Removing Ethanol from Gasoline

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by Nerys

xxxx xxxx...

nerys' truth: now back them I was not thinking about fuel so much. gas was cheap I was being paid well.

You know as well as I that cheap econo cars were every bit as available as SUVs.

[user removed]

When gas was 90 cents a gallon?

Lets assume you bought the Cherokee new, since you really did not answer my simple question.

Lets also round off your mileage at 500k and your mileage at 21 MPG.

23,809 gallons of fuel.

Now lets assume the average cost of fuel was $2.00 per gallon.

$47,618.

Double your average mileage and save $23,809 over that period of time.

I have no choice but to use E10. The closest station with E0 is Washington DC, 180 miles from here.

In spite of that you can see I am getting pretty good mileage in the vehicles I am driving.

In fact the fuel cost calculations I just made using assumptions (for lack of facts) mean you have spent more money on fuel in one vehicle than me and my wife have spent for every drop of fuel we have purchased since we were married in 1989.

Possibly more money than we both have spend driving in our lifetimes.

The same economy you strive to achieve today was a part of my calculations when I bought a new 1984 Honda CRX that averaged 44 MPG for 50k miles, and gas was cheap then.

I think you have made your point about ethanol, and I actually agree with most of your conclusions. To minimize the losses due to Ethanol you need to have a knock sensor and advanced timing to allow the higher octane to help mitigate the mileage loss.

I'm done here.

I hope you continue to strive to get healthier and use a lot less fuel. It's sad that when times were good you did not anticipate that they might end, or you could have saved and better invested money for the bad times. That is what my wife and I did, and many of our friends thought we were crazy to not spend as fast as we earned.

They are not laughing now.

regards
Mech

[tjts1]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

I thought the conversion efficiencies had improved. Are we still going off the widely quoted study from decades ago?

If you have data to back that up, post it.

[Nerys]

yes it is. Your missing my point. The analogy is comparing energy content to MPG.

Your proclaimed my results did not make sense because there is energy in the ethanol so how could it go LESS than without the ethanol at all.

I needed to give you an extreme obvious example. Well your car can't run on diesel can it? no of course not.

well mine is not "that" bad it obviously DOES run on ethanol just "not as well" so much so that trying to burn ethanol in it INTERFERES with its normal function to the point of degrading performance to that level.

Pick another fuel.

Hydrogen, Butane, Propane, Natural Gas - all of these WILL burn in our normal gas engines. Our spark plugs WILL ignite all of these.

but your not going to get very far on any of them because our engines were NOT designed to operate on them and all of these burn EASIER than ethanol does.

We are not driving high compression spark ignition engines.

We are driving run of the mill old used spark ignition engines not race cars with 12:1 or better compression ratio's that love alcohol.

NOW as I said it was a guess on our part but it "fits" the results. I go further on 9 gallons of gasoline (ethanol removed and thrown away) than I do on the full 10 gallons of gasoline with ethanol.

This is a fact. I have and can test and show this repeatedly. I can duplicate these results every single time without fail.

I can show it with historical data on my other vehicles as well

Minivan 28mpg. Except one time when I went up to the mountains and got 26mpg I HAVE NEVER EVER gotten less than 27-28mpg in that van. Not one time that I can recall pre ethanol.

Post Ethanol I CAN NOT get better than 21mpg no matter how hard I try. Lets do some math. (and note its very HARD to get 21mpg but lets use that anyway)

On 10 gallons of E10 I can go 210 miles
On 09 gallons of E00 I can go 252 miles

My Jeep cherokee. 22mpg consistant average over 250,000 + miles

On Ethanol 18mpg is my average. 16 is my normal but lets use 18 to be conservative.

On 10 gallons of E10 I can go 180 miles
On 09 gallons of E00 I can go 198 miles

My Club wagon. Normal around home driving 19mpg - now I average 13 mpg. I can hit 17 on e10 but only on EXTREME highway driving (is semi surfing never dropping below 65 for 500+ miles except to stop for gas) previously I would hit 21 doing this.

On 10 gallons of E10 I can go 130 miles
On 09 gallons of E00 I can go 171 miles

The van REALLY hates E10. it was one of Ford's early EFI's which might be part of the reason (its a 92)

My Dad and my Mom both have Chevy Lumina APV

Previously they got 25 and 26 mpg respectively. so to keep it simply I am going to use 25.5 mph

Now 21 is the absolutely max either can get. Period. Even when I drive it I can not seem to break 21mpg.

On 10 gallons of E10 I can go 210 miles
On 09 gallons of E00 I can go 229 miles

This is repeatable consistent reproducible results on every single car we have driving on E10.

This means Ethanol is NOT cleaner is NOT cheaper is NOT greener and saves not one single penny. in fact it costs a small fortune to use.

and thats not even counting the cost (both ecologically and financially) of PRODUCING the stuff. this is just USING it.

The point is comparing energy content only works when BOTH FUELS ARE FULLY COMPATIBLE WITH THE CARS SYSTEM :-)

My contention is ethanol is NOT fully compatible. it makes the cars run WORSE so much so that its worse than not at all.

[Nerys]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

You know as well as I that cheap econo cars were every bit as available as SUVs.

No they are not. not even close.

SURE a brand new SUV is far more expensive than a brand new Econo car but I can afford NEITHER and neither can most people.

when your buying USED. when you price is limited to say $1000 or $2000 suddenly things flip. old gas guzzlers are a LOT cheaper than Econo cars.

An example. I was barely able to afford my metro. $600. thankfully he took payments. Thankfully he let me buy the $1200 in parts it needed through him at cost bringing the price down to around $500 and thankfully I was able to do 100% of the work myself (another $1500 savings AT LEAST)

essentially to the average person this was a nearly $3600 car. (it did need a lot of work but the car is soooo easy to work on and I got the parts so cheap)

To the average person they would not be so lucky. Ever price what a clean rust free metro goes for? $2500 is the current average asking price on craigslist with really clean models commanding quite a bit more.

The people you see driving around in crown vic and old ford explorer's ? most of them DO NOT HAVE $2500 :-)

[Nerys]

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

When gas was 90 cents a gallon?

Lets assume you bought the Cherokee new, since you really did not answer my simple question.

Lets also round off your mileage at 500k and your mileage at 21 MPG.

23,809 gallons of fuel.

Now lets assume the average cost of fuel was $2.00 per gallon.

$47,618.

Double your average mileage and save $23,809 over that period of time.

I have no choice but to use E10. The closest station with E0 is Washington DC, 180 miles from here.

In spite of that you can see I am getting pretty good mileage in the vehicles I am driving.

In fact the fuel cost calculations I just made using assumptions (for lack of facts) mean you have spent more money on fuel in one vehicle than me and my wife have spent for every drop of fuel we have purchased since we were married in 1989.

Possibly more money than we both have spend driving in our lifetimes.

The same economy you strive to achieve today was a part of my calculations when I bought a new 1984 Honda CRX that averaged 44 MPG for 50k miles, and gas was cheap then.

I think you have made your point about ethanol, and I actually agree with most of your conclusions. To minimize the losses due to Ethanol you need to have a knock sensor and advanced timing to allow the higher octane to help mitigate the mileage loss.

I'm done here.

I hope you continue to strive to get healthier and use a lot less fuel. It's sad that when times were good you did not anticipate that they might end, or you could have saved and better invested money for the bad times. That is what my wife and I did, and many of our friends thought we were crazy to not spend as fast as we earned.

They are not laughing now.

regards
Mech

I can't tell if your insulting me or not. Whether your trolling or not or whether your just not very nice/snobby or just misread something I said that rubbed you wrong.

as for facts. I can not give you facts. what part of I did not retain records from then was unclear to you? I could have "estimated" as you did but then you would yell at me for guessing and not giving you facts. So I abstained.

I would say $47k is very conservative - I probable spent a LOT more than that in fuel in the last 14 years but I really have ZERO means of even estimating it without knowing the average fuel costs each year how many miles etc.. it would be a wild guess. SO I did not guess.

Remember I was 16 years old. Gas was under $1 a gallon. I had a lot of commuting to do and had hobbies I liked and could not afford TWO cars.

I paid for my first and every car since then 100% on my own. My pop assisted me with the "down payment" on the cherokee which I paid back in 4 or 5 months including making my payments on the car.

Otherwise no help at all. Did it all myself.

22mpg is NOT bad for a car that is both a daily driver and a commuter. I tow a lot (dolly trailer camper etc..) an economy car is simply NOT AN OPTION as an only car back then. Period.

This cherokee owes me nothing. I don't think I put more than $1000 into it over its entire lifetime not counting optional upgrades and normal maintenance.

New? your kidding right? maybe this is just a confusion so let me clarify. I was born in 76 the car was made in 88 I was 11/12 years old when this car was made :-) and it already had 92,000 miles on the clock.

I got it for what was a "song" at the time. $4500 (remember I could NOT afford 2 cars insurance would have murdered me even if I could afford two payments) and the one car needed to do everything I asked of it.

I actually USED the "utility" in my SUV a lot (and a cherokee is a very tiny SUV its almost as small as my Metro and not much heavier either)

I still have and drive that Cherokee to this day. It still serves functions my other vehicles simply can not perform.

I will reply more later when I have dwelled on it more since you did put a lot of effort into the post and i don't want to jump the gun.

We can not pick up our family business and move it. Its complicated but it would be legally impossible to do. IT is what it is it is where it is and we live where we live (moving would cost orders of magnitude more than the gas does for our entire lifetimes we ownt he home we don't rent and only an ..... or a person unable otherwise or someone with a GOOD job lives in NJ. the costs of living their are just insane) Just the insurance increase would far exceed the savings in gasoline.

I am stuck with the commute till we get rid of the business its that simple.

even driving a metro averaging 50mpg I still spend more money on gasoline each year than your average person does no matter what they drive.

Average person would have to get 15mpg max just to equal what I spend on gas in the metro ($2104 roughly at current prices)

anything higher than 15mpg and they are spending less than I do (average citizen drives 12,000 miles a year thats $2104 at 15mpg)

[UFO]

No one is questioning your data. I was just wondering how a small amount of ethanol affects your mileage so much. I do not have the records that you do, I've just been using whatever gasoline comes out of the pump for my truck (don't drive it much anymore, I daily-drive a diesel) and I always get 25mpg city and 30mpg in the mountains. Maybe your vehicle is just not set up to operate on higher octane fuel...?

[Nerys]

its not higher octane. its still just 87 octane fuel. They use lower octane gasoline so when the add the ethanol it boots it to the proper normal octane.

10% is not a small amount in my book. thats a lot. 15% that they want to goto is even more. maybe too much for some older vehicles.

Also either way its costing me a ton of money and who knows how much in extra maintenance costs.

My problem is them shoving it down out throats. if there was two pumps E0 and E10 I would be fine with it.

alas the corn lobby does not want this as no one would BUY the E10 if they had a choice.

it would be very very hard and expensive to test this on anything but the metro.

the jeep would require me to make 20 gallons almost twice a week for a good test. I just can't afford that and because of the quantity I would have to drive even longer to validate the results.

the metro is only 10 gallons. if I could afford it and do it safely I would drive up to allentown and get E0 ie a few hundred gallons.

then every 2 months go up for more. Even though its 10cents more per gallon (25 cents more per gallon compared to NJ gas) and it would cost me gas roundtrip to even GET IT I would still save money big time.

alas its similar to buying a car. you need significant cash UP FRONT to even start to do it and since I can not "borrow" the next 1.5 months worth of "fuel money" to fund it .........

also I would be very concerned over how to safely and legally (less a concern) store the stuff.

[Phantom]

To compare some numbers of 87 93 pump gas and e85 (sorry I do not have e10 in my book I got this from)

87
Lower heating value 42.7 kJ/kg
Density 0.740 kg/l
Stoich 14.8

93
Lower heating value 43.5 kJ/kg
Density 0.755 kg/l
Stoich 14.7

E85 Octane 104.2
Lower heating value 26.8 kJ/kg
Density 0.790 kg/l
Stoich 9

So e85 has less energy weighs more and takes more fuel to be at the stoichiomertic ratio.

On a side note Methane Propane or LPG would be a better solution all have a higher energy content an octane rating from 104.5-120 and stoich ratio from 15.5 to 17.2 also they are less dense than Gasoline.

Just to note that on all the above fuels a narrow band O2 should still be able to read fine at lambda=1 (or = to stoich). Also I want to state that many (if not all) flex-fuel cars have a sensor that determines the Ethanol content of the fuel and them uses that info to adjust the ignition timing and possibly fuel injection timing to optimize for the slower burning fuel.

[Nerys]

good info phantom. but we are not talking about newer car designed to deal with Ethanol. We are talking about older cars that were designed before ethanol was even a thought :-)