Re: ethanol use...

Posted by Gerald J. on March 14, 2005 at 07:25:30 from (67.0.96.251):

In Reply to: ethanol use... posted by Tim Shultz on March 14, 2005 at 06:42:18:

Straight ethanol (200 proof) is drinkable. So it has to be made deadly or the taxes are unreasonable. Adding gasoline is one of the accepted ways of making it not drinkable.

All of the gasoline sold in some areas like St. Louis has 10% ethanol. Reduces pollution. In some states, like Iowa, the road tax on ethanol is lower so that 10% ethanol blends cost less and so sell well.

In Missouri and Iowa and other states, many state owned vehicles run on 85% ethanol, E85. These are available from the major makers as Flexible Fuel Vehicles. At least in the Ford Taurus, the FFV option is a no cost option. There seems to be a few hundred thousand FFV on the roads in the US now.

In some states, e85 is hard to find, though there are many pumps for it in Minnesota and Iowa and Northern Missouri.

I spent part of last evening researching the conversion issue. For a fuel injected engine it seems to boil down to replacing the injectors with injectors having 30% greater maximum volume and adding better flash back protection at the gas tank filler. That's to make a vehicle run on E85. For a carburetor engine it gets more complex. First there's generally no computer to monitor the oxygen in the exhaust and adjust the mixture for various fuels, and ethanol hasn't the multitude of low temperature vaporizable fractions (its all the same chemical compound) for low temperature starting. E85 helps the low temperature starting by having 15% gasoline, but some reports indicate that it may take adding a separate gasoline fuel system for cold weather starts. The fuel pressure of fuel injected systems gets ethanol vaporized at low temperature, but even then some hint it helps to warm the fuel before a cold start.

My gas 4020 runs rough on E10. That may be because it has a cold intake manifold that tends to run the end cylinders more on condensed liquid. It has provisions for heat and the manual calls for heat running gasoline on light loads up to 90F but there's a big crack in the heat part and I don't want to listen to raw exhaust out that crack. I may need to fix that with another manifold. Some of the literature says that good manifold heat is necessary for running high percentages of ethanol fuel.

EPA and CARB are opposed to after market conversions afraid that they will cause excess pollution and so require massive tests that can't be achieved by a company smaller than Ford or GMC and both of those prefer to sell a new vehicle than update an old vehicle.

There are at least 4 E85 pumps in my county, possibly 5 right now. And there are probably 100 E10 pumps. At least one third of the gas pumps around here pump E10.

So WE DO burn ethanol. We could burn more.

Gerald J.

Follow Ups:

• Re: ethanol use... MN_FISH 08:14:01 03/14/05 (15)
  • Re: ethanol use... Tim Shultz 08:27:53 03/14/05 (14)
    • Re: ethanol use... Mark - IN. 16:37:41 03/14/05 (0)
    • Re: ethanol use... Mark - IN. 16:36:45 03/14/05 (0)
    • Re: ethanol use... paul 11:45:48 03/14/05 (0)
    • Re: ethanol use... ChrisH(IA) 11:37:35 03/14/05 (1)
      • Re: ethanol use... RustyFarmall 12:57:13 03/14/05 (0)
    • Re: ethanol use... JT 11:31:51 03/14/05 (1)
      • Re: ethanol use... RustyFarmall 13:05:53 03/14/05 (0)
    • Re: ethanol use... Gerald J 10:30:28 03/14/05 (0)
    • Re: ethanol use... RustyFarmall 10:06:13 03/14/05 (5)
      • Re: ethanol use... JMS/MN 12:56:49 03/14/05 (4)
        • Re: ethanol use... riverbend 15:21:55 03/14/05 (2)
          • Re: ethanol use... paul 16:56:14 03/14/05 (1)
            • Re: ethanol use... cdmn 17:11:41 03/16/05 (0)
        • Re: ethanol use... Old Time Farmer 14:17:31 03/14/05 (0)

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