

More ethanol coming to pumps near you
New blend will work in any vehicle built back to 2001








It basically hurts everyone… 




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RE: Ethanol - alright with me
By randomly on 3/15/2011 3:23:36 PM , Rating: 2
1) yes things have improved over the years, but not by that much. It's still scarcely better than break even on energy return.

2)We can't even remotely do both. It would take 6 times the total agricultural land in the US to grow enough corn to make the fuel used by light vehicles alone. You need to check the scales of our fuel consumption.

We do not have a surplus of corn, if we did then why are corn prices at an ALL TIME HISTORICAL HIGH of almost $7 a bushel? These high prices trickle down through all food prices especially meat since corn is used for feed.

3) No there is no magical advantage of burning Ethanol in an 'Ethanol' engine. The thermodynamic efficiency of the engines is little changed when running on gas or ethanol. The primary problem is gallon for gallon there is less energy in Ethanol than there is in gas. No engine is going to extract energy that isn't in the fuel in the first place. Ethanol has a higher octane rating than gas which allows you to run a higher compression ratio which gives a small efficiency advantage. However the ethanol gas mixes are still blended to 87-93 octane rating like regular gas and you again have no advantage.

Ethanol has a LOT less energy than gas. It takes about 1.5 gallons of ethanol to equal the energy in 1 gal of gas. You don't make that up with marginal compression ratio increases.

I'm sorry but your information is outdated and incomplete.

