First you are quite correct, the rate of fuel consumption volume increased significantly, about 45%. Not only are there less C's & H's to bond with the O's per volume, but ethanol carries along an O to share with it's components.

And for those entropic minded keeping score, it takes about 10% the energy to liberate the O in ethanol as it gain back in bonding to a more powerful bond directly with a C or H. (If you don't understand why, do some research on cycloalkanes and bond angles).

In my case the racing fuel we used has 110 octane, about the same as ethanol. Our CR125's do indeed run high compression. 6.2 CCV against a swept 125cc volume. We also ran a nearly perfect mixture and an HRC Det Counter.

The advantage of ethanol came from two things;
First the extra oxygen in the ethanol.
Second is the higher heat of transformation that cools the charge, and is especially valuable in a 2 stroke.

The Biland also showed a healthy increase, despite being low compression. The Biland runs just fine on 89 octane as it was designed to run. Each of the (2) 125cc cylinders has a CCV of 11.5cc's. All we did was rejet it and reset the static ignition.

I wold have tried it with the Rotary Seatta we borrowed for a while except that there are some concerns with the existing lubrication system.

As far as tuning, I run a website that hasn't been updated in two years that caters to Karting and requires a $25 subscription to get access to the tuning and Data Acqusition operations info. We still get a healthy income from renewals, and have had subscribers that include Brad Coleman, Scott Speed, AJ Allmendinger, Brian Herta, Kyle Rahal, Marco Andretti, and Jimmy Vassar. If you run into Brad at one of the local Freebirds, tell him I said hi.

psscht, CR125s are for bitches. I tune/ride RS125s :batman:

haha, j/k


I wonder if we could use something like the HRC Det counter on our RX-8s? So we could actually figure out if it was detonating, unlike the crappy detonation listener thing we have on the engines now.

If only they would let us run RS125's it would have made life so much easier.

Other then rod length when we get done we practically have an RS125 when we get done.

The HRC Det counter won't work on a Rennie.

I'm guessing you've been to this track

http://www.kartweb.com/Archives/Atlanta/snippet.wmv

I rented a 250 to play there. The last time I ran there a bridge was over turn 1 and there was no chicane before turn 11 so it's been a few years. That was in a C Sports Racer.

not the exact HRC det counter, but something that fit on the spark plugs. there might be something out there like this

so, you guys wanna see my pulsejet? it's real nice, I got it on sale at target, haha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26FymT9dDzM&NR=1

YES I KNOW THERE IS A PROPANE TANK next to it, this is for start-up/warming for the diesel/gasoline.

Like most alcohols ethanol is in fact not very complex at all, it is a simple hydrocarbon ethylene with an attached hydroxyl group. While yes adding an OH to ethylene does in fact increase the mass of oxygen that oxygen is by no means free and isn't just liquid oxygen floating around. I think ya need to rethink your basic chemistry. oh and btw the combustion of ethanol delivers 23.5 megajoules per liter, while gasoline delivers 34.8.

btw this is not in anyway a knock on ethanol in general, i tihnk we should use it, its a reusable energy source that can end up costing very little (make it from the stalks of corn) and also end our reliance on imported fuels.

that's why I put the quotes on it. I know it's not just entirely free, but it gets oxygen into the combustion chamber. I know there are some bond energy things that I'm kind of rusty on, but if you have the final enthalpies then it doesn't really matter.

I said 12,800BTU/lb for ethanol and 18,500 for gasoline. You said 23.5MJ/L and 34.8MJ/L. They're both pretty close to each other. Either way you'll make more power with ethanol because the AFR is so much lower 23.5*(14.7/9)=38.4 .

The bottom line is Ethanol cannot survive in a free market which is why the federal government has to prop it up with major subsidies.

Here's the lastest stories to back up my facts:

Ethanol: How the promise dwindled

Here's the latest example that production of Ethanol takes more energy than what Ethanol would yield which means sacrificing other resources to produce it.

Big Corn and Ethanol Hoax

This article also spells out the subsidies that the government puts on Ethanol...

Over at the NPR they report that Ethanol is worse for the environment again debunking the excuse that it's worth to waste production to save the earth.

Study: Ethanol Worse for Climate Than Gasoline

I suppose I should also point out that vast parts of the Rain Forest are being burned, and cleared to plant trees that produce sap for Biofuel. I love how everyone wants to save the rain forest when we cut down trees for homes, paper, and other needs but to produce bio fuel nobody cares.

So what have we learned?

Ethanol costs more money, takes more resources, and produces less energy than it does with oil or gasoline. It's incapable of surviving in a free market which is why BILLIONS of subsidies are paid out every year to famers and Ethanol producers. Finally, we're seeing that the investments into Ethanol are already failing and energy companies are losing tons of cash.

I don't know about that. The figures I've always read were 1.4 units of energy out for every 1 unit of energy in.

Ethanol definately would fail without some subsidies. To begin with any new fuel competing with oil has to compete against an existing infrastructure.

But the real challenge is competing with oil subsidies. Before The Iraq War, over 1/5th of the Navy budget went to the cost of patrolling the middle east. Duty free imported oil amounts to over a million dollars a day. Tax free income from domestic oil production profits is another couple million dollars a day.

I'm not suggesting we take away the oil subsidies, just pointing out that in order for any fuel to compete it will almost certainly take some subsidies to launch it.

As far as bad business decisions, they're everywhere, especially in the oil prospecting industry. Look at the history of Spectrum 7, or Standard Oil, or Sinclair, or Marathon, or even my favorite, Phillips Petroleum. They've all made mega-million dollar flops. But for every failure there are four success stories.

yeah bond dissociation energy is the key element of what you're going for here, but combustion isn't the same thing as bond dissociation. Do the stoichometry of the energy released from combustion and complete bond disassociation, very different numbers.

you have to take the bond energies of the products and the reactants though. and do something with them, add substract i forget and that's the combustion energy. right?

Great answer. It's great to see we have a chemist on board. Its been close to 30 years ago since I worked in the Champion Spark Plug Combustion Analysis Lab, but I spent enough time there to wear out 2 Waukesha Engines. Even in those days we did quite a few tests for the petroleum and automotive engineers for various formulations of fuel.

It looks like the biggest speedbump for the success of ethanol is really the mis-information among the general public.

From a performance perspective ethanol is superior to unleaded gasoline.

From a cost perspective per BTU ethanol (at the current demand) is still less then gasoline. Sure people can argue subsidies and that is valid - except when they neglect the subsidies applied to gasoline.

From an environmental perspective no one can really say which is better or worse. Combustion wise there could be a slight favortism towards ethanol due to a very slightly higher by-product of H2O as opposed to CO2. But on the flip side how do you really quantify all the production, distribution, and storage emissions for ethanol and gasoline? How about the nasty little oil spills? How about the risks of deep drilling in the Gulf of Mexico?

On the flip side when it comes to energy density gasoline whallops ethanol. The majority of the US auto fleet runs fine on gasoline. But that same majority also runs fine on E10, and probably even E15.

If used everywhere in America, E10 would reduce daily import of oil by 800,000 barrels a day.

If E20 were practical for the US fleet we could eliminate our dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

you can only do that for gaseous reactants at standard conditions, hess' law and all that stuff. and for ethanol and gasoline both are liquids at standard conditions, so the total bond dissociation is not a practical or realistic measure of the energy released. But lets think about what has to happen with those bond energies. another way to go about the thinking of the O in ethanol is to look at the lewis structure, in order to get the oxygen free as a reactant you'd have to break an OH and a single CO bond. I dont remember what the specific energies are for that, but thats energy that is lost and not doing work (hence ethanol's total energy released during combustion is lower than that of gasoline and at the same time also partially explains why alcohol has a high octane rating.) :) At least i think so from what im remembering, i have to focus on more biological organic chemistry but i enjoy fire too lol.

speaking of chemists in here, anybody know of a good way to oversaturate an NaCl solution to 6M one of my protocols requires 6M NaCl for DNA extraction and for the life of me i thought NaCl saturates at like 5.5M.

im no chemist and im sure im saying the wrong thing buuutttt...

way back in 7th grade when we were needing to oversaturate solutions for crystal growth experiments we heated them.

The only thing I can think of is to heat the solution so that 6M of NaCl will dissolve, the NaCl solution graph (solubility Y/ heat Y) is kind of a small linear slope though so it might take a lot of heat to do this.

Every business makes bad decisions and they recover from them. If you are trying to say these companies are gone, you are wrong. For the most part they have merged with other companies. As for Standard Oil (of Indiana, there were several Standard Oils after the monopoly was broken up), it changed it's name to Amoco and later merged with BP. I'm setting in the ex-Amoco Research Center, in the Chicago area, at this moment.

oh yeah gotta be without heat, since i gotta do the extraction at a certain temp. i'll reread the protocol next week

well then you need some kinda chemical catalyst. mix with some other salt maybe? or what about pressurizing it?

The only one on that list tahst gone is Spectrum 7.

Studies vary wildly on net energy production from ethanol. The factors people don't think about such as distillation of the ethanol, fuel for farm equipment, production of fertilizer, etc, have 100 different answers on energy consumption for each of these steps. You can come up with high or low net energy production if you pick and choose, even totally leave out steps.

Exactly.

Moreover, various different "studies" that have come up with totally different findings used totally different inputs.

While some subsidies exist, they are mostly in the form of tax relief and again depending on who reports the numbers as they too vary. Just like the numbers for our subsidies of oil.

So the bottom line is how much does ethanol or gasoline cost to produce on a BTU basis?

The clear winner today is ethanol. And going forward its safe to bet gasoline will only go up while ethanol will either remain the same or go down.

Here, in grape country, ethanol is an everyday part of the brewer's art. Often a wine is fermented to it's fullest ethanol potential because the government makes the vintner pay higher taxes per bottle.

In France, poorly made lots are collected and recycled for fuel. I think, if we stopped worrying about flavor, and included vine wood which is cut off and burned, but is high in carbohydrates, we could increase our national production of fuel ethanol....

However, I have some concerns with ethanol as fuel: When we get reagent grade ethanol it is 100% alcohol, but as soon as it is exposed to the air, it begins to collect water, and it may pull in enough water that it is barely above 70% alcohol.

All the fuel work is done, I assume, with 100% alcohol - but what about ethanol in fuel mixtures - does it pick up water? Does this have an effect on storage or usage? Would a ethanol -gas fuel become less able to burn, and run engines over time?

Also, gasoline can burn down to CO2 and H2O - but ethanol and toluene, ect. seem to produce aromatic compounds or carbon chains with enough components that you can detect them by smell - are we getting air that is less clean as a product of burning and more clogging for our cats?

ethanol from corn is definitely temporary, a bridge fuel to more advanced biofuels that don't use corn. At least the government has a cap on the amount of corn ethanol that can be made. By 2022 there is a requirement for 36 billion gallons of biofuel to be made, 21 billion of which must be advanced biofuel, most likely cellulosic ethanol because it the closest to being commercial viable. If biobutanol can be made commercially viable it will be much closer characteristically to gasoline. There are already steps in this direction, with similar processes to making cellulosic ethanol. Here are some links, one an article, the other biobutanol wiki:
http://www.upi.com/International_Sec..._ethanol/7919/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biobutanol

If ethanol uses more energy in production than you get out of it, then it will not matter what the costs, you will run out of energy to produce it. Eventually you get caught by thermodynamics.

No, the added energy from ethanol comes from the sun. If you want to look at from a thermodynamics point of view. Honestly, I don't believe you know what you are really talking about and are just making obvious statements. If it was that simple then why would anyone make ethanol...

You should be careful with telling people they don't know what they are talking about, you haven't impressed me so far. If to produce one gallon of ethanol the farming, transportation, distillation, and storage takes more than one gallon of ethanol, you have a net loss of energy. It does not matter where the production of the starch/sugar for fermentation comes from, the sun is not (yet) providing energy to do all the other steps in the process, unless you get more energy out of production than you put in. National Geographic recently had an article on ethanol production, and aside from some exotic as yet untested ideas, it comes out close to a 1:1 ratio of energy input:output.

Why do people make ethanol? In the US it is mandated, since we can no longer use MTBE as an oxygenator. A company can also get tax breaks, direct subsidies, and make a lot of money at it. Just because a company will produce it and people will buy it doesn't make something efficient.

If my knowledge hasn't impressed you, wait til you see my driving :evil_laug

haha, just kidding, kinda....

I do realize there is energy put into harvesting the corn, grinding it up, and then the mix has to be heated and later distilled. This isn't thermodynamics though and you saying that made me think you were just some guy that wanted to say "thermodynamics" in an ethanol thread.

You have to define "close". I think a lot of people would say 1.26-1.4 are pretty close to 1. Do you have any literature on the production efficiency?

I have looked at several things, but I haven't seen anything I would consider serious research on a closed ethanol system. That would be using ethanol in the farm equipment, transportation, distillation, etc. At some point opponents and proponents do magic handwaving and say "it's great!" or "it's a crock!" There may be some great research I haven't heard about, and if there is I would like to see it. And anything involving energy production/use is related to thermodynamics. Each of the steps cited uses energy, energy that you will be using on one side of the equation to figure net energy gain. Sure, it's not an exact citing, but doing that you are using the first law about conservation of energy.

As far as close, you are correct, 1.26-1.4 is very close. Imagine it this way: at 1.26 for every 26 gallons of ethanol you make you consume 100 gallons in production. For gasoline/oil for every 20 gallons you consume you make around 80 gallons. The EPA or Energy Department has stated it is around 1.3:1 for ethanol, but there is some debate about methodology. Other sources have put it close to 1.1:1 or even parity, 1:1. The truth is no one can claim to be certain, and advances in agriculture and production will probably raise this.

The thing with gasoline though is you aren't really making it, you're taking it. You worded that kind of oddly. At 1.26, you don't use 100 gallons to make 26 gallons, you use 100 gallons to make 126 gallons, if you use 100 gallons you will have a net gain of 26.

There are ways to improve this though, i.e. using solar energy to power to the production plants or atleast assist in powering them.

Why is this thread still going on? Ethanol hasn't stopped sucking any less in the last few days.

There is the problem, you've changed it. No longer can it be a closed system, you have to use some outside power source to keep your production running. Most likely it wouldn't be solar power, but coal.

And I thought about it and yes I did word that somewhat incorrectly. You do get a net gain of 26 gallons, but think of how small a gain that is. A bad crop yield one year, maybe aging equipment gets less efficient, you name it and you're moving backwards instead of forwards. Sure, gasoline has its supply problems as well, but it is a proven system.

Ethanol is a great fuel, for drinking. :) Not bad for certain types of racing either.

I have changed it to use an outside power to improve production. How is that a problem? It could very well be solar power too. It isn't that small of a gain either. They can get up to 1.4 in effecieny so let's start using that term and not making ethanol look bad with the 1.26 stuff. Aging equipment? not much of an effect really. A bad crop? Most of the energy consumed in making ethanol is the actual processing of the corn into ethanol, not growing the corn.



You haven't become any less wrong in the last few days...

RotaryGod, where do you get your hatred for ethanol? The only bad thing about ethanol is that you use more of it because it's oxygenated. Otherwise, it makes more power, burns cleaner, and is renewable.

I certainly don't know as much as you guys seem to know about fuels and chemistry... but E85 certainly seems to have it's place... the standard Koenigsegg CCX produces 888hp on standard gasoline and gets 18mpg on the freeway... the CCXR (E85 version) is exactly the same car but is tuned for E85... it produces 1018hp but only gets 13mpg on the freeway...

Personally, I don't give a bears shit in the woods about the fuel efficiency of E85, what I care about is the cost of using it... I don't care if I have to fill up every 130miles (instead of the every 180 miles that my RX8 currently mandates), I don't care about miles per gallon, I CARE about dollars per mile! if E85 were cheap enough that it's use cost the SAME as gasoline, I'd happily enjoy the extra 33hp that I should theoretically get from E85 (properly tuned of course)

Having said that I think that E85 will NEVER become a widely used or available fuel in the US... I think that instead we will see cars capable of hundreds of miles per gallon... such as the Aptera... I also think we'll see a lot of development in hydrogen... and I think Diesel cars are going to become a lot more commonplace in the US...

really? NEVER?!

Most gas stations are using E10 have been for a while, E85 is becoming more available and the car manufacturers are making ethanol capable vehicles.

The reason ethanol is good is because we can easily make ethanol and it's renewable resource. Hydrogen makes a lot less power, and how are we going to effectively produce hydrogen? The fueling issues with hydrogen are of concern too. It is a gas at atmospheric pressure and liquid hydrogen is extremely dangerous. I've seen the metal hydride tanks which seem to be effective, but are expensive. Here is an interesting product http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/
You make your own hydrogen using solar electrolysis and store it in the metal hydride tanks.

actually the production costs of hydrogen are probably cheaper than ethanol, electrolysis is relatively easy making alcohol takes a few steps. Don't forget that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. Water is quite abundant here, run a current through it and hydrogen and oxygen are released, Burn the hydrogen later and you make it water again...hooray.

I know all about electrolysis, but the amount of energy used to separate the hydrogen and oxygen is much greater than the amount of energy yielded by that hydrogen.

obviously otherwise there'd be no water on the surface of the earth. But i think thats gonna be true about most fuels, gasoline and ethanol included. If it took less energy to create than it made when it was spent then we'd have no energy crisis. Thermodynamics and entropy always win...reactions occur because on some level increase entropy of the universe. There is no free energy.

I actually don't have a hatred for Ethanol. I'm just smart enough to know it isn't as powerful or efficient as gasoline on a natrually aspirated engine. It's not and you can't prove otherwise. I'm not wrong. Saying it's oxygenated (repeatedly as you have nothing else to go on!) is just a cheap bs way of justifying it's lack of efficiency.

Yes it burns cleaner per equal volume. Somewhat. It depends what we are measuring. Too bad you need to burn ALOT more of it than gasoline which means these results are skewed a bit. I know, I know, but it's oxygenated! It's still cleaner than gasoline I'll give it that. It is renewable which is also a good thing. Oil is renewable too. It just takes a bit longer!!! ;)

It does have it's place. It's not the be all end all fuel. It's a poor fuel as a straight substitute and always will be. If we make it from waste, all kind of waste, then it's a good thing. It's not something that we should be making from any amount of corn though. We haven't addressed it's production correctly. We also can't make enough of it to replace gasoline anyways. We can supplement though and that's what we should be doing with it. Supplemental fuel made from ONLY waste byproducts. As you have pointed out if we can obtain the power to produce it from solar or wind, that would be gravy. If it makes sense, chances are it won't happen.

BTW: I will never let a 17 year old kid call me wrong on anything car or rotary related. It's not going to happen. At least not without them making some phone calls to certain people first to confirm things! ;)

now from what i understand about ethanol from corn production the chaff (the stalks) are used to make the ethanol, so it is what is normally a waste product. Correct me if im wrong, i just heard this somewhere.

Before anyone gets on my case for my last statement, please recognize the smiley face as it was intended to be taken with a sense of humor.

This is known as Cellulosic ethanol. The term really applies to any method to produce it that utilizes waste products. When I say waste, I mean things like rotting fruit, pumpkins, etc... It is in fact possible to ferment grass clippings but that's a special type of yeast that has a patent and is owned by a company that is owned by Chevron so good luck with ever getting that one. That would make way too much sense. Imagine going outside to mow your lawn for fuel albeit a very small amount. Anything that contains sugars or starches (which can be converted to sugars) that gets thrown away could be used. You'd be surprised at how much of this there is.

I get the impression that someday Fred and Nachos will be good friends :fingersx:

Seal.

Here's the way to do it. I've always been a diesel fan and especially biodiesel. Here's a new way to make it with virtually no waste! This is kick ass! I saw this talked about in a Biodiesel Magazine online article. It an convert almost any kind of feedstock. It's a continuous process rather than a batch. It works in seconds not hours. It doesn't have glycerine as a byproduct. It gets converted too! This would be the perfect method to use with all kinds of waste products.

http://www.evercatfuels.com/Default.asp

You realise that 'biodiesel' as we know it, from the pumps, is actually only 10% bio, and 90% ordinary dinosaur juice.......

S

obviously there is no free energy, the extra energy from ethanol comes from the sun! The highly endothermic reaction of 6CO2 + 2H20 -> C6H12O6 + 6O2 is performed by photosynthesis. I don't know how hydrogen is a solution unless it is generated using solar power or wind turbines. Running electricity through water and using the hydrogen for an internal combustion engine is like drinking a bottle of water so you can sell your piss. Profitable but pretty ineffecient, if you have the electricity to do electrolysis it is exponentially better to use it in an electric motor than to use it to make a very poor combustible out of water...



and RotaryGod, just wait until i make/have access to a dyno. Then a 17 year old kid won't tell you your wrong, the numbers will!!! :cool:

and your correct, the phone call was only to confirm what I had figured out. :)

making ethanol (especially pure) from the sugars in corn is an added step, can't run a car on glucose, and you left that part out. We all understand that photosynthesis makes the sugars and starches in corn, making ethanol from said sugars and starches isnt exactly an automatic reaction.

Umm btw hydrogen gas is probably one of the best combustibles there is period. no question or argument. Pound for pound it releases 4.5 times the energy of ethanol. Theres a reason liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen is used as rocket fuel

The processing, heating, and distilling are just converting the "free" sugar. The most efficient ratio (as I have stated previously in this thread) is 1:1.4 for in:out. So you are getting energy! Very much unlike electrolysis....

Liquid Hydrogen and Liquid Oxygen, hell yeah! but in an ICE it sucks. The Hydrogen Renesis makes about 50% of the power of the gasoline powered Renesis, and would make about ~45% of the power of an ethanol powered Renesis :) .