20% Ethanol in our gas? oh oh.
 

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=14238

10% is already bullshit, now they want even more because "omfg we're not making enough money you piece of $hit !"

What sup with these "Corn Ethanol" people, there is almost no benefits in Corn based Ethanols. It cost a lot of money and energy to make, it uses a lot of water, and what it came out is ? some shit that has so little Energy volume, and of course it uses OUR food to make them. Unlike Sugar cane.

This is sad.

Lets assign an ethanol tzar. That way, when their god awful abomination of a fuel destroys all the rubber and aluminum parts of my car I'll know who to send the repair bill to.

From my Owner's Manual:

In a big box marked "CAUTION":
And:
Our cars are not unique in this caution. Components in the fuel system are not designed to handle the damage - from rubber breakdown in hoses and pumps, to water separation in the fuel tank - caused by high concentrations of ethanol. So far, only cars certified "E-85" can safely run more than 10% ethanol. According to this website there are only about 40 vehicles manufactured worldwide that advertise E-85 compatibility.

So, any government is going to end up with a lot of blood (lawsuits) on their hands if they go ahead with this proposal.

I'd urge all of you who are able (US Citizens) to send an email to your local representatives stating your opposition to this proposal, and to make whatever facts you can find known to them.

^shell v-power does NOT contain any ethanol.

This does not make sense... unless you factor in the cost of changing existing infrastructure to Electric stations.

It's cheaper to continue using "fluid" fuel for the time being. Doesn't hurt gas company's bottom line.

IMHO: It's a half baked solution, just like hybrids. I prefer a whole answer, not a sitting on the fence answer. Mugwump... that's what they are, Mugwumps!

A mug wump is a bird sitting on a fence, with his mug on one side and his "wump" hanging over the other.

Mugwump.

Give me a gas powered car, or (for goodness sakes), an electric car. Heck, if they want a Mugwump solution so bad, why not use gas powered electric generators at the fuel stations to power the electric car battery chargers... I know, "doesn't fix anything really" ... except influence and convert the population's mode of transportation. Then future decisions can be made on what people need then - which by that time would mean "we mostly use electric cars". Thus we're no longer shackled to oil.

IMHO: they should cut the red tape and allow new companies to grow. Ones that sell solar panels or other highly effective energy converting technologies. Sell them to the people, for the people. Energy, free energy in the hands of the people. Wouldn't that be nice? However, this isn't the case... sigh... It is exhausting to see the symptoms of energy monopolies trying to safe guard their oily pocket books through government lobbyists.

It's not Global warming we should be alarmed about. It's greedy men, and why / how they get into positions of influence.

does anyone seriously still consider ethanol to be a real answer? and if not, then it's absolutely retarded if this goes through. It's like fixing a dam with a piece of scotch tape (which obviously wouldn't help) when we should be using duct tape (cause duct tape fixes everything).

^+1

Why ethanol is even produced is beyond me... In school I did a decent amount of research on alternative energy, Bio diesel and Ethanol included, and Ethanol has to be one of the dumbest ideas brought into mass production. The impact that it has environmentally is on par with gasoline, it causes food price increases and has a pretty big effect on local water tables because of the amount needed for production. It's probably the biggest farce as far as trying to be 'green' goes. Sorry for the rant, but it pisses me off, how much tax $$ is wasted on 'solutions' like this when real ones like solar, wind already exist

Ethanol? No thank you.

It does in Washington State

In NYC, ALL gas has 10% of "crap" in them ... oh wait, its called Ethanol.

Are we the people? or we're just no one. Cuz it seems that Government these days just do "whatever" the hell they want.

Time to spin up the FTL drives....

Hymee's supercharger can run on E85. So I'm OK with this as long as the gov't buys everyone with an RX-8 a Hymee Supercharger and pays for the install.

Can't beat the scumbags ripping us off and driving our economy into the crapper you might as well join 'em...

Honestly won't almost every single car manufacturer have to release a new flash to be able to accomodate this? Fuel economy will be worse on 20% eth., cost will increase significantly, and polution won't be reduced. This is just insane.

RK, NO FUEL gets within about 10 inches (downstream) of Hymee's (or a turbo). So, it will have no effect one way or the other.

Yes, you can tune our engine with the Scanalyser or Cobb to run 'properly' with E-85, or 100% alcohol for that matter. The requirement to 're-flash' is not the problem.


The point is that the components within our fuel system - the plastic in the fuel pump - the rubber and plastic fuel lines - the aluminum in the fittings - etc, etc, etc, has NOT BEEN DESIGNED to be fuel-tight over time with any concentration of alcohol over 10%.

There is a tremendous fire risk, and cost to owners of replacing failed components by running fuels contrary to the design of the components.

The oil companies want this due to gas conservation.
Every bit more Ethanol they can get into gasoline decreases gas mileage just a little bit more.
The idea is to do it gradually, so no one notices how gas mileage has dropped.

This is not cool, who would be the appropriate official to complain to?

Give me a brake. You want to blame this on the oil companies? You think they want to sell ethanol (which they don't make) more than gasoline (which they do make)? No :icon_no2:
Complain to your US Congressman & Senators.

oil companies are not that stupid, many of these "Ethanol" plants are owned and operated by oil companies.

Cuz

oil will run out one day, just dont know when, probably the end of the world.

Plants wont run out unless theres no more water.

in the other words

fossil oil = time limited profit (a loonnnng time ...)

Ethanol = goes on and on and on and on and on ...

Like they would listen ? seriously. :( lobbyist > us

Fucking mugwumps.

Regardless of who makes the ethanol, it is sold for the same price as gasoline, and causes more gasoline to be used.

Ethanol is the oil companies solution to reverse the gas conservation efforts.
If you have not noticed:
ahem...
ETHANOL CUTS GAS MILEAGE!:soapbox:

i think you're forgetting what it takes to produce ethanol in the first place...
either way, oil companies sell their oil. whether its used in manufacturing ethanol or at the pump, its still sold.
meh, whatever. itll never be mandated, and I try not to fill at crap-thanol pumps anyways.

Although you do need to burn some oil to make ethanol (farm equipment etc), the majority of the power used in production is from natural gas generally (and it takes quite a bit)

I would be interested to see what oil companies own what as far as production goes... I was under the impression ethanol was more on the agriculture industry side like ADM etc... do you have any links or anything showing that?

And yeah... it has less internal energy and burns at a lower air/fuel ratio, so takes more to do the same work

It makes a lot more sense to just use natural gas to power the car.

CNG is waaaaay better than ethanol. They converted all of the shuttle buses over at Logan airport to CNG, and the difference between the diesel fumes and CNG fumes is night and day. You used to literally get choked by that diesel crap in the air, now you notice nothing.

Id say electric.... you get a nice torque curve and don't necessarily have to burn anything to get the power.... CNG doesn't really solve the whole non-renewable issue, nor does it solve emissions, although they are lowered

it certainly does in any states where it is mandated by laws. Like her in oregon for instance where it used to be only in the winter but now starting this past year it is all the time because the co2 level in the gorge hit some magical number one day

actually mugwump is an Iroquois word which meant leader or war leader. it was used by a reporter to describe a bunch of republicans that campaigned for a democrat. so in that sense it meant independent. later it was used as a term of derision calling them "fence sitters" and thats how the word became misunderstood as meaning what you wrote.

also your political statement has been removed per forum rules.

but it also created a lot of problems.

Battery is made out of either toxic(NIMH) or could led to deadly explosion(Li-Ion)

power gotta come from somewhere, imagine what would it be like if "all" cars on the road are plug ins ? thats ALOT of power. Where it came from ? Power plants. and how they make power outa those plants? coal, natural gas, hydra, wind or nuclear. Which one you want ? Coal is the worst polluter. Natural gas is 2 times better but it produces much less power. hydra and wind plants produce WAY too little power and its hard to find a good spot for it. Nuclear produces clean power but if there is a melt down/accident we're all fucked, plus where should we store the waste ? I know it can last more than 500 years.

Plus Electric powered cars are way more complex than gasoline buddies, so it will cost more to maintain.

shurgs. I hate life. full of failed.

that's only true at normal gasoline spark ignition pressures read

https://www.rx8club.com/showthread.p...ol#post2359332

or more directly at the source

http://www.epa.gov/otaq/presentation...-isaf-no55.pdf

NG & Propane is used in the corn driers. but diesel, electricity and to a lesser extent gasoline is used in the farm equipment.
ADM produces 22% of the ethanol in the US.

well, yeah... but until we build engines that are designed specifically for that...

I was more making the point of why 'flex fuel' vehicles will get lower mpg with more ethanol in the mix of the fuel

and ethanol from algae is the direction they should be headed
http://www.dailytech.com/Algae+May+S...ticle11671.htm

i saw another article recently about growing algae in hanging rows ina green house- its floating int he back of my brain that i have room in the backyard for an "algae bio-reactor" greenhouse :)

ah here's a version

http://www.vegcar.net/?p=228#http://...car.net/?p=228

Or Sawgrass.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladium

But, back on topic, 20% ethanol is too much for cars to handle.

current cars yes

Electrics are the future. Specifically in series hybrids. The generators can be powered by any fuel but ultimately as battery technology improves the need for the generator will diminish which means fuels for those generators will have decreasing demand. Something that is currently being developed are shock absorbers that generate electricity from the motion of the shock itself which is pretty cool. While it couldn't power the entire car, it could extend the range of an electric vehicle and that's really what it's all about. Hydrogen isn't our future. Ethanol isn't our future. Gasoline isn't our future. Electricity is. What we use as we ween ourselves to that point is up for grabs but ultimately trying to promote any one thing as the future is not the way to go about it. Since fuels as we know them will slowly come to an end, it makes the most sense to just use what we know and can get easily which means not wasting money developing and implimenting a hydrogen infrastructure or a natural gas infrastructure, or even an ethanol based system. Instead of changing away from gasoline to another temporary fuel, we should work on making the electric a viable reality as soon as possible so we can get away from other sources.

FWIW: Coal can be burned very cleanly. I've seen people say it can't be clean and then cite 100 year old technology as a basis for that when the reality is that the combustion chamber design has more to do with how something burns off and how cleanly it does it than the actual fuel being used. You can make anything burn off cleanly and completely if you know what you're doing.

regenerative shocks from MIT

http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/10/r...y-team-at-mit/

The electrical grids in our country need considerable reworking/redesign to take advantage of technological possibilities. I work w/ power companies all the time at my job, and it quite frankly scares the hell out of me how poorly they are designed. Biggest problem the utilities face is loss of brain power. The old timers that understand power generation/transmission/distribution are all retiring now, and kids are only majoring in computer science or computer engineering. There's no one to take the jobs that are being vacated due to retirement. So there's no one for redesign efforts.

It will be decades before plug in cars become standard. The grid just can't handle it. There's a big push now for plug in hybrids, to give energy credits to consumers for putting power back into the grid. Too bad our nation's entire grid has to be scrapped to to it, current can only go one way right now. We would have brown outs every night when everyone comes home from work and plugs in their cars to recharge, just like during the summer when everyone turns on the AC when they get home.

All the solutions have warts, it's a question of how many there are.

Electricity def is the future, look at Honda's new hybrid, the name currently escapes me, but it has a hydrogen fuel cell powering the car, it can do roughly 200 miles at every fill-up and takes no more time to fill than current cars, plus hydrogen is roughly the same price as gasoline.

The car's only emission is pure H2O.

The only downside is that the only hydrogen pumps at gas stations are located in California currently

There are hydrogen pumps at upstate NY, but yeah, Upstate NY, couple hundred miles away from me :lol2:

I still remember the black out from couple years ago.

IT was fun, but also reminds me of how suck our power grid really is.

There' a multiquote button, use it :lol:

(its this one: https://www.rx8club.com/images/butto...iquote_off.gif and select the posts you need, and then click "quote" on one final one, and you'll have all of them in the text box)

Don't worry, fearless leader & congress will take care of it.

honda has a home refueling unit that extracts the H from NG while at the same time heating your water and powering your house.

http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-cla...y-station.aspx


http://www.plugpower.com/products/re...ialgensys.aspx

Guess it's time to invest!

shuuuuuuut up !

Search you n00b ! :lol::lol::lol:

man having a hydrogen powered 8 and your own hydrogen generation system would be awesome. Then only have to pay for gas when you really want to have fun.


oh and not to ethanol, I want the price of steak to stay reasonable (assuming they produce it from corn).

You can tell a country has gone nuts when it starts burning their food source as fuel.

I've heard that burning coal creates more radioactive waste than modern nuclear plants, but I'm sure the converse is also true.

There hasn't been a new nuke plant in 30 years. Hmmm....what technology really exploded in the last 30 years? All of them, that's what! I vote for Nuclear.

However, take a step back. Electricity isn't the solution, because something has to generate the electricity. The only true renewable energy source is the sun. Every other source gets its power from the sun.

The day a solar panel factory is 100% powered by solar cells on its roof is the day I start believing in solar (a net energy surplus or gain. Currently it takes more net energy to create a solar panel than it will ever give back in return. This can create small pockets of positive energy surpluses, but the system as a whole is losing energy - increasing entropy).

We live in a snowglobe. We can create positive pockets of energy, but the overall system will operate at a loss. Hell, our entire planet and life itself is an example of a small pocket of positive energy (the earth itself), while the universe as a whole is losing energy/increasing entropy. That's how you explain life and evolution to a creationist who tries (feebly) to use science to show that the laws of thermodynamics have been violated by our mere presence in the universe.

Bio and algae is a good field. Let microbes create methane out of air, water and sunlight.

On a different note, I thought ethanol was 100 octane, and that in turbo applications people purposely squirt alcohol into the system to cool it down and to add power (AI). I'm guessing ethanol in the gas tank doesn't help in this regard? Just asking.

Beer is more radioactive than the cooling water returning to a river from a nuclear power plant - learned that from history channel.

Even tho its power sucks I would rather hydrogen than electricity. I would miss the sound of an ICE in my driving experience.

It also carries much less energy, and lots of cars today cannot stand too much Ethanol in them.

No one really wants to use Ethanol cuz everybody knows its a really pathetic form of "energy". but hey, who cares about what we the consumers think? Its always up to those higher ups/rich ass who decides what we can/will use.

Pretty much

dunno about that part.

Yeah but lets not forget, a Nuke plant SHOULD be closed after maybe 50 yrs of "use". but hey, thats not the case in lots of areas ... and if a melt down occurs ... you can hope that its not the one "around" you, but radioactive waves will go up to the atmosphere then its gonna go every freaking where. Look at what happen to Chernobyl. Sure it blew on the other side of the earth at 1986, that place is still deadly, at least to all kinds of "living beings", and the waves is still all over earth. hmm 1986 ... another 400-500 years before it will disappear (the bad stuff)

Bad thing about Solar panel is that you cannot get it 24 hours a day. sure you can have tons of it and store it in a battery or something. but Current battery technology simply not good enough for storing large amounts of energy in a "stable" matter.

BEST power should be Lighting, Its free, you get it every few weeks or so everywhere, each strike of lighting can power a big city for a LONG time, thats PURE energy right there. but again, there is no way to store such "high amount" of energy in a safe and fast way.

Some Scientist has said that Li-Ion will probably last another 10-13 years before another "revolutionary" battery technology can come out to replace it. so ...

lol