Quote:
Originally Posted by N1LAF
This "Expert" uses calcs based on dodecane...Try using octane..54% goes to like 0%.
Thanks for the info though.
My personal favorite was " Octane (n-dodecane):" like WTF man???
rot
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Quote:
Originally Posted by N1LAF
This "Expert" uses calcs based on dodecane...Try using octane..54% goes to like 0%.
Thanks for the info though.
My personal favorite was " Octane (n-dodecane):" like WTF man???
rot
Throwing out all the facts and figures and pontificating... I don't put that shit in my car's gas tank unless I'm stuck. Personal experience tells me that 100% sure gasoline is better performing and is less taxing on the car itself. [/eof]
It might get you less gas mileage, but in today's cars (Which are designed to burn it), it's just as good as gasoline. Computer control monitors burn, and controls air/fuel mixture into optimal settings.Quote:
Originally Posted by W4GPL
As a matter of fact, my owners manual says to specifically avoid ethanol based gasoline if possible. But everyone else is an expert...
It's not "just as good as gasoline." It is marginally worse.Quote:
Originally Posted by KC2UGV
Flex fuel vehicles designed to run E85 have to have stainless steel hoses and gas tanks because that alcohol shit is so corrosive. You don't find that in most regular cars.
And that's just for cars - small engines in lawn mowers, generators, go-karts etc are being ruined by the thousands because of ethanol which picks up water like a sponge.
In fact it can't even be piped for very long distances because it is so hygroscopic. This is why you won't find many flex fuel gas stations outside of the corn belt. It has to be trucked, which means more diesel fuel being burned (and more CO2 in the air) by tankers driving from the corn belt to out of state refineries.
It's another stupid Government mandate that the auto manufacturers have to work around. GM, Chrysler and Ford are the only ones really putting out flex fuel vehicles anyway.
And you have a Ford... who makes E85 flex fuel vehicles too.Quote:
Originally Posted by W4GPL
Of course it does. You don't have a duel-fuel vehicle :) However, it runs just fine with the 10% ethanol. And, I'm not an expert: I asked my mechanic, and two friends who are mechanics.Quote:
Originally Posted by W4GPL
Which mine is not. When I got the car, they gave me a very bright red addendum to the owners manual that specifically covered ethanol fuels and and octane. Our regular grade gas in Colorado is 85 octane, where as in the most parts of the country it's 87 -- this is due to the elevation. They stressed that you should only use 87 octane or greater and avoid ethanol blends.Quote:
Originally Posted by N2RJ
And what you said about lawn mowers and other small engines is true. Ethanol clearly degrades parts faster, people like Corey can argue with me until they're blue in the face with facts and Wikipedia snippets, but I've seen if with my own two eyes. I don't need to read through dozens of forums posts and bullshit politically based data to know the truth.
No, it specifically said to even avoid 10% blends. See above.Quote:
Originally Posted by KC2UGV
Ethanol as a gasoline additive is a scam perpetuated on us by politicians on both sides of the aisle who are pandering to farm interests in the Midwest, simple as that. It started out as a well-intentioned attempt at reducing the country's dependence on imported oil but it turned into yet another pork barrel project that neither Republican or Democrat has the will to label as the environmentally unsound boondoggle it actually is.
Money talks, boys...
Odd, here's what the owner's manual states from Ford:Quote:
Originally Posted by W4GPL
http://owner.ford.com/servlet/Conten...rd&model=FocusQuote:
If your vehicle is not a flexible fuel vehicle (FFV), then only useUNLEADED fuel or UNLEADED fuel blended with a maximum of 10%
ethanol. Do not use fuel ethanol (E85), diesel, methanol, leaded fuel or
any other fuel.
Fifth Printing.
Of course, that's for a 2012 Ford Focus. What year is yours?
But.. but... Corey and his mechanics know better the vehicle manufacturers.Quote:
Originally Posted by W4GPL
And it was from Ford, not the dealership. On the Focus forums I read, other people have spoken to this as well.Quote:
When I got the car, they gave me a very bright red addendum to the owners manual that specifically covered ethanol fuels and and octane.
If you're not going to read..
Quote:
Originally Posted by W4GPL
Interesting... I would have figured a supplement to the owner's manual (Which comes from Ford) would be on the Ford website.Quote:
Originally Posted by W4GPL
Does it degrade parts faster? I would have figured if Ford gives the ok on a fuel blend, that car was engineered for it. But, what do I know? 3 mechanics have told me the 10% blend is fine for modern cars.
Even a small amount of alcohol degrades metal and rubber parts. With rubber, the side exposed to alcohol will swell up and dissolve.Quote:
Originally Posted by KC2UGV
It could be related to the elevation, as it addresses the octane levels as well. It may not apply to all locations. I admit it doesn't say it anything about degrading parts.
With that said, I still stand by the fact I've seen these marginal ethanol blends degrade small engines -- Ryan is correct. The fact is, I pay $3.60 at the 7-11 with 10% ethanol and $3.65 at the Shell station for pure 100% gasoline. I'll pay the nickel for the piece of mind. And dozens upon dozens of Focus owners on another forum have reported increased performance and gas mileage avoiding 10% blends.
I have no doubt my car will run just fine on 10% ethanol, but I also would like to see the 5 year statistics on the degradation of the fuel injection system for people who stick to 100% gasoline vs those who don't. Just a hunch, my car will be better off.
Unless the rubber has been treated to tolerate that. Aircraft rubber parts are treated to resist the MEK we need to use to clean parts; and resist the acidity of Triple Nickel oils.Quote:
Originally Posted by KG4CGC
I'm not talking about an E85 car or one made after 2010 or aircraft or whatever. I'm only speaking to alcohol and the general deterioration experienced in most regular vehicles, bikes, small engines, etc etc yada caa caa.Quote:
Originally Posted by KC2UGV
After 2004 or so. When MBTE was banned in CA and NYS (And, then in 25 states later). Yes, in vehicles not designed to tolerate it, it will have issues.Quote:
Originally Posted by KG4CGC
I trust the numbers in Paul's original post, and I agree with the immediate results of his calculations, but I disagree with some of his interpretive statements.
Based on his numbers, to travel 300 miles not only requires more hydrocarbon/ethanol fuel blend, but actually more of the hydrocarbon component as well.
The first part is not surprising: since the energy density per liter of ethanol burning to CO2 and water is lower than the volumetric energy density of hydrocarbon fuels, any blend must have less bang per volume of fuel.
The second part is more interesting, since not only is the ethanol a less efficient fuel, but it makes the hydrocarbon it's mixed with less fuel efficient, "wasting" fuel and contributing to global warming, because the excess hydrocarbon fuel used is NOT carbon neutral. Why would anybody cheese off both the left and the right wing by mandating ethanol use? Corruption? Bureaucratic stupidity?
Try science and environmental policy from before the climate change and energy supply issues took center stage.
The requirement to add ethanol to automotive fuel was instituted to change the chemistry in the combustion chamber, predominantly by introducing additional oxygen, in order to minimize the generation of precursors of photochemical smog.
The addition of ethanol was driven by clean air concerns, not fuel efficiency or climate change arguments, and based on personal experience it has in fact worked. One can reduce dependency on foreign oil and CO2 emitted by automobiles, but are we willing to go back to the days of the brown clouds? It's an unpleasant trade-off to consider, but it isn't going away without major changes in transportation technology and practices.
They do to a point but using alcohol free gasoline will still make them last longer.Quote:
Originally Posted by KC2UGV
Cars designed to withstand ethanol usually don't have much rubber parts that touch the fuel and have stainless steel plastic lined hoses.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ab1ga
You agree that the enthalpy and stoichiometry of burn is the same for dodecane as is for octane?
rot
Goodness no, I didn't use those numbers because I didn't need them, and at the very least they contain a hell of a typo or transcription error. Paul's original post with the mileage for both blended HC-only fuels was all I used, and other posts in the thread seemed to verify the phenomenon, if only qualitatively.Quote:
Originally Posted by rot
Since petroleum based fuels are quite variable in composition by source and seasonal changes in blending, I feel using tabular thermodynamic data of pure compounds can lead to errors in interpretation similar to those resulting from belief in false precision. I am not even sure of the range of compounds and their molecular weights for automotive fuels. Dodecane sounds more like a component of diesel fuel than gasoline, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were a minor component of automotive fuel.
One place where I did take liberties was the use of volumetric calculations rather than gravimetric ones when assessing the proportion of the blend which was ethanol and which was HC. Volume is not conserved upon mixing, but I wouldn't expect a large error and it would have been in a direction which wouldn't have changed the nature of the result.
Again, that the blend is less fuel efficient is not surprising, but the 15% increase in the consumption of HC fuel in addition to the ethanol had me scratching my head. My first guess is that the pollution mitigation comes from reductions in combustion chamber temperature. Carnot engine efficiency goes as (Tchamber - Texhaust)/Tchamber, if I remember correctly, and is the theoretical maximum heat engine efficiency. In a real car engine, the lower Tchamber would cause less torque, requiring more rotational speed to maintain output power. I ain't no automotive engineer, so your mileage may NOT vary.
But the point of my post was really that ethanol was never intended to make fuel go further, but to reduce pollution. The ethanol provides oxygen in addition to the mixed atmospheric air, which in turn reduces unburned hydrocarbons. The lower combustion temperature lowers NOx production, which if I remember my chemistry correctly react to form smog when photochemically triggered. Sadly, policy makers have forgotten the reason for adding ethanol in the first place, and falsely assumed it was used purely as a substitute for hydrocarbon fuels. The backlash of fuzzy ethanol policies now threatens to reverse decades of gains in air quality, which I feel would be a terrible shame.
73,
I just bought a new truck last week and it has a Flex Fuel engine, that means it can use E85 or any Ethanol blend. It says right in the owners manual that power and mileage will be less with Ethanol blended fuels. That's no secret, not for a long time. AB1GA is right, the purpose is to reduce pollution but the truly amazing thing is that modern engine control systems are adaptive enough to even allow a car to run on such a diverse mix of fuel.
Nah, not really amazing. They just use more expensive materials like stainless steel to prevent gas tanks from being corroded and lower our expectations about how long the car will last and run properly.Quote:
Originally Posted by ka4dpo
Dale is right when it comes to the reasoning of ethanol, but like many good intentions, there are secondary effects that not seemed to be considered. I was reading one of those secondary effects, where the production of soybean decreased to make more room to grow corn (for ethanol), Brazil, increased soybean production, and was clearing the forest to do so. It is interesting with the trade-off issue, one is to use food products for fuel, and we no longer hear those commercials dealing with world hunger as we did in the past.
This is the kind of discussions I miss, being in the forum world of cut & burn. We should have more discussions like this (big thanks to Dale and Rot...)
Well maybe I is a doofus here, but I only see references sited from 2 places...the Energy in America article and the Intota whatever... I am not sure what Paul's original post points to (thought that was the dodecane one) but so be it.
and I just lost my rant in the fine boardbuffering so you got spared on that one..
Anyhoo maybe some other time gents..have a fine day!
Early morning rot to ya!
(p.s. "rot to ya" is not meant to be interpreted as an "up yours" or anything like that for the record)
Noflame,NC
rot
Rot, your informative and insightful posts are most welcome. If you see an error, by all means jump right in. My point is that if the same volume of fuel for each type releases the same amount of CO2, the non-ethanol brand, having more energy capacity, will release less CO2 than the ethanol blend.
I suppose it depends on how old you are. I raced motorcycles as a yong man and it took a lot of carburation and ignition timing changes to get a gasoline engine to run on alchohol. Of course mine were tuned in a way that produced significantly more horsepower than with gasoline but I also ran a 15:1 compression ratio. Having been modified to run on alky however, they would not run on gasoline at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by N2RJ
In the 1980's automobiles were dismal creatures barely able to run on the new unleadded gasoline. Even with a compression ratio of 9:1 they had a tendency to knock when hot and horsepower was pathetic. At some point in the early 90's the Japanese, Honda primarily, invented a working knock sensor and a computer system that could retard and advance the timing in milliseconds. Compression ratios began to climb and so did power. Now most high output cars run 11 to 11.5:1 and can produce well over 300 horsepower with a small six cylider engine. Turbo charged and super charged small blocks are in 600 HP territory, and on unleaded gas. It wasn't that long ago that was beyond imagination.
It takes a lot of sophisticated technology to produce engines that can run on a wide range of fuels. Stainless tanks and fuel resistant rubber are the easy parts. Getting an engine to run reliably on gasoline, alchohol, or a mixture of both is a modern miracle if you are old enough to remember when to do so was impossible.
Well i do not know a lot regarding how the range of fuels burn in say average Joe's car, but I look at solely on the fuel examples which are used to justify the claims. Granted we eventually will reach a place where it all makes sense and I do think Dale knows his stuff.No doubt.
When the "Expert" says Joe goes from A to B using a jet fuel surrogate(huge combustion enthalpy) and draws base therms/C02 out from that as example..I'm like no way dude. There is no fractional distallation refining stream from any oil company gonna blend back in a component that cost them buttloads in therms to seperate. (n-dodecane BoilPoint at 210C vs octane BoilPoint at 125C). They are gonna isolate this fraction and sell it to reap back their cost. In other words it aint in Joe's gas tank...
Now with that said, this "expert" hammers the ethanol blend with a Glucose to EToH CO2 charge..like Joe is pumping syrup and yeast in the tank..waiting a month for the CO2 to blowoff convert to ethanol then top off with some jet fuel..to takes the same trip from A to B.
This "expert" did not charge the nonblend jackshidt for the thermal ramp to get the freakin jet fuel which aint there anyway...but he sure does jam on its enegy output assuming Joe's car could eve burn the stuff.
All that aside..of course you are gonna lose mpg..but i do not see believe the CO2 cost are that different for an nonethanol vs E10ethanol blend..I see it as at least break even or I'll give a little to the premise. 54% is off the hook, IMHO.
Now the efficiency may add in significantly all the considered...I'll give ya that... but its like the nonethanol stuff gets to hit from the ladies tee and the ethanol blend is teeing up the pro spot. I cry foul to the stealth expert!
Anyhoo...I do not advocate ethanol as the cure all...could be functional and productive at some level i do believe...
Lord I sure have personally processed enough of it over the years...but that is indeed Chapter 2.
rot
Special delivery, for Paul:Ryan. You're Welcome. :mrgreen:
http://american.com/archive/2008/apr.../FeaturedImage
rot,Quote:
Originally Posted by rot
I'm the doofus here, I'm afraid. I looked at the thread again and realized that the starting post was not made by Paul at all! It was the actual mileage data listed in the first post by WN9xxx (can't scroll back while editing, sorry, OM) which I was using.
That got me to searching the web again, and I found this blurb on a site called www.turborick.com. I'm not gonna vouch for accuracy, but here's what I found:
What I found surprising was the spread of carbon count (I can buy a heavily branched C12, but I would have guessed any C3 would evaporate out, unless it's part of a high-boiling azeotrope). It also supports your statement that any dodecane is probably being sold as a separate diesel fraction.Quote:
Gasoline contains over 500 hydrocarbons that may have between 3 to 12 carbons, and gasoline used to have a boiling range from 30C to 220C at atmospheric pressure. The boiling range is narrowing as the initial boiling point is increasing, and the final boiling point is decreasing, both changes are for environmental reasons. Detailed descriptions of structures can be found in any chemical or petroleum text discussing gasolines.
I agree that Paul has found less than a true expert, and should probably delete the item from his Favorites list. But the mileage data from the first post in the thread is still interesting.
73,
.dale.
Almost forgot, while 93 octane gasoline will not produce more power in engines designed to operate on 87 octane it will increase gas mileage by about five to ten percent depending on the compression ratio of the engine and the fuel oxygen control system.Quote:
Originally Posted by WN9HJW
I try not to, Kelli. My sportbike runs like shit on moonshine gas. Go out of Pima or Maricopa counties where I can get neat gasoline and she purrs.Quote:
Originally Posted by N2KKM
ETA: My mom's flex fuel Chrysler minivan sucks down E85 like fish drink water. It gets 20 MPG with gas tho.
Osmosis. Hypertonic, Isotonic, Hypotonic.Quote:
Originally Posted by W7XF
Not all fish drink water. =)
No prob man..I think your road rocket site is on top of it..Quote:
Originally Posted by ab1ga
the fuel trend that is..
and hopefully on top of it at 200 mph as well...
the bike that is.:-D
Later,
rot
Well, ethanol finally took out my bike this morning. It's been extremely hot and humid the last couple of days and it rained all night along with the humidity. The bike is always garaged, but apparently that doesn't matter. You can actually SEE the freakin water in the bottom of the tank. I went to leave for a monthly meeting this morning and it wouldn't start. Finally got it started and it just ran horribly, spitting and sputtering and stalling.
So now what? I have to drank the gas tank somehow. And from now on we're buying ethanol free gas. We can get it at the indian reservation about 15 miles away. Going to get a couple of 10 gallon cans and fuel up every couple of weeks. Why the heck are we being forced to deal with this crap? I read somewhere this morning that part of the problem is that some fuel manufacturers are sneaking in way more than 10% ethanol because it's cheaper. WTF!!!!
There's a good chance a lot of that water came from the gas station too. I've mentioned Star Tron before and while we do have a couple of E free gas stations, the gas smelled really oily. Like diesel with motor oil in it.
Don't know if you're running a carb or EFI but a carb is naturally more sensitive to these changes. Some guys run a carb with a device called Dial a Jet. It bypasses the carb jets, float and all that, sprays fuel directly into the mouth of the carb and has a twist valve to regulate fuel flow into the carb opening. If you can reach it while you're riding, you can adjust it on the fly. Never used one but some guys say tune for ethanol. I say screw all that. You can not possibly tune for all the varying levels of E from one gas station to the next and even if you go to the same station every time, there is no guarantees that the level of E is consistent.
One station that I liked in January started carrying what HAD to be E20 in February. They are a name brand station but I doubt they carry the premium brand in their tanks anymore. I use Star Tron but I have to clean the carb more often due to the E (I suspect) and run detergent fuels more often. I should do a tear down today just to see if it makes a major difference like I think it will.
I am no expert. Just a guy who runs a small motor that is telling of every little difference ... in everything.
Screw Carbon Neutral.Quote:
Originally Posted by KG4CGC