ethanol

I am not going reference any other post or even outside data. What I am going to tell you about experiences in engine testing laboratories that I either worked in or directed during my long career as a lab rat.

Gasahol was proposed during the Carter administration to lessen the demand for imported oil. As much as the amount of oil import has changed, you can understand how successful this program was. (Hint - oil imports are higher than ever)

When a properly maintained engine is tested, the actual emissions difference between fuels was not measurable with the existing technology. There were changes that could be identified with in-stream chemical analysis. This change could also be identified by using a spectral analysis (device made by Nicolet Instrument) that could speciate the specific hydrocarbons in the exhaust. This is a seriously moot point as all the exhaust gasses will pass thought an oxidizing catalyst before leaving. We though about it a while, and when we got a vehicle (often out of the employee lot) that we new was in poor tune for the fuel test, we cold measure a change. That change was usually for the better, but not always. These tests were done with both open loop and closed loop engines and tested in many different methods. If the subject engine was closed loop (has an oxygen sensor in the exhaust) then the change was hard to see, and as soon as the fleet was largely electronic fuel injection, that change was not detectable by any means.

At the time it was proposed, those of us that were technically smart about engines were aware of the problems this could cause, but none of us were really ready for the damage this would do to the existing fleet.

As it happens, some years back we acquired a classic vehicle. This vehicle is not just pre-cat, but is open loop and the only computer onboard is what we use for navigation. When we started useing her for travel (and being a dyed in the wool lab rat along with both an aircraft pilot and a lifelong watermen) I took up carefully logging fuel consumption. I got with a chemist friend and we developed a simple and carry-able method to quantify the amount of alcohol in the motorfuel we took on. It did lack accuracy when compared to the lab tests, but was convenient to carry and it was accurate enough. I had originally planned to reject fuels that had ethanol, but that turned out to be impractical. But I did log the measured concentrations in my fuel log. It only took a few thousand miles for some trends to be confirmed. The final result was relatively clear. The alcohol behaved like a filler. If we went from no alcohol to full 10% at similar altitude, the change would be exactly the alcohol. So, sea level to about 3000ft (east of the Mississippi) the change in fuel consumption would be almost exactly the alcohol. That means if the fuel was a full ten percent, the coach mileage would go down that same ten percent. The engine was (and still is) tuned for sea level, and in later log entries at higher altitude the difference seemed to have been less, but I had lost interest at that time. The doctored fuel did exhibit exactly the same knock resistance as those fuels that were not doctored, but all motor fuel has been shipped a rating by average of motor and research octane numbers, so that is to be expected.

One thing I had not counted on was the damage that modern "motor fuel" would do to an old fuel system. In the time I have owned this, I have had to replace everything that was not tern plated steel. There are Rochester kits that now have specific ethanol resistant components. There are rubber fuel lines that claim a ten year life.

Did you wonder what happened to 15%? When it was mentioned, the majors all included parts in the fuel system that would indicate that 15% fuel had been used. If that part indicated that it was, all warranty and safety guarantees would be void. There is a big reason why a "FlexFuel" costs more.

I should not have this much time to write here, but I am in SE MI and the outside temperature is brutal.

Matt

Campfire Time wrote:
I must be doing something wrong then. In all the years E10 has been mandated for SE WI, I have never had to use additives, rebuild carbs, nor have I had any other damage from E10 to any small engines, or big ones for that matter. I also don't know anyone who has had to deal wi

We are about 20 mins from a gas station and being on a small farm we have cans of gas. Not all the equipment gets used constantly. It is not uncommon to have gasoline hit or pass the 6 month mark.

Additives are what we would have to use (aka Stabil) to prevent the gumming up and damage to the equipment, especially carbs and diaphragm fuel pumps.

We have a lot of old equipment.

It would be GREAT if we could buy no-road-tax, ethanol free gasoline for offroad use.

Matt
thank you for your observations and experience

i have to ask, why is the engine tuned for sea level ?
its not a boat
with every where you have been, would not a tune for a higher 'mean' elevation been more fuel efficient ?

donn0128 wrote:

ethanol fuel returns lower fuel economy. I have never understood how 20% lower fuel economy produces lower emissions.

lower emmisions... its true when measured in parts per million, without counting the number of millions
the problem is that adding ethanol to gasoline creates many more millions (total volume) of with very increase in the bad emission parts, so what you get is a dilution of the bad emmisions in the measured volume...
less parts per million of the bad emissions, but in the big picture there is an overall increase in total emissions produced from a gallon of ethanol fuel than there is in a gallon of ethanol free fuel..

all anyone seems to ask or care about is the "parts per million"... but no one ever asks how may more million parts are being produced per gallon by adding ethanol to the fuel....

yes, its a scam thats made believable by not giving the whole truth..

I buy non-ethanol for all my small engines here on the farm, it costs a little more to purchase but if you figure the cost of the chemicals to get rid of it, it is a bargain and all the engines run so much better with less wear and problems

Without ethanol in fuel the current vast surplus of corn (https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN17D0EO) would skyrocket (40% of corn produced in USA goes to ethanol https://www.afdc.energy.gov/data/mobile/10339) and the price of corn would plummet. Ethanol in gasoline is politically driven.

Turtle n Peeps wrote:
But to say things like alky puts out less power than gasoline is silly. Or to say things like E10 puts out more smog than pure gasoline is really silly

Please don’t attribute words to me that I did NOT say.

You cannot add something with much lower energy content and then expect equal work out of it.

Laboratory tests are just that, lab results, what really matters is the results of millions of vehicles going up & down the road every day.

Ethanol has 2 tendencies that cause a relatively large adverse effect on mileage, first is that it blends very well with gasoline, the second is that it is very hygroscopic, it really likes absorbing and holding onto water.

When you run that water-entrained mixture through a vehicle it causes another series of issues. First and foremost, the energy content is further degraded beyond what the ‘lab tests’ showed it was. Secondly though, and more importantly, it fools various sensors in the engine. When fuel containing water is burned that water flashes into steam which ups the oxygen content of the exhaust. When the O2 sensor sees the additional oxygen it interprets that as meaning the engine is running to lean and so riches the mixture.

The end result of all of that is an engine running too rich and burning more fuel to do the same work.

The math is simple.

If a motorhome gets 10mpg on straight gas and does a 5,000 mile trip it will burn 500 gallons of gasoline.

If that same motorhome gets 9mpg on E10 fuel and does that same 5,000 mile trip it will burn 555.6 gallons of fuel.

So now you’ve burned the same 500 gallons of gas, PLUS an additional 55.6 gallons of water-entrained ethanol.

I see the comment made by one of the mnoderators (But not in mnoderator mode) about how Ethonol reduces pollution.

The other studies have clained it increases it and increases oil consumption as well due to the enegery used to distill the booze, and the energy used to grow the corn (Preparing the field planting, clutivating, harvesting and transporting)

This is not an area in which I am expert but I have read lots and lots of conflicting studies. I tend to believe the "It increases" folks as those studies are more complete... OH, I have grown corn.

Lab tests measure energy content (what you claimed was just estimated); what you were really talking about was emissions per mile being impacted by the fuel used.

I’ll bet the combustion engine efficiency improvements and emission decreases made over the past several decades have been out paced by the increases in the number of combustion engines in use (overall net increased in emissions).

JaxDad this is what YOU said:

JasDad wrote:
You cannot reduce the amount of energy and ‘add power’ at the same time, it’s scientifically impossible. Ethanol has only about 2/3 the energy by volume, BTU’s, that gasoline does.

Look at the energy chart I provided. See where methanol has almost half the energy of gasoline? Are you saying the chart is wrong? Are you really trying to argue that alky makes less power than gasoline? Or worse yet. That nitromethane makes less power than gasoline because it has less energy then gasoline? If not, what are you trying to say when you say I can't make more power with less energy? Because that is EXACTLY what the chart above shows.

I have already stated that you will use almost twice the methanol as gasoline and three to four times the amount of nitro as gasoline.