The Ethanol Scam: Are ethanol advocates giving slanted mpg numbers?

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by cfg83

trebuchet03 -
Isn't it difficult to make a one-to-one comparison with Brazil because of the source of their ethanol? I thought they used sugar-cane while we used corn. The gist I got was that they were extracting more energy from sugar-cane than we are from corn.

CarloSW2

Also throw in the fact that their climate is hot and perfect for ethanol production without burning fuel and throw in the fact that they generally don't blend ethanol with gas and can tollerate higher water percentages, etc ,etc.

If we wanted to produce ethanol more efficiently we could, potatoes are much better than corn and there are slower methods of making alcohol that would require fewer fossil fuels.

The trouble with anything in our "economy" is that it has to be fast and easy and almost always use oil.

With more thought and investment we could make alcohol more efficiently without the use of fossil fuels but sadly lobbies control this sector and they rarely do things that save resources

e85forum.com

Also mileage as in MPG on a vehicle does not always go down running alcohol. My buick got the same mileage both ways running a 50% blend of e85 and e10 AKA 30mpg-32mpg highway. Sadly that motor had major issues to begin with and blew out (not alcohol related) and I haven't tested the new 01 with e85 mixes yet.

The odd thing is most folks who run a mix of e85 in a car NOT DESIGNED TO RUN ON IT tend to get almost exactly the same mileage (e85 mileage is best in warm climates), those that have flex fuel MPG almost always goes down on e85.

Ah well

[Frank Lee]

Ja my mpg is the same at 50/50 blends or less.

[ShadeTreeMech]

In my Villager on E0 gas I get 20-21 MPG; on E85 I get 16.5-17 mpg. Yes I lose mpg, but the lower cost in my area made up for it.

I'm all for a plug in beat about town vehicle and a long range hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. I'm also interested in the pnuematic powered vehicles, which use only compressed air. I think that has a lot of merit due to wieght considerations and the variety of ways air can be compressed. Heck, using a windmill for the power plant you could compress air, or even powering an air compressor with solar cells.

But how does poor good ole boy from Arkansas afford to even think about affording such a thing?

[dcb]

No offense, but I think the jury has already returned a verdict on hydrogen, and it is considered a storage medium and a pretty crummy one at that, unless you are building a rocket with LOTS of other peoples money.

But little sub $1000 econoboxes with a stickshift can be finessed to 50mpg pretty easily (to 100mpg+ by some patient masters), sub $500 motorbikes get about 100mpg without trying too hard, theres a lot room for improvement on the cheap, especially for a do-it-yourself modder.

[Allch Chcar]

Very much misinformation and ad hoc thinking. The EPA starts requiring Ethanol use and our economy promptly fails apart, very unlikely. The reason these scientists can only give up is that Emissions and VOC are a minor part of climate factors. The Green House effect is a minor player in the entire process and the Sun's nuclear rate and speed of heat ray generation is usually the biggest factor. So I'm no expert but they're measuring gold fish to find the problems with the ocean. Scientists have done silly things to find the answer to problems and this is just crazy talk.

I thought this was going to be a discussion of E85 fuel mileage difference from anecdotal sources. The E85 lobby has also given up on giving mileage numbers and just states that, "E85 has 70% of the BTU content of Gasoline and should return at least that much mileage" and "they have see reports of better MPG" but always less than 100% of Gasoline MPG.

The dry vs wet ethanol argument is simple moot. You cannot mix "wet" ethanol with gasoline. Brazil mixes "dry" ethanol with their gasoline which is a 25% Ethanol, 75% Gasoline Mixture and they sell ethanol in it's maximum wet form of 95% Ethanol 5% water. It's been said that taking Ethanol to 95% alcohol content takes half of the energy and the other half is spent getting to to 98-99% alcohol content. But there's no other way around mixing it with gasoline. I wish we could have "wet" ethanol(denatured of course) here instead of E85, it'd be a lot cheaper and better albeit with more corrosion so changing fuel system components would be a bigger factor than they already are. But with our climate and the required components to make a Flex Fuel car run on "wet" ethanol and regular gasoline would be a major problem for regulators.

Corn Ethanol has been shown to be essentially just be a transient fuel and a is a First Generation Biofuel so it gives a small energy surplus from modern production which uses mostly Coal and Natural Gas instead of Petroleum. The next point is how much more efficient Ethanol is than Gasoline but that's another topic eh?

[gc-steve]

Originally Posted by thefirebuilds

interesting, ive never heard a correlation between Corn values and our economy. I was under the impression that we make far more corn than we can use and the government subsidizes it just for that reason (to interest farmers in making it)

what irritates me is subsidizing something that farmers are obviously making money off of.

There is an interesting little documentary (King Corn) about the costs of producing 1 acre of corn and the subsidies involved.

I think I watched in on the instant Netflix deal, but there is an extend PBS clip here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDurZc5Yr6c

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