once you control for race, most of those Canadian advantages disappear into thin air.
[citation needed]
The US has a more diverse population
The CIA World Factbook does not support this statement.
more Latinos and Blacks, who have worse expected health outcomes vis-a-vis life expectancy and infant mortality
Latinos and Blacks have worse expected health outcomes not because they are Latino or Black, but because a disproportionate number of them are poor.
The US also has 10x the population of Canada, and what works well for some provincial backwater some 33 million people will not work for a country with a much larger, much more diverse population.
Firstly, as above, the US population is not more diverse than Canada's. Secondly, are you seriously trying to say that the economies of scale presented by having ten times the population make things harder?
Re:Don't blame me, (Score:5, Informative)
The problems with ethanol as a fuel are twofold, though neither problem is insurmountable.
First, ethanol will damage and eventually destroy engines that are not designed to burn it, full stop. It deteriorates rubbers and plastics, notably fuel lines, filters, pumps, etc. but also causes lubrication problems with piston rings, valves, and so forth. Most "late model" cars in the US (the cutoff point for "late model" is sort of nebulous at the moment) are designed to handle up to 15% ethanol content in their fuel. It is a safe bet to assume that any vehicle that does not explicitly state in the manual or marketing literature that it is compatible with higher ethanol concentrations (E85, etc.) is not, in fact, compatible. E85 capability is a huge marketing bullet point these days, and aside from a few very new model vehicles from Chevy and especially Ford, American engines will be damaged by high ethanol concentrations. Full stop. No argument allowed, nor required. Many engines can be converted to run somewhat satisfactorily on ethanol, but most of them do not have a factory conversion and must be converted using third party parts with the usual gamut of quality problems that this often entails. Many, many engines on the road cannot be converted to ethanol at all: Truck engines, high performance engines, bike engines, etc. Also, many older engines ("older" as in 15-20 years, still otherwise perfectly viable vehicles, not to mention all of those even older than that) cannot be converted at all.
On the topic of destroying engines, I can provide experience for a sector nobody's thought much about: Small engines. Lawn mowers, chain saws, weed trimmers, and everything else related. In the small engine shop run by my store, we have seen a marked increase in failures of nearly every fuel related part in the power equipment we service. Fuel lines rotting out within a year of purchase, seals going bad, rings seizing, pistons scoring, and filters clogging. I have personally pulled lawn mower fuel filters from units filled with E15 fuel just packed with fibrous gunk the likes of which I had never seen before the ethanol-laden fuel became popular in my area. I guarantee you that if any piece of gasoline powered equipment runs at all on high-ethanol fuel, it will not do so for long.
The second caveat is that ethanol has lousy energy density compared to gasoline. You get less heat and less energy out of ethanol per gallon than gasoline, and there's no way around it. Converted vehicles will get reduced mileage on ethanol as compared to gasoline. Ethanol-only vehicles will have to have larger tanks or just suffer with less range per tank than comparable gasoline vehicles. If ethanol prices closely follow gasoline prices, even in the short term, it will become a much more expensive proposition than most people anticipate. Likewise, our "barrels per day" number will not be directly transferable from gasoline to ethanol - A considerably larger amount of ethanol will have to be produced, pumped, shipped, and sold compared to gasoline today. This will incur additional cost and add additional complication.
In time, these problems will be solved. But it's going to cost a lot, and the one thing Americans have been known to get sore about in a hurry is some government type coming along and demanding that they get rid of their stuff/spend money/buy a new lawn mower/mothball their classic car because of the Ethanol Revolution. Under the theoretical argument that the whole country goes ethanol eventually, I predict a LOT of resistance to the idea, rallied under banners of "taking away our freedom," "admonishing tradition," "from my cold, dead fingers," and so forth. Some of which, admittedly, will be justified. (Though I'd doubt regular old gasoline will go away any time soon, or indeed at all until we run out of crude oil entirely. Motorheads are die-hard types, many of them are willing to spend lots of money, and someone will crop up to meet that demand. On it goes.)
Re:Brazilian Ethanol [Re:Don't blame me] (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, haven't basically all US market cars for the last decade or more been designed for E85?
No, they have not.
I know even my 1998 Windstar had filters and seals that were E85 compatible, it's not like it adds much cost to make a car E85 compatible.
Great, now are your sensors and injectors? What about the EFI computer? Do you know if the fuel tank and lines were also? E85 is more reactive so basically everything that the fuel comes in contact with has to be corrosion resistant. Your EFI computer also has to know to inject more fuel into the cylinders because E85 has a lower energy density than that of regular unleaded.
Heck here is the midwest winter mixes probably go to 15% ethanol already to combat fuel line freezup.
Fuel line freeze up is a diesel only issue. The freezing point of gasoline is around -120 F, possibly as "warm" as -97 at best depending on the the water content. Gasoline has winter and summer blends due to the change in atmospheric pressures and regulation by the EPA to maintain a specified Reid vapor pressure (RVP) for gasoline. If the RVP of a liquid exceeds the atmospheric pressure it will boil. Obviously this would not be a good thing. Since the atmospheric pressure is lower in the summer the RVP must be as well. In the winter the RVP can be higher, which also tends to make gas much cheaper to produce, with a higher RVP, and is why winter gas prices tend to be lower.
Re:Ethanol is just stupid (Score:4, Informative)
Germany, France and Britain are all lovely countries with economies just as strong (though obviously not as large) as the US.
Except that we need to compare with Europe as a whole, not just the states within the community.
According to Wolfram [wolframalpha.com] (this seems the sort of question it works well with), GDP for USA is $13.78T and Europe is $17.95T
Re:Brazilian Ethanol [Re:Don't blame me] (Score:5, Informative)
it's not the gasoline that freezes, it the water that contaminates it. If you drive on a warmer day, air with more moisture is drwan into the fuel system, at night the moisture condenses out of the air and accumilates in the fuel tank and lines, if it below freezing it turns to ice and can easily occlude the fuel line. Having EtOH in the fuel lowers the freezing point of the water-ethanol mixure and solves the problem; many people in cold weather will add dry gas, methanol, to absorb the water.
Re:Brazilian Ethanol [Re:Don't blame me] (Score:4, Informative)
Uh, haven't basically all US market cars for the last decade or more been designed for E85?
Rebutals from other responders to you post aside, there are still a lot of multi-decade cars on the road. My mom's car is 18 years old, and my brother's is 24.
Re:Ethanol is just stupid (Score:4, Informative)
Turbo benefit - not so (Score:3, Informative)
I have a 2006 VW GLI. It has a 2.0L turbo-charged, direct injected engine in it. While driving across the country a few years ago (before the federal mandate hit), I averaged 34 mpg while driving in non-ethanol states. Once I hit states that had already started adding ethanol to the gasoline, my fuel economy dropped to 27 mpg.
I was shocked! Changing the fuel to 10% ethanol resulted in a drop in fuel economy by 21%. I couldn't reconcile the drop, as it didn't make sense that ethanol would drive my economy worse by an amount greater than the percentage of ethanol added.
I don't drive like a maniac, and discovering this caused me to reform my driving habits to get better fuel economy. The best I have been able to manage since the mandate is 29 mpg. Again, I was getting 34 mpg on straight non-ethanol gasoline, while driving more aggressively.
I did some further research, and found that Volkswagen's stance on ethanol is to absolutely not use it, ever. My engine uses a new technology (gasoline direct injection) that is emerging in just about every high-efficiency gasoline engine that is on the current or near horizon. All of them will have the same detrimental performance with ethanol blend fuels.
This will set up a situation where the non-government controlled auto industry, attempting to meet the new aggressive CAFE standards will be fighting against the government castrated companies and the ethanol lobby. I hate to admit that we will all be losers in the end, as the former winning will increase fuel economy, but probably cause fuel taxes to rise to make up for lost revenue from increased mileage. The latter's win will also increase the cost of fuel, while further decreasing mileage on new direct-injection engines.
-- Len
Re:Brazilian Ethanol [Re:Don't blame me] (Score:5, Informative)
I will have to comment on this one, since I enjoyed it.
You are right on your account there. Here in Brazil, when we first started wide scale ethanol use, the first ethanol engines would have trouble pretty soon. Lets say a regular gas engine would require maintenance every 5000Km, an ethanol engine would require maintenance every 2000Km. These are, of course, some wide numbers I took from my head, but they do give a good picture of how things WERE.
These days, all engines here are designed to run a mix of gas and ethanol. They are called Flex (flexible fuel) engines, and you can mix gas and ethanol whatever way you want. Or run on whichever is cheaper at that given station. And engines give no problems at all. Technology evolved a lot in the past 20 years.
I will, however, agree that corn is not a viable solution for producing ethanol, although I can totally understand the reasons USA wants to use it. Corn simply doesn't produce the same quality (energy etc) of ethanol as you get from sugar cane. Then again, I'm not really sure how much of an option sugar cane is for the USA. I do believe there are other options that might be as good as sugar cane, or at least better than corn. Sugar beat maybe ?
One thing that worries me (by looking at the Wikipedia page), is the low Greenhouse-gas savings for corn. While sugar cane based ethanol is listed as having 87-96% savings, corn is listed as 10-20%.
Re:government and freemarkets (Score:3, Informative)
Is the freemarket the reason Canadians have the come to the US for surgeries [nejm.org]?
I read a several years old study on that. It concluded that the number of Canadians that got health care in the US was quite small and the majority simply was in the US at the time of need. If you go by anecdotes you'll find cases of people coming to and leaving the US for health care so one can't draw conclusions from a handful of cases, otherwise people would still practice homeopathy... oh wait :-)
Culturally homogenous? (Score:4, Informative)
Oh golly.
We have different languages every few hundred of kilometres and people from North, South, and East European descent, who have arrived at different times from different places.
Just Spain recognizes several autonomous entities, with a seizable heritage (800 years) of Arabic culture and, naturally, DNA interchange, the UK is divided in 4 distinctive countries (with 2 recognized languages) and we know the disaster of the former Yugoslavia (where Muslims and Christians could not live together).
What about Sweden, Norway and Finland? Where several groups with different languages mix in each country? (for Linux nuts: Torvalds is not a Finnish last name).
As for Italy, tell a North Italian that they are pretty much like their compatriots in the South and he may reply to you, in German, that he politely chooses to disagree.
I could go on, but I think my point has been made.
Re:Ethanol is just stupid (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ethanol is just stupid (Score:3, Informative)
Thankfully those of us dumb enough to believe in the possibilities of ethanol fuel were spared the MTBE fiasco [epa.gov] our more environmentally enlightened oil industry friends in California and elsewhere had to go through. My part of the midwest has sold up to 10% ethanol since the 1980s if not earlier and I've run everything from late 60s V8 engines not even designed for unleaded (150k miles) to high compression Mazdas (>200,000 miles) on this mix. Maybe someone is trying to cover up a QA problem with American cars by using ethanol as a scapegoat.
Re:Ethanol is just stupid (Score:3, Informative)
You're right, they aren't. But under a truly 'free' market as defined by our libertarian friends, you have no recourse if any of them happen.
The issue isn't free markets it's, *fair* markets. Only the gov't keeps markets fair. Free markets are like anarchies; they immediately devolve into strong-man rule--in market terms, that's cartels and monopolies. The history of abuse by business in the absence of gov't enforced rules is long, and at this point should be obvious to anyone.
/.er ignorance and shortsightedness (Score:3, Informative)
Second, none of the critisizm you are railing against are unrealistic. The majority of the US fleet is not compatible with Ethanol and cannot be made compatible with ethanol without being replaced outright. Buring E85 fuel in engines not designed for it is a slower equivalent to draining all of the oil out of the engine block and then driving cross country, it's guaranteed to kill the engine. The US not only lacks the appropriate climate for sugar cane, it also lacks the requisit infrastructure for the large scale production necessary to replace corn-based ethanol production.
Third, most of the posts I've read above are of the opinion that corn-based ethanol is the problem, not ethanol itself. We can gradually shift the US fleet to 100% E85 compatibility solve the fleet problem. We can find alternative substrates to corn (sugar beets, celullosic biomass, etc.). Hell in the near-term we can improve the efficiency of corn-based ethanol production by fractionating corn prior to fermentation, which has been claimed to increase yeild per batch by 30% (less non-fermentable substrate taking up space inside the fermentation apparatus).
As to the planting of sugar cae in the dessert with the massive irrigation that would require, that's not really an option. We are already having to deal with the fallout of excessive aquafer depletion in the western US where the desert is located. There are already fairly high profile disputes between California and the states East of there over who exactly has the right to use the water from the rivers that flow into California.
Vested interests may or may not be a problem for the burgening ethanol industry in the US, but that doesn't make any of the critisizm I've seen above invalid or inappropriate. In the absence of debate we are left with despotism.
Re:Don't blame me, (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Don't blame me, (Score:5, Informative)
"Brazil runs all of their cars (a lot of old vehicles, I might add) on 100% ethanol."
*Cough* Bullshit *Cough*
According to Wikipedia:
There are no longer any light vehicles in Brazil running on pure gasoline. Since 1976 the government made it mandatory to blend anhydrous ethanol with gasoline, fluctuating between 10% to 22%.[12] and requiring just a minor adjustment on regular gasoline motors. In 1993 the mandatory blend was fixed by law at 22% anhydrous ethanol (E22) by volume in the entire country, but with leeway to the Executive to set different percentages of ethanol within pre-established boundaries. In 2003 these limits were set at a minimum of 20% and a maximum of 25%.[13] Since July 1st, 2007 the mandatory blend is 25% of anhydrous ethanol and 75% gasoline or E25 blend.[14]
Re:Don't blame me, (Score:1, Informative)
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons as mentioned by the parent...
Many years ago the rubber tappers in the Amazon were being deprived of their livelihood by ranchers and farmers who would burn vast tracks of forest and by illegal logging. Chico Mendes [wikipedia.org] fought to save the rubber trees and the Amazon rainforest. He became a celebrity of the early environmental movement when he went to New York to address the United Nations. Because of his efforts there are more than 20 extraction reserves on the Amazon forest today where rubbers trees are tapped and Brazil nuts gathered. For his efforts, Chico Mendes was assassinated in 1988.
It is interesting to note that Chico Mendes was the leading local member of the Workers Party (PT) - the very same party who today is in power on Brazil. However, in Brazil today, nobody speaks for the sugar cane cutters, least of all the Workers Party. Nobody cares about the Amazon rainforest any more - especially the Workers Party, who has allowed more rainforest to be illegally logged and burned in the last 7 years they were in power than during any previous government. They just sit idly by and watch it burn, while local state and county governments get fat on bribes from the loggers, ranchers and soy bean producers who are destroying the forest. (Well, it is wrong to say they sit idly by. What they do is pass their time plotting and scheming about how much money [wikipedia.org] they can skim off to fill their pockets.)
One would expect that Brazil's poorest and most exploited people - agricultural workers and sugar cane cutters - would be among the first to benefit from the new wealth sugar cane production has brought to Brazil, especially under the ruling Workers Party. The reality is that the exploitation continues as before, and nobody speaks for the sugar cane cutters, nobody at all.
Brazil's president, Lula da Silva [wikipedia.org], is proud to show off Brazil's ethanol and bio-diesel productions facilities to visiting dignitaries such as when George W. Bush visited. Lula was among the founding fathers of the Workers Party of Brazil, and personally knew Chico Mendes. Among the endless photo-opportunities (inaugurações) we see Lula attending that he loves to do so much, we have never seen him out in the cane fields shaking hands with the poor sugar cane cutters to whom Brazil owes such a debt of gratitude. The only policy that affects the sugar cane cutters the Workers Party has is to encourage automation in sugar cane production that will eliminate the need for the cane cutters in the long run. There is no program to ensure these poor exploited workers will be cared for and retrained for other jobs when they are no longer needed in the cane fields.
Re:Don't blame me, (Score:5, Informative)
Thank god the "bio-oil" craze didn't take off, where they tried to fuel cars with canola seed oil. The whole car smelled like you dumped week old McDonald fries in the trunk.
You are joking right, bio diesel is much more viable than alcohol. Actually diesel bio or fossil is cheaper and more economic to produce than petrol even with ethanol added. When you look at haulage trucks you normally see diesel and if the price of diesel goes up then haulage costs go up and so does the cost of living. Why would haulage use diesel? Well there are numerous reasons and the best are it's cheaper to run and the engine is very very reliable.
I run a diesel car and I get better fuel economy and produce less green house gases than the equivalent petrol engine. Smell? what smell, noise? what noise. Surprisingly even though the power of my engine is much lower than it's petrol equivalent it torque is so much higher that I have to be careful not to spin my wheels when I take off and this usually surprises many people when I out accelerate them by 3 to 4 car lengths in a 60 kph (35 mph) zone (no I don't exceed this although the pissed of driver does just to overtake me) without really trying. Of course a direct shift gear box does help.
Re:Don't blame me, (Score:5, Informative)
You're sort of right -- I assume you're peripherally involved with the use of E85 in the hot rod community, but haven't done it yourself.
From experience, its a pain in the balls to convert an engine to run on it. You lose a lot of horsepower, and you have to basically replace all the fuel lines, rejet the carb (if you can use the carb at all -- E85 is corrosive to aluminum, too).
Where it becomes interesting is when you build a new motor -- you can run a higher compression without having to run 100+ octane fuel, on smaller engines you can turbocharge with higher boost, but you have to do one of the two to get around the fact that you're producing a lot less power.
And you'll never EVER produce more power than gasoline with Ethanol. You can build an engine to burn more of it at a higher compression than you can with standard gasoline, but gallon for gallon you simply can't get more power with it. Gearheads prefer it to 100, or 110 octane because its not $7/gallon, so even if they burn 50-100% more of it, they still come out ahead.
Re:Brazilian Ethanol [Re:Don't blame me] (Score:2, Informative)
IF you RTFA you'd see that it's not engines being ruined by ethanol, it's fuel pumps and pickup lines.
Direct quote from the slashdot article: "there is increasing evidence that it is destroying engines in large numbers"
So, basically, you're saying that the slashdot summary is wrong. Well, well.
Re:Brazilian Ethanol [Re:Don't blame me] (Score:3, Informative)
I agree with the first point you made. However, although it does take energy to produce fertilizer, note that plants do not get their energy from fertilizer, they get it from sunlight.
Sorry, I meant expenditure of energy. It takes energy to make poop, too, but that is a natural consequence of eating. Making artificial, oil-based fertilizer is not a natural consequence of anything. More energy than sunlight most certainly does go into the process of producing crops.
Re:Don't blame me, (Score:3, Informative)
E10 indeed drops mileage 5 to 10%, and you are MORE prone to having water problems in the fuel system, as moisture can come into your system via the fuel (in solution in the alcohol).
Not to mention that any engine with an open loop control system (mowers, weedwackers, 90% of all motorcycles) will have their fuel mixture leaned out (the more ethanol, the more fuel-rich the mixture needs to be). This need for a richer mixture is what drives the mileage decrease.
This causes poor running, overheating, stalling, and on engines that are already running excessively lean from the factory to meet emissions requirements there is a real risk of engine damage.
I lived the transition from E0 to E10 back in connecticut, so not only does thermodynamics say there is a mileage loss, so does experience.
Dave
Re:Brazilian Ethanol [Re:Don't blame me] (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.greencar.com/articles/saab-9-5-biopower-gasoline-ethanol-flexfuel-vehicle.php [greencar.com]
This Saab is a turbocharged engine and adjusts its turbo settings to provide more boost when it senses it is running on the much higher octane E-85 fuel...effectively increasing the compression ratio in the cylinder. First semester Thermodynamics tell you that the higher compression ratio offers more theoretical efficiency. This Saab puts out more horsepower and torque running on E-85 than on gas, and it gets approximately the same mileage in town and 15% better mileage on the highway.
Re:Brazilian Ethanol [Re:Don't blame me] (Score:3, Informative)
Correct, but how many of GM/Fords US brand "Flex Fuel" vehicles have forced induction?
Most of them rely on fuel mappings, spark timing, and (some of them) valve timing. So even if they maintain the correct Air:Fuel mixture, they have no means of increasing compression to improve efficiency.
In vehicles designed to run on Ethanol, it's not a bad fuel. But in the current crop of US Flex Fuel vehicles, we're left with crappy designs that get mediocre gas mileage and horrendous Ethanol mileage.
-Rick
Re:Brazilian Ethanol [Re:Don't blame me] (Score:4, Informative)
Replace oil fields with Corn fields? (Score:3, Informative)
Some research and calculations I did in 2005 ...
Replace oil fields with Corn fields?
Dr. Bartlett, retired Univ. of Colorado Physics professor, wrote that "Farming is merely a way of using land to convert oil into food". People either have forgotten or never realized the food IS energy. It takes 7 TIMES more petroleum energy to put a slice of bread on your breakfast table than you get by eating it. And, oil is used for many other things besides transportation. How long would squirrels survive if they spent more energy collecting nuts than they get from eating them? We are the squirrels, and we are about to find out.
One measure of how much oil we may still be able to find is the "Barrels Per Foot Drilled" metric. In 1946 oil companies recovered 45 barrels of oil for each foot they drilled. That metric, which is an aggregate measurement, has been showing a steady decline since 1946. It was obvious that at some time in the future it would take the same amount of energy to drill a well as the energy that is in the NEW oil produced by that well -- the "break-even" point. That time is now. The "Barrels Per Foot" value crossed below the break-even point in 2005. During the last 10 years only 38 billion barrels of oil have been discovered. All the cheap oil and most of the expensive oil has been found. Now we, and the rest of the world, are draining the bottom half of the world oil barrel and are beginning to cast about for other high density energy sources to replace oil, something we should have been doing 30 years ago when the current problem was accurately predicted. We will need oil to help us build an alternative energy resource before our oil resources are totally exhausted. Have we waited too long to act?
What else is available? Wind and tidal energy can't even replace 5% of our oil needs. Geothermal energy is not widely available and is usually located in unstable geophysical areas. People are rightly afraid of radioactive contamination from nuclear power, besides the fact that it takes more energy to make, maintain and decommission a nuclear plant than it delivers in its lifetime. Cold Fusion was an illusion and Hot Fusion has been a 50 year old multi-billion dollar pipe dream that experts say will take another 50 years of research and billions more before we'll see fusion power plants, if ever. That leaves solar energy as the only remaining source of renewable energy which could be harnessed in sufficient capacity to replace oil. One way of extracting solar energy is with Solar Power Tower II devices, developed in the USA but being installed by other countries. Another way to utilize solar energy is to utilize photosynthesis. That is why, in the USA, Corn is receiving considerable attention.
Initially, Ethanol from Corn was added to gasoline in small amounts to replace toxic fuel additives used to prevent pinging. As percentages increased farmers began to see Ethanol plants as big customers for their Corn. The Ethanol Industry set up front organizations to lobby Congress for subsidies and publicize Ethanol as a substitute for gasoline. Ethanol import tariffs and Federal subsidies support Ethanol production at slightly over $1 per gallon. Now that politicians have jumped on the bandwagon they are presenting an illusion that Ethanol is the answer to our energy problems. One politician had a campaign ad that suggests "corn fields may replace oil fields". One interesting aspect in the Ethanol dynamic is that demand for Ethanol has increased considerably over the last 5 years, but the price of Corn had remained essentially the same, about $2.55/Bu, for the last 50 years (but recently -6/2007- has risen as high as $4.04/Bu). Concerning the price of corn, what is interfering with the laws of supply and demand? The role of the multi-national agri-corps in annually suppressing the price of Corn just when farmers bring their product to market is a topic for another investigation.
Ethanol industry sponsored studies report that Ethanol p
Re:Don't blame me, (Score:2, Informative)
My single-cylinder XR650L is quite sensitive to the difference between E0 and E10, what's interesting is your bikes were old enough that they were not jetted quite lean like modern street-legal bike engines are.
Yeah, for two-strokes there is even a whole other world of hurt than can be encountered with the mix oil compatibility with the alcohol.
Dave
alcohols / ethanols reduce gas mileage (Score:3, Informative)
Lots of people have been playing with various gasoline additives. Alcohol does not come out high on the list.
Essentially, by adding ~10% ethanol to gasoline, people have measured reductions in gas mileage of around 10%. So it's a great way to create agricultural subsidies without really impacting OPEC all that much at all. Big win for everyone but the consumer.
This article about using acetone as an additive has always stuck out in my mind... too bad the guy's tone kinda veers towards sounding like a quack. But as an engineer, I commiserate with his exasperation in the face of stupidity.
http://pesn.com/2005/03/17/6900069_Acetone/ [pesn.com]