Just heard on the news there are currently 30 ethanol plants being built as we speak in the US

Ethanol has 60% of the energy value of gasoline. Unless Ethanol comes in very, very cheap, this isn't going to fly with the consumer that feels he/she is beleagured. This is sold as the salvation to high gas prices. But who will save us from the Ethanol lobby, which now includes GM?

I still say this whole campaign is a diversion intended to sell GMs inventory of monster trucks and SUVs. You don't hear them pushing E85 on any of their smaller vehicles.

dursun, sure GM is moving...right to bankruptcy court.

E85 is 81,000 BTU/gal. Typical US-blend gasoline is around 112,000 BTU/gal. That gives E85 72.3% the energy content of gasoline. Pure ethanol is 77,000 BTU/gal, which is still about 69% the energy content of typical gasoline.

You can run higher compression ratios and more spark advance on E85 and ethanol thanks to it's far higher octane ratings, typically quoted at 100 to 105 octane. Pure ethanol should measure around 110 octane on the US Anti-Knock Index, although no one's talking E100 in this country just yet.

As oil continues to get more and more expensive and we improve our ethanol production from other feedstocks besides just corn, the cost competitiveness will continue to increase. With a low-dollar feedstock like switchgrass, E100 shouldn't be much more than $2.50/gal. The problem is that that no one's doing it from that feedstock on a large scale yet, and refining capacity is still ramping up in the US.

Five years from now, we should have roughly four times the ethanol production capacity that we have today, which I believe would bring it to about 8% of our total transportation fuel consumption. To be honest, there's a good chance that 5 years from now, gasoline will be over $4/gallon anyway, further increasing the demand to ramp up alternative fuel infrastructure.

It would seem to me that the E-85 vehicles couldn't be tuned to take advantage of the higher octane if they can also run on low octane gasoline.

I guess they could have a sensor to make the switch, but that would require the ability to innovate.

Hey! Am I already on 10% ethanol in California? On the last couple tanks it's been "harder work" to stay above 50 mpg.

A note from a chemical engineer doing biofuel stuff - ethanol is "thermodynamically challenged." I don't think I've heard that phrase before. Funny.

And as a last note, my local Orange County California prices now average $2.95/gal ... wooo hooo.

Y'all forgetin' sometin'.
heres a link:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/04/australian_biot.html

Just tweak swithchgrass or some other low impact plant that grows rapidly. Now, yes y'all gotta test it out for unintended consequences, but it could work. For the Brazilians, it could improve their yields way over 1-12 input output-energy budget for their cane ethanol. And use the enzymes to convert unaltered or tweaked starch or celluose. Just blend some in the batch with the rest of the biomass.
PS: The Australians might not cash in on this as much as y'all might think. The geology and climate makes Australia less able to regenerate soil. Whats there ain't easily replaced.
http://www.abc.net.au/landline/stories/s116302.htm

James, "thermodynamcially challenged" also refers to the upstream diesel used to grow that corn. Why don't you add that in?

(you can count switchgrass when it is a majority share of ethanol production)

Look up switchgrass. It improves the soil. (Like Clover)

A vehicle designed to run on either gasoline or E85 will be less efficient running E85 than a vehicle designed to run E85 only.

Here is why.
Compression ratio.

A spark ignition engine you want the fuel to be ignited by ..well the spark ... not before by spontaneous combustion due to the temperature and pressure in the cylinder.

Compression ratio is typically 8 - 10:1 for gasoline engines and 19 -21 for diesel (just to give you an idea not hard limits here folks)

The octane rating of a fuel describes its anti knock properties (remember that spontaneous combustion)
A fuel octane rating of 100 would have the same anti-knock properties as 100% Octane
C8H18, a fuel with an octane rating of 0 would have the same anti knock properties of heptane C5H12. A 91 octane would be equal to 91% octane and 9% heptane.
I don't know how they calculate octane ratings over 100.

A higher compression ratio gives you a higher cylinder pressure and hence more power
but requires higher grade fuel . If the engine must run on 87 or even 85 octane gas that is sold as regular in some areas that will limit how high the compression ratio can be.

If the engine was only ever going to be run on 100 -110 octane gas it could be optimized mechanically to take advantage of this ... these optimizations would make it such that the engine could not run on 87 octane gas. It would ping so bad that the engine could be damaged if it was run on 87 octane gas.

Having the ability to run on both 85 octane crap regular gas and high octane ethanol is a compromise ... such an engine will do neither very well. The two fuels are different enough that mechanically tuning the engine for one is mutual exclusive of the other.

Electronically you can advance the ignition timing when running with the high octane stuff and you'll have to change the injector duty cycle (it takes more fuel to get the same # of btu's) but you can only do so much.

Yes, they do use a sensor to detect when they are running E85 or gasoline. All reports that I have read indicate that it is done by monitoring the O2 sensor, as ethanol is an oxygenated fuel.

If the numbers quoted for BTU content of gasoline at 112,000 and e85 at 77,000 are correct the taho is more efficient in terms of BTU's used per mile than gasoline.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question90.htm

http://www.e85fuel.com/index.php

It does not matter how much gas a civic , or uses compared to a taho because a civic can't seat 6, tow 5000 lbs, haul large objects, or go at all in anything over a few inches of snow (you can't drive in a foot of snow in a car with 4" of ground clearance)

It is like hey I need a 18 mm wrench ... and some one trying to sell you a dozen roses ... nothing wrong with roses or the civic but it doesn't matter how nice roses smell when you really need a wrench.

and no not every one needs a taho.

There is not enough clean electricity sources to run electric cars or plug in hybrids, they are a fraud, right?
Or maybe ethanol production will become more efficiant as more people switch over to it?

As for flex fuel vehicles not running as well as they could on E85, Saab use turbo charging to up the compression when running on it, perhaps this could be used on all flex fuel vehicles.

There is not enough clean electricity sources to run electric cars or plug in hybrids, they are a fraud, right?

We'd also get a huge amount of backup generation for the grid; it's a two-fer.

Or maybe ethanol production will become more efficiant [sic] as more people switch over to it?

The problem with ethanol is that it will be fed into those same 15%-efficient vehicles; barely more than 1/7 of the input fuel energy actually gets to the wheels.  An electric car can get something close to 70%, which requires roughly 1/5 the energy.  Conversion from biomass to ethanol is about 48% efficient, CC turbines can convert most any fuel to electricity at 50% or better; even if you start with grass, you need many times the feedstock to go ethanol.