I'd appreciate your opinion of how you can remove 10% of the potential energy in a gallon of gasoline and NOT see a 10% increase in consumption.
They are not removing 10% of the energy content. And let me show you why.
You have 10 gallons of straight gasoline and you remove 10% of it. You now have removed 10% of your energy and end up with 9 gallons of straight gasoline.
Then you replace that one gallon of straight gasoline with one gallon of straight ethanol. You now have 10 gallons of what is called E10.
Since that "one gallon" of straight ethanol has only around 2/3's the amount of energy as straight gasoline the new E10 you just made has 96 to 97% of the energy of the 100% straight gasoline.
If you put this new E10 into a car that gets 10MPG on straight gasoline you would now be able to drive around 9.6 to 9.7 miles. So you would lose about a 1/4 to a 1/3 of a mile in 10 miles of driving, but you would reduce some smog causing chemicals and gases by 25%!
That's as simple as I can make it. As Geico says, it's so simple a cave man can get it. :B
