Ethanol in gas?

TeGGeR® wrote:
>
> Not quite. It's being added because the deep-green freaks have managed
> beyond all logic to convince legislators that ethanol is somehow
> "environmentally friendly".

its easy to blame the greenies for everything. wrong!

if the oil companies werent making more money for selling less gas, and
the ethanol suppliers/farmers werent making money, it wouldnt have
happened. at all. ever.

same with smog checks- theyre a scam too. attrition would get rid of the
truly gross polluters.

TeGGeR® wrote:
> To a point I suppose. But...
>
> It didn't work out for them when they were told to find an alternative to
> TEL.
> It didn't work out for them when they were prevented by the greenies and
> the NIMBYs from building new refineries.

excuses, excuses. excuses to charge more for gas. "its the greenies"!
its "nimby", etc. royal dutch shell closed a perfectly good refinery in
bakersfield california for no reason other than to tighten supply.

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news...SrBF8&refer=us

> It didn't work out for them when they were told to produce "boutique" fuels
> for tiny markets.
> It didn't work out for them when they were told to reduce sulfur content.

it always works out for them. always.

wrote:
> Meanwhile, Cuba is making plans to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, but
> Congress won't let our producers do it, being fearful of the Greenies.

coff (bull****) coff...

why would they WANT to increase supply when theyre getting whatever they
feel like charging now?

if you sold widgets on ebay for whatever you felt like charging, and
were not having supply problems, why would you want to spend the
millions to build a widget factory? that would glut the market and youd
be forced to lower prices.

Kenneth J. Harris wrote:
> Perhaps you would like to give the your source for your statements that
> ethanol causes a 6% mileage decrease(= 1.5 gal ethanol approximates 1
> gal gas).



You could Google it, you know. The first thing that shows up is:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question707.htm

which is actually a pretty reasonable analysis.

Regarding the water use, no it doesn't disappear, but you're taking
water that could be drunk, used to grow food, wash your car, take a
bath, etc., and are turning it into water vapor. Sure it'll rain
somewhere. Don't you know how much water California is already
"stealing" from Utah, they're really ****ed about the current
allocation. Potable water is a valuable resource and you'll understand
that when the supply of that tightens up too.

Meanwhile, let's all have more kids and encourage more immigration,
legal or otherwise.

This link will let you see what mileage others are getting in real life.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/mpg/MPG.do?action=browseList
I have been updating mine almost every time i fill up.
09/30/2005 266.40 8.009 33.3
10/07/2005 230.00 8.122 28.3
10/17/2005 225.80 7.769 29.1
10/24/2005 222.40 7.674 29.0
11/08/2005 221.90 7.658 29.0
12/14/2005 186.50 7.247 25.7
03/27/2006 236.30 8.681 27.2
04/05/2006 255.30 8.704 29.3
04/12/2006 224.40 7.521 29.8
04/25/2006 244.40 8.847 27.6

Go here first and create your own record https://www.fueleconomy.gov/mpg/MPG.do
it graphs it out for you also.




"ThomasE" > wrote in message lkaboutautos.com...
> Regarding the more tangible ideas presented I suggest that we all run an
> experiment with our cars comparing Ethanol Gas with Non Ethanol Gas. As I
> have indicated in my Apr 24, 2006 at 02:48 PM post under the title "MPG
> difference with different gas?" I, personally, have seen strong
> indication of large fluctuations in gas mileage between two different
> brands/gas stations that I have been monitoring lately here in Milpitas,
> CA. The difference is not small. So far I have filled up a total of 6
> tanks of gas (3 from each station) using my 3 different cars and noticed a
> 15-17%!! difference in the ethanol gas compared to the non-ethanol gas. The
> magnitude of the difference surprised me.
>
> I engaged in this experiment because I had been routinely fueling up at my
> local 76 gas station for the past year or so, checking gas mileage once in
> a while out of curiosity and as an indication of general engine health.
> Then, in the last few months, I noticed that gas mileage on my '98 Nissan
> Frontier had dropped significantly and I started wondering if my engine
> was getting out of tune. So I tried filling up at another gas station, my
> local Shell station and voila! The MPG went back up to the 24.5MPG that I
> remember when the truck was new. I repeated the experiment with my other
> two cars, an '88 Nissan 323 and a '89 Honda CRX and I also noticed similar
> MPG differences (15-17%).
>
> I cannot claim to know at this point whether this is due to the ethanol or
> other additives. I do know that the caloric content of ethanol is much
> lower than gas so some decrease in gas mileage should be expected. Also I
> do not know whether the caloric content of ethanol is converted to
> mechanical energy with the same efficiency. And sure, other factors could
> be at play such as driving conditions, ambient temperature, accuracy of
> pump measurement etc. So I would like to encourage you to run similar
> experiments as I continue my experiment so that we can collect a large
> statistical sample and remove the random errors.
>
> I also suggest that somebody posts some ideas on how to remove other
> variables from this experiment so that MPG differences can be attributed
> to gasoline only. E.g. Do not compare city driving with Highway driving,
> short driving with long driving etc.
> In my case, with my truck, I do mostly highway driving and I noticed that
> the MPG using gas from any one particular gas station is surprisingly
> consistent (no more than 2-3% variation). I cannot explain the 15-17%
> difference that I have recently observed between these the two gas
> stations I mentioned above.
>
> When it comes to the less tangible ideas presented, I have to confess,
> that I live in the US but I am originally from Europe and still spend a
> lot of time in Europe. In Europe where there is a lot more regulation by
> our "benevolent" governments we pay around $6 per gallon in most European
> states. The true cost of gas in Europe is more or less the same as for
> every other country, that is, somewhere between $2.00 and $2.50 per gallon
> which covers paying for the international price of crude, refinement costs
> and various transportation costs. The rest of the price up to the $6 level
> is, you guessed it, taxes that our benevolent European governments levy on
> us using the power that we relinquished to them a long time ago. My
> general advice to you Americans is, whatever you do, do not follow
> Europe's example. If you do, you will also deprive us Europeans of the
> still rather individualistic America you have now which is the only
> remaining reminder to us and the rest of the world of what our countries
> could have been had we not relinquished our power as individuals to the
> collectivism of the state. As to how America got to be this fortunate,
> it's another story but, from what I see, America's individualistic
> fortitude will be temporary and short lived if you do not safeguard it.
> After all, wouldn't you agree that it would be difficult for America to
> avoid the fate of almost every other country in the world? So be very
> weary of relinquishing power to the collective thinking of the state, it
> is a one way path, a trap that almost every other country in the world has
> fallen into and cannot get out of. It happens gradually as it happened for
> us Europeans. For many of us Europeans America is left as the only
> reminder of what our countries could have been.
>
>

On 2006-04-25, > wrote:

> a vehicle as far as 1.0 gallons of gas. The earlier poster arguing
> against the gas mileage drop is either biased or truly ignorant.

Much would depend on the car. In my case, the Dodge van of which I
spoke was susceptible to pre-detonation (knock or pinging). This
severely reduces the efficiency of the engine. Loss of efficieny
equals lower milage. Using E90 gasoline greatly reduced pinging under
load on hot days. So, reduced pinging equals increase efficiency. A
net gain or loss in mileage? Who knows. All I know is my truck ran
better and I didn't "notice" a loss in mileage.

How timely is this? Popular Mechanics crunches the numbers:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...page=1&c=y

nb

On 25 Apr 2006 12:15:37 -0700, "butch burton" >
wrote:

>The Agri Business Lobby is the biggest booster of ethanol. It can harm
>certain rubber gaskets and o rings in older autos - dissolves them. It
>delivers less energy than straight gas. Ethanol gets an $18 per gallon
>subsidy from us taxpayers and still costs $118 per barrel - really $136
>with the subsidy included.
>
>Cornell University did a study of the efficiency of producing ethanol -
>they determined it took 129 BRU's of energy - inputs ranging from
>diesel fuel to till, harvest, transport and produce the stuff while
>only delivering 100 BTU's.
>
>Yes the US of A produces a whole lot of corn simply because the stuff
>is so subsidized - cash price is now around $2.35 per bushel - not much
>change from 40 years ago. When Mexico opened their borders to US corn,
>their local corn producers could not compete - nobody in the world can
>with that price - cotton is even worse. We have a fantastic amount of
>"carry over" corn from last year still in silos around the country.
>The Agri Business Lobby got the gasoline clean air bill passed last
>year that would require all gasoline in the US to be adultrated with
>ethanol and increase to 20% of the total blend over the next 10 years.
>I suspect ethanol in gasoline causes a net degredation to our
>environment after the inefficiency of the stuff along with the run off
>from the additional acers of corn being planted is taken into account.
>
>So IMHO all the whole ethanol thing boils down to is this - our
>congress - both houses cow tows to the Agri Business Lobby - pure and
>simple - like so many other issues - who has the money controls our
>federal political system. I know our system is "better" than most
>others - wow what a mess the rest of the world must be in for that to
>be true.
>
>End of rant.

I think what you say is pretty much correct. However, it should be
mentioned that the idea of ethanol fuel is not inherently bad. Brazil
has a very successful program and expects to be completely independent
of imported oil soon. They use sugar cane which I think is less
energy intensive to grow, harvest and process. I wonder what the
economics of beets would be.

On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 00:52:38 -0700, SoCalMike
> wrote:

wrote:
>> Meanwhile, Cuba is making plans to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, but
>> Congress won't let our producers do it, being fearful of the Greenies.
>
>coff (bull****) coff...
>
>why would they WANT to increase supply when theyre getting whatever they
>feel like charging now?
>
>if you sold widgets on ebay for whatever you felt like charging, and
>were not having supply problems, why would you want to spend the
>millions to build a widget factory? that would glut the market and youd
>be forced to lower prices.

What is blocking US drilling in the Gulf is the fact that the
residents of a certain state understandably don't want drilling off
their coast. That might not matter except that their governor has a
brother in high office.

The basic problem with ethanol is how energy inefficient it is to
produce. Cornell said it takes 129 BTU's of energy to make 100 BTU's
of energy from ethanol. There is a vast world surplus of sugar just
now and even with that surplus I will bet Brazil is subsidizing the
hell out of their ethanol program. Sugar beets are grown for sugar
production in this country in a few places becasue the US govt places
strict quotas on sugar imports into the USA. If those import quotas
were removed, there would not be the first sugar beet grown in the US
nor would there be any cane sugar grown in FL - a very wealthy Cuban
family owns the FL cane sugar business.

Also the whole business of corn sugar production would dry up - it is
cheaper than cane sugar - which is a vastly better sugar - only because
of the huge govt subsidy on corn. When you roll all the govt ag
subsidies up together - you find a sticky web that controls the US
Senate and to a lesser degree the house. The Senate is easier to buy.
If anyone attempts to eliminate these welfare programs for the billion
dollar agri business sector - it won't happen - too many wealthy people
are dependent upon taxpayer handouts.

Gordon McGrew wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 00:52:38 -0700, SoCalMike
> > wrote:
>
>> wrote:
>>> Meanwhile, Cuba is making plans to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, but
>>> Congress won't let our producers do it, being fearful of the Greenies.
>> coff (bull****) coff...
>>
>> why would they WANT to increase supply when theyre getting whatever they
>> feel like charging now?
>>
>> if you sold widgets on ebay for whatever you felt like charging, and
>> were not having supply problems, why would you want to spend the
>> millions to build a widget factory? that would glut the market and youd
>> be forced to lower prices.
>
> What is blocking US drilling in the Gulf is the fact that the
> residents of a certain state understandably don't want drilling off
> their coast. That might not matter except that their governor has a
> brother in high office.
>


there are other states in the gulf as well- louisiana, texas, etc.

the fact of it is the oil companies are happy to bring the oil over from
the middle east, refine it, then charge what they feel like. and WTF are
YOU gonna do about it? nothin, thats what.

then they say "ummm... its the environmentalists!" and you, as one of
the lemmings, say "uhhh... okay!"

there *is no shortage*

no "gas lines", no rationing, no closed stations. just record profits.

they gotta make the money while they can, because dubya and his cronies
only have a few more years of looting to go! gotta make sure they can
all retire VERY comfortably, while the next administration (dem or
repub) has to deal with the aftermath.