What Ethanol Does And Doesn't Do (PDF)
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Forum Discussion
NinerBikes wrote: "Ethanol is fluff in your fuel tank, a large percentage of alcohol is, by weight, oxygen. Why would you want to carry around oxygen, when you can get it free for ignition from the air intake? Therein lies the fallacy. Splitting hydrocarbons and taking free oxygen from the air makes energy. Providing oxygen in the fuel is just plain stupid, from a chemical reaction point of view. It adds expense, while not providing energy to propel you forward. Dumb, really, really dumb."
Well lets be accurate if we're going to talk about ethanol. Ethanol is +-35% oxygen by weight. The oxygen in ethanol provides no energy to the combustion reaction because of the bonding in the molecule. Think of ethanol as partially burned ethane in liquid form. At room temperature ethane is a gas. It's true that a portion of the ethanol molecule is dead weight/volume as a fuel but it does increase the octane rating of regular unleaded gasoline it is added to which can partially compensate for some of the energy lost due to its lower BTU rating per gallon compared to straight gasoline. (if the engine is tuned to take advantage of the higher octane rating)
All politics aside, remember the first Arab oil embargo of the 1970s? Gas lines, gas rationing, price hikes etc. As a country with few oil resources, Brazil surely does. Low fuel availability really put the country in the hurt locker. As a country with lots of fertile land, they decided to use sugar cane to make ethanol as motor fuel so they could minimize their energy dependence on foreign countries. They never looked back. Since the mid 70's Brazil has used 100% ethanol (as well as gasoline) for motor fuel. Where are the problems? Research is currently going on to manufacture ethanol from a variety of plants/animals other than corn. Like weeds, bacteria, algae, etc. Up scaling the processes is still a problem.
It's true, we won't be running out of petroleum in the near future but that doesn't guarantee the availability. IMO, if petroleum for any reason becomes unavailable, or marginal, not having alternative fuels is just plain dumb, really dumb.
Chum lee
(no affiliation to farming or petroleum industries)
Well lets be accurate if we're going to talk about ethanol. Ethanol is +-35% oxygen by weight. The oxygen in ethanol provides no energy to the combustion reaction because of the bonding in the molecule. Think of ethanol as partially burned ethane in liquid form. At room temperature ethane is a gas. It's true that a portion of the ethanol molecule is dead weight/volume as a fuel but it does increase the octane rating of regular unleaded gasoline it is added to which can partially compensate for some of the energy lost due to its lower BTU rating per gallon compared to straight gasoline. (if the engine is tuned to take advantage of the higher octane rating)
All politics aside, remember the first Arab oil embargo of the 1970s? Gas lines, gas rationing, price hikes etc. As a country with few oil resources, Brazil surely does. Low fuel availability really put the country in the hurt locker. As a country with lots of fertile land, they decided to use sugar cane to make ethanol as motor fuel so they could minimize their energy dependence on foreign countries. They never looked back. Since the mid 70's Brazil has used 100% ethanol (as well as gasoline) for motor fuel. Where are the problems? Research is currently going on to manufacture ethanol from a variety of plants/animals other than corn. Like weeds, bacteria, algae, etc. Up scaling the processes is still a problem.
It's true, we won't be running out of petroleum in the near future but that doesn't guarantee the availability. IMO, if petroleum for any reason becomes unavailable, or marginal, not having alternative fuels is just plain dumb, really dumb.
Chum lee
(no affiliation to farming or petroleum industries)
