E85, Flex Fuel Engine?

[dgruis]

In 1925, Henry Ford told a New York Times reporter that ethyl alcohol was “the fuel of the future” , he was expressing an opinion that was widely shared in the automotive industry. “The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumach out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust — almost anything,” he said. “There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There’s enough alcohol in one year’s yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years.”

http://www.environmentalhistory.org...charles-kettering-and-the-fuel-of-the-future/

Maybe we should ask Henry Ford who claimed to know a thing or two about cars. Henry may agree that, Alky may not have the btu's of gasoline because gasoline is millions of years of concentrated sunlight. But someday people will need to use the sun energy they can collect and use each day. Luckliy/unluckily we have been living from our oil-piggy-bank. As we shake the pig, it seems lighter than 50 years ago, like almost empty.

As world population approaches an estimated 9.6 billion by the year 2050 many, many, many things will need to change. ENERGY will become the most critical issue. ENERGY is the question, energy for people, energy for human use.

Elio is designed to reduce energy consumption, ironically some future Elio owners have dreams of souping-up their Elio, and INCREASE energy consumption. Technically, gasoline is a renewable resource...but... it takes an estimated millions of years. My kids and I plan to die within the next 200 years, because gasoline would take so long to be renewed, it is called non-renewable...go figure.

Ask Ambassador Quinn of the World Food Prize Foundation, I have. Food-related riots were NOT caused by a shortage of Yellow Dent #2 corn. White corn is produced for human food. Yellow Dent #2 corn is NOT raised for human food. Yellow Dent #2 is primarily used for livestock feed and ethanol. White corn is far too expensive to use for ethanol. Crops require different growing environments, much of the Midwest is perfectly suited to produce Yellow Dent #2 Corn, which has received huge plant-breeding improvements.

Some complain about genetically-modified-organisms like BT corn, but it is not likely that 9 billion people can be fed without using genetic-modification as a tool. Plant breeding (traditional and engineered) has and will continue to allow for higher crop yield. Some crops which harvest sunlight are not suited to human consumption, but must be utilized if we want to keep living. Fossil fuels are reserves of highly concentrated solar energy, as fossil fuel runs out, collecting and concentrating solar energy through plants/algae/bacteria is the most logical solution.

In terms of harnessing solar energy, Yellow Dent #2 corn has received the highest level of plant breeding expertise. Throughout history, maize has been bred to produce what we now know as corn. Significant amounts of plant breeding has been directed to physiological characteristics such as leaf-angle. A simple concept of changing the leaf-angle of corn has allowed for higher populations (planted closer), yet allowing the closer leaves to intersect optimum amounts of sunlight.

Biomass ethanol production is becoming a reality, allowing corn kernels to NOT be used for ethanol production. Ethanol production from biomass (stalks/fodder) is developing, and harnesses parts of plants that non-ruminants like people cannot digest for energy..

Biodiesel is a potential by-product of ethanol. The ethanol production plant in Iowa (Shenandoah, IA) is currently testing the production of bio-diesel from algae. The algae is produced in the "waste" warm water from ethanol processing.

http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2012/09/26/ebony-and-ivory-the-bioprocess-algae-story/

Elio can help us increase energy-availability be REDUCING the energy we use. Even if we need to use fewer btu's.

 

[Farm Boy]

Wrong. The Obsession of turning corn into alcohol has caused shortages and food riots in other parts of the world that used to receive our surplus corn.


Wrong again. You can't produce alky at a price that will compete with gasoline. More so since the restrictions holding gasoline prices artificially high won't last forever.


Sorry wrong again. Alky doesn't have the energy potential of gasoline. Period. No amount of tuning or computer wizardry will add BTU's to a fuel when they're not there to start with.

Corn a very efficient source of food and a very inefficient source of fuel.

I respectfully have to disagree with some of your conclusions and would like to beg to differ with some of what you have to say.
First, rice, not corn is the most common food staple in the world and shortages of rice can cause ripples though out the other types of food stuffs.
Second, I don't know what is artificially holding up gas prices except government restrictions on oil exploration , transportation[ Keystone XL pipe line] and refining, there hasn't been a new refinery built in the US for over 30 years.
Third, I never said that the E85 would get just as good mileage, just it takes time for the engine to optimize its the mileage .
And as in another post, #2 yellow dent corn is not used for direct human consumption. We feed it to livestock so we can we can eat the livestock in tern eating the corn.
And in my post I said ethanol is not the only thing you get from your bushel of corn. If you stopped at the ethanol, yes that would be a waste of corn. But the byproducts go on down the line and gets utilized at every step of the way and so is not wasted.
I respectfully have to disagree with some of your conclusions

 

[Joshua Caldwell]

I think this is the first time I've ever heard that side of the story farm boy, I'm following the thread with interest.

 

[dgruis]

As Farm Boy said the by-products of ethanol production are not wasted.

One bushel of corn produces 2.5 gallons of fuel ethanol, 12 lbs of 21% protein feed used to feed livestock, 3.0 lbs of 60% gluten meal (very high in protein) used as a supplement for livestock, poultry and pets., and 1.5 lbs. of corn oil.

Green plants re-use carbon dioxide generated in the process which can be piped into greenhouses to help vegetable crops to grow more rapidly. Fossil fuels release millions of years of carbon, we need to get to a one yr. to one ratio yr

Henry Ford saw ethanol as the future fuel, and Rudolf Diesel’s first engine ran on peanut oil at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900. Even then petrol prices were high and he could see the advantages in agriculture and for the environment.
http://www.dieselveg.com/rudolf_diesel.htm

Elio could be the perfect design to bring biofuels to common use.

 

[KN16]

...snip...
I respectfully have to disagree with some of your conclusions

They are not my conclusions they are facts. If you're standing in the back yard with a bunch of people and a red bird lands on the fence post and the bunch you're with says "Ooooooh a cardinal". You're free to say no I think that's a black bird but......

 

[Ty]

If you think we're saving the world by using ethanol, please note that the price of a tortilla has skyrocketed on the streets of Mexico City, rising 69% between 2005 - 2011. That means that US ethanol expansion cost Mexico between $1.5-$3.2 billion in higher corn prices- or on average between $250-$500 million per year. That money, plowed (sorry) into Mexico's corn productivity could raise their national corn output 700,000 tons per year - but that's only about 10% of their corn "deficit".

The problem is that corn, like oil and motor gasoline is a "fungible commodity", that is because it is freely exchanged for gold, or other commodities, it's price, while flexible, causes it to go to the highest bidder on the world market. We are using corn not only to feed livestock, but now we are putting it in our tank, subsidized by the federal government. That means that when we sit down to dinner, we have to set a place for our livestock and now our automobiles, because they are competing with us for the food on our tables. In relatively wealthy nations, we don't feel the pinch so much as in the second or third world where food is survival rather than choice.

What can we do? Well, we can start by shutting off the subsidies that have artificially supported corn as a biofuel for the past ten-plus years. There is plenty of biomass out there from which we can produce fuel or fuel additives - Brazil has been doing it for the past 37 years, at this point it is fully sustainable. Brazil's biofuel industry is based on an extremely efficient means of producing sugar cane and turning it into ethanol - but it does require vast acreage to be planted in sugar cane. Sugar cane is six times more efficient at producing biofuel than corn, but at this point at least, the corn lobby is winning out over the sugar lobby at the USDA and DOE. Today, Brazil is a net exporter of ethanol, sending as much as 160 million barrels (over 7 billion gallons) of sugar cane-based ethanol to the US annually.

There are plenty of other biomass resources here at home that could be even more efficient than sugar cane, such as switchgrass, the current rockstar of the cellulose biofuel world. An acre planted in fast-growing switchgrass can produce as much as 1,150 gallons of ethanol annually, according to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and it can be grown on marginal land that is not suitable for foodgrains. It is a perennial, meaning that it only has to be planted once, requires minimal water, fertilizer, or pesticides, and its cellulose biomass is much more easily processed into ethanol than corn or soybeans.

There are solutions out there, but just as with other alternative forms of energy, none will be competitive with crude oil for at least another generation. So far, in terms of energy density, today's conventional gasoline and diesel refined from crude pack the biggest bang for the buck. We just need to use smaller or fewer "bangs" to save bucks. Enter Elio.

Well said, ole chap.

 

[Jeff Miller]

Huh, nothing like throwing the gauntlet down and then leaving the grid for a few days. Interesting discussion but I didn't see any reference to the huge quantities of water consumed during the production of ethanol. Here in the land of 10,000 lakes we even blink when the distillers open operations.

Gotta love powerful lobbies.

 

[dgruis]

This thread is pushing the conversation far beyond many of our personal areas of expertise. The original discussion was about a flex-fuel "option", such as E85. If flex-fuel was an option, I assume many would choose this add on.

I do feel the need to clarify one assumption. Price variations of "commodity" products are linked to many factors.

The USDA which has access to the most comprehensive data. "Food prices typically climb about 1% for every 50% increase in average corn prices", said Richard Volpe, a USDA food markets research economist.

 

[Jim H]

This thread is pushing the conversation far beyond many of our personal areas of expertise. The original discussion was about a flex-fuel "option", such as E85. If flex-fuel was an option, I assume many would choose this add on.

I do feel the need to clarify one assumption. Price variations of "commodity" products are linked to many factors.
The USDA which has access to the most comprehensive data. "Food prices typically climb about 1% for every 50% increase in average corn prices", said Richard Volpe, a USDA food markets research economist.

Not an option I want. Have a flex fuel vehicle now and will not put E85 in it.

 

[Keith Stone]

I am ok with production of ethanol because framers burn so much diesel in there tractors to help support my industry,drilling, although it's proven it is not a good fuel to let sit in the tank espically for chainsaw,snowmobile,lawnmower, and small engines. I have had no experience with vechicles so I really can't say much, I am not a hater but not a huge supporter. Just my $.02