i <3 ethanol free gas

[wreckdiver1321]

The octane is higher, but the energy density is less.

This. Remember, higher octane does not equal more power.

The higher the octane, the more compression it takes for combustion. This is why racing cars run high octane fuel. Their engines are high compression, which means more power. But in order to get peak performance you need the explosion to occur as close to TDC as possible. Lower octane gas will ignite earlier (known as "pinging" - very bad for an engine), thus losing efficiency.

If you have a vehicle tuned for regular unleaded and put premium in it, you'll actually decrease performance, because the fuel is harder to ignite and when it does, it doesn't burn fully. High octane + low compression = inefficient.

As far as ethanol is concerned, it does have a higher octane rating, but the amount of energy it contains is noticeably less, meaning it's less explosive. It doesn't create the same amount of force when combusted under pressure, so it doesn't push against the pistons with as much force as gasoline does. That makes it less efficient. A less efficient engine burns more fuel because it needs to work harder to move the load.

 

[Plannerman]

E10 will never go away, I dont think. Its too much stimulus for corn farmers and no politician is going to shoot themselves in the foot over it. The farming lobby pushes extremely hard for it, and the decision is political not scientific.

This isn't entirely true. Ethanol is added as oxygenate to reduce the punt of carbon monoxide, soot, etc., coming from combustion. Initially, the oil companies were given a choice as to what oxygenate to use and they chose MTBE (for a variety of reasons). It turns out MTBE is very effective at polluting water and hence the change to ethanol.


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[KiwiKurt]

Regardless of how it got to corn, corn ethanol is the federal mandate, and it needs to be ended.

Corn ethanol in fuel doesnt work as a practicallity. Its worse for the environment than they originally thought, for starters, and it causes more fuel total to be burned. Nevermind the almost incalculable cost/energy waste of its production and distribution.

On the economic side, its driving food prices higher....and now that the ~$6B subsidizing is stopped as of Dec 31 (despite much effort on behalf of corn farmers), I wouldnt be surprised to see fuel prices go higher still, unless the bill to end the mandate passes.

Hopefully it does. It has some decent bipartisan support.

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[Joe-Nathan]

I am very fortunate to have at least 4 stations in my area that are pure gas only (no ethanol) and have all three grades available (87, 89 and 91/93). I have been running my Titan since last May on pure gas (except a couple of trips to Texas, which apparently is scared of pure gas). I average about 2mpg better than on e10 and more power.

Now I do agree that the corn for ethanol mandates need to go. We can get just as much ethanol from sugar cane cuttings as corn and at am much better price. And it would not have the inflated price for feed stock corn we now have.

A really good friend of mine runs the engineering group at a near by refinery. This year they have switched to producing only diesel b/c of the gas ethanol mandates.


I do like my pure gas.