Thread: E85 VS. Premium fuel

Tweet

Here we go again. There's a solid reason, well more than one really, why E85 would be cheaper.............it contains less energy! See the linked chart for comparisons of most common fuels used for transportation; http://www.nafa.org/Content/Navigati...quivalents.htm

You'll note that a gallon of E85 has almost 1/3 less energy content than a gallon of gasoline. That means that without changing the hardware (and in modern cars the computer software) you'll get approx. 1/3 less work out of it. If it's only around 10% less expensive, using the example sited, then you're actually paying MORE in useable energy cost. This is part of why you have to jet up when you switch to E85 if you want to optimize it's use. Also, the higher octane will allow you to tune to a higher level. Net net you may be able to increase your thermal efficiency a few percent, but it's unlikely you'll improve enough to get beyond 75-80% as much output as from a gallon of gasoline, so E85 still should be priced at that level to just break even with gasoline for REAL cost (excluding the cost of modifications to use it). For more reasons why ethanol fuels are more expensive in REAL cost than gasoline see the next paragraph, there's a more detailed discussion in the link. In addition to what was true then as now, we've now had the heavy hand of government distort the demand market for ethanol by mandate so that now it is crowding out the corn used for food production. As such this artificially driven demand has increased the cost of feed for meat production, cereal products, food fillers, corndog coatings, and more food products than you can imagine unless you like to read the fine print on the side of packaged foods. So, higher grocery prices are a result of increased ethanol use, yeah, you're paying at the store for that "cheaper" fuel that you may not even be buying(except for the 10% mandated oxygenate)!

Three years ago I addressed most of the issues involved in a thread called "No Free Lunch"; http://www.clubhotrod.com/forums/sho...ght=free+lunch
This will only be of interest to those who are willing to explore the issues involved in our fuel picture. If you'd rather be mesmerized by media hype or popular culture mythology it will be an honest inconvenient truth for you. Keep in mind that some of the pricing and profit data are three years old, so have changed, but the fundamentals are still viable.

I see that hydrogen fuel is brought up again. I asked the other day in the Avgas thread for you all to consider the feed stock for hydrogen fuel. If you've read the the "No Free Lunch" thread by now, you understand my point. If you're not interested enough to read that then I'd love to continue the discussion here. Where do we get the hydrogen?