I'm running 57% ethanol in an unmodified car. It is NOT a FFV.

[Sentinel]

Do it the old fashioned way, import the corn!

 

[AmigaMan]

Originally posted by: tangent1138

Biofuels such as biodiesel, ethanol, methanol etc. are great, but only in small doses. Biofuels are all grown with massive fossil fuel inputs (pesticides and fertilizers) and suffer from horribly low, sometimes negative, EROEIs. The production of ethanol, for instance, requires six units of energy to produce just one. That means it consumes more energy than it produces and thus will only serve to compound our energy deficit.



In addition, there is the problem of where to grow the stuff, as we are rapidly running out of arable land on which to grow food, let alone fuel. This is no small problem as the amount of land it takes to grow even a small amount of biofuel is quite staggering. As journalist Lee Dye points out in a July 2004 article entitled "Old Policies Make Shift From Foreign Oil Tough:"



. . . relying on corn for our future energy needs would

devastate the nation's food production. It takes 11 acres to

grow enough corn to fuel one automobile with ethanol for

10,000 miles, or about a year's driving, Pimentel says. That's

the amount of land needed to feed seven persons for the

same period of time.



And if we decided to power all of our automobiles with

ethanol, we would need to cover 97 percent of our land with

corn, he adds.

This is ridiculous. So how much energy does it take to process raw oil into what we put in our gas tanks? Does it take into account the ships transporting it from the middle east? What about the cost of drilling it from the earth? And even if it is less than corn or other biofuel, gasoline has had decades of efficiency improvements. Given time, biofuel would also become as efficient to produce. The argument about how growing biofuel is taking away land that could be used to feed 7 humans is stupid. I don't know about you, but I don't live on corn alone. We have plenty of land for growing corn or whatever, and plenty of land for food production.

Also, since you didn't give an author to your little quote, I'm going to assume it's written by someone sponsered by an oil company.

 

[2cpuminimum]

I would recommend that you refrain from exceeding 20% ethanol in a non ffv, as you risk destroying your gaskets, o rings, fuel lines, and oxygen sensor.

 

[Eli]

Be sure and change your oil a little more often than you normally would, too.

That's really where you could start to run into problems with your seals and gaskets.

 

[MrBond]

Originally posted by: AmigaMan
This is ridiculous. So how much energy does it take to process raw oil into what we put in our gas tanks? Does it take into account the ships transporting it from the middle east? What about the cost of drilling it from the earth? And even if it is less than corn or other biofuel, gasoline has had decades of efficiency improvements. Given time, biofuel would also become as efficient to produce. The argument about how growing biofuel is taking away land that could be used to feed 7 humans is stupid. I don't know about you, but I don't live on corn alone. We have plenty of land for growing corn or whatever, and plenty of land for food production.

I had to design a fuel-ethanol plant for my senior design project, so I know a little about this.

Ethanol of a purity high enough to use for fuel-ethanol is very hard to distill. The distillation is very energy intensive, which is expensive to do.

Fuel Ethanol is something like 99% ethanol cut with a certain percentage of gasoline to denature it. The problem is, coming out of a fermentor you have a solution of about 12-15% ethanol and a bunch of water. Ethanol-water mixtures have an azeotrope at around 94%, which means it's impossible to distill it beyond that without doing a specialized distillation. We used extractive distillation in our design, where you distill to a certain point (say 90%), add a third chemical to break the azeotrope, then distill it up to 99% purity. You use a third column to separate out the third chemical from the water, you can generally reuse most of the third chemical.

In designing our plant, we were doing really well cash-wise, even after we specced out and put a cost on all equipment. I think we had about a 100 million dollar cushion left for energy costs. Once we got to calculating the energy costs, that $100 million went away very quickly.

We ended up losing money each year, the plant was never profitable. Almost every team lost money, the only ones that didn't were groups that made (in my opinion) unreasonable assumptions, like being able to sell the CO2 generated from the fermentors as high-purity CO2 (which is expensive).

Now, we went with mostly traditional chemical engineering equipment. Specialty equipment for distillation of ethanol does exist, but for a project of this scale, it really wasn't worth trying to track down quotes (since most companies won't quote something to a college senior design team anyway)

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: MrBond

Originally posted by: AmigaMan
This is ridiculous. So how much energy does it take to process raw oil into what we put in our gas tanks? Does it take into account the ships transporting it from the middle east? What about the cost of drilling it from the earth? And even if it is less than corn or other biofuel, gasoline has had decades of efficiency improvements. Given time, biofuel would also become as efficient to produce. The argument about how growing biofuel is taking away land that could be used to feed 7 humans is stupid. I don't know about you, but I don't live on corn alone. We have plenty of land for growing corn or whatever, and plenty of land for food production.

I had to design a fuel-ethanol plant for my senior design project, so I know a little about this.

Ethanol of a purity high enough to use for fuel-ethanol is very hard to distill. The distillation is very energy intensive, which is expensive to do.

Fuel Ethanol is something like 99% ethanol cut with a certain percentage of gasoline to denature it. The problem is, coming out of a fermentor you have a solution of about 12-15% ethanol and a bunch of water. Ethanol-water mixtures have an azeotrope at around 94%, which means it's impossible to distill it beyond that without doing a specialized distillation. We used extractive distillation in our design, where you distill to a certain point (say 90%), add a third chemical to break the azeotrope, then distill it up to 99% purity. You use a third column to separate out the third chemical from the water, you can generally reuse most of the third chemical.

In designing our plant, we were doing really well cash-wise, even after we specced out and put a cost on all equipment. I think we had about a 100 million dollar cushion left for energy costs. Once we got to calculating the energy costs, that $100 million went away very quickly.

We ended up losing money each year, the plant was never profitable. Almost every team lost money, the only ones that didn't were groups that made (in my opinion) unreasonable assumptions, like being able to sell the CO2 generated from the fermentors as high-purity CO2 (which is expensive).

Now, we went with mostly traditional chemical engineering equipment. Specialty equipment for distillation of ethanol does exist, but for a project of this scale, it really wasn't worth trying to track down quotes (since most companies won't quote something to a college senior design team anyway)

Very interesting

 

[SuperSix]

Better get to know the guy at the local auto parts store by first name.

 

[Evadman]

It's not that hard to convert really. I had an old 70's Arens tractor with a 4 horse tecumseh engine. I bought the thing for $30. Fixed it up and got it running. But 4 horse and a 29" deck with m on it was not conductive to anything resembling power. I upped the compression by machining about 1/4" of head away, and put in some valve pockets.

The compression was so high it was pinging horribly on 99 octane fuel (the highest you can get around here without going to 107 Sonoco at a track.) I figured going to alchohol would help as it runs cooler and has a higher octane. I otit unning, but it was running hotter than hell with the mixing needle at full open, so it was runnin lean. I took the carb apart, bored out needle & seat and put in a set from my dad's old truck. (it takes more alcohol than fuel, you need more than 14.7:1 with alchohol) Wow, what a difference. I never put it on a dyno or anything, but it felt like it was making 9-10 hp on 90% alchohol 10% gasoline. (it refused to start on 100% unless I used propane to richen the mixture, whic was a pain) It ran like a champ until the rod snapped and cracked the block. Probably got too hot, expanded, and the piston hit the head.

 

[BWMerlin]

Producing ethanal is very energy intensive but I plant here in oz that makes it burns the sugar can mulch to power the plant (steam engine) and produces more energy than they need so sells the rest to the power company's which then sell it onto consumers as green power. IMO if you are going to produce alternatives to petrol you need to look at the whole process and see what parts you can change to make it greener (such as burning the mulch to power the ethanal plant). The US armed services area a huge user of bio-diesel (largest in the US) and they claim they have no problems with it. http://www.wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,68969,00.html?tw=rss.TEK If you can replace some parts the whole process than become greener and you will remove some of the negative effects resulting from producing fuel for vehicles. Also mentioned is that you also have the possibility of selling the carbon absorption of the crop as part of the world carbon trading scheme they have got going, so producing the ethanol may still remain a money loser but selling the carbon is absorbs may just make the whole operation profitable.

 

[Inspector Jihad]

Originally posted by: Evadman
It's not that hard to convert really. I had an old 70's Arens tractor with a 4 horse tecumseh engine. I bought the thing for $30. Fixed it up and got it running. But 4 horse and a 29" deck with m on it was not conductive to anything resembling power. I upped the compression by machining about 1/4" of head away, and put in some valve pockets.

The compression was so high it was pinging horribly on 99 octane fuel (the highest you can get around here without going to 107 Sonoco at a track.) I figured going to alchohol would help as it runs cooler and has a higher octane. I otit unning, but it was running hotter than hell with the mixing needle at full open, so it was runnin lean. I took the carb apart, bored out needle & seat and put in a set from my dad's old truck. (it takes more alcohol than fuel, you need more than 14.7:1 with alchohol) Wow, what a difference. I never put it on a dyno or anything, but it felt like it was making 9-10 hp on 90% alchohol 10% gasoline. (it refused to start on 100% unless I used propane to richen the mixture, whic was a pain) It ran like a champ until the rod snapped and cracked the block. Probably got too hot, expanded, and the piston hit the head.

wow...i wish i could do all that

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: Evadman
It's not that hard to convert really. I had an old 70's Arens tractor with a 4 horse tecumseh engine. I bought the thing for $30. Fixed it up and got it running. But 4 horse and a 29" deck with m on it was not conductive to anything resembling power. I upped the compression by machining about 1/4" of head away, and put in some valve pockets.

The compression was so high it was pinging horribly on 99 octane fuel (the highest you can get around here without going to 107 Sonoco at a track.) I figured going to alchohol would help as it runs cooler and has a higher octane. I otit unning, but it was running hotter than hell with the mixing needle at full open, so it was runnin lean. I took the carb apart, bored out needle & seat and put in a set from my dad's old truck. (it takes more alcohol than fuel, you need more than 14.7:1 with alchohol) Wow, what a difference. I never put it on a dyno or anything, but it felt like it was making 9-10 hp on 90% alchohol 10% gasoline. (it refused to start on 100% unless I used propane to richen the mixture, whic was a pain) It ran like a champ until the rod snapped and cracked the block. Probably got too hot, expanded, and the piston hit the head.

Nah. It should've been running cooler on alcohol than gasoline.

The problem was just.. the rod. The stock rods in cheapo small engines are pretty damn weak.

Too bad it cracked the block. Probably could've found a nice billet rod to replace it and it would've been good to go.

 

[Evadman]

Originally posted by: Eli
Too bad it cracked the block. Probably could've found a nice billet rod to replace it and it would've been good to go.

I didn't so much crack it as blast a hole in it. Bu same result Seriously though, it was just a play toy really. They do make some NICE billet rods for Jr. Dragsters and such, but the whole lawn mower cost me about $50 so a $300 rod was out of the question . Although, I do hav a nice new 17hp 2 cyl B&S tractor now. Hmm... Replacement engines for it are only about $300. wonder if it will do wheelies with more power...

 

[rezinn]

I did a quick google search and this article has some good information. Just skip some of the modifications until you get to fuel system stuff. They replaced most of the fuel delivery system and some other things to make the engine more alcohol "compatible."

http://www.engr.unl.edu/~ethanol/unl-sae2.pdf