Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
Help out the ethanol plants? I was thinking now is the time to switch back to E0 and help out the fracking industry. We could bump up fuel consumption ~5% from that.
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Sorry, I have no love for the fracking industry. It couldn't be regulated and done relatively safely but as of today it is not.
Even corn ethanol has a positive EREI which means it is actually a renewable fuel. Cars run fine on it and some actually get better fuel economy on low blend ethanol fuels like E10. That depends on whether the engine can make adjustments to use the extra octane from the ethanol. The NHTSA credits for flex-fuel vehicle were incredible stupid because they allowed automakers to take credit of vehicle that were not optimized for E85. Most E85 vehicles are low compression trucks and SUVs because those are the vehicle where manufacturers needed fuel economy credits. E85 runs best in turbocharged engines that can effectively change compression ratio based on ethanol content.
If you remove the ethanol you still won't have pure gas because a oxygenate is still required. MTBE has been banned so now we have ETBE (ethanol mixed with isobutylene)
114,100 BTU/gal Gasoline (regular unleaded)
112,000 BTU/gal Gasoline (10% MBTE)
111,836 BTU/gal Gasoline (E10)
111,811 BTU/gal Gasoline (reformulated gasoline, ETBE)
No 5% bump there.
The backlash against ethanol is mostly politics not science based. It is Big Ag vs Big Petroleum.
On an individual - level lots of people have had poor experiences with small engines. That is mostly a combination of engine manufacturers being too cheap to make their produce E10 compatible until they were forced to do so and poor maintenance by users. Let mower or line trimmer sit over the winter full of fuel and in spring you will have a gummed up carb. Drain the fuel before storage as recommended and the mower will fire right up come spring.