E15 coming down the pipe

[CThunder-blue]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-1...-gasoline.html

AAA, the nation’s biggest motoring organization, said in July 2009 the EPA should reject Growth Energy’s request because higher blends may damage exhaust systems, engines and fuel pumps and destroy catalytic converters. General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC have said the Obama administration should be cautious about increasing the ethanol percentage in gasoline.

They know it's not good for older gas engines, but who cares right? As long as the lobbyists get their paychecks.

[bob706]

I wish they would bring back E-0.

[ChaosFromAbove]

I'm not one to usually chime in on politics, in fact i hate politics, but all this crap about relying on foreign oil is pissing me off. It is what it is. Not every country has what it needs, therefore you need to TRADE. Christ. Are they trying to eliminate our needs for foreign stuff altogether? If so, y not make a large barricade around the US and hire people to shoot anyone that comes within 200feet of the border...I mean i get the fact that they wanna keep the money domestic, but it can't happen, and it won't so what do u do? shop internationally.

/end pointless rant

[Sailariel]

Bob, E-0 would be ideal. Methanol would be a great alternative. The big problem with corn (used in Ethanol production), besides the strength of the corn lobby, is that corn really depletes the soil more than most crops. The big farmers will grow corn because there is a huge profit plus subsidies,and so on. So when the soil is depleted, then what? Fertilizer won't do it. The soil needs a rest and needs to be replenished with compost and manure. We will end up with another dust bowl like we had in the 20's if the soil is not allowed to rest They are strictly profit driven. The small farmer will be gobbled up, and we will have a Power Elite similar to the Oil Business--after all, corn and oil are married to each other--and all the other businesses such as Automotive, will just have to adjust, invent an additive, hire some engineers to re engineer engines to handle 15%, then 20%, and it goes on. Private Aircraft owners/pilots are concerned. Alcohol burns cooler than straight gasoline and also draws water to itself. When there is enough water, we get Phase Separation--a sure bet that fuel lines will freeze at high altitudes. My son is a pilot, and he is really concerned. All we can do on our part is to educate people concerning the dangers of ethanol, and the enormous impact this has on our planet from an environmental standpoint. I did not mention that it takes a lot of fuel to produce Ethanol--but that's good for the oil companies. It looks like a no-win situation for us motorists.

[CThunder-blue]

That foreign oil dependency has been a political rant forever. You have one branch saying, "we need less dependency" and another branch saying "well, you're not going to ruin our environment by drilling here."

imo, it's all a game of "How to make it look like we care, without lifting a finger."

I understand that dino oil won't last forever, but ethanol is a really poor substitute. It has less combustion potential than gasoline, produces higher levels of formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, and the amount of corn needed to produce ethanol could feed a lot of poor people. The price of corn will go up even more and I really like my corn

[ChaosFromAbove]

Originally Posted by Sailariel

Bob, E-0 would be ideal. Methanol would be a great alternative. The big problem with corn (used in Ethanol production), besides the strength of the corn lobby, is that corn really depletes the soil more than most crops. The big farmers will grow corn because there is a huge profit plus subsidies,and so on. So when the soil is depleted, then what? Fertilizer won't do it. The soil needs a rest and needs to be replenished with compost and manure. We will end up with another dust bowl like we had in the 20's if the soil is not allowed to rest They are strictly profit driven. The small farmer will be gobbled up, and we will have a Power Elite similar to the Oil Business--after all, corn and oil are married to each other--and all the other businesses such as Automotive, will just have to adjust, invent an additive, hire some engineers to re engineer engines to handle 15%, then 20%, and it goes on. Private Aircraft owners/pilots are concerned. Alcohol burns cooler than straight gasoline and also draws water to itself. When there is enough water, we get Phase Separation--a sure bet that fuel lines will freeze at high altitudes. My son is a pilot, and he is really concerned. All we can do on our part is to educate people concerning the dangers of ethanol, and the enormous impact this has on our planet from an environmental standpoint. I did not mention that it takes a lot of fuel to produce Ethanol--but that's good for the oil companies. It looks like a no-win situation for us motorists.

whoa...i though planes used an alcohol based fuel? And also thought alcohol burned hotter? whaaaaa?

[TrueFader]

i believe fighter jets use an alchohol based fuel but airline planes dont need quite the boost of faster than sound speed..... e-15 bad for people with plastic tanks as well

[ChaosFromAbove]

and just about all newer cars have plastic tanks

[TrueFader]

ya, 250 doesnt tho... but a lot of ducatis and dirtbikes do.

[greg737]

Originally Posted by TrueFader

i believe fighter jets use an alchohol based fuel but airline planes dont need quite the boost of faster than sound speed..... e-15 bad for people with plastic tanks as well

Jet fuel is Kerosene-based. It's a fossil fuel, not an alchohol.

There are a huge variety of formulations that are grouped under the "Kerosene" heading. It's not uncommon for these various blends to be so different that you can't swap one type for another without ruining the engine.

JP-8, or JP8 (for "Jet Propellant 8") is a jet fuel, specified in 1990 by the U.S. government. It is kerosene-based. It is a replacement for the JP-4 fuel; the U.S. Air Force replaced JP-4 with JP-8 completely by the fall of 1996, to use a less flammable, less hazardous fuel for better safety and combat survivability. JP-8 is projected to remain in use at least until 2025.

[tjkamper]

Just a little rant...

The concern about dependence on foreign oil has come down from old legislation back in the 1930's under FDR. The (Quote-UnQuote) conservatives have run away with "Buy American" ever since.

The truth is that Trade and Specialization provide increased productivity and reduced cost for all parties, even if one country has an absolute advantage in production of all goods. Isolationism does not work. Open Trade does. It is the first thing covered in any Macroeconomic Text. Let the invisible hand actually move transactions.

Now-a-days the conservatives complain about big government, but then want to pass legislation and create more control. (that is an oxymoron). The Conservatives want to pass just as much control as the Liberals, just over different issues as it will benefit them individually and not society as a whole. That is why nothing ever gets done. Our system of checks and balances isn't even a good defense against corruption any more. Now all it really does is prevent any type of progress or reform.

So, let the oil companies, farmers and automobile manufactures produce what the market will allow them to produce. If the people don't want it they shouldn't buy it. E-0 E-10 E-15, natural gas, liquid O2, water, electric, hybrid, solar, windpowered, Steam, Coal, Nuclear, Some crazy $#!+ that hasn't been invented yet. The market will decide. There is no need to legislate it.

If E-15 is Crap, the we shouldn't use it.

[tapdiggy]

My bike is a 2009 and my car is a 2010. I'm safe it seems. So, I'm glad about that. But, if higher ethanol raises overhead for gas stations, they won't react well. Fuel is already a touchy issue for the C-store industry.

[FrugalNinja250]

Regarding "free" markets. They only work when there are viable paths for startups to offer new or improved products within any given "free" market. For instance. I can start making motorcycle accessories in my garage and if they're good enough they'll sell. Energy markets are absolutely not free markets. Why not? Well, for starters, nobody's making any more fossil fuels. And, nobody's big enough to introduce an alternative product in quantities meaningful enough for the market to use, or at a price most can afford. And what few small startups are attempting to create new markets, such as EVs (IMHO the only viable long-term path for consumer transportation for the general masses), are facing relentless bashing and undercutting from the political group most responsible for keeping us on the fossil fuel addiction in the first place.

As to world free markets, when a labor force that's quite happy on 25 cents an hour is introduced the only result can be to drive down wages everywhere else. This can only be a bad thing, and in fact it's crippled several of the world's once great economic powers including us. And military might is not relevant because you can't force an economy to grow at gunpoint. The only endpoint for uncontrolled access of substandard wage structures to the markets is everyone making poverty wages. That's the nature of competition of that sort, to drive prices down. A race to the bottom of the economic ladder, as it were.

One of the things crippling our economy now is the fact that more than two thirds of it, us regular wage earners who spend money at the consumer level, have watched our incomes stay stagnant (at best) or drop (most of us) over the previous decade and specially since the recession started so many years ago. Less consumer spending means less manufacturing and services, which means a shrinking economic base and a declining economy. An economy where only some of the boats rise while the rest sink or tread water is a doomed economy.

I'd hazard a guess that the people pushing macroeconomic textbooks would starve if they actually had to produce something for a living and attempted to live on what they could earn in the real world.

Another concept to study is called The Tragedy of the Commons.

Edit to add: Creating a fuel source that directly competes with our food source (arable land, seed, chemicals, equipment, etc) is a positively stupid idea. Every acre of land devoted to growing corn for ethanol is an acre less for food production, and therefor only serves to drive up food prices as anyone who's taking basic business and learned the supply/demand relationship can tell you. And, there is simply not enough arable land in this nation to grow enough corn to replace just what we use for transportation fuel, much less any other way we use energy. Put another way: If we converted 100% of all the land in this country capable of growing any kind of crop on over to growing corn just for ethanol production just to keep the number of cars on the road this very moment running, we'd still have to import oil and 95% of us would starve because the rest of the world can't grow enough extra food now to feed us 100%. It's physically impossible. Just like trying to fly by flapping your arms. Not going to happen.

FWIW...

[HKr1]

Sounds like theres gonna be a special pump for it(E-15).... How many E-85 pumps do you see??
They know it sucks for older cars/motorcycles and small motors. Not to mention how it would suck for boats too!

http://www.icis.com/Articles/2010/10...bjections.html

^ nice read

[backinthesaddleagain]

I have a need for foreign motorcycles.

[rockNroll]

The problem(s) with ethanol in cars are one: you need lots more of it to get the same from your engine. If your car wasn't designed to run the higher ethanol your air/fuel mixture is gonna be way lean and you're gonna have driveability problems. If you drive an older car then just stay away from the E15 pumps. Two: corrosion. The fuel system components have to be made of more expensive materials now with the high ethanols because gasoline will keep corrosion at bay whereas ethanol won't. The difference in price for a fuel pump might be $100.00 more for E-85 vs non E85... same year/make/model vehicle. The more E, the more corrosive.

[Sailariel]

Travis, You are spot on. I sense that we will really have no choice. You cannot buy E-0 Gasoline in Maine. Our Municipal Marina was the last holdout. We now are forced to use E-10. The absolute stupidity of using a food for fuel is quite obvious with the outcome quite predictable--as you said, higher food prices and so on. My wife is a Master Gardener and is quite well versed in soil conservation, composting, and all that good stuff. She maintains that corn depletes the soil more than most crops. That causes the use of more chemicals--which can be used only so many times before the soil becomes totally worthless. If we were allowed to grow Industrial Hemp (not the kind one gets high on) we could produce superior paper to paper made from wood pulp, and produce Methanol (which also has problems) but at least is not food and does not deplete the soil nearly as much as corn does. Of course there are other by-products such as fibres for clothing, and the list goes on. We would also be saving a lot of trees, which is good for the environment. I guess the biggest problem is with our initial premise--we are assuming that the system is rational when in reality it is profit driven.

[Reswob]

Originally Posted by tjkamper

If E-15 is Crap, the we shouldn't use it.

E85 is crap, but look at all the car companies touting it and all the idiots believing them.

[sombo]

There is yet another plant to use that farmers have discovered is far more efficient for making fuel then corn. It's switch grass. It's native to North America, can grow in virtually any environment, can yield a crop of 5-10 tons per acre, uses the whole plant to make fuel, isn't used for anything else, and can make up to 100 gallons of ethanol per ton. It's a plant and forget crop that needs nothing other then for you to cut it down when it's ready. It grows up to 9' tall and doesn't need the pesticides that other crops do. Up until recently it was just a filler farmers used in fields they could no longer use for food crops.

So there you go, a way to make ethanol that won't hurt the food industry, won't increase costs, and will make more fuel then you could from corn anyway. Some farmers even use this crop to help produce the fuel they need for all their equipment to help cut down some of their costs and get use out of "dead" fields.

Before anyone starts saying I'm full of crap and other such non-sense, I suggest researching it yourself.

Also, just so you know, back at the turn of the 20th century, ethanol was the primary fuel, not gasoline. The model T was ran on ethanol. Somehow at that time it just became easier and more profitable to make fuel from oil and it took over the energy industry. I read somewhere that in 1909, 1 out of every 9 cars in NYC was 100% electric. Most were running on ethanol and oil was just starting to make an impact. So to say that those technologies are new and not ready for use is just BS lies from the oil industry trying to keep the world in it's grip. I've been hearing all my life (and heard speeches from the 50's and 60's) that keep saying "maybe in 20, 30, or even 50 years from now". How long are we gonna listen to and believe the lies?

[TrueFader]

seems like obama and the epa need your info on switch grass sombo. i dont see how they dont understand the utter stupidity in using a fuel that will damage the engine, fuel injection and exhaust. and how do you market a fuel to a certain era of cars made between certain years? force them to only but they bad stuff?

[Alex]

Had a few minutes to kill to see what the numbers would look like for switchgrass. Here are some references:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panicum_virgatum
http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/switgrs.html

Reading through those, it looks like in the best case, switchgrass can allow for 95 gallons per ton, and people expect to be able to get 15 tons per acre (per year). That works out to about 1400 - 1500 gallons per acre per year, or 3.9 gallons per acre per day.

According to the DOE:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pe...s_mbblpd_a.htm

We use 9M barrels per day of finished gasoline for transportation (disregarding all other uses of oil). At 42 gallons/barrel, thats 378M gallons per day. By dividing that number of gallons per day, to gallons per acre per day, turns out that we'd need 96M acres to grow the switchgrass to meet those transportation needs. This assumes that the ethanol coming out is exactly as energy rich as gasoline. It isn't, by 20 - 40% depending on the measurement, but lets assume that it is.

96M acres is a plot of land about 400 miles by 400 miles. Here's what it would look like on a US map:

switchgrass.jpg

This assumes perfect coverage with zero gaps on the entire box of course, so in reality the box would be much, much larger in the real world. And that land could be used for exactly nothing else but switchgrass production.

I was curious to see if the amount of land necessary would fit in the US itself, and it looks like it would. According to these two links:

http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/A...RICULTURE.html
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...0110211AA12Krx

The US has about 950 million acres of farmland in its entirety, so we're talking about using 10 percent of that. Again, not a totally insane number, but a hugely significant amount, that can no longer be used for crops that it is currently providing.

If we want to replace most of the petroleum usage, and not just the finished products for transportation, that would be a little over double this amount, so assume 200M acres. (even though it's not possible to replace 100% of what petroleum is used for by biofuels).

These are the scales we are dealing with. This is why it's not an easy problem. This is why any changes that do occur take years/decades/lifetimes, and aren't settled during a single administration, or set of administrations.

[TrueFader]

so if i understand correctly if we convert the empty states in the middle of the country already covered in fields with the correct grass we can eliminate our country's dependency on oil for transportation and not increase food costs?

how does that plot of land compare to what would be needed for corn?

i vote give it a go, just teach the drillers how to farm and move em...

and that location on yuor map seems perfect to me. maybe dip into oklahoma a bit. and just take the area and make it its own state.

[ChaosFromAbove]

Originally Posted by TrueFader

so if i understand correctly if we convert the empty states in the middle of the country already covered in fields with the correct grass we can eliminate our country's dependency on oil for transportation and not increase food costs?

how does that plot of land compare to what would be needed for corn?

i vote give it a go, just teach the drillers how to farm and move em...

and that location on yuor map seems perfect to me. maybe dip into oklahoma a bit. and just take the area and make it its own state.

lol...first off i can't tell if ur being sarcastic/funny, so tht picture is just so u can get a visual of how big 96million acres is...and if ur being funny...you'd have to pick a better area than tht...I'm pretty sure most of that land would be really hard to grow on (colorado). maybe we should demolish 10 of the worse US cities and grow the stuff there, and hire the cities inhabitants to pick the stuff Not only would u be keeping drugs off the street, you'b be giving new jobs and creating a "green" resource!

[CThunder-blue]

If switch grass is a real viable alternative to corn, then it should be an easy transition. Not all ethanol is produced in the US. We have Canada and Mexico that could easily grow what we need and then some.

The problem isn't the source, but the politics. The Ethanol lobbyists get paid by the corn manufacturers, not farmers growing switch grass.

[Rayme]

The problem isn't the fuel, it's the engines

We need to start focusing on alternative energy, fast.. petrol is going to run out eventually (how soon is another thing), but it will go down, and we'll feel the heat way before it's gone, as something get rarer, the price will go up.

The CAFE regulation keeps going up, and at the same time the alcohol content in gas goes up(gas with ethanol gives really bad MPG, you get less for your money). This does not make sense to me.

It's a very complicated situation, but that Ethanol thing...looks like something they are doing just for the sake of saying they are doing something.

[Sailariel]

It seems to be a never ending circle. The government is legislating that cars need to be more economical, but as Rayme said, the mpg goes down as the Ethanol increases. Of course, the government collects taxes per gallon of gasoline and Diesel. Why would they advocate selling less fuel? There was a fellow around here who went around to restaraunts collecting used fryolator oil. He would take the stuff home, go through some filtering procedure, add something (I don't know what), and run his diesel vehicles on the stuff. The government-State and Federal insisted that he pay a Road Tax and some other license fee, so he had to cease operation. The same thing happened with Biodiesel (Not practical in the winter because it gells up) In the summer, it is sort of nice to run your diesel and have it smell like french fries. Biodiesel is all but dead around here, and if you find it, the price is super high. Soy Beans are a great source for Biodiesel. I used to love running the stuff in my diesel auxiliary on the sailboat--no soot on the transom like with ordinary diesel. The stuff really burns clean.

[Racer x]

The biggest problem is the corrosion of the brass jets. Fuel Injection just has a LOT more stainless steel parts. So It will not have a problem like older carb engines. The ethanol attracts moisture that causes brass and steel to rust and corrode.that is what stops the engine from running. Use fuel additives and you will be OK.

[Cuongism]

Looks like NASCAR is using it next year.

http://m.espn.go.com/rpm/story?storyId=5692452

[FrugalNinja250]

Originally Posted by sombo

There is yet another plant to use that farmers have discovered is far more efficient for making fuel then corn. It's switch grass.

Al Gore talks about this in the documentary Inconvenient Truth, but the political attacks against that film pretty much stigmatized it out of the public conscious. The decision to use corn was entirely rooted in the last administration's lobbying by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and had nothing to to with science, logic, reasoning, or facts.

That being said, switch grass still can't produce enough ethanol to replace fossil fuels used for our transportation infrastructure today, much less 10 or 20 years in the future. It's 10X better than ethanol, but it still competes to some extent with food crops since it still needs arable land. IOW, it won't grow on mountain tops or in deserts.