Flex Fuel for the Future ; Is E85 the next unleaded or a pipe dream?

[tigerhonaker]

Flex Fuel for the Future
Is E85 the next unleaded or a pipe dream?

By BOB GRITZINGER

AutoWeek | Published 04/24/06, 7:36 am et


By now you’re probably aware of E85, whether you caught President George W. Bush hailing it in his State of the Union address or heard General Motors chairman Rick Wagoner touting it as he revealed his company’s line of flex-fuel vehicles.

So what’s all the hullabaloo? And if you want to help save the planet, should you hop on the E85 bandwagon?

E85 is the designation for a fuel that combines 85 percent ethanol with 15 percent gasoline. E85-compatible—or flex-fuel—vehicles can run on E85 or regular unleaded gasoline. Because the alcohol in E85 can break down rubbers and plastics used in typical internal-combustion engine fuel systems, vehicles must be specially modified to allow its use. And to obtain maximum power from higher-octane E85, engines must be tuned to run on it, or be able to adjust timing and the air-to-fuel ratio when running on E85.

Supporters say the alternative fuel is environmentally friendly, reduces dependence on fossil fuels and imported oil, and takes advantage of America’s surplus of agricultural crops, like corn, that can be readily converted to ethanol for use in E85.

Critics note insufficient ethanol production facilities exist to significantly offset the nation’s appetite for fuel, that refineries aren’t adapted to producing E85, and that E85 is harder to transport because its corrosiveness means it cannot flow through existing gasoline pipelines. In addition, in most states E85 costs about the same as unleaded regular while costing the driver up to 15 percent in fuel-economy penalties because it does not pack the same explosive punch as gasoline.

Those negatives aside, Phil Lampert, executive director of the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition, sees a substantial upside—and predicts prices will drop as more ethanol production comes on line in the next 18 months. But even with ethanol production slated to nearly double in the next 10 years, E85 will remain a bit player in the U.S. fuel market for years to come—which is not to say you won’t be burning some ethanol. Blends of up to 10 percent ethanol with gasoline may become more commonplace soon. Ethanol enhances the octane rating of the fuel, supplanting the toxic additive MTBE, which itself substitutes for lead as an octane booster.

E85 vehicles remain a small niche, with about 70 models capable of running on the alcohol mixture on the U.S. market since 1998. GM, which claims industry leadership on promoting E85 use and awareness, recently made a substantial push into E85 vehicles, announcing its 2005 and 2006 sport/utility vehicles and pickups, along with two Chevrolet car models, are E85 compatible. The company has marketed 28 flex-fuel models since 2000. Chrysler, Dodge, Ford, Isuzu, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mercury and Nissan have also sold or are still selling flex-fuel vehicles in the United States.

Owners of the estimated 5 million flex-fuel vehicles on the road today—those who deliberately bought a vehicle for its flex-fuel capability—are likely to find their E85 consumption limited by the short supply of E85 fuel pumps in most states outside the Midwest farm belt. The number of E85 fueling stations doubled from 2005 to 2006, but that still means you can buy it at only 600 of the nearly 200,000 fueling stations in the United States. In most states E85 outlets exist only in major population centers. As a result, owners of flex-fuel vehicles often have to run on regular unleaded gasoline.

Minnesota, which has passed legislation to support the use of ethanol, leads the nation with 208 stations offering E85, while Illinois ranks second with 117. But the numbers drop dramatically from there, and in 13 states—including a number of Northeastern states that pattern their strict emissions rules after California—E85 isn’t sold at a single station. In the eco-friendly Golden State you will need access to the private E85 pumps at Vandenberg Air Force Base to get a tankful, or you will have to live, work and play in San Diego, home of the only publicly accessible E85 filling station in California.

http://www.autoweek.com/apps/pbcs.dl...4007/1008/FREE

[xcel]

Hi Terry:

___The item that ticks me off more then any other is the fact these guys never consider the real cost of straight Ethanol in their articles. The Ethanol manufacturers make the stuff including transportation for < $1.50 per from corn of all things vs. gasoline at $2.75 per + taxes in many locations nowadays. Not that you or I will ever see that $1.50 + tax because of the overwhelming demand via mandates turning the ethanol market place upside down but it truly costs just a touch more then ½ that of gasoline today. If you placed a normalized Ethanol gallon at the pump for $1.75 and gasoline was right next to it at $3.05 per, you can bet the US consumer would be screaming bloody murder for it! The Brazilian’s truly are ROFLAO at our expense because of this administrations and congress’ lack of an energy policy worth more then a buffalo nickel. Farm’s Ethanol feedstock (Corn) is in no way going to be able to supply us with the US’ transportation needs but the real cost of Ethanol is so far below that of oil/gasoline that I don’t see how we can continue down the rosey scenario path we are currently on.

___By the way, the Brazilians are making Ethanol from their much more native sugar cane for ~ $0.75/gallon nowadays! How is that for taking OPEC out without so much as a shot being fired or a nickel being spent vs. our hundreds of billions in protection or whatever it is called nowadays? I guess I have this small little problem knowing what countries citizenry was actually behind 9/11 is all

___Good Luck

___Wayne

[tigerhonaker]

Wayne;

I think we are on the same page.

[Katz6768]

What about air pollution from E85 fuel ?

I was in Brazil (Sao Paulo & Rio) a couple of times and found the sweet smell unbearable, the locals were also unhappy with the quality of the air in these cities. I don't know if it makes a difference if the source for the ethanol is corn rather than sugar cane.

[tigerhonaker]

Originally Posted by Katz6768

What about air pollution from E85 fuel ?

I was in Brazil (Sao Paulo & Rio) a couple of times and found the sweet smell unbearable, the locals were also unhappy with the quality of the air in these cities. I don't know if it makes a difference if the source for the ethanol is corn rather than sugar cane.

I can see where that the Sweet-Smell would get Old after awhile if it was overbearing. I bet the E85 made from Corn would not smell like the E85 made from Sugar-Cane.

[Jrfish007]

Originally Posted by xcel

Hi Terry:

___The item that ticks me off more then any other is the fact these guys never consider the real cost of straight Ethanol in their articles. The Ethanol manufacturers make the stuff including transportation for < $1.50 per from corn of all things vs. gasoline at $2.75 per + taxes in many locations nowadays. Not that you or I will ever see that $1.50 + tax because of the overwhelming demand via mandates turning the ethanol market place upside down but it truly costs just a touch more then ½ that of gasoline today. If you placed a normalized Ethanol gallon at the pump for $1.75 and gasoline was right next to it at $3.05 per, you can bet the US consumer would be screaming bloody murder for it! The Brazilian’s truly are ROFLAO at our expense because of this administrations and congress’ lack of an energy policy worth more then a buffalo nickel. Farm’s Ethanol feedstock (Corn) is in no way going to be able to supply us with the US’ transportation needs but the real cost of Ethanol is so far below that of oil/gasoline that I don’t see how we can continue down the rosey scenario path we are currently on.

___By the way, the Brazilians are making Ethanol from their much more native sugar cane for ~ $0.75/gallon nowadays! How is that for taking OPEC out without so much as a shot being fired or a nickel being spent vs. our hundreds of billions in protection or whatever it is called nowadays? I guess I have this small little problem knowing what countries citizenry was actually behind 9/11 is all

___Good Luck

___Wayne

Sorry to bring back a half dead thread, but what you said is not really true. The price ethanol is at $1.50 per gal because of government subsidaries, aka the goverment is paying large portion of that. Thermodynamically it is ludicrous to make ethanol because the chemical energy stored in ehtanol, is just about how much you have to put into it to refine it. Contrary to belief it is very hard to process ethanol because it has an anzeotrope with water, and water is bad in combustion engines.

There is also a second point about ehtanol, look how long it takes to grow the corn stalk, then look at how long it takes to burn the ethanol that results from that corn stalk. I'm sure you can see a problem with this.

Ethanol is a good thing, but it isn't the magic key everyone seems to think it is. It is part of a larger porfoilo that will help to reduce emmisions and such, it's not the entire portfolio though.

[xcel]

Hi Jrfish007:

Originally Posted by Jrfish007

Sorry to bring back a half dead thread, but what you said is not really true. The price ethanol is at $1.50 per gal because of government subsidaries, aka the goverment is paying large portion of that. Thermodynamically it is ludicrous to make ethanol because the chemical energy stored in ehtanol, is just about how much you have to put into it to refine it. Contrary to belief it is very hard to process ethanol because it has an anzeotrope with water, and water is bad in combustion engines.

Ethanol is a good thing, but it isn't the magic key everyone seems to think it is. It is part of a larger porfoilo that will help to reduce emmisions and such, it's not the entire portfolio though.

___E85 was being sold at < $1.50 not 3 years ago here in the states including the mandatory state and federal taxes on it. Subtract those from the subsidies and where does that leave you? ~ $1.50 per let alone Brazil selling it on the open market for < $0.75/gallon maybe a year ago. As for energy in vs. out, you only need to look at the $’s let alone the latest real studies (not Pintal or whatever his name is). How can you spend $2.89 per gallon for gasoline or diesel, farm and process the Corn, transport the ETOH, and end up with $1.50 per gallon? The real price is an energy conversion figure all on its own. You don’t want to see the energy balance of Crude pump out, refining, and shipment, do you

___We don’t grow enough Corn in the entire country to supply even 15% of our daily liquid fuel needs today. That being said, we may as well get a start on it because every bit helps. When you can make more from ETOH production then for food, guess where the $’s flow? With the PHEV/EV, BTL, and CTL solutions/processes in the pipeline, now we can not only make a dent, we may even become self sufficient!

___Good Luck

___Wayne

[Jrfish007]

lol, yeah I know how bad the energy balance is with petro (I had a project of designing a refinery plant in one of my classes), I'm just saying we need to look to more rapid methods of making fuel than through bio-related methods. You said it, we can't even provide 15% one days needs, certainly biomass can help, but I don't see being a major solution to anything.

Lets take, for instance, coal. Coal is dirty cheap (probably cheaper than corn per unit of chemical energy), you can gasify it, preform Fischer-Tropsh and get plenty of EtOH, and the only limiting factor is how quickly you can build the plants and dig the coal up. There is a company in S.Africa that provides 1/3 of their fuel via coal and this process. As far as self sufficient, the US ise estimated to have over 300 years worth of coal in the US, so coal is not a problem.

The really good thing about E85 from biomass is that to produce it you are taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and putting O2 back, so the net CO2 production for a gallon of EtOH is very low, this is very good enviromentally, but $ doesn't flow towards the enviroment untill it's to late.

Also keep in mind that I believe all these are temperary solutions to the obvious problem of fossil fuels, they pollute like mad and will some day run out. Alias there is another solution, I know a guy over in Tiawan that is currently working on water spliting (taking water and making hydrogen and oxygen using solar energy). He has devloped a reactor design that is almost 10% effecient, I think this type of technology will be the BIG break through the world needs, but that's just me. If you would like I can try to find some of his papers, I'm not sure how many are in English though lol.

[xcel]

Hi Jrfish007:

___I saw you reference your friend’s H2 research in another thread and it did indeed pique my interest. If you have anything with good detail, you could create a great article or at least an informative post about it. Right now, only high temp Nuclear splitting appears to be a viable solution in the short term and the US doesn’t have a Reactor built specifically for that just yet. There is quite a bit of discussion and initial design work being considered for the Gen IV and later nuclear units but there is nothing on the ground just yet.

___Then there are the problems of storage and use from an infrastructure standpoint as well as in an H2 based ICE or PEM based automobile.

___Good Luck

___Wayne

[phoebeisis]

John, great post. A question:
Do you have any numbers on how much energy, or what percent of a gallon of ethanol it takes to get ethanol to my gas tank? The "thermodynamically impossible" stuff is obvious BS-The brazilians would have noticed a long time ago, if it took 1.01 gallons of ethanol to make 1 gallon of ethanol. I would guess it is something like 20-30-40-50 % which is not bad.Gasoline-oil is probably pretty low-maybe 5-10%- but oil is practically free,running out,CO2 positive, and in the wrong countries(most importantly)..
Is the corn you guys use genetically engineered to max out the starch or sugar? Probably not, but regular crop engineering/selection has been going on for 1000 years, so there might not be much to be gained there.
You guys just sell the "waste" back as high quality feed? No attempt yet so squeeze out the oil and make a few $$ there?
If you can, it would be nice to see a % number.Thanks,Charlie