Quick2500

To help make this a little more clear... With manufacturers improving the efficiency of their engines to levels thought previously unattainable, it really only comes down to how much stored energy is in the fuel. And yes, the energy is indeed the fuel (see definition of fuel if needed). An internal combustion engine uses this stored energy (heat, which can be measured as BTU) to drive the Pistons downward. Heat is not a "byproduct" of combustion, it's the expansion of the gasses due to heat that forces the piston down. It's an absolute necessity. The fact is ethanol has less stored energy per gallon. Period. If you can manage to extract more energy than it contains, please clue us all in, we would all love to try and patent it. Not only that, it requires, REQUIRES, a richer mixture. It attacks rubber, corrodes aluminum, it's conductive. You're going to lose this because you are wrong.

TexasVines

many theories from the 1900s still hold true today

180 PSI may have been crazy high back then, but it is not today......yet I was still 100% correct that it is possible to get the same horse power hours per gallon from ethanol VS gas and I showed that was known over 100 years ago no matter what todays football school math majors may believe

and if they could make ethanol perform as well back then without all of todays computers, sensors and sophistication what on earth would make anyone with an ounce of intelligence believe the same thing could not be accomplished today.....unless they are trying to make the false claim that technology only applies to gas as a fuel and nothing else.....which of course is senseless

ethanol was put into place as a replacement for MTBE and nothing else....anyone that tried to claim it would lead to US energy independence (at least in the near term) did not know what they were talking about

mike tkach

iTrader: (3)

what do you think the cranking psi is in today,s v8 engines that make 400 plus hp on today,s no lead fuel?and i am not talking about supercharged or turbocharged engines but normally asperated ones.

Quick2500

Depends.

TexasVines

I did not say that heat was a byproduct of combustion.....but heat is a major factor of waste and inefficiency in an internal combustion engine

also there are other factors besides heat that you either conveniently ignore or do not understand like compressibility and detonation from compression

just because a fuel puts out a massive amount of heat that does not mean it is a great fuel when a large % of that heat goes out the exhaust, radiator or is radiated from the engine block or headers

again there is no claim that ethanol can produce the same amount of heat as gas per gallon.....but your inability to understand that the generation of heat is not the only factor that leads an engine to produce horsepower (and in fact heat is a loss of potential horsepower) and your inability to understand something simple like why a diesel can have higher compression VS gas or why that is important to diesel and diesel horsepower and efficiency is why you are presenting very basic and reason lacking arguments to try and defend a position

energy put to push the piston down is a use of energy from any fuel.......heat exhausted from a tail pipe, engine block, header or radiator is energy that was not captured to produce horsepower to do work by that engine.....so again just because something burns hotter that does not mean it is the best fuel in an internal combustion engine especially when so many other factors play into an internal combustion engine producing horsepower and some fuels produce a lot of heat that is wasted out of the engine instead of captured as horsepower to do work......heat is not a direct conversion to horsepower when one actually puts it through an engine

I suppose you also think that all foods with the same calorie content are just as good of a food for a human to perform at their best.....just because a bomb calorimeter says those two foods in the same weight/volume heat a volume of water to the same temp.....that would make you a very poor dietician as well

these are really very basic concepts...to most...

Quick2500

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/ethanol.shtml

mike tkach

iTrader: (3)

the federal government stated it would cut down our dependance of foreign oil.we all know the government never lies.

Quick2500

Is ethanol more tolerant in high performance applications? Yes. It still requires more fuel, though. Nitromethane is the same. It takes a certain volume of fuel to generate a certain level of power, nothing can change that.

mike tkach

iTrader: (3)

it is pretty hard to dispute the facts!

mike tkach

iTrader: (3)

i may be wrong but i believe that combustion is a controlled explosion and the heat is a byproduct of the explosion.