E85, Ethanol myths and realities
E85 Logo: E85 Logo. Source-Wikipedia
What is E85?
The 85 refers to 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. Regular gasoline in Minnesota is E10, 90% gasoline and 10% ethanol.
What are the benifits of E85?
- Reduces smog forming pollutants by 25%
Reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 35% to 40%
Increased vehicular horsepower by 5%
Why has the price of E85 gone up so much?
The price of ethanol has been driven up because major oil refiners are suddenly buying in bulk. They're stocking up on ethanol as a replacement for MTBE, a petroleum-based additive suspected of causing cancer. MTBE and ethanol boost the octane of gasoline and can reduce pollution.
Won't E85 production deplete human and animal food supplies?
No, actually the production of ethanol from corn uses only the starch of the corn kernel, all of the valuable protein, minerals and nutrients remain. One bushel of corn produces about 2.7 gallons of ethanol AND 11.4 pounds of gluten feed (20% protein) AND 3 pounds of gluten meal (60% protein) AND 1.6 pounds of corn oil.
What about E85 miles per gallon?
Unfortunately, because ethanol contains less energy than gasoline, fuel economy is reduced for most 2002 and earlier FFVs (flexible-fuel vehicles) that are currently on the road by about 30% (most after 2003 lose only 15-17%, or less) when operated on pure E85 (summer blend). Some of the newest vehicles can lessen this reduction to only 5-15%. It is important to note, however, that if the engine had been specifically tuned for consumption of ethanol (higher compression, different fuel-air mixture, etc.) the mileage would have been much better than the results above. The aforementioned fact leads some to believe that the "FFV" engine is more of an infant technology rather than fully mature.
In daily commute driving, mostly highway, 100% E85 in a turbocharged car can hit fuel mileages of over 90% of the normal gasoline fuel economy. Tests indicate approximately a 5% increase in engine performance is possible by switching to E85 fuel in high performance cars.
Does it take more energy to produce ethanol than it delivers?
Current technology fuel ethanol, returns 139% of the energy invested in its production and delivery for a net +39% energy return, due to the free solar energy captured by the plants used for its production. Current values for the energy balance of production show that gasoline returns only 80% of the energy invested in its production and delivery to the consumer. It has a negative energy balance of -20%.
Energy crops such as perennial switch grasses, timothy, and other high-output/low-input crops will be used in the future. This will improve the energy input/output ratio even more.
How are flex fuel vehicles (FFV) different from a gasoline-only vehicle?
"An FFV will contain a fuel sensor that detects the ethanol/gasoline ratio. In addition, a number of other parts on the FFV's fuel delivery system are modified so that they are ethanol compatible. The fuel tank, fuel lines, fuel injectors, computer system, anti-siphon device and dashboard gauges have been modified slightly to tolerate the alcohol. This normally includes a stainless steel fuel tank and Teflon-lined fuel hoses. The use of E-85 in gasoline-only vehicles is not recommended as it may cause damage due to the incompatibility of the alcohol fuel (ethanol) with the parts in gasoline-only engines. Performance and emissions will also be compromised."ethanolrfa.org
How is ethanol purified from the fermentation mixture?
For blending with gasoline, ethanol purities of 99.5 to 99.9% are required, depending on temperature, to avoid separation. Currently, the most widely used purification method is a physical absorption process using molecular sieves.
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Hi my name is Cory and the fourth and fith graders at Laura MacArthur Elementary is coming to The Science Museum of Minnesota
On June first. We are going to the smm from 10:00-3:00. I really liked your website.
Thanks,Austin
Are you confident of your energy return numbers? The last I heard, growing corn for fuel was not net energy efficient. You seem to be saying there's a 40% energy gain. How did you arrive at this number?
Why is gasoline not energy efficient? That's the key reason we began to use it for fuel. Is it because of its relative scarcity now?
I, too, used to say "I heard it takes more energy to make a gallon of ethanol than you can get out of it." My wife, who works with renewable energy researchers finally handed me a stack of articles and challenged me to look at the research. I agree with a "cite your sources" approach.
Estimating the Net Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol. By Hosein Shapouri, James A. Duffield, and Michael S. Graboski. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Office of Energy and New Uses. Agricultural Economic Report No. 721. is the first of many references found at JourneyToForever.org
Another more recent study(pdf) cites ethanol giving 67% more energy than it takes to produce.
Getting a gallon of gasoline from oil under ground to your gas tank has an energy cost, too. These source articles are not easy to understand, but after looking at several, I have accepted their view.
Their calculations do not include the hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives spent trying to protect our access to foreign oil.
Nothing from nothing leaves nothing. I assume you refer to either the Gulf War of 1991 (fought to enforce a UN resolution to repel unprovoked aggression), or the current conflict in Iraq (fought to enforce a UN resolution to enforce the armistice at the end of the previous conflict). Neither was fought "to protect our access to foreign oil." And if they were, they were singularly unsuccessful, as the oil fields remain in the hands of their respective nations (albeit Iraq's are administered by the UN.)
Furthermore, US casualties in both conflicts combined have not yet topped 5,000, let alone "tens of thousands."
We are all, of course, entitled to our political opinions. But they are rather out of place in a scientific discussion.
As you said, political discussion is out of place here, but...
By "casualties" I assume you mean just deaths. Casualties include more than that, and so there have been way more than 5,000 American casualties in these two conflicts.
And by "lives," I assume the previous poster meant "human lives," not just American lives. In which case he is entirely correct with the "tens of thousands."
Whether or not someone agrees with the "protecting our access to foreign oil" thing, it's definitely in the US's interest to work for a politically stable Iraq, in part because we can then buy oil from them. Obviously there are other reasons too, but it would be silly to ignore that.
I grant your first point. The post I was replying to said:
"Lives spent" means deaths. However, you are absolutely right -- the word "casualties" does include both the dead and the wounded, and I was careless to use that word when referring only to lives lost.
I disagree with your second point. While all human life is equally precious, ARTiFactor's post was talking about the cost of gasoline in the United States. Thus, American lives would be the only ones at issue, and deaths of people from other countries -- while equally, terribly tragic -- would not be included in calculating our costs. (There's a reason they call economics the dismal science.)
I would also disagree with your third point. While political stability -- in all countries -- is a good thing, instability has less impact on oil prices than one might think. Oil is a fungible commodity -- a barrel of crude from Saudi Arabia is identical to a barrel from Canada or Mexico. In 1973, Arab nations imposed an embargo on selling oil to the United States. The US simply bought it's oil from non-Arab countries; the nations that had been buying that oil switched to Arab suppliers; and within a few months the boycott collapsed. (To my knowledge, the US hasn't bought any oil from Iraq since 1990. While having free and open markets benefits everyone, this particular country has not been a source of oil to us for a long time.)
All of which obscures my original point, that the American lives lost in the Gulf these past 17 years were not expended in pursuit of oil, and thus should not be included in any calculation of the price of that commodity.
I think civilian deaths in Iraq should be counted, too.
You might be interested in this database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq that have resulted from the 2003 military intervention by the USA and its allies. (currently about 70,000).
Also this quote from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
I suspect our presence in Iraq is about oil. Even president Bush is now saying so (Washington Post).
Keeping our focus on science, this post is mostly about math, and the misuses thereof.
I don’t see how non-American deaths would figure into the price we pay for oil. Unless the cost of oil has risen to pay for those deaths in some fashion, but to my knowledge it hasn’t.
The Iraqi Body Count uses a flawed methodology. They take reports of fatalities, even those from obviously biased sources, at face value without attempting to verify the numbers. They also fail to distinguish between “deaths in Iraq that have resulted from the 2003 military intervention by the USA and its allies,” and those which resulted from the actions of terrorists, insurgents, militias, etc.
The Johns Hopkins study is even worse and has been widely discredited. They interviewed a small number of Iraqis in selected neighborhoods – some of which had been unusually violent – counted 547 deaths, and then extrapolated to a number a full order of magnitude over other worst-case scenarios. Even the Iraq Body Count people criticize the Hopkins study.
(An argument can also be made that the liberation of Iraq has actually saved lives by removing Saddam Hussein.)
However, this is all academic. Whatever the true number of deaths, I would maintain they are not germane to the cost of gasoline, as the war is not about oil.
Which brings us to the final point. In the Washington Post article, President Bush does not say American troops are in Iraq to “protect our access to foreign oil” – the original assertion. Rather, he claims that one of reasons for staying in Iraq now is to prevent its oil from falling into the hands of terrorists, who could use it as a weapon of economic blackmail or to fund their operations. (The second part of the Post article contains analysis which supports my earlier discussion of world oil markets – they even use the word “fungible”! – and thus undermines the blackmail argument.)
I tend to rationalize things that would otherwise be morally troublesome to me. It's easier for me if these things are far away.
Tens of thousands of lives lost is untrue. Several thousand lives lost is better, and I think it's a fair price for... ensuring that a corrupt regime has not obtained WMDs. Think how many lives that dictator COULD have taken. Billions maybe. You can't prove otherwise.
And by acknowledging that we mean to protect resources from others in no way suggests that those resources are important to us. Because governments operate on altruism.
And because dwindling oil supplies can be found in many places, why would we be interested in Iraq's oil? After all, we are great friends with the Venezuelans, Sudanese, Russians. Cheap oil forever, from everybody! It is, in the end (the very end), fungible.
I detect a subtle whiff of irony here. Perhaps even sarcasm. So let us clear the air.
We are not discussing morality. (I made clear that all deaths are tragic, wherever they occur.) We are discussing how much it costs to get a gallon of gasoline out of the ground. ARTiFactor argues that the cost should include the blood and treasure expended in the Iraq War. I argue that it should not.
You seem to agree with ARTiFactor, implying that the current conflict is indeed being fought for oil. But you offer no evidence for this, only sly innuendo. And as fun as that might be, it doesn’t really cut it on a science blog.
Math is a science. Our discussion of the number of violent deaths in Iraq has focused on two studies with faulty math behind them. Despite this, the number is certainly in the tens of thousands. But the deaths have had many different causes, not all of which are related to our original question.
What is your evidence that oil supplies are dwindling? As the price of oil goes up, sources which had previously not been worth exploiting become economically feasible. All part of the fungibility.
Civilian deaths should be counted? Really, terrorists killing each other should be counted in the number of war casualties for you to apply to the cost of oil?
For those of you complaining about the war being "About Oil", I sure hope each of you are doing so from your solar powered homes while you walk everywhere you need to go. If not, then you are a hypocrite and part of the necessity of war being "about oil".
Funny how the champions for conservation and the enviro-whackos have the biggest hypocrite on the planet as their leader, Mr. Al Bore.
So stop your Bush bashing and get over it.
If an engine is modified to a higher compression ratio, the mpg change is near zero. All engines can be modified for ethanol. Drag racers and monster truck owners along with all gear-heads have been doing it for years. If it were true that alcohol produced less energy during combustion than gas, race enthusiasts would not run alcohol fueled cars. Yes, I know race cars get horrible mpg. Keep in mind they are tuned to go fast not far. Also keep in mind that a fully blown gas race car gets the same mpg as a fully blown alcohol fueled race car. The alcohol fueled car goes faster.
That ethanol contains less energy per volume or weight than gasoline by itself is a scientific fact, there is no changing it. However, what can vary is the efficiency with which that energy is harvested by the vehicles engine. This is why properly tuned engines consuming ethanol blends can approach the mpg levels seen in gasoline only engines, and why it is possible to generate greater horsepower from ethanol-fueled engines than from gasoline-only engines. When tuned for a power, an ethanol consuming engine can realize a greater net energy output, despite the lower inherit energy content of the ethanol itself. (And, consequently, why ethanol engines tuned for fuel efficiency can approach, but will likely never equal, the mpg levels of gasoline-only engines.)
Car and Driver just tested a flex-fuel 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe on both E85 and regular gas. Their results show no change in performance from one fuel to the other; acceleration times and such were identical. However, fuel economy when using E85 was reduced by 28-30%, from 15 city/21 hwy on 87 octane gasoline to 11 city/15 hwy on ethanol. The vehicle's driving range was reduced from 390 miles a tank for gasoline to 290 on ethanol.
Click to seeThe whole article
how do I get an E85 gas station in my town?
I SEE IT THIS WAY,IF YOU WANT TO GO FAR AND SAVE ABOUT $500,STICK WITH EVERYDAY GAS. YOUR GOING TO SPEND MORE MONEY CONVERTING TO ETHANOL THAN IF YOU JUST STUCK WITH GAS. NOT TO INCLUDE E85 COSTS MORE,AND YOU ARE GARUTEED TO LOSE MPG. WHAT PERSON IN THE RIGHT MIND WOULD PAY MORE FOR LESS????
To the person that judges things on price only and drives an import car, you won't understand.
A friend of mine builds the worlds largest roto tillers. He was picked up at the airport in Brazil. The limo driver said he needed fuel so they pulled into a gas station with LONG lines. While sitting their he noticed a pump not being used. "Whats that pump for" he ask. Oh thats Arab oil, was the answer. We're in a hurry lets get some and get going replied the American. No was the reply "we support Brazil". And they sat there for 30 min. untill they had filled up with Brazilen ethanol. Oh by the way, the gas was cheaper!.
The American Lung Association of Minnesota is a strong supporter of E85 fuel, which is cleaner-burning than gasoline (20% less ozone-producing pollutants, 30% fewer greenhouse gas emissions) and sold in more than 300 stations statewide. To see where E85 is sold, who offers the best price and which vehicles can use E85, visit our website:
www.CleanAirChoice.org.
Bob Moffitt
Communications Director
Clean Fuels & Vehicle Technology program
American Lung Association of the Upper Midwest
One thing that is neglected in this article is quantity. Although engines can be converted to use ethanol efficiently, this is not something everybody could do. We would run out! Not enough corn crop is converted to ethanol to meet the demand if everybody started using E85, and to meet that demand, so much corn would have to be grown, other crops would suffer. I also notice little mention of biodiesel, which, last I heard, had a 93% net energy gain from soybeans. Again, however, to meet a full demand, too much farmland would have to be devoted to fuel crop. While fossil fuels, ethanol, and biodiesel will last us awhile, eventually, the oil will run out and the bio-alternatives won't meet demand. What then?
If this country were to switch to mainly ethanol based autos we in essence would keep American dollars in America. And to me that's cool, but the fact that all the companies are buying up all the ehtanol it seems that they're positioning themselves to keep consumers exactly where we all are now with regular petroleum based gasoline (basically we'll be making the rich richer while the poor get poorer). One real question to ask is: Would this open things up for genetically engineered corn to be produced for ethanol production?
Interesting discussion. My quick take on this E85 corn growing business is wouldn't that allow other countries to start manufacturing E85. This would allow less technically advanced countries to grow corn or other valuable crops for E85 production. This should increase production and decrease prices lower than they are now. American farmers producing E85 is a cool thing, but to me so is a Mexican or South American farmer. There is plenty of farm land out there, So doubling corn growth is a option to help better the global argument on global warming and helps out US allied countries.
So, I just read everything from everyone of the comments posted here.
First off, the conflict in Iraq has to be in some way related to the price of oil. Weather or not our elected officials refuse to admit it. The price of gasoline was slightly over a dollar a gallon before the conflict started, and is now almost four times higher. It started rising steadily after 9/11, and began to skyrocket when the occupatoin of iraq began.
Next question:
All lives lost (american or otherwise) must be counted when factoring the cost of it all. Afterall the same oil that powers their vehicles powers ours as well. In addition to that, we oil transporting troops to kill those people. We use oil during the manufactering process of the bullets, and the weapons (assuming the weapon being used was produced in the US). Oil is used to make the clothing for their uniforms and boots. There for, all lives lost during this conflict affect the bottom line in some way shape or form.
Next:
Alcohol Fuel powered race cars cannot run on gasoline. The compression ratios are much different, and the fuel jets in the carbs or the injection system wont allow it. Which is not to say that an engine designed to run on alcohol could not be detuned to run on 114 octane gasoline. (with some healthy doses of NO2). Most recently there are engines that are capable of running on race gas, but also have stand alone alcohol injection systems. The alcohol like nitrous atomizes gas allowing it to burn at a lower temperature. Heat robs engines of power, so these systems allow the engine run cooler thus producing more power. Nitrous is an inert gas, meaning its not flammable. Its sole purose for racing is to cool fuel charges. Alcohol, methanol, and nitromethane are all higher quality fuel types that allow ultra high compression ratio engines run properly. Computer controlled flexfuel type vehicles adjust engine timing among other things to allow no noticable drop in power. The result is a drop in fuel enonomy. This is an unavoidable, and fundamentle flaw with the technology.
(Note: none of this is a political argument. You may have whatever opinion you wish about Operation Iraqi Freedom. The question is, to what extent does that operation influence the price of gasoline?)
First, I do not understand how the price of gasoline in 2008 can be used as evidence of the motivation for actions taken in 2003.
Second, the history of gas prices you present is incorrect. In March 2003, at the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom, a gallon of gas in the US cost about $1.60. After a brief spike, it actually went down. It did not rise above $2.00 on a consistent basis until March 2005, and vacillated widely for about two years, tending to peak during the summer driving season. It’s only been the past 12 months that gas has consistently been at $2.75 and above. This does not closely track with events in Iraq. When violence peaked last summer, gas was at its recent low. Since last fall violence in Iraq has dropped drastically, but gas prices have soared.
Third, and most importantly, most economists agree that the price of oil has gone up due to increased demand from expanding economies, such as India’s and China’s. (The amount used by the military is a drop in the bucket of global consumption.)
As I said before, oil is a fungible commodity. It doesn’t matter too much who you buy it from. If Iraq were taken off-line (as it largely was through much of the ‘90s), we could still get the same product from a bunch of other places.
I have been wondering if I could blend my own fuel, like if I put nine gallons of “normal” fuel with one gallon of e-85. We already have up to 10% ethanol in our gas, so how far could I push this ratio?
Why are we still using corn? A return of 1.3 vs. 11 to 1 for switch grass! Are we effing retarded??? Add to that that switch grass will grow almost anywhere, there is roughly 20% of the US that no other crops will grow that could be used for switch grass.
And citing race engines is an apples and oranges debate. Race engines typically use injectors four times the capacity of equivalent gas engines. Raising compression Does in fact do wonders for ethanol burning engines. Offenhauser anyone???
The corn thing still gets me. Why would someone spend $100.00 to make $130.00 when they could spend $100.00 and make $1100.00?? Brazil has been usinig sugar cane for years. Why are we here in America so far behind on this?
We also need to look at various different fuel sources, not try to trade one for another. If we want to be completely free of fossil fuels it will take more than just ethanol.
Lobbies. And subsidies. And the fact that corn-growing Iowa holds the first vote in the presidential primary season.
it's been hard to find E85 in some states and only E10 has been utilized greatly across some countries. Anyone aware of this ---> "In Wisconsin, drivers of E85 ethanol flex-fuel vehicles waited in line for free Cenex gift cards. Anyone who purchased eight and a half gallons or more of e85 between 10am and noon received free twenty dollar gift cards from the the Wisconsin Corn Growers Association."
The alcohol can be a gas dvd/book is a very good source on this topic as regards to fuel/land use, and food production. It changed the way i look at fuel alcohol and its impact on food production, in a positive way.
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