I read this tonight - and wanted to pass it on:

The Great Ethanol Scam - BusinessWeek

I noticed about a 10% drop in mileage when the stations around here changed over to a 10% Ethanol blend. I imagine I've lost about the same percentage of horsepower - but can't really tell.

Anyways - I'm just upset in general about how we're tackling the oil/fuel/energy issue - and wanted to thow out an article that highlighted some of the problems associated with the Ethanol push.

I also think the new CAFE standards (39MPG for cars) are the wrong way to go (though a nice idea).

Gas just needs to be expensive again. Tax fuel to death - just like we tax cigarettes to the point that people are quitting just to save money.

When fuel was over $4 - I saw people doing all sorts of things that we (as a country) should be doing all along - carpooling, riding bikes, buying smaller cars, buying scooters and small motorcycles, combining trips - you name it. We started to drive less.

I drive a lot - and expensive gas means many things become more expensive - not just the gas for my car. Groceries - TV's - everything - the cost of anything that has to be shipped rises, and hurts my pocketbook. But the government shouldn't force car manufacturers to build smaller/lighter/more fuel efficient cars. They should build them because that's what Americans want - and Americans will want smaller cars when gas is expensive. Put the tax procedes into alternative energy research...

1. Don't force Americans to put junk fuel into their cars (or small engines).
2. Don't force car manufacturers to produce smaller cars - let consumer demand drive the market.
3. Increase taxes on fuel. This will fix number 2.

 

Of course ethanol is a detrimental and useless scam. It's also part of the reason our cars get noticeably less range per tank in the colder climes---- when the winter fuel blends contain more ethanol (ostensibly) to prevent the formation of ice crystals in fuel and then clogging filters.

The tax-to-death alternative might get status-seeking serfs out of their SUVs but beyond that there's more harm than good being done by such a socialist strategy---- and it's rife with opportunities for bureaucratic cluster-@#%*-type corruption, a slippery slope if ever there was one. Tax proceeds RARELY end up funding the causes they were originally intended for. Most of the money stolen, er... raised via increased taxes quietly gets shifted into some black hole general revenue-type entity where the feds can use it for whatever cause they may choose--- usually on a whim "for the good of the nation."

So what's the solution(s)?

1. Bio-DEISEL for aircraft and large trucks. With proper additives and/or fuel-heating techniques this would work without the type of issues associated with gasoline additives such as ethanol, while not only weening north America off foreign oil supplies but also reducing emissions and creating a home-grown economy.

2. Bio-ELECTRIC for everything else. Electric car technology is advancing at a previously-unheard-of rate. There are now decent-performing cars running only on electricity (ie: not a hybrid) that have a range approaching 250 miles per full charge and plug into your home over night. On a long trip? No problem--- simply get a 75% charge in five minutes at a charging station. For comparison, most gasoline-powered cars have a range of around 300 miles per tank. This electricity could be produced by running bio-deisel-powered engines at a power-generating plant, by nuclear power or by wind turbines and hydro-electric means. And best of all, think of the homegrown employment opportunities created by this shift.

3. It gets better. What about heating fuels for homes and businesses? Geo-thermal heat is available anywhere on the continent and produces no emissions. Not to mention the jobs created right here in north America.

The result of all this? The US, Canada and Mexico become far less dependent on foreign oil, our economies do much better, and mid-east oil tycoons/Islamic terrorist sympathizers see their means of waging war dwindle. Suddenly the world is a better place than what it used to be....

 

Your vehicle does not lose hp when using E10, because its octane rating is higher than 93.

 

Octane rating != horsepower. All octane ratings do is tell you when and whether detonation will occur.

FACT: Ethanol contains about 2/3 the potential energy of an equal quantity of gasoline. Depending on the efficiency (and other design factors) of the engine into which it goes, that will affect peak power output. Even if it does not affect peak power, it still cannot help but affect miles per gallon.

 

Uh, octane rating is a measure of a fuel's ability to combat detonation (ie: "engine knock"). It DOES NOT affect the engine's horsepower either way.

What higher-octane fuel DOES do is allow manufacturers to build higher-compression-ratio engines and forced-induction systems for engines (both of which are capable of yielding more power output than lower-compression or normally-aspirated engines of the same displacement and dimensions are capable of) ---- without increasing the engine's tendency to detonate under these higher pressures.

E10 fuel IS an octane-booster because alcohol is an octane booster, ie: it helps reduce knock. But E10 DOES rob power because alcohol contains less energy (measured in BTUs, ie: British Thermal Units) than gasoline does. It therefore requires MORE E10 to push your car down the road a given distance at a given velocity than normal gasoline does.

How much more? If I drive highway miles in my Sport MT at 70 mph on dry pavement at around 65 degrees F ambient air yemperature I can expect about 300 miles out of one tank of winter-blend gas, which typically contains around 10% ethanol. But if I fill up with a non-ethanol blended gasoline I can get 350 miles per tank under those same conditions.

And then there's the issue of what damage that ethanol is doing to your fuel system. There have been reports of ethanol-related failures of components even in so-called "dual fuel" vehicles.

 

Apparently not known to everyone, the computers which control modern engines have a little wiggle room to slightly advance the ignition timing when gas with a higher octane rating than what is specified is burned. And this produces more specific power, which in turn increases acceleration.
However, due to the Fit's engine's low hp and torque output it probably does not produce a power increase that's sufficient enough to produce a SOTP acceleration feeling when this happens. But it can definitely be felt in a more powerful engine(Read: My Mustang GT's 300 hp 4.6L). So having been there and having done that, I can assuredly attest that using E10 with its higher octane rating definitely does not reduce an engine's hp, as I had stated in my original post.

 

Advancing the timing would certainly result in more hp produced at a given rpm, and if the chip set is capable of recognizing higher-than-required octane and can therefore use the "wiggle room" then this is a good thing.

But the question then becomes "Is this wiggle room timing advance capable of generating enough extra horsepower to cancel out the horsepower lost due to the lower BTU ethanol content in the fuel?" If this is true, then I should have gotten MORE range per tank of fuel in my above example, not less. At the very least I should have broken even. But I didn't.

In two days I'm driving from Fredericton, NB Canada to Calgary, Alberta. this is a 2000-mile trip, and I'll once again be able to assess the differences from one tank to the next.

On the way here (ie: eastbound from Calgary to NB) last month I was getting >580 kms (about 350 miles) per tank---- until I filled up in North-western Ontario. Then my range plummeted to under 500 kms (300 miles) per tank until I reached NB, my final fill-up taking place in Quebec. But my first fill-up in NB post-trip returned my range to the normal 350 miles (580kms) per tank.

This would indicate that the stations in Quebec and Ontario that I filled up at were still selling winter blend fuel, probably left-over stuff from the colder-than-normal winter they had. The roads were dry and free of ice and snow so traction (or lack thereof) was not a factor.

 

Modern ECU's, slick as they are, have no way of knowing the octane rating of the fuel being fed to the engine. None. Nada. Zero. Zilch. What they do have is a signal input from something called a knock sensor. What they do when the knock sensor sends a signal is retard timing.

Your Mustang has a very high compression ratio, as does my STi (when the boost is up). High compression ratio = higher propensity for detonation/preignition. Your Mustang likes E10 not because its ignition timing is being advanced more, but because is it is not being retarded.

And you still get worse MPGs than you would from straight gas of a similar octane rating.

 

The Fit is tuned for unleaded gasoline, which has a stoichiometric air:fuel ratio(A/F) of 14.64:1. When cruising with the engine warmed up, the PCM is in what is termed the "Closed Loop" mode, meaning that it takes readings from the O2 sensors in order to determine the proper fuel feed rate that maintains the stoich A/F ratio(also termed a "Lambda" of 1.00). The PCM will run a calculation on the volume of fuel to feed the engine based upon its built in programming. The PCM then polls the O2 sensors after a short period, and measures the results of this calculation to see how it compares to the stoich A/F. If there are any errors, then they are collected and learned over time, and a correction is applied to the calculation to keep things in check for fuel variations, changing conditions, aging sensors, etc. Typically a PCM allows for a 15% correction either way. If an error exceeds the max allowable correction %, then the PCM will throw a check engine light, along with a rich or lean code.
Let's assume that the Fit is perfectly tuned, the fuel trims are within a few percent of each other, and the A/F has a correct Lambda of 1.00. Now you fill up with E10, which leans out the engine's A/F, and the A/F lambda increases above 1.00. The engine now requires a higher fuel feed rate in order to reset the A/F Lambda back to 1.00. The PCM/02 sensor "Closed Loop" senses this condition, and the PCM increases the fuel feed rate, which enrichens the A/F mixture back to a lambda of 1.00.
And mainly it's this richer A/F mixture that:
(1) Significantly reduces the Fit's mpg.
(2) Provides sufficient energy that powers the Fit like unleaded gasoline.

 

Fully agree and thanks for the detailed explanation. However, I didn't feel like getting into all of the boring technical stuff at the time, so I tried to keep my explanation in general terms, even though it was not as accurate as it should have been. But I made up for it in my post prior to this one.

 

its really GMO companies scam. ethanol is made from corn. 98% usa corn is genetically modified organism. and note all the 'high fructose cornsyrup is no evil' commercials... DAMN YOU GMO'S, DAMN YOU FOR SCREWING UP MY MPG!!

 

Aviator - I really think the corrupt bureaucracy issues you refer to are easier to fix than the energy issue itself....as a matter of fact, I think they are the ones pushing the slogan:

""Help Break America's Dependance on Foreign Oil". You'll always here "Foreign" in there - there's just too much lobbying going on to cut to the chase - and make the commitment to try to get away from oil - period, not just from overseas...

Your ideas are all great - but how do you fund the research to mature those technologies? I would be willing to bet that most of the funding for research in those areas comes from tax revenue. Sure - private firms are doing their own research on their own nickle, or from venture investment groups - but it's really hard to afford the kind of development and research it takes to transform a nations energy systems. I just don't think it can happen on a large scale without government (tax) help.

Putting a premium price (tax, tariffs, whatever) on a limited resource that ends up polluting the environment, in order to fund research for a better, cleaner, more sustainable energy source isn't socialistic - it's just the right thing to do.

I keep using cigarettes in my head as a case where something similiar has worked. It's not the same - but the small percentage of tax in cigarette sales that is required to go to public education - I think that it's made a difference. Yes - most of the tax dollars from cigarettes go to things that are completely un-related, but overall - it has worked. If you think about it - cigarettes could be banned overnight - end of story. But it'll never happen because of the tobacco giants. The same will be true for the oil companies.

Again - I like all of your alternative energy ideas, but how to you get companies to build the machines, processing facilities to produce the new fuels or batteries, and cities to update their infrastructure to support the new fuels. I think you need to provide financial incentives, and I think the governement should afford those incentives by generating more tariffs, taxes, whatever - on fuel (especially foreign fuel).

Almost a year ago now - we saw record gas prices here in the US. The whole nation changed for a few months. It was amazing to me to see how much exitement there was about altenative fuels and conserving energy. My friend was making Bio-diesel in his garage, and I was looking at Vectrix scooters! It's so funny how in less than a year - the feeling is gone. Just look at the MPG forums on this site - they were buzzing a year ago - sort of ho-hum now.

I guess that in my lifetime - I've never seen anything else inspire so many to conserve energy, and start looking for alternative fuel options - as high gas prices did. I saw it work - and I think it's what we need. Instead of the profits going overseas though - we need to recycle them into research and new technologies - right here in the US.

 

Everybody knows it is a giant scam... but nobody with big enough shoes has the balls to call them out.

 

I have a late-90's Buick that is very sensitive to E10 gas. Of course the engine was also first dreamed up in the 1960's, when gas was leaded and bald eagles were almost extinct. Hypermiling in that tank with its old-school pushrod V6, it does worse on E10 gas than straight gas. Less power, less fuel economy, and runs less smoothly.

The Fit is working through its first tank of unknown juice, so the jury is out on whether a new-school engine will do better on E10 than my Buick.

 

FWIW, I found this article that has a comment which supports my following statement in a previous post in this thread:
".....the computers which control modern engines have a little wiggle room to slightly advance the ignition timing when gas with a higher octane rating than what is specified is burned."
Plus, the vehicle in the article is a 1st generation Honda Insight, which has a less sophisticated PCM than the units installed in current Honda vehicles.
Please read the 3rd paragraph under "Doing It On The Honda Insight".

http://autospeed.com/cms/title_The-5...0/article.html

 

The evenings and early morning hours have been wonderfully cool for this time of the year in Texas, but since all of the gas pups are pumping 10% ethanol I believe that it is creating moisture condensation in my fuel tank. On two different occasions I when I have started my car it has repeatedly died and at highway speed it cut out repeatedly on one occasion. This is since recently purchasing a tank of EXXON Premium with the 10% ethanol sticker on the pump. Has anyone else experienced this?

 

I've run a lot of E10 through my Fit and never had that happen. I'd put a higher probability on there being something wrong with that particular fillup, such as excess water in the underground tank or somesuch.

 

Dump a can of Drygas or Heet into the tank. If the problem goes away, then water in the gas is the cause.

 

The tank that I filled from must have been near empty, because the bottom is where the water settles. My father owned a service station and we dipped the tanks to match our sales against the amount in them daily and also applied a chemical putty to the end of stick to check for water..... I am wondering if that is even done these days.

 

Oh, how I hate ethanol-mixed gasoline. At the very least, we should have the choice of which fuel to buy. I would pay a little more for straight gas, and I bet most people in the know would, too.

I HATE HATE HATE having a government who thinks we are all their children to look after. And I do not mean just the current administration, I mean the last several administrations. Bigger government = worse and less efficient government.
Maybe I should secede! LOL