E85, 85% fossil fuel free...

[Frank Lee]

Then YMMV- know- not guess- how much mpg drop your car gets and buy accordingly.

[Allch Chcar]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

A good rule of thumb for saving money is that whenever E85 is at least 20% cheaper than regular, get it- if you're gonna run straight E85. Blends- it doesn't matter.

The actual BTU difference is about 25% less in the summer and 20% less in the winter. Given that E10 has less energy than "pure" Gasoline which has 3% more energy than Gasohol.

Originally Posted by Quezacotl

Well, E85 is consumed average 30% more than regular fuel. I'd say 30% is the rule of thumb for me.
Then someone would say newer cars can use the booze more efficiently. But then in other hand, those cars can use regular gas more efficiently too... So still, i could say 30% price difference is where is the line.

That number is compared to "100%" Gasoline(which is to say it doesn't contain ethanol). It's both rare and more expensive than E10/Gasohol here. Which fuel is actually cheaper depends heavily on the local fuel market. Some straight Gasoline is cheaper, some places it's E10 or even E85.

Ethanol demand is too low to justify other feedstocks. Corn Ethanol might not be the cleanest or the cheapest but it's available and it's plentiful. Not that I disagree with you on more/better feedstocks, I'm just being realistic here. Most if not all of the issues with Ethanol now are what it's made out of. Ethanol itself is cleaner, cheaper, and higher octane than Gasoline.
If you haven't noticed that Premium Gasoline prices have gotten closer to Regular in the last few years.


It's just a fact that Ethanol is far cheaper than the high octane alternatives.

[Frank Lee]

The actual BTU difference is about 25% less in the summer and 20% less in the winter.

That may be, but there isn't a direct correlation between BTU content and mpgs.

[Allch Chcar]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

That may be, but there isn't a direct correlation between BTU content and mpgs.

You are correct, of course.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by euromodder

Ethanol can only be a solution if it's not competing with food supply.
It's bad enough that most biofuels will almost always compete for available farmland.

As long as it's the corn industry pushing for higher ethanol levels, something's wrong.
There's far more efficient ways and plants to make biofuels, that don't directly compete with food supply.

That's why I'm favorable to cellulosic ethanol since it can be made out of almost any agricultural residue, and the usage of meat-processing leftovers to produce biodiesel and biomethane too. Well, there are many other ways to overcome the competition with food supplies.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

That's why I'm favorable to cellulosic ethanol since it can be made out of almost any agricultural residue, and the usage of meat-processing leftovers to produce biodiesel and biomethane too. Well, there are many other ways to overcome the competition with food supplies.

The problem with cellulosic ethanol is no one has really figured it out yet and when they do its still not going to be cheap.
I say they should have gone with cellulosic methanol. The feed stock can be wood chips, the byproduct is charcoal that can be used as fertlizer or burned at certian power plants. Its been technically possible, commercially and economically viable most of the time since world war II.
Only time it isn't economical is when natural gas is really cheap like it is now.
Any diesel engine could be fitted with a methanol intake fumigator, so the diesels wouldn't have the corssion problems the current gassers would have.

Last time I had good number on it (2 or 3 years ago), bulk methanol could be had for about $1/gal.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

[QUOTE=oil pan 4;37635I say they should have gone with cellulosic methanol. The feed stock can be wood chips, the byproduct is charcoal that can be used as fertlizer or burned at certian power plants. Its been technically possible, commercially and economically viable most of the time since world war II.[/QUOTE]

Wood chips were used to produce even gasoline during WW2 in Poland and Germany.

[oil pan 4]

Only problem with making gasoline out of wood chips is its pretty expensive.
Methanol is just real easy to make.
You can use natural gas, wood chips, coal, just what every is cheap.

[Swordsmith]

By driving carefully I can get 31 mpg on E85. By driving carefully I can get 40 mpg out of 93 E10. Driving normally, I get 22mpg on E85, and 31mpg on 87 E10. In PA last winter I was paying around 3.30 a gallon for E85, 3.50 a gallon 87 E10, and 3.90 a gallon 93 E10. But in Texas this spring I was paying 2.78 a gallon E85 while 87 was running 3.50. E85's viability from an economic standpoint is very based on how large the discrepancy between it and pump gas is. Even driving 25 miles out of my way to get to the E85 pump I still felt like I was getting a decent deal in Texas, here, it's just something that makes my car more fun, it actually ends up costing me money to use E85 instead.

I wonder specifically about the tax issue; it seems to me the way to make E85 more economically viable is simple enough; don't tax it. The tax on gasoline is a significant portion of the price we pay, if we paid tax only on gas, and not on ethanol, then the tax would be 10% lower on E10 and 85% lower on E85. They could even raise the tax, by exactly enough (coincidentally) to leave the tax the same on E10.

A non-trivial portion of the fleet today is flexfuel ready, but most people are still putting gasoline in their tanks because that's a cheaper way to travel. I would think widening the gap between the two liquids would be all it would take to significantly increase the number of people actually using the fuel, and that might also affect the car buying public, increasing demand for flexfuel cars... and that in turn encourage the car manufacturers to make the things.

Get adoption rates and use rates higher, more stations put in flexfuel pumps, and alternate forms of ethanol production get easier to finance. Everybody wins, except the petroleum producing countries.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Only problem with making gasoline out of wood chips is its pretty expensive.
Methanol is just real easy to make.
You can use natural gas, wood chips, coal, just what every is cheap.

Sure, but since the range with gasoline is still higher than with methanol, that might worth to overcome the cost