E15 is coming

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Jastreb
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E15 is coming

Post by Jastreb »

http://www.epa.gov/otaq/regs/fuels/additive/e15/

The short of it is - the EPA will now allow E15 blend gas to be sold, but only for 2007 or newer vehicles... Chalk another win for the corn ethanol lobby. :( Having separate pumps for 2007 and pre-2007 cars... sounds to me like a bloody mess in the making. And I though E10 was bad enough...
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Re: E15 is coming

Post by AHTOXA »

I want pure gasoline. It's all about PAH!
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Re: E15 is coming

Post by FDSpirit »

Is there really any benefit to our cars with these blends of gas? I'm pretty uneducated on the subject, but weren't cars running fine before that? I know there are a few "pure gas" stations left around here, but I never understood this whole ethanol thing. Seems like it's just something to line the corn industry's pockets.
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Re: E15 is coming

Post by Rope-Pusher »

Jastreb wrote:http://www.epa.gov/otaq/regs/fuels/additive/e15/

The short of it is - the EPA will now allow E15 blend gas to be sold, but only for 2007 or newer vehicles... Chalk another win for the corn ethanol lobby. :( Having separate pumps for 2007 and pre-2007 cars... sounds to me like a bloody mess in the making. And I though E10 was bad enough...
My buddy what can burn E85 hasta keep in mimed the price savings he needs to achieve to account for the energy shortage in E85. Now, will we all need to do the math between E10 & E15 as we pull up to the pumps?

Why add ethanol? Changes emissions, reduces amount of petroleum burned in the car (how much is used to grow the corn and transport it to the distillery?), raises cost of feed for cattle, hogs, and the Colonel's pets. It's not strictly a fuel supply or an engineering issue. All things being equal, it requires higher flow rate fuel pump and injectors, reduced oil change intervals, some special considerations on fuel system materials, reduces fuel mileage, leads to famine in Ethiopia (uses food for fuel) and __________________________.....(you phil in the blank)
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Re: E15 is coming

Post by FDSpirit »

Great. Can't they just mess with stuff that matters? I hate the corn industry. Those stupid HFCS commercials make me wanna punch somebody.
http://pure-gas.org/index.jsp?stateprov=NY
I guess you can throw your state in there and check for local stations. I'm gonna hit up one of these my next fill up.
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Re: E15 is coming

Post by Tups »

Rope-Pusher wrote:(how much is used to grow the corn and transport it to the distillery?)
It's not like I fully support this ethanol thing - the Escort doesn't run on anything but the current 98E5 - but I'm sort of tired to see this argument every time they talk about ethanol in fuel. Yeah, growing corn etc. burns oil just like everything, but is it more or less than drilling crude oil, transporting it halfway across the globe and distilling it to gasoline and diesel? What's the energy balance like, i.e. do we burn more than a gallon of gasoline to produce a gallon of ethanol that can replace a gallon of gasoline in someone's fuel tank?
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Re: E15 is coming

Post by DarkPilot »

f**k ethanol blend fuels. They KILL mileage. Supposedly E blend gas is cheaper, but you need more of it to go the same distance.
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Re: E15 is coming

Post by Tups »

DarkPilot wrote:Supposedly E blend gas is cheaper, but you need more of it to go the same distance.
I'm sure that next year, when 95-octane is replaced with E10, the fuel prices will go up. If they come down, the taxation will be adjusted accordingly.
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Re: E15 is coming

Post by theholycow »

Tups wrote:It's not like I fully support this ethanol thing - the Escort doesn't run on anything but the current 98E5 - but I'm sort of tired to see this argument every time they talk about ethanol in fuel. Yeah, growing corn etc. burns oil just like everything, but is it more or less than drilling crude oil, transporting it halfway across the globe and distilling it to gasoline and diesel? What's the energy balance like, i.e. do we burn more than a gallon of gasoline to produce a gallon of ethanol that can replace a gallon of gasoline in someone's fuel tank?
100% agreed!

People talk about the entire ethanol economy from building the farm tractor to the lights above the pump at the gas station, but pretend that gasoline just magically appears in the tank of their car. I too don't know how they compare, and I'll never know if all we ever discuss is ethanol without even looking at dinosaur juice.

Let's see...

Petroleum: Produced worldwide and heavily imported (in the US, 57% imported)
Ethanol: Produced locally (at least in the US)

Petroleum: Huge mining rigs built on-site, hot hydrocracking, worldwide shipping, big environmental disasters that affect realists like me just as much as hippie environmentalists
Ethanol: Tractors and combines built in local factories, fermentation just like whiskey, local shipping, manageable fertilizer runoff (from farmers who waste their money and will go bankrupt anyway)

Petroleum: If the Chicken Littles are right, it will eventually run out and then all the old cars that can't reasonably be converted to E100 will be out of luck (someone will make horribly expensive synthetic gasoline)
Ethanol: We can always find a way to make it, and the more of it we use now, the more petroleum is saved for the vehicles that need it

Petroleum: Purportedly causes endless huge wars (there's no doubt in my mind that it contributes although I don't think it's as large a player as people say)
Ethanol: Purportedly takes food away from starving 3rd world countries (they're always going to starve; our farmers aren't shipping their corn over there anyway; and our farmers are already paid NOT to farm all of their land to avoid flooding the market)

What I want: All new cars to be designed to run on 100% ethanol just like Henry Ford made his Model T, or 100% SVO/biodiesel like Rudolph Diesel intended. Power production changed to non-fossil-fuels. Existing cars to have their dinosaur juice supply maintained for as long as possible, by converting other fossil fuels (yes it is possible; it's even a mature technology) as well as conserving the crude oil. Ethanol and biodiesel to be made from the waste stream, including farm/industrial waste, garbage, and sewage.

What will actually happen: 15% ethanol will be tried, it will suck because vehicles were designed for 10% just like they were 30 years ago in 1980 (I have proof), and a new wave of anti-ethanol people will continue using the petroleum that should be saved for 1968 Camaros.
Last edited by theholycow on Thu Oct 14, 2010 9:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: E15 is coming

Post by Rope-Pusher »

If farmers are smart at all, ALL of the land that they are getting paid not to grow certain crops on is their least productive land. Even if they extended corn production to this acreage, it wouldn't add a lot of inexpensive corn for ethanol production. Lord Maynard Keynes talked of Guns and Butter, but food and fuel demonstrates the principle of a demand curve for corn. The more we use grain for fuel production, the less we will have and the higher the cost for food production. Cellulosic ethanol production (As Cheech and Chong sang: "From stems and seeds that you don't need") is really where we are headed, but getting there with a cost-competitive product is taking some time.
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Re: E15 is coming

Post by theholycow »

Rope-Pusher wrote:The more we use grain for fuel production, the less we will have and the higher the cost for food production.
I would think that was true if there wasn't a surplus keeping prices deflated.

Food prices are up because energy prices are up. Mass-produced food price is mostly energy, with only a small fraction being materials (and most of the materials cost is from the energy required to make the materials too).
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Re: E15 is coming

Post by Rope-Pusher »

theholycow wrote:
Rope-Pusher wrote:The more we use grain for fuel production, the less we will have and the higher the cost for food production.
I would think that was true if there wasn't a surplus keeping prices deflated.

Food prices are up because energy prices are up. Mass-produced food price is mostly energy, with only a small fraction being materials (and most of the materials cost is from the energy required to make the materials too).
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So now Farmer Al is payin' Luther extra to work longer hours planting corn in the swampy end of the field and the tractor gets stuck and half the stalks die from too much water and he lost that Gov't money for not plantin', so it ends up costing the farmer more to grow that last 100 bushels of corn than the first 1000 bushels did, IFSO FATSO he has to charge more for his corn.
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Re: E15 is coming

Post by Jastreb »

I checked my owner's manual, and it specifically says not to use anything with greater than 10% ethanol. So first off, the claim than any vehicle newer than 2007 can use it is a white lie. Someday, E15 is gonna be as widespread as E10 is now, and getting gas will become a royal pain.
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Re: E15 is coming

Post by theholycow »

Jastreb wrote:I checked my owner's manual, and it specifically says not to use anything with greater than 10% ethanol.
Mine too.

Back in 1980 they called it Gasohol.
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They said it was good for 10% ethanol but I think they hadn't thoroughly engineered the carburetor to handle it in the long term. Then again, it runs pretty decently for 30 years old without a carburetor overhaul.
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