qmdv wrote:

N1593Y wrote:One only needs to refer to the table ...

What he is saying is that unless our lawmakers change, we are screwed. Let me change my wording arround. What he is saying is that unless we change our lawmakers, we are screwed.
CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN

Tim

Don't blame Obama dude, EISA 2007 is entirely a product of the Bush administration. Bush signed the flawed bill into law in January 2008 to great fanfare.

I hope it doesn't disappear avgas is just way to much anymore

avgas is just way to much

That's what monopoly does for you.

180Marty wrote:

avgas is just way to much

That's what monopoly does for you.

And limited production lots, and supply and demand, and a captive consumer group, and transportation costs from a limited number of refineries. Etcetera. And the grinch. And the trilateral commission. And the vast right wing conspiracy. And Rush Limbaugh.

......and self absorbed, for sale gullible politicians........

I didn't know what SEMA was but here it is.

The SEMA Show is the premier automotive specialty products trade event in the world (PLEASE NOTE: THE SEMA SHOW IS NOT OPEN TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC). It draws the industry’s brightest minds and hottest products to one place, the Las Vegas Convention Center.

An ethanol plant designer just sent this e-mail to me.

Just a couple things. Found it interesting that the blender(pump) station web site that Dan had posted had a sponsor listed as SEMA. I will be driving a E85 charger in Auto Weeks road rally that end up in SEMA. SEMA has been the most anti ethanol group in the aftermarket and was interested to learn more.

Just back from Detroit this week and finding alot of interest by engineers that would really to see E30.We don't give up on vehicles capable of higher blends but if engineers can get equal mileage with E30, reduce high load fuel enrichment and we ultimately show the difference between test fuels and consumer fuels, we have their interest.

Noticed this link http://www.flyunleaded.com/airports.php Jerri if there is a Distributor in Vegas for no alcohol fuel --- find where there getting the NO ALCOHOL FUEL here around Vegas --- I've got a 200 Gallon tank and Pump on trailer and will go there .Also have another 1600 gallon tank on truck available.
Alcohol is for drinking not for powering airplanes.

E-free mogas is available at my field, which is great. But it's only $.33 cheaper than 100LL . If it were $.50 cheaper, it would be easier to justify the cost of the STC in two years or so (I'm only near home base around half the hours I fly). I'd rather put that $$ towards new wing tip strobes or new windows. If it were closer to a dollar cheaper, I'd definitely prioritize it.

***
On another note, I really don't see where rational excitement comes from in the automotive world for burning alcohol blends. If you burn pure alcohol, you can boost the compression ratio to get higher thermodynamic efficiency; the boost is enough to overcome the disadvantages. That's why the race boys use it. If you are using a blend, then you are limited to the relatively low end of the range of compression ratios for the most part, and all the alcohol does is make it burn a bit cleaner while reducing overall thermal efficiency (alcohol cools the intake air charge significantly).

It seems almost entirely political. The reduction in petroleum consumption is about zero (given that it takes almost as much energy in liquid fuels to produce the equivalent in ethanol). So it doesn't offer an alternative to domestic or imported petroleum at all. Every kilojoule of ethanol represents close to a kilojoule of energy it took to make it in the first place.

Perhaps someone else has more insight on this than me...

Bill, I called Craig's and the kid working doesn't know who sells it. The owner is supposed to be in tomorrow and I'll find out where he's getting it in Vegas. I have a brand new 200 gallon Boat tank I think I might fill up. Now I just need a 12 volt pump.

Jaerl wrote:Bill, I called Craig's and the kid working doesn't know who sells it. The owner is supposed to be in tomorrow and I'll find out where he's getting it in Vegas. I have a brand new 200 gallon Boat tank I think I might fill up. Now I just need a 12 volt pump.

Watch your email - 20 gpm pump with hoses etc $179 bucks

If you burn pure alcohol, you can boost the compression ratio to get higher thermodynamic efficiency; the boost is enough to overcome the disadvantages.

30% ethanol would raise the octane rating about 7.5 points. If you were a engine designer, doing eco boost technology in Detroit, would you rather design for 84 octane that the oil companies like to make or 91.5? I've pretty well proven to myself that E30 goes just about as far as E0---- at least here in Iowa.

Don't know about E30 in Iowa, but here in Washington E10 costs me 2-3 mpg on the highway-- between 7 & 10%. E-zero mogas is available but at about a 16% price premium, so I only buy it for the airplane.

180Marty wrote:30% ethanol would raise the octane rating about 7.5 points. If you were a engine designer, doing eco boost technology in Detroit, would you rather design for 84 octane that the oil companies like to make or 91.5?

There is a common misconception that octane rating=power rating. It does not, and the two are not even particularly related. Alcohol has 1/3 less energy per unit volume than gasoline. Alcohol has less energy per stoichiometric fuel/air charge than gasoline by a wide margin as well. Adding alcohol to gasoline with the same compression ratio will reduce engine work output. This is due to the enthalpy of the alcohol and the stoichiometric differences. E-30 typically means a power loss of 10% on the same engine at the same volumetric fuel flow. You step on the gas slightly more as a result, and this leads to a higher volumetric fuel consumption.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel

In addition, ethanol production only yields 30% more energy than it takes to make it. if we all switched to E-30, our national gasoline energy consumption would actually go up by a factor of over two. That's because the EROEI (energy return on energy invested) of gasoline is around 10:1 at present, while for alcohol, it's 1.3. So it works out to (10/1.3*30%)=230% of present gasoline energy consumption to replace 30% of our gasoline with ethanol. You'll find similar conclusions elsewhere- greenies choose lower ethanol EROEI's, the oil folks like to use the best imported oil EROEI numbers.

Brazil can come out way ahead with alcohol- they have an ethanol EROEI of 8:1. The US has not figured out a way to do this.

To use alcohol effectively, one needs to boost the compression ratio of the engine to achieve higher Carnot thermal efficiencies. It's as simple as that. And you can't really bring gasoline fractions in ethanol blends along for the ride. An engine set up for alcohol has a high compression ratio to take advantage of high thermal efficiencies. An optimized alcohol engine will be more efficient than gasoline. A conventional gasoline Otto cycle engine today cannot optimally exploit the Octane number advantage of the alcohol. Newer designs can make progress.

These 'eco boost' engineers in Detroit know full well the limitations of alcohol with conventional engines. What we have today is not a result of stodgy bureaucracy, but real limitations. They would rather design an engine as revolutionary as they can dream it, at a price they can sell. That's what engineers do.

As for mileage with E-blends (page 6), it follows my own experience very closely:
http://www.ethanol.org/pdf/contentmgmt/ ... Report.pdf

lesuther, The manager from one of the plants I invested in just sent this out in the latest newsletter.

On a more positive note, I was in a meeting with one of the engine manufacturers recently, We learned that in order to meet international CAFE standards they have to increase the octane level of the fuels they consume. They informed us we will see smaller 4 cylinder engines power enhanced with eco boost technologies in the not to distant future. One of the easiest and most economical ways of doing this is ethanol. They believe somewhere between an E23 and E28 is the optimum blend for decreased emissions.

Another paragraph from the newsletter.

ICM has done a lot of good work in this area showing the effects of blending ethanol on the overall octane levels in gasoline and what ethanol is disguising in terms of some undesirable components in standard gasoline. Believe me when you read this detailed data, ethanol has been a good friend to the oil industry, but yet they continue to run us down. Why, because we are taking market share away from them. At 13.5 billion gallons produced annually, we now account for almost ten percent of the US gasoline consumption.

I would be interested in seeing what hotrod150's mileage is if we took the ethanol out of the fuel he is burning. From what I understand, you guys out there are getting sub-octane gasoline that needs help from ethanol. I assume the energy content in the 84 octane is the same but would the engine like it? If the refineries had to go back to 87 octane, would we get as much gasoline from a barrel, if they had to produce 10% more product would the price be cheaper in your opinion?

Guys.... TAKE THE F**KING ETHANOL OUT OF THE GAS !! Some of you guys have spent more time arguing about it than it would have taken to rig up a simple system to remove the ethanol and make your own E-0.

YES, of course it's not as easy as just driving up to a gas station that carries E-0 at $2.50 a gallon and a kid washes your windows like it was still 1957. But it will still be a lot cheaper than avgas. The time you spend bitching about E-0 not being easy to find anymore can be spent taking the ethanol out of E-10. I think the math far and away adds up to a big enough savings to be worth the effort... even after you lose 10% of your fuel (the ethanol you remove) and even after you spent an hour switching tanks and pumping and shammy-ing and testing.

Put 91 octane E-10 into a translucent tank. Pour 1/4 more water into the tank. Mix it up real well so the alcohol binds with the water. Let it all settle out into two layers. The water/ethanol mixture will be at the bottom of your tank. Drain this mixture off. You are left with E-0 gasonline in your tank. It SHOULD meet the minimum octane requirement for MOST low compression airplanes. Do two or three checks and tests on your new batch of E-0 gas to insure it is 100% water-free. Now shut up and go flying

oops duplicate sorry

EZFlap wrote:Guys.... TAKE THE F**KING ETHANOL OUT OF THE GAS !!

This likely actually works. Keeping alcohol dissolved in gasoline is actually a problem- it's called phase separation.

Interesting idea...reprocessing mogas to get rid of the alcohol. But then you have alcohol/water mix, which would have to be separated. Hmm.

180Marty wrote:If the refineries had to go back to 87 octane, would we get as much gasoline from a barrel, if they had to produce 10% more product would the price be cheaper in your opinion?

That's a question for a petroleum engineer. But in reality, it is possible (and likely, in an ethanol world) to get more energy from lower octane than higher octane for a given compression ratio.

Make no mistake, burning alcohol results in cleaner immediate tailpipe emissions across the board- lower particulate, CO, and NOx.

It would be nice to be as lean as possible. Unfortunately, this produces more NOx emissions due to higher combustion temperatures and time above the critical NOx reaction temperatures. This busts the CAFE targets. Too rich and you send unburned CO and other stuff out the tailpipe. To meet CAFE fuel economy standards, car manufacturers would like to burn leaner without belching out NOx, and be able to use slightly higher compression ratios for thermal efficiency. They would also like to advance the timing a bit more so they aren't wasting the energy of that last little bit of the fuel/air charge out the tailpipe at higher RPM's. These things are made a lot easier with alcohol.

But alcohol does nothing for a Lyc or TCM with the same compression ratio and timing as developed for 80 octane avgas in the 40's.

Wasn't this thread about Ethanol FREE Fuel? Why don't you guys resurrect one of the other 50 threads that got polluted with the "E" word.

Bill, I talked to Craig and he told me the people at Sevier Valley Oil in Richfield haul it for him. I called them and they said that they buy it straight from the refinery in Vegas and they won't fill your tank. He took my name and he's going to give it to a guy that delivers to Salt Lake and Utah Valley. He's supposed to give me a call. He said he comes up here about every other day and would fill a tank for me. When he calls I will find out exactly where he delivers and if any of you guys want his number, PM me.

I also know some people who deal in Military salvage. I bought 2, 600 Gallon tanks a few years ago and they had hundreds of them. Some of them were new and usable for drinking water. Hope they haven't scrapped them by now.

EZFlap wrote:Guys.... TAKE THE F**KING ETHANOL OUT OF THE GAS !! <snip> The water/ethanol mixture will be at the bottom of your tank. Drain this mixture off.

How do you get rid of the alcohol/water mix? Will it burn? No, not at the ratio Flap is talking about. Distilling? Heat the hangar/garage with the alcohol? This sounds promising but probably dangerous/impossible in town. Water the grass with it? You need to get rid of the alcohol without drawing a crowd. Definitely not a safe process without really thinking it through, but the vegetable oil to diesel fuel folks probably faced similar sorts of issues in the beginning without the added volatility of gasoline.

Maybe separate it with a cyclone centrifugal system? Like a dust collector. Sounds like we're going to have to atomize the fuel though......a bomb in the making. Can we spin it in an oxygen free state then pull the E out of the center of the cyclone? Thats how they get the junk out of the oil in the oil patch. I dunno. I might know people who do though.

Just get enough people together to make bulk buys from the refinery. Without water/alcohol in it how long can one store E0?