Originally Posted by VetteLT193 (Post 3269767)

It kills the mileage in my vehicles too. easily 10%, if not more.

I'd say E10 would lower the mileage by 3.4% in a flex fuel vehicle that is designed to accommodate for the fuel blend. In that situation it isn't so bad because it should make a bit more power too.

But... in vehicles that are not flex fuel the engine computer really doesn't know exactly what is going on, what exact blend to use so it does the best it can. that is where you get hosed.

Originally Posted by T2x (Post 3269790)

Either way, my point is that we are now forced to introduce piss (real or synthetic) into diesel engines. Another example of politicians believing they are scientests or engineers. Once these "improvements" are made (catalytic convertors, ethanol, death taxes, Obamacare, etc.)...you can't get rid of the nonsense under any circumstances, it seems.

Originally Posted by Tom A. (Post 3269839)

Holy crap! I always used to say that all I needed to do was piss in the tank and my old Isuzu diesel would run..... never thought it would be true!

Originally Posted by paintman (Post 3269996)

if we could just tap into all that methane at our gov't buildings.........

Originally Posted by CigDaze (Post 3269815)

I believe it!

All things being equal - meaning best case - my numbers are valid. They are purely the mathematical relationship between the two combustible's potential energies.

In the real world there are other factors involved such as varying ECU-driven engine management schemes based on what fuel it senses. I'm not surprised that it's a 10% drop. In some situations it may even be more.

Originally Posted by CigDaze (Post 3269662)

Well, ya!

This whole goddamned ethanol issue just infuriates me! It's preposterous to even contemplate using ethanol as a fuel, yet alone mandate it.

This should truly illustrate to everyone how idiotic our environmental advocates and politicians are!!!!!!

Facts:

Regular gasoline yields 115,500 BTU's of potential energy.
Ethanol yields 76,000 BTU's of potential energy.
That's 33% LESS!!!

That means that:
E10 lowers mileage by 3.4%, and
E15 lowers mileage by 5.1%

And it would take 1.52 gallons of ethanol to drive the same distance as you could on 1.0 gallon of gasoline!

Wow!!!!!

And if that's not bad enough, consider that it costs more to produce a gallon of ethanol than it's worth, and it requires more energy to produce ethanol that it will ever yield!!

Where's the sense in that? There is none! Welcome to the U.S. government.


Between fertilizer, pesticide, farm equipment fuel, irrigation, electricity and bulk transport, it requires about 81,000 BTU's of energy to simply grow the corn.

The energy economics get worse at the processing plants, where the grain is crushed and fermented. As many as three distillation steps are needed to separate the 8 percent ethanol from the 92 percent water. Additional treatment and energy are required to produce the 99.8 percent pure ethanol for mixing with gasoline. This all amounts to an additional 50,000 BTU's of energy per gallon of ethanol.

131,000 BTU's of energy in to get 76,000 BTU's out.

BRILLIANT!!!!!!!


An acre of U.S. corn yields about 7,110 pounds of corn for processing into 328 gallons of ethanol.

But planting, growing and harvesting that much corn requires about 140 gallons of fossil fuels and costs $385 per acre. Thus, even before corn is converted to ethanol, the feedstock costs $1.05 per gallon of ethanol.

In total, Ethanol from corn costs about $1.74 per gallon to produce, compared with about 95 cents to produce a gallon of gasoline.

if it weren't for government subsidies no one would dare venture into producing ethanol. It's a $ loser.

It's no wonder that corn farmers and processors burn gasoline in their equipment and not ethanol. They couldn't afford to.