Fight etahanol

This may have been posted on Classic Motorsports. The Historic Vehicle Assoc. has a web site, "historic vehicle.org." that has a petition to the gov't to remove ethanol from gasoline and also maps to find non ethanol gasoline.

Ethanol is a central ingredient in making my car stupid fast, so I can't go there with ya, but have fun.

I get sick of this knee-jerk response to ethanol...

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ETHANOL....

It is a perfectly viable fuel option. The problems people have with ethanol are almost exclusively covered by political entanglements with the US corn industry.

But corn is not the only source of ethanol on this green earth, for crying out loud....

Brazil does a pretty good job with sugar cane, IIRC. They are self reliant for most fuel.

DILYSI Dave wrote: Ethanol is a central ingredient in making my car stupid fast, so I can't go there with ya, but have fun.

I was just thinking the same thing. Corn fed=poor mans race gas.

madmallard wrote: I get sick of this knee-jerk response to ethanol... THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ETHANOL.... It is a perfectly viable fuel option. The problems people have with ethanol are almost exclusively covered by political entanglements with the US corn industry. But corn is not the only source of ethanol on this green earth, for crying out loud....

you're forgetting that it likes to eat anything not stainless or nylon in your fuel system, and gets worse mileage. gov't wants to put more and more ethanol in fuel while increasing MPG requirements.

madmallard wrote: I get sick of this knee-jerk response to ethanol... THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ETHANOL.... It is a perfectly viable fuel option. The problems people have with ethanol are almost exclusively covered by political entanglements with the US corn industry. But corn is not the only source of ethanol on this green earth, for crying out loud....

Tell that to the fuel systems in my mower, weedeater, and chainsaw. Gums them up quite often.

Haven't noticed an issue with my E36 M3ty junkyard truck.

madmallard wrote: THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ETHANOL....

Besides that without subsidies, it would cost more to produce and you would have to consume more of it? Sounds pretty E36 M3ty to me!

I am amazed at how easily people buy into the whole "ethanol is good 'cause it makes my car faster" thing. That's fine for you, but it's very much beside the point.

There are reasons that even pro-environment groups including the Sierra Club are opposed to ethanol from corn (which is where 95% of it comes from) as a motor fuel. It takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol from corn than it generates. http://pennsylvania.sierraclub.org/PA_Chapter_2008/Conservation/Air%20Qualty/fuels_for_our_future.html

Should our tax dollars be piddled away on this futile endeavor? http://zfacts.com/p/63.html

Is anyone still unaware of the damage to engines being caused by ethanol in gasoline?http://www.fuel-testers.com/ethanol_engine_precautions.html

There is NOTHING good about this country's experiment with ethanol in gasoline. Please lose the redneck "Hyuk, it makes my car fast" mentality and EDUCATE yourselves!

Strizzo wrote: you're forgetting that it likes to eat anything not stainless or nylon in your fuel system, and gets worse mileage. gov't wants to put more and more ethanol in fuel while increasing MPG requirements.

E10 has been the standard fuel here since at least the late 80's and these problems just don't happen.

Adding ethanol is an automatic MPG increase, because the CAFE is calculated by gallons of gasoline consumed. E15 is only 85% gasoline, E85 is only 15% gasoline, it's a great way of boosting the CAFE numbers...

1988RedT2 wrote: There are reasons that even pro-environment groups including the Sierra Club are opposed to ethanol from corn (which is where 95% of it comes from) as a motor fuel. It takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol from corn than it generates.

I do agree that this is stupid. However, the more corn by-products are in fuel, the less are in food, and anything that cuts down on HFCS in foods is a good thing.

In reply to Knurled:

To me, that makes it more of a CAFE circumvention than a meaningful MPG increase. Especially given that producing ethanol uses more energy than it produces... So although it may make CAFE numbers more favorable, it actually increases the amount of fuel consumed...

If the 15% of a gallon of fuel which isn't gasoline took the equivalent 20% of a gallon to make, then using my gallon of fuel is effectively using 1.05 gallons...

EDIT: Do they really let auto manufacturers count their CAFE fuel usage by ignoring any fuel used which isn't gasoline? Baffling...

Knurled wrote:

Strizzo wrote: you're forgetting that it likes to eat anything not stainless or nylon in your fuel system, and gets worse mileage. gov't wants to put more and more ethanol in fuel while increasing MPG requirements.

E10 has been the standard fuel here since at least the late 80's and these problems just don't happen. Adding ethanol is an automatic MPG increase, because the CAFE is calculated by gallons of gasoline consumed. E15 is only 85% gasoline, E85 is only 15% gasoline, it's a great way of boosting the CAFE numbers...

so then we are only charged for the gasoline part of E10? have i been getting a 10% rebate on my gas purchases that nobody's been telling me about? i really could not care less what E10 or E85 does for a manufacturers CAFE numbers if the real world result crapping in my sandbox.

don't piss on my shoe and tell me its raining

ransom wrote: In reply to Knurled: To me, that makes it more of a CAFE circumvention than a meaningful MPG increase. Especially given that producing ethanol uses more energy than it produces... So although it may make CAFE numbers more favorable, it actually *increases* the amount of fuel consumed... If the 15% of a gallon of fuel which isn't gasoline took the equivalent 20% of a gallon to make, then using my gallon of fuel is effectively using 1.05 gallons... EDIT: Do they really let auto manufacturers count their CAFE fuel usage by ignoring any fuel used which isn't gasoline? Baffling...

Yes. Always has been.

CAFE was originally to reduce the amount of imported fuel, so not counting the ethanol or methanol that was produced in the US was a good thing.

Now the rule is being changed to reflect "renewable" fuels. You'll see a LOT more flex fuel vehicles in new fleets in the future.

Still, there are plenty of sources other than corn to make ethanol. It's bad that the representation from the corn belt is twisting things that direction. (both EPA and NHTSA get specific direction from our elected representation- many of the really odd ethanol rules can be traced to Bob Dole from Iowa)

On a funky side note- you can make Butanol from sugar beets. much better fuel than ethanol, since it CAN be piped in pipe lines.

Knurled wrote:

1988RedT2 wrote: There are reasons that even pro-environment groups including the Sierra Club are opposed to ethanol from corn (which is where 95% of it comes from) as a motor fuel. It takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol from corn than it generates.

I do agree that this is stupid. However, the more corn by-products are in fuel, the less are in food, and anything that cuts down on HFCS in foods is a good thing.

uhhh, what? its not going to reduce the amount of anything food related that is used, it will just make it more expensive

Politically it's an abortion. That doesn't make it a bad fuel, just a fuel that results from bad policy.

You guys arguing about CAFE numbers need to read more.

From Wikipedia:

For the fuel economy calculation for alternative fuel vehicles, a gallon of alternative fuel is deemed to contain 15% fuel (which is approximately the amount of gasoline in a gallon of E85) [22] as an incentive to develop alternative fuel vehicles.[23] The mileage for dual-fuel vehicles, such as E85 capable models, is computed as the average of its alternative fuel rating—divided by 0.15 (equal to multiplying by 6.666) -- and its gasoline rating. Thus an E85-capable vehicle that gets 15 mpg on E-85 and 25 mpg on gasoline might logically be rated at 20 mpg. But in fact the average, for CAFE purposes, despite perhaps only one percent of the fuel used in E85-capable vehicles is actually E85, is computed as 100 mpg for E-85 and the standard 25 mpg for gasoline, or 62.5 mpg.[12] However, the total increase in a manufacturer's average fuel economy rating due to dual-fueled vehicles cannot exceed 1.2mpg.[24] Section 32906 reduces the increase due to dual-fueled vehicles to 0 through 2020.

I don't think it will be long before CAFE standards are measured in MPGe, which is fine with me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPGe

In my area, you can only buy E10. Travel about an hour, and you can find E0, but its a higher cost than the difference in energy content, so no real benefit.

DILYSI Dave wrote: Politically it's an abortion. That doesn't make it a bad fuel, just a fuel that results from bad policy.

+1.

1988RedT2 wrote: I am amazed at how easily people buy into the whole "ethanol is good 'cause it makes my car faster" thing. That's fine for you, but it's very much beside the point. Is anyone still unaware of the damage to engines being caused by ethanol in gasoline?http://www.fuel-testers.com/ethanol_engine_precautions.html There is NOTHING good about this country's experiment with ethanol in gasoline. Please lose the redneck "Hyuk, it makes my car fast" mentality and EDUCATE yourselves!

I'm amazed that anybody would actually post a link to that site as defense for their argument. Talk about ignorant.

You may not like the politics, but nobody can deny that it's an excellent fuel.

Strizzo wrote:

Knurled wrote:

1988RedT2 wrote: There are reasons that even pro-environment groups including the Sierra Club are opposed to ethanol from corn (which is where 95% of it comes from) as a motor fuel. It takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol from corn than it generates.

I do agree that this is stupid. However, the more corn by-products are in fuel, the less are in food, and anything that cuts down on HFCS in foods is a good thing.

uhhh, what? its not going to reduce the amount of anything food related that is used, it will just make it more expensive

Not to mention that it reduces the amount of arable land available for food crops. No worries, we can just cut down some more old growth forest here in the States and rainforest down in Brazil to compensate. Biodiversity shmiodiversity!

How many times and in how many different ways can this horse be beaten?

Gasohol has been around for twenty years, an online petition is not going to change anything.

MitchellC wrote: No worries, we can just cut down some more old growth forest here in the States

{sarcasm} Yes, because where old-growth is makes for awesome farmland. {/sarcasm}

Tangent:

I love the ignorance that people have regarding timber. You realize that the alternative to harvesting old growth, at least in the Sierras, is to let it burn, right? Only, because we've had such an obsession with fire-suppression, that the forest can't burn natually, so instead of a relatively low-temperature fire that just clears out the underbrush and allows for regeneration of key species, we get a super-hot fire that burns down to mineral soil and devastates everything.

/Tangent.

In reply to stuart in mn:

This petition may not, but I'm not sure the horse is dead as long as the practice of using ethanol produced in such an inefficient manner goes on.

It's political, and if the winds blow the right direction with the public's flitting attention perhaps we can move on to saner alternatives.

I'm disinclined to just shrug and let the corn lobby have it.

It will never be "the" fuel, because we could never produce enough to supply the entire US fleet. Oh, maybe we could buy foreign corn to offset it....

Zomby woof wrote:

1988RedT2 wrote: I am amazed at how easily people buy into the whole "ethanol is good 'cause it makes my car faster" thing. That's fine for you, but it's very much beside the point. Is anyone still unaware of the damage to engines being caused by ethanol in gasoline?http://www.fuel-testers.com/ethanol_engine_precautions.html There is NOTHING good about this country's experiment with ethanol in gasoline. Please lose the redneck "Hyuk, it makes my car fast" mentality and EDUCATE yourselves!

I'm amazed that anybody would actually post a link to that site as defense for their argument. Talk about ignorant. You may not like the politics, but nobody can deny that it's an excellent fuel.

how exactly is that? since it has lower energy density than petroleum based gasoline and uses more petroleum per gallon to produce than it actually replaces?