E85 fuel...is it a good thing???
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torbs;223647 wrote:
Very vague website...Oh and here's what you may be looking for...
Here's some:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354350,00.html (FOX)
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/4636/ (CNN)and finally:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=corn+ethanol+food+prices (google: corn ethanol food prices)Yet Brazil is energy independent and uses Ethanol as their primary source of fuel.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2006-03-28-brazil-ethanol-cover_x.htmStar Tribune wrote:
*Published on Sunday, April 17, 2005 by the Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) *
**The Future of Ethanol **
by David Morris
Want to see the potential of biofuels? Visit Brazil, as I did a few weeks ago.
In Brazil, by law, all gasoline contains a minimum of 25 percent alcohol. Yet ethanol is so popular it actually accounts for 40 percent of all vehicle fuel.
By 2007, 100 percent of all new Brazilian cars may be able to run on 100 percent ethanol. Brazilian sugar-cane-fed biorefineries will be capable of producing sufficient ethanol to allow the entire fleet, new and old cars alike, to do so.
In Brazil, ethanol is now being used in aviation. Small planes, like crop dusters, are switching to ethanol because it is a superior fuel and is more widely available, even in remote parts of the country, than conventional aviation fuel.
Its stunning success with ethanol has encouraged Brazil to begin displacing diesel fuel with vegetable oils from its vast soybean crop. Within 15 years it expects to substitute biodiesel for 20 percent of its conventional diesel.
One more detail. Back in the mid 1990s, Brazil ended its ethanol subsidies. Nevertheless, with world oil prices hovering around $55 a barrel, the price of ethanol today is only half that of gasoline. Since its inception, Brazil's ethanol program has displaced imported oil worth $120 billion. This is comparable to a savings of almost $2 trillion for a U.S.-sized economy.
Back in Minnesota, our vehicles remain stuck at the 10 percent ethanol level first achieved almost a decade ago. Yet today, ethanol produced within the state could displace 25 percent of gasoline consumed within the state. Without increasing crop acreage, Minnesota could become self-sufficient in passenger-vehicle fuel and significantly displace diesel fuels.
Minnesota arrived at this enviable situation as a result of farsighted state policies. In the early 1980s the state ethanol incentive mirrored the federal incentive -- a partial exemption from the gasoline tax. That incentive increased demand, but every drop of ethanol was imported into the state.
In the mid 1980s, Minnesota's farmers successfully petitioned the Legislature to restructure the state incentive to encourage in-state production of ethanol.
The incentive became a direct payment of 20 cents per gallon. There were limits: The ethanol had to be produced in Minnesota. The incentive was available only for the first 15 million gallons produced each year. The incentive lasted only for 10 years per plant.
The restructured incentive has made Minnesota home to 15 small- and medium-sized ethanol plants (18 by the end of 2005). The biorefineries' relatively small size has enabled a significant proportion of the state's full-time grain farmers to become owners. This dramatically boosts the local economic benefit of such facilities.
Because of the incentive's time limit, within the next year or two, more than half of all state ethanol production will receive no incentive. Several new plants are being built without a state incentive.
Brazil has shown us that biofuels can be a primary fuel rather than simply a gasoline additive. Here are seven policies Minnesota should adopt to imitate Brazil's success.
1. Immediately request a waiver from the federal government to allow a 20 percent ethanol blend in all vehicles. Gov. Tim Pawlenty has indicated his desire to do so. The request should come from many states, not just one, and the cost of all the required testing should be shared by these states. If all 29 states whose governors have joined the Governors Ethanol Coalition chipped in, the cost would be a trivial $100,000 per state.
2. Aggressively expand the number of Minnesota gas stations that offer ethanol as a primary fuel (E85). Adding $15 million to the state bonding bill would enable every gas station in Minnesota to have at least one E85 pump.
3. Require all governments in Minnesota to purchase flexible-fueled vehicles. Several dozen popular models are already available and on the roads.
4. Develop a 20 percent renewable transportation fuels mandate that mirrors the 20 percent renewable electricity portfolio mandate that many states have passed.
5. Inspire a public discussion about redesigning the federal biofuels incentives so that they are tied to the price of oil. If oil rises above a certain level (say, $60 per barrel) the incentive would completely disappear. If it drops below a certain level (say, $35 per barrel) it would be equal to the current incentive.
**6. **Focus on converting the state's abundant cellulosic materials into energy. Brazilian biorefineries are virtually energy self-sufficient because they burn bagasse to power and heat the mill and refineries. Bagasse, the fiber fraction of cane, is brought to the mill along with the sugar cane. In Minnesota the corn stover (stalk, etc.) is not transported to the mill along with the corn kernels. The Chippewa Valley Ethanol Cooperative (CVEC) is developing innovative ways to economically transport the stover to the mill. Given the high price of natural gas, and the resulting pressure on ethanol plants to shift to coal, Minnesota should immediately provide the funds to accelerate the use of cellulose in the ethanol plants (first for heating and later for making ethanol itself).
7. Make farmer ownership the state's ownership preference. New ethanol plants are very large and absentee-owned. The ethanol they produce is welcome, but they do not generate the local and regional economic and social benefits that farmer-owned plants do.
*David Morris is vice president of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance. *
2005 Star Tribune -
torbs;10929 wrote:
I recently read a forum on dsmtuner and found it quite interesting...i was wondering how you local guys feel about this stuff...afterall, it is always gonna be 20 cents cheaper than gas, but you burn a lot more...plus, with the right tuning, you can make a bit more power...anywho, jw if u guys think this is a good thing or not...laterE85 is a terrible idea. Lets turn food, into fuel. Then over charge the be-jesus out of it. Not a good idea.
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XJHEAD;223682 wrote:
I couldn't imagine using that stuff....LOL...yeah, I've heard it's only good for 9 second passes on street cars making well over 1000 WHP.
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tjamz;223685 wrote:
LOL...yeah, I've heard it's only good for 9 second passes on street cars making well over 1000 WHP.Maybe if I used 91 octane it would go 8's.
On a serious note next time out the cage will be done and hopefully a few supsension changes will be done. I don't think they will let me back out there until then. Going to turn it up and see if it will blow.....Then time to build a real motor..
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Race gas for less than the price of low octane pump :icon_thumleft:
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XJHEAD;223687 wrote:
Maybe if I used 91 octane it would go 8's.On a serious note next time out the cage will be done and hopefully a few supsension changes will be done. I don't think they will let me back out there until then. Going to turn it up and see if it will blow.....Then time to build a real motor..
bah, don't blow it up. I'll take that clunker of a motor off your hands if you need me to.
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PSI2HI;223712 wrote:
Rumor has it corn is supposed to rise to $8/bushel which is going to make things interesting.I see already E85 is up to the $3.30 range around town.
Hopefully they will start doing more with making ethanol from other starches.
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I like the idea of ethanol as a cheap replacement for race gas. I think E85 from Corn in the US is probably a bad idea.
It would be interesting to have a corn farmer (Parker?) give his opinion on things, but a book I am reading ("the Omnivore's Dilemma) talks about the development of industrial agriculture in the US.
According to this book, the corn boom in the US took off after World War 2. There were lots of US factories that had been making nitrates into explosives and gun powder. They needed something to do.
To a very large extent, the limit of a piece of earth for producing food is based on the nitrogen extraction potential from that peice of soil. While 75% of the atmosphere is nitrogen, getting it a form that plants can use is tricky, and biologically, depends on bacteria growing on legume root systems.
A clever German guy (Haber, i think) figured out how to suck nitrogen out of the atmosphere as part of the Nazi war effort to make explosives. It didn't take more than a few clever Washington politicians to repurpose all of our ammo factories into making synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.
Once you have artificial fertilizer the yeild of a given peice of land goes way, way up, because you're bring in outside energy into the system. The green revolution is largley a product of industrial fertilizer production.
As it turns out, the Haber process for nitrogen fixing requires... fossil fuels to work. I beleive that specifically they burn natural gas to do it.
It's a bit ironic that the massive over-harvest of corn we have is only possible due to the Nixon era farm bill (that basically said the government would pay a certain per-bushel price irrespective of what the market did, instead of the earlier New-Deal era loan/cover program), and the infusion of synthetic nitrogen, the latter of which is only possible via fossil fuel depletion.
What's the point of turning fossil fuel into E85, via subsidized corn, and then claiming that it's a renewable energy source?
Naturally, if your corn operation isn't using Haber-process nitrogen in its fertilizers, that's a different story.
Anyway, that's what this book is saying about the industrial farming cycle. My post is getting too long for certain peoples tastes, so I'll stop here and see if anyone else wants to chime in on the natural of industrial corn production.
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Colin;223684 wrote:
E85 is a terrible idea. Lets turn food, into fuel. Then over charge the be-jesus out of it. Not a good idea.+1
Yeah it may claim to reduce dependency on foriegn oil, But has it? It costs way more to make a gallon of E85 than regular gasoline. It wasnt the right choice.
Now supposivly they are working on making ethanol from Garbage. But yet again they will probably charge an arm and leg for it.
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MisterCMK;223765 wrote:
The E85 haters need to realize that it is at least a step in the right direction. Rome wasn't built in a day. You need to take things one step at a time.exactly, be part of the solution not the problem. there isnt going to be a one clear cut fix all for our energy problems, but supporting the move in the right direction is going to get us somewhere much faster than sitting around spreading hate on whats already WORKING
here a psht, there psht, everywhere a psht psht
PVC SQUAD MEMBER #2- 95 CIVIC EX- DD 320whp on a mustang dyno
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I have been reading into E85 for the past few weeks, I will be converting my eclipse to it over the winter, hopefully before. I have read many threads on dsmtuners and talk about it. People on those forums and been running it with no longterm effects on the fuel system with the proper upgrades. All that is needed to run E85 is bigger injectors (around 1000cc) to compensate for the amount of fuel that needs to be used, larger fuel pump, upgraded fuel lines, and a good tune. People on talk have been making 450+ horsepower on a 16g.
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