Study says ethanol not worth the energy

Matt D. · 07-19-2005

http://wcco.com/nationalwire/Ethanol...rces_news_html

Discuss.

Now knowing this I feel it's time to move ahead and forget about using ethanol on a wide scale like they're pushing us to do. This renewable resource is obviously not all it's cracked up to be.

**Kracka** · 07-19-2005

Hopefully WCCO blows that wide open and spreads it all over the 10 pm news making the MN legislature reverse the new recent law! I'm sick of ethanol and the worse gas mileage and less power output per gallon associated with it.

LightningGSX · 07-19-2005

Maybe you will all learn someday....
At present is isn't all the economical, this will change soon.But as far as your car goes, you can safely run higher boost and/or higher timing adv to more than account for you loss in mileage/performance.Is short, ethanol is good, an someday you misiformed people will believe so.

LightningGSX · 07-19-2005

deleted

LightningGSX · 07-19-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by S2kracka

I'm sick of ethanol and the worse gas mileage and less power output per gallon associated with it.

At least for GM vehicles, is/should/will be a reflash available which will make you not even notice you have ethanol fuel.If you have have any source of tuning in your vehicle, regardless of what the misiformed say, you should be able the boost mileage AND power with ethanol fuel

**JET** · 07-19-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by LightningGSX

At least for GM vehicles, is/should/will be a reflash available which will make you not even notice you have ethanol fuel.If you have have any source of tuning in your vehicle, regardless of what the misiformed say, you should be able the boost mileage AND power with ethanol fuel

I disagree. If they mixed the same 92 octane gas that we used to get with ethanol, then yes it would bump up the octane level. Notice it still says 92 octane though? Well, they are taking the old 90 octane, mixing it with 10% ethanol and you have 92 octane. So we aren't getting any gains from it, we use more fuel because of less energy stored in the ethanol.

Matt D. · 07-19-2005

I didn't post this so it could become another "ethanol sucks for performance use" bitch-fest. The study has proven that simply creating ethanol isn't efficient. Negative energy, if you will. Like extracting oil from the sand in Canada.

Steeltwo · 07-19-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matt D.

I didn't post this so it could become another "ethanol sucks for performance use" bitch-fest. The study has proven that simply creating ethanol isn't efficient. Negative energy, if you will. Like extracting oil from the sand in Canada.

with modern technology you are correct.

at one time, normal gasoline was the same way vs coal and other hard fuels.

Jakey · 07-20-2005

You all know that I'm a huge ethanol supporter, have always used ethanol, and will continue to use ethanol. Cornell University has (to my recollection) never had anything pro-ethanol ever be published and David Pimentel (again to my recolletion) has been one to continually preach against ethanol. However, I have read reviews of his work before and have learned that many are cautious about his publications because he loves to use agricultural production figures and facts that are beyond outdated versus modern information. By using the outdated information, he is 100% correct as ethanol used to be a complete waste of energy due to the drastic loss ration in terms of production versus output. However, this has been improved exponentially in recent years. I just got back from an American Society of Agricultural & Biological Engineers conference in Tampa Bay, FL. I'll do some digging through the most updated technical papers and publications and see what I can find for facts to post up.

Pushit2.0 · 07-21-2005

The simple fact is we will run out of fosil fuels someday. I dont see a problem in mixing ethonal in with gas. But I do not have a vehical that "needs" pump gas hp. I am going to run my car off methonal, but that is not really a street driving fuel.

~John

Hung Tau Racer · 07-23-2005

to my knowledge the ethanol based fuel E85 is 105 octane which means more boost more power but lower gas mileage. The E85 gas is also much cheaper to buy than say 100 octane race gas. So it might not be worth it for the companies that make it but until they stop making it it is almost like a cheap race gas. If of course you have the right fuel sytem to handel ethanol based fuels.

**Kracka** · 07-24-2005

New studies are also showing that oil is not actually a fossil fuel.

E85 is actually more expensive to run even though the price per gallons is cheaper since it is far less efficient.

**Shane@DBPerformance** · 07-26-2005

If you have a standalone, you might be be able to run it lean enough and with a bunch of added timing to get a lot of the gas mileage back. It wouldn't work so well with a stock ECU and a non-lambda O2 sensor though.

**Kracka** · 07-26-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by ecoli

If you have a standalone, you might be be able to run it lean enough and with a bunch of added timing to get a lot of the gas mileage back. It wouldn't work so well with a stock ECU and a non-lambda O2 sensor though.

Just as a sidenote for everyone, all my E85-based posts are talking about as if it were to be run in a FFV vehicle.

Jakey · 07-30-2005

Ok ladies, take a look at this: http://www.cleanairchoice.org/outdoo...%20Balance.PDF

...and other good stuff: http://www.cleanairchoice.org/outdoor/index.asp

slowbubblecar · 07-30-2005

I clicked on it but it is 6 pages so I didn't look at it.

Jakey · 07-30-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by slowbubblecar

I clicked on it but it is 6 pages so I didn't look at it.

That's what the abstract is for at the beginning of the paper.

Jakey · 02-10-2006

GM is surely pushing ethanol, check out their homepage.
http://www.gm.com/

**Kracka** · 02-10-2006

GM is doing everything they can to NOT lose money. Selling their current cars is obviously not the key.

**1ViciousGSX** · 02-10-2006

There's always another motive behind anything big business does. I've been in dealerships and around major car manufacturers for over 20 years. They don't do anything they aren't made to do by the EPA or the gooberment.

Remember when airbags, door support cross-bars, 3rd brake lamps, etc were added to cars? The car manufacturers were putting out all these commercials about how they were trying to save lives, make cars safer, etc. But behind the scenes, they were raising holy hell that the gooberment was forcing them to put more parts on cars that cost more money to make that took away some of their profit margin.

Ethanol has some good points, but for every good thing it does, there is a negative side.