This blog post is in reference to the email going around about "Warning from AAA" and the Video on Fox,(see video and email below if you didn't already get one in your inbox) I have a lot to say on the subject. I am taking the time to write all this because I hope people will know more about issues like this and have a deeper understanding of the possibilities. There is a lot here that could help our economy and the environment.
Maybe it should go without saying that if you have not modified your vehicle you should run the fuel that the manufacture recommended especially if you expect them to honor a warranty. Most vehicle can be modified to run on just about any percentage of gasoline and alcohol, but that is another story.
Your vehicle can be damaged by running Gasoline that contains more then 10% ethanol (if it is not a flexfuel vehicle or modified), As they mention in the in the video there are Flexfuel vehicle that can run on higher alcohol content (some as high as 50/50 or more).
There is a House bill to set a national standard for cars so in the future they can run on any mixture of Gasoline or Alcohol. (open fuel standards (H.R. 1687))
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Fuel_Standard_Act_of_2011
Gasoline has more chemical Energy then alcohol so most vehicle get more miles per gallon out of gasoline then alcohol and typically more miles per dollar of fuel as well. But you are still only using about 20-30% of the chemical energy in the gasoline.That being said there are some up sides to alcohol. (The most efficient engines only get about 50% efficiency from petroleum, but that is another story as well)
Pure alcohol has a higher Octane rating then Gasoline (typically around 109), so you can run much higher compression, this potentially lets you build an engine that can actually have greater efficiency then gasoline engines in spite of the fact that Gasoline has more chemical energy.
Alcohol is a single chemical, Gasoline contains hundreds of chemicals, so Alcohol can be much easier, less expensive and safer to manufacture, store and has a much, much longer shelf life. You do not need a giant refinery to make alcohol. You wont need different blends for different seasons or different states.
Alcohol is very clean burning, it does not need any emissions controls in order to meet current EPA standards, like catalytic converters and such which actually make combustion engines less efficient. (You motor heads know what I am talking about)
Ethanol is only one of several alcohols that can be used as fuel (methanol, isopropyl etc). These alcohols can be made from lots of different substances from Crops like corn, cow manure, coal, crude oil, lawn clippings etc. I personally don't want to see fuel compete with food on the open market so lets not get focused on just corn. Oddly enough even though we experienced a drought this past year, the U.S. still has a surplus of corn, just like it did the year before. You can make ethanol from other crops like fodder beats, Jerusalem artichokes, Cat tails, Switch grass and on and on.
Alcohol fire are much easier to extinguish then gasoline, if you put water on a gasoline fire you will probably cause it spread that is why fire fighter use chemical extinguishers or foam. You can put alcohol out with water so it is much safer in an accident or to handle in general. You would not need that ridiculous nozzles they put on gas cans if you lawn mower ran on alcohol, which means you would not spill it all over the place.
Alcohol burns much cooler then gasoline, there is a lot of advantages to this when building a vehicle, you don;t need a liquid cooling system which robs power and adds weight to a vehicle which of course just wastes more gasoline and money in building the vehicle like emission devices do.
The problem is trying to burn alcohol in a vehicle designed for gasoline with out modifying it, not that alcohol can't give you good MPG, because it can and you can do it with a simpler more reliable engine.
To me the most important thing is that alcohol does not require any dependence on foreign oil and it is not subject to prices on the world oil market. Alcohol can be made locally, when I say locally, I mean in your town, you don't have to buy or transport stuff all over the place. When you go fill up at the local gas station how much of your money do you think goes to a multinational oil company? How much of each dollar goes over seas? Now if you made alcohol locally your money could stay local. Right now Ethanol is trading at some where around $2 a gallon.
I think the same is true of natural gas or methane, we have an abundance of methane and we can make methane from manure, lawn clippings, garbage, agricultural waste, sewage, etc. Methane has a lot of the advantages that alcohol has and it is far more powerful as a green house gas is then CO2 so why not capture it and use it for energy? Did you ever drive by a water treatment plant, oil refinery, or garbage dump and see one of those giant flames on top of a stack burning off the methane?
Why not keep all that money we spend on imported oil and refining at home in the US, or in our home town? Right now a lot of Gasoline is refined for us in other countries because we are not allowed to build new refineries in the USA, so imagine how much money and energy is spent moving the oil and the gasoline around? Go down to the harbor and see all those enormous tankers full of fuel.
I am a big believer in making things more local, this holds true for Government, Economy, Food and Energy. If we all have good information we can change things like this to our advantage. This is great opportunity to go on an anti big government rant, but I won't.
Here is the link for those of you who want to cut straight to the Video!
VIDEO
This is the email that inspired my response.
"For those of you who do not have 2012 cars or newer please watch this video from Fox Business news-very informative. Donna
If you have cars/trucks, YOU NEED TO WATCH THIS and pass it on to all of your friends.
We ALMOST screwed up a few days ago and came close to using this fuel at a recent fillup.
LOOK CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU PUMP.
Void your warranty!!!! All from our wonderful, benevolent and protective government. If you 've got a car you need to watch this.
Watch this video from Fox Business...if your CAR IS OLDER THAN 2012 you need to AVOID THE NEW E15 GAS that is just starting to show up at gas stations. Most car companies will not honor the warranty on your car if you use this new gas"
This is a response that was forwarded to me after my initial response got forwarded.
To: AC
Thanks for forwarding that piece on alcohol for fuel. I have been researching for two years on this and everything he said is true. The primary reason we have been on gasoline still and for so long is too many politicians own oil stock....or oil company "kick-backs".
One of the best sources of methanol fuel stock for production is overwhelming us in Big Bear. Did you know that a single piece of paper contains 2 liters of hydrogen ? Methanol is the simplest on the hydrocarbon chain at CH3(OH)......notice that the primary element is hydrogen......
Want to know something really cool? Plastics....we all know that they are manufactured from oil (primarily)......the most used today are the Polyethylenes and the Polypropylenes.....more commonly all the plastics we use in food and beverage containers and packaging.....
Here's the cool part.....they can be shredded, cooked (actually distilled) in a kiln (a quality builder can build one for home use) and powered by electricity.......2.2 lbs of plastic yields 1 liter of diesel.....almost pure diesel....purer and with less problems than "McDonald's" french-fry oil.....AND.....(at Bear Valley Electric rates).....can be done for about $1.00 of electricity per GALLON of diesel produced from waste plastic.....AND....if part of the diesel is used to heat the kiln instead of electricity.....then only 20% is needed of the product.....leaving 80% of the produced diesel fuel produced for free!!!
And shredded plastic can actually be bought for about $50 / per ton.....that's enough to produce close to 250 gallons of diesel or only 200 gallons of diesel if the diesel is used to heat the kiln........let's see...I think that equates to about 25 cents / per gallon of diesel fuel.....how much would you like ??
And do you know why you don't hear about this.......???
Same reason as the alcohol fuel issue......
BTW......a small propane tank is perfect for a scaled-down version of this.........
So now you know more of what I do in my spare time.......research first.
From: TF
I was kind of surprised I got a response like this in about 12 hours, I guess there are plenty of people around who are thinking about subjects like this?
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