Use of ethanol in Chrysler products

On this one point (i.e., if all you're looking at is power potential and
turn a blind eye to the economics), might the answer be that the greater
power is obtained by pumping more volume thru? In other words, maybe
you can get the power by using more of it (assuming you have the
capability of burning a higher concentration of it than gasoline), but
of course this further hurts the economics of using it.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')

 

So to be fair, that, by definition, means that you own stock in ADM, right?

Don't be ridiculous. There are concentration thresholds - oh - and
don't forget time of exposure. Thru the early 90's, fuel systems were
designed - yes designed - to handle up to about 15% ethanol. Whats the
% content in beer, and how long will it be in that keg. And at what
temperature?

A car manufacturer worries about problems that develop in the fuel
system after 2 or 3 years exposure. How long are you letting your beer
sit in that plastic cup and what's the % content of alcohol?

Is that not by a higher volumetric flow rate - IOW you might get the
power, but what happens to the mpg and per-mile cost?

See others' cpmmentrs about artificial subsidies. Why do you
(intentionally?) ignore that factor?

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')

 

Not if the mixture is optimized so there is no extra oxygen left over
- use it all to burn the fuel.[/QUOTE]

You can't ignore that ethanol is an oxygenate, and as such, there
will always be oxygen left over.

 

Alcohol at 4-6% concentration is a lot different than alcohol at 85%
concentration, so that proves nothing.

 

You've put your finger right on the shell game being played here. The
discussion about ethanol restarts whenever gasoline prices increase; it is
a discussion rooted in fuel economics. Blinkered ethanol proponents would
like very much for us not to realise that the "extra power potential" they
crow about (or, since it's the same thing, the ability to "make up for the
lost power") comes at a very steep penalty in real terms of miles per
gallon.

DS

 

You read it on the interweb; it must be true. They don't let people put up
self-serving or false stuff on the interweb.

 

The big oil company's *what*? You forgot a noun. Or perhaps you're one of
these idiots who thinks that the purpose of the apostrophe is to provide
helpful advance warning of an impending "s".

Any company that loses sight of its customers' best interests soon goes
out of business. Witness GM.

....and even more power and even better economy on gasoline, which contains
more energy.

So you dispute the existence of heavy Federal subsidies for fuel ethanol
in the US?

 

yeah, OK.

Right... like beer is 85% ethanol and sits in the keg or cup for years
at a time.

Nobody's disputing that an engine optimized for ethanol can make good
power. that's not the issue.

Still haven't addressed the issue that ethanol has fewer BTUs per unit
volume than gasoline, I see.

When ethanol costs less to produce and distribute on a *per BTU* basis,
people will start using it.

nate

 

Does this somehow advance your argument? I guess it is supposed to run me
down some? Very clever, you certainly put me in my place.

GM's going out of business? Don't think so stern.

Only true if the gasoline has the same octane as ethonol. You do realize
I'm comparing ethanol to pump unleaded not racing fuel.

Don't know. Don't care.

 

It'd sure be refreshing if you posted something you actually had a clue
about, stern. I know you know next to nothing on the subject or you would
bring up the very real drawbacks of using ethanol. None of the detractors
so far has mentioned any of the real problems with ethanol other than the
corrosiveness of the fuel. I'm done here, none of you here has any real
interest in the subject all you're concerned with is spewing forth your
uniformed bullshit opinions.

 

It's such a pity you're forced to read my posts. How do you cope?

Ah, yes, those bollocky mysterious very real drawbacks of using ethanol
that *only* you know about. Mm. I'm sure you're refraining from
elucidation only because you've been unable to find worthy ears, as it
were, in this forum. Good of you.

which, actually, doesn't exist.

Would that it were so. You've said the very same thing and flounced off to
sulk...how many times has it been, Rick, over the years? I've lost count.

 

You, uh, don't get out much, there, do ya?

....says the man who claims to have an overspanning knowledge of the
subject, and a deep interest in it.

G'night, Gracie.

 

My opinions wear no clothes. 8^)

We were just discussing the inferior energy content (to get the same
power, the mpg and any chance of economy has to go down, so I don't
think we only brought up one thing.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')

 

Do we have to quote every post before making a response? Seems like all I
am doing is scrolling to the bottom of massive threads for a two sentence
comment.

 

Mgrant wrote:

Anyone who disagrees is either close minded and

Or simply understands that a fuel that takes almost as much energy to
produce as it releases when burned can never be a viable primary fuel
source...

 

What crawled up your backside and rotted your brain? Its not a "bullshit
opinion" that *thanol contains about 60% as much energy per unit volume
as gasoline, which itself contains significantly less per unit volume
than diesel fuel. Any nitwit can look those numbers up in a CRC Handbook
of Chemistry and Physics, and it follows DIRECTLY from those numbers
that in order to produce the same amount of power, you have to burn more
gasoline than you do diesel, and more *thanol than you do gasoline.

It has nothing to do with the "power potential" of the fuel at all.
Hell, nitromethane (the fuel used by Top Fuel dragsters) contains less
energy per unit volume than *ANY* of the fuels we've been discussing by
a huge factor, but that doesn't prevent dragsters from producing
thousands of horsepower from 500 cubic inch engines! They just have to
burn a LOT of liquid fuel- in fact the air/fuel ratio is so low that
they run right on the edge of hydraulically locking the cylinders all
the time.

So sure, you can get the exact same horsepower out of an engine
optimized for *thanol as you can out of a similar engine optimized for
gasoline, but a) the *thanol engine will burn nearly twice as many
gallons per unit time at the same power level, and b) some of the
changes needed to fully optimize the engine can't be realized if the
engine management system must be able to operate on either gasoline or
*thanol.

 

Electronic engine management systems are able to sense percentages of
gasoline and either methanol or ethanol, I don't know if they can
differentially discern ethanol from methanol and either from gas
accurately. Certainly spark and fuel can be varied accordingly, but
compression ratio cannot. Optimizing an engine for high alcohol fuels
means running a higher compression ratio, which can slightly compensate
for the lower heat energy of alcohols, but not enough to make a
colossal difference.

Methanol is quite corrosive unless fuel systems entirely fabricated
from certain plastics, stainless steel, or certain high energy metals
are used. Race cars using methanol usually are purged of fuel in
storage.

It's not a huge challenge to build a hobby vehicle running on ethanol
or methanol if you want to tinker, IF you don't need to meet emissions
regs. There is a E85 vendor in my area and he has several street rod,
drag racer, etc customers, and a guy with a Alfa Romeo powered vintage
road racer with Webers that buy it all the time.

 

If I were rebuilding an old car I would make it a 100% alcohols-proof
fuel system. The old tanks can be sloshed with a compound that is
alcohol-proof, you run stainless or Monel fuel lines, and use an
alcoholproof electric fuel pump and carb or aftermarket EFI. Eventually
we will have alcohol blends, like it or not.

 

Steve - there IS one thing you are not taking into account. The
thermal efficiency of a gasoline engine is abyssimal. A lot of "power"
goes out the exhaust pipe, and a lot more out of the radiator. If more
heat could be kept in the engine and converted to actual useable
mechanical power,a lot more horsepower hours could be produced by a
gallon of any fuel.

Gasoline has several limitations - the largest being it's octane
rating. Run a gasoline engine too hot and the fuel detonates - and
kills the engine in short order. Keep the expanding gasses in the cyl
long enough to convert more heat to power, and the engine gets too
hot. Force feed the air into the engine, or run higher compression
ratios (which also get more power out of each unit of fuel burned) and
you are back into detonation again.

An Ethanol powered engine - like a propane powered engine, has the
advantage of a motor octane rating in the 130 range - allowing
enhanced valve timing, higher compression ratios, advanced ignition
timing, and a hotter running engine - all of which increase the
specific power output of the engine for the same amount of fuel
burned.

If a gasoline engine is 33% thermally efficient and gets X number of
HP hours per gallon of gasoline burned, and an ethanol engine can run
at 66% efficiency, even with only 60% as much energy per gallon, the
ethanol engine will produce (2X)x.6, 0r 1.2X HP hours per gallon of
ethanol.
Granted, you might not get 66% efficiency, but even at 50% you get
(1.5X)x.6, or 90% of the power you would get from the gas engine.

And IIRC, Ethanol is better than 60% as "powereful" as gasoline.

 

You are sort of right. But you haven't looked at the numbers.

Direct injections now coming into existence solve this problem
for gasoline engines; allowing high compression.

You don't know how to calculate thermal efficiency. The difference
is much smaller than you imagine and wrote above. I doubt that
it even approaches 5%. Thermal efficiency is defined as the
difference between initial and final temperature.
In both cases above, the final temp Tf (outside temp) is the same.
Combustion (initial) temp Ti is directly related to compression ratio
(we're measuring the amount of work extracted by the gas expansion).

Unfortunately, the temperatures are measured in degrees absolute
(Kelvins) so the combustion temp difference between the two is quite
small - 50K or so - so the difference in efficiency is small: Ti/(Ti-Tf).

Most thermal power are no better than about 40% efficient;
internal combustion engines (gas, diesel, whatever) are less.

Floyd