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E85 vs. Gasoline Comparison Test
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E85 vs. Gasoline Comparison Test
E85 vs. Gasoline Comparison Test article on Edmunds.com
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-corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced;
-switch grass requires 45 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; and
-wood biomass requires 57 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
In terms of energy output compared with the energy input for biodiesel production, the study found that:
-soybean plants requires 27 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced, and
-sunflower plants require 118 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July05/ethanol.toocostly.ssl.html
Also, it takes lots of water to make ethanol, about 3 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol. And finally, the US Government uses our tax money to subsidize ethanol fuel. I think it is around $.51 per gallon. This money comes out of our paychecks and bank accounts or is borrowed from the Chinese and our kids get to pay it and with interest. So where is the win?? BTW, I hear luxury cars sales in Iowa are brisk.
Gasoline, on the other hand, is approaching the end of peak production (ACS). As a result, oil prices will continue to rise as the total cost per oil barrel produced increases. Even if oil prices were to remain the same, to consumers, there are still the indirect costs to society; such as climate change, oil industry subsidies, oil spills, etc. These are known as external costs in economics, and when added together, roughly total $12 per gallon. These are real costs and if we don’t pay them, our children will (Brown).
Also, many emission comparison tests seem to forget that all biofuels come from biomass, which must remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the first place, to grow. Of course, it releases it back into the atmosphere when consumed, but compare that to crude oil. Oil brings 150 million year old hydrocarbon from the depths of the ocean and we burn it off into our air like it’s no big deal. We are screwing with the planet’s equilibrium and, yet, people continue to ignore it.
Lastly, it is always important to note in a comparison test, who has the handicap. E85 does, in this case. If an engine was optimized for E85 usage only, it would get comparable or better mileage. It allows for more ignition timing, which manufacturers implement when the ECU detects E85. The higher octane rating of ethanol also allows a higher compression ratio, which lets the engine produce more work energy out of the heat energy, but it must also be able to handle gasoline. Therefore a low CR is favored to increase the demand of their vehicles. People who purchase a flex-fuel vehicle and still use gasoline.
Brown, Lester R. World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011. Print.
Inderscience. "How Much Oil Have We Used?" ScienceDaily. N.p., 07 May 2009. Web. 12 July 2012. .
American Chemical Society. "World Crude Oil Production May Peak a Decade Earlier Than Some Predict." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 10 Mar. 2010. Web. 15 July 2012. .
One, using the same nozzle, will not assure the same fill factor. The shutoff is a safety device not accurate measure. The shutoff happens when a back-pressure happens. Look at the end of a nozzle and you will see a small round or square tube - in the end of the tube is a very small hole (a flake of snow can cover it) and it changes by temp, barometric pressure, position of the nozzle and other factors. A better test is to use a test bucket found at most service companies and measure your product in and out.
The price of ethanol most likely doesn't include taxes. So the gas and diesel you buy will have about a 40 to 60cents advantage per gallon. I know in Minnesota and South Dakota they deduct the State taxes and get a rebate from Federal Government. Those taxes are what is used to build and maintain roads.
Also ethanol has the ability to bond a molecule of gas to the ethanol (and a molecule of water), so once you added E85 to a gas tank, you immediately mixed the product. So driving around to clear the tank of gas was unnecessary. Any gas left in the tank would be mixed with the E85. That is why 'gasoline antifreeze' works.
Very good article, lots of truth to this. One other point is the increased maintenance to the engine. Also if you are pulling a load you may be greatly increasing the wear due to the reduced power. Power can be measured by heat or temperature and alcohol burns much lower than gas.
But there are new products on the horizon, but we need the government to get out of the alcohol business. They are forcing use by laws based on greedy information and not on common sense nor real facts. Once they did that they increased the cost of all energy. That's why government needs to have a controlled input on use and quit forcing issues.
I am from Iowa and wanted to help the Ag Ecomony. The 30+ years experiment with Ethanol has failed. The Feds need to quick all subsidies and let it stand the test of the free market.
I've ran quite a bit of E85 in my Dodge Caravan and yes, the fuel economy was less. But here in north central Missouri, E85 was priced so that after I figured MPG vs fuel cost, it was almost exactly the same cost per mile. Like within a few hundreths of a cent per mile.
This is nothing newsbreaking for anyone who is smart enough to research what they're doing. But then again, when I ask some people what kind of fuel economy they get with their new car, their answer is something like, "With my old car, I had to fill up every week while this car I can go a week and a half between fill ups." Of course when I ask them how big the fuel tank is, they have no idea whatsoever, meaning their new car may have a tank half again as big. Or twice as big.
My old car had an 11 gallon tank and the Dodge pickup at work has a 37 gallon tank. My old car got about 3 times the gas mileage as the truck, but with the bigger tank the truck could go much farther on a tank full. Wee what I mean?
Global warming destoying the environment is a hoax played on ignornant people with the goal of transferring wealth. Energy independence is best achieved by increasing oil production in the USA. Ethanol maybe renewable but it economically unsustainable without Government subsidies, handouts, and bailouts. Do Americans want more money going into a bottomless pit?? We will never achieve energy independence by making Ethanol. It would destroy the USA economy. Elimnate all the subsidies and let Ethanol production stand on its own.
Either the test is BS (or there's some variable that's botched), or the engine wasn't far from being correctly tuned for E85. In all other tests I've seen, E85 increased the performance of the car. Not decreased it.
Also, running into and against the wind to "average" your results isn't very accurate at all. It's assuming that the tail wind was identical to the frontal wind. That's highly unlikely.
One more thing, a car tuned specifically for E85 (and not as a flex-fuel car) will generally get closer to within 2-3% of the economy of E10 because it can take advantage of the much higher compression, duration and timing available to a higher octane fuel. I would venture a guess that this flex-fuel Tahoe simply added fuel without increasing timing and since we don't know what year this Tahoe is, we don't know if it's capable of increasing duration. Simply throwing more fuel at the engine doesn't take advantage of the benefits of a fuel that has a more violent combustion and burns cooler and longer.
Our small limousine fleet has Lincoln Flex-fuel sedans, our crucial issue is those vehicles typically get 15-25% poorer mpg versus regular unleaded gas. Since E-85 is only 15-20% cleaner, we seem to be treading water. If you factor in the additional costs involved in getting it to market, tanker truck or rail car, vs using pipelines, any reduction in carbon footprint is wiped out.
Include the impact to consumers at the grocery check-out line and flex fuel has been a disaster for the American public.
If I could dictate, I'd insist on more clean diesel & CNG vehicles from car manufacturers. With diesel you sacrifice no performance issues but double or triple fuel mileage. CNG of course is cleaner.
All and all being said if one was compairing an apple to an apple instead of to an orange the outcome would be as thay say in Nevada a "push".
Why? Because ethanol is most efficient when the engine has a 13.1;1 compression ratio. No Tahoe or any other vehicle has that. Most range from 8.2:1 to 10.0:1, depending on vehicle.
The "yellow cap" program was a sham. The vehicles could have been tweeked to run E85 from the day they were bought, but GM, in all of its infinite wisdom, chose to wait 2 or 3 years, then send letters out prclaiming "dual fuel" capabilities.
Also not apples-to-apples is the range. A tank of gasoline will take you farther than a tank of E85 because gasoline has more energy per drop than E85, meaning it takes a little more E85 to produce the same results.
The government is in love with corn as a source of ethanol for purely political reasons. Corn is the WORST source, as it requires almost as much energy put in as comes out of a gallon of ethanol...because corn is a "wet" source. It has been demonstarted elsewhere in the world that other sources are far more efficient (sugar cane provides 80% of the E85 used in Brazil for the last 10+ years).
Producing efficient E85 engines would take re-tooling the factories and re-training a "we-hate-change union labor force.
The other points may be valid, but this sort of glaring omission really diminishes the credibility of the "test."
It's like government has the Midas touch, only instead of gold you get digestive byproducts.
By building a vehicle that can run on both an Ethanol blend AND gasoline, two very different fuels; all you do is ensure that you get the worst of both worlds.
Build a vehicle that runs on JUST E85 so that you can fully take advantage of it's advantages and you'll be much happier.
Seems pretty common sense why gas is better than ethanol just based on fuel economy alone.
Stage 2 Dyno vs the stage2 + e85.
There's plenty of others just look through the Dyno plots on this site. E85's octane is 100 , compared to gasoline's 85,87,91 octanes.
Here's a e85 FAQ on nasioc. It's a site for Subaru owners. This applies to all cars of various manufacturers however.
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=803341
E85 is better in the areas of performance and lower emissions, as well as cost. It is simply a political battle due to the oil giants supporting senators campaign pockets so they who vote yes for oil and no for e85.
Boaters have already learned that they must drain their fuel tanks if they expect the engine to lie unused for a few weeks.
The cost for not doing so is typically a full engine replacement.
According to Honda Marine: "Using fuels with percentages of ethanol or methanol higher than 10% may cause starting and/or performance problems. Such use may also damage metal, rubber, and plastic fuel system components."
Ethanol has 34% less energy per gallon than clear gasoline. That means that, on paper, a vehicle running E85 (85% ethanol + 15% clear gasoline) should get 28.9% worse mpg (85% x -34%).
However, the article neglects to address whether the gasoline they burned was truly clear (zero ethanol) or had some ethanol in it. California has required for quite some time that all gasoline fuels be blended with 5.7% ethanol as an oxygenate. The state has been moving toward 10% ethanol, although this is not required by law at this time. The best-case basis for the gasoline burned in the course of the article's research is therefore E5.7.
A gallon of gasoline containing 5.7% ethanol would have 1.9% less energy (5.7% x -34%) than truly clear gasoline. Deducting the 1.9% clear vs E5.7 mpg hit from the predicted 28.9% clear vs E85 mpg hit yields an on-paper, E5.7 vs E85 mpg-differential prediction of 27.0%.
On-paper mpg differential prediction = 27.0%
Real-world mpg results using a vehicle designed to run on ethanol = 26.5%
Of course, if the gasoline they burned in the article was E10, then it would have had 3.4% less energy than clear gasoline, which means the on-paper mpg differential projection would actually have been 25.5%.
That tells me that, if a vehicle is designed to run on E85, it will effectively achieve the energy-content-differential-projected mpg differential. It also tells me that, if a vehicle is NOT designed to run on E85, the mpg differential will be larger than the energy-content-differential-projected mpg differential.
Until and unless industrial-level production of cellulosic ethanol occurs, the net cost to the US economy, the global environment, and third-world countries (whose food costs are increased by the diversion of corn crops to ethanol production) simply doesn't pencil out, IMO.
Food for thought, or lack of food on the table for thought....
Also, you COULD get better mileage, with an engine specifically designed for ethanol... But the hybrid designs will never get as good of mileage with ethanol as they do with regular fuel...
Some stations are going back to selling all gasoline again and for good reason. A fuel that creates more emission issues than it solves is just another green LIE.