87 Octane Ethanol free vs 89 with Ethanol

[pacofortacos]

Is your position seriously that alcohol isn't faster than petroleum because something else is even more fasterer? ... OK I'm done

No my position is the engines are built and tuned to run what the chosen fuel is and if you run a fuel that the engine isn't built/tuned for that performance will suffer.

 

[TomB 1269]

The whole ethanol/no ethanol thing is hilarious to me. In the states, we have been blending up to 10% ethanol in our gasoline since the late 1970s. It wasn't necessarily advertised at the pump like it is now but if you are driving a vehicle designed since the 1980s, IT IS DESIGNED TO RUN ON 10% ETHANOL blended into the gasoline. Will it hurt your vehicle to run 0 ethanol gas? No, but for the additional price of 0 ethanol gas, there is not enough benefit to regularly run it. The research shows most vehicles will gain 2-3% in fuel efficiency on 0 ethanol, but the cost is usually 10-15% more per gallon. Also, the alcohol has a lower flash point and burns more completely than gasoline so you pick up a little power with ethanol, that's why drag cars run methanol injection.

Now, if you plan to store your vehicle, watercraft, lawn equipment with gas in the tank for longer than 45-60 days, I would recommend 0 ethanol in that case as the ethanol does absorb moisture from the air and any amount of WATER in your gas is far worse your fuel system than the 10% of ethanol you will find.

I would absolutely disagree, it may have been in some places but not widely used or at the levels used today....We have been running fuel with additives to better oxygenate it and decrease pollution, but thru the 80s and 90s it was MBTA

 

[pacofortacos]

The "other things" could be ... ethanol. When was the last time you saw a MSDS hanging off a bottle of Jim Beam? OSHA's hazardous chemicals communications standard leaves it up to the chemical compound manufacturer to determine if an ingredient in their product constitutes a hazard.

Since neither of us knows what the "other things" are in that, this is all just talk. I don't know if you'd rather be paying for mysterious inert ingredients or combustible fuel in a bottle of fuel additive...

I would think their shipping trucks are placarded. Just guessing though as I do not know for sure.

We often pay for inert ingredients - I do agree it is all talk though without knowing.
But why hide it if it is alcohol? Who out there reads MSDS sheets before buying something?

 

[kurek]

I would absolutely disagree, it may have been in some places but not widely used or at the levels used today....We have been running fuel with additives to better oxygenate it and decrease pollution, but thru the 80s and 90s it was MBTA

What exactly is it about other oxygenators that would be preferable (to you) over ethanol? All oxygenators - for the same reason - will have fewer BTU's per pound than pure petroleum.

Since they will all find their way into the air we breathe and the water we drink, can you think of an oxygenator safer than the one we also deliberately drink after work on Friday?

 

[Brandon-w]

What exactly is it about other oxygenators that would be preferable (to you) over ethanol? All oxygenators - for the same reason - will have fewer BTU's per pound than pure petroleum.

Since they will all find their way into the air we breathe and the water we drink, can you think of an oxygenator safer than the one we also deliberately drink after work on Friday?

I'd prefer a nice fat bottle of nitrous and fil stations all over for it. And a better price.. [emoji6] If "we goda have it" let's have some fun with it.

 

[kurek]

But why hide it if it is alcohol? Who out there reads MSDS sheets before buying something?

Just conjecture on my part here but I'd guess it's about the same reason KFC doesn't print their 11 herbs and spices.. just keeps the trade secrets secret. They also list a range of percents for the listed ingredients, in reality it's (surely?) a very specific percent why would they fluctuate the blend bottle per bottle by 30%? But the less they disclose about the recipe the less likely they are to lose sales to a competitive manufacturer or people getting on the internet and sharing DIY home depot paint aisle recipes.

 

[TomB 1269]

If 10% of your fuel has 30% fewer BTU's then at most you would see a 3% difference in gross fuel consumption for equivalent work.

That's before taking into consideration that your effective volumetric efficiency is improved by not having to push as much nitrogen out the tailpipe when your fuel is oxygenated.

Holy cow people get weird about this stuff it's just math and chemistry it has conclusive and concrete answers.

You are actually including in the fuel efficiency the molecular weight/drag of N2 in your exhaust. Co and N2 have the same mass at 28.01b/mol

 

[pacofortacos]

What exactly is it about other oxygenators that would be preferable (to you) over ethanol? All oxygenators - for the same reason - will have fewer BTU's per pound than pure petroleum.

Since they will all find their way into the air we breathe and the water we drink, can you think of an oxygenator safer than the one we also deliberately drink after work on Friday?

That is a very valid point, it is about the best that we can get.

The big question is - is corn the best product to make it from?
Sure it is plentiful but any plant can be grown and using a bunch of corn increases the price of other goods - though to be honest some of the other uses for corn aren't the most healthy. haha

What about making it from sawgrass? I thought a few years ago that sawgrass was much more of an efficient plant to use.

 

[kurek]

You are actually including in the fuel efficiency the molecular weight/drag of N2 in your exhaust. Co and N2 have the same mass at 28.01b/mol

But you're supplying some of the oxygen in the liquid fuel so for a given horsepower demand the throttle blade is open less. The stoich. ratio for ethanol is shorter than the ratio for petroleum. Some of the O (now in the form of CO and CO2) being pushed out of your exhaust pipe got there in the liquid fuel and therefore did not come with the attached burden of a bunch of N2 that's just along for the ride.

 

[TomB 1269]

That would be my interpretation too but the MSDS only lists 2 things and their percents don't add up to 100 and the balance has to be something...

No MSDS or SDS only need to list hazardous material in concentrations greater then a certain percent on a "publicly" available MSDS or SDS and i think its 1%. Companies are required to furnish your EHS department with fully disclosed MSDS or SDS if requested but only after signing an NDA (non-disclosure agreement). Not EHS at my company, but I order the stuff and work with engineers on their needs.

 

[TomB 1269]

But you're supplying some of the oxygen in the liquid fuel so for a given horsepower demand the throttle blade is open less. The stoich. ratio for ethanol is shorter than the ratio for petroleum. Some of the O (now in the form of CO and CO2) being pushed out of your exhaust pipe got there in the liquid fuel and therefore did not come with the attached burden of a bunch of N2 that's just along for the ride.

You got me there....just not sure how much your talking .00001% in difference.

 

[pacofortacos]

Just conjecture on my part here but I'd guess it's about the same reason KFC doesn't print their 11 herbs and spices.. just keeps the trade secrets secret. They also list a range of percents for the listed ingredients, in reality it's (surely?) a very specific percent why would they fluctuate the blend bottle per bottle by 30%? But the less they disclose about the recipe the less likely they are to lose sales to a competitive manufacturer or people getting on the internet and sharing DIY home depot paint aisle recipes.

Yeah, it did seem strange to have such a range.
Unless that range doesn't matter as far as Hazmat would be concerned with those chemicals.

The missing balance can't be water, it has to be something that is burnable. Maybe kerosene lol.

 

[kurek]

That is a very valid point, it is about the best that we can get.

The big question is - is corn the best product to make it from?
Sure it is plentiful but any plant can be grown and using a bunch of corn increases the price of other goods - though to be honest some of the other uses for corn aren't the most healthy. haha

What about making it from sawgrass? I thought a few years ago that sawgrass was much more of an efficient plant to use.

This part gets into the territory where friendships are lost because there are just so many moving parts in the conversation and it's easy to get caught up in any of them. It's why people can't believe other people would vote for "the other candidate" or can't believe other people follow "some other God" .. every answer has some valid parts and some parts that require a bit of acrobatics or willful ignorance to accept.

You can point at ag subsidies, but petroleum gets subsidies too. In both cases a lot of those tax benefits are obfuscated by being three layers removed from actual cash being handed over and some of them have good reasons even if they come attached to bad ones. Everyone is going to pick their own position and ignore any data that conflicts with it.

What we should probably all get better at - and I'm including myself in that we, in case there was any confusion there - is accepting that all of these fuels and technologies are here to stay for a while and the only way we're going to arrive at good results from talking about it is to keep the conversation level headed and facts-grounded.

 

[pacofortacos]

The one thing I can't figure out - unless they couldn't get past the EPA - is why Ram never made the 5.7 flex fuel capable?
It would seem to be able to be easily done - again unless they couldn't get it to pass EPA standards.

Not that it would most likely matter here in PA, since some flex fuel vehicles cannot be sold new here - unless they passed California emission rules.
For example the 2016 Ford Focus 2.0 DI flex fuel. was not able to be sold by dealers in PA, but you could go buy one in OH.

 

[TomB 1269]

Yeah, it did seem strange to have such a range.
Unless that range doesn't matter as far as Hazmat would be concerned with those chemicals.

The missing balance can't be water, it has to be something that is burnable. Maybe kerosene lol.

Gents this all part of keeping their proprietary mix a secret. They do not have to list specifics as the government does not require specifics, just whether or not it falls within a given range of a specific hazard or hazard specification. To illustrate this, we all know a big enough gas leak in your house can cause it to blow-up right... well not really. The explosion hazard only exist in a 10% range and that is from 5% to 15% natural gas, under or over the explosion hazard doe not exist, just like the too much fuel in the cylinder and you get no fire.

Someone mentioned placarding of commercial vehicle, only when amount of any given hazardous material with in that specific hazard class is present in a given container 60- 1 gallon cans of gas may not require placarding, but a single 55 gallon drum might. It's not just about the hazard, flammable, etc. but how much can be released. 60 1 gallon bottles the likelihood of all 60 leaking or rupturing is much less than the leaking of 55 gallons of gas from 1 rupture or leay drum of gas. I have 2 cylinder of the same mix of gas in to different work locations. Each requires a different orifice restrictor as the abatement system in one location can not handle the volume that could be released if there was a problem in the on location with the larger restrictor, but the other location requires a hire flow rate so they cannot use the smaller restrictor.

Your HazMat lesson for the day........... If anyone cared and yup I did

 

[kurek]

.just not sure how much your talking .00001% in difference.

We could do the math.. Oxygen has a molar density of .71 grams per liter (STP) and weighs 1.14kg/L and about 34.8% of an ethanol molecule by mass is oxygen.

So if you burn a liter of pure petroleum (750g) at 14.7:1 you're also drawing in 11kg of air, of which 8.6kg is nitrogen. If you burn a liter of E10 (753g) at 14.08:1 you're drawing in 10.6kg of air of which contains 8.27kg of nitrogen and the net result is you're pushing about 397 grams or about 3.37% less mass out the tailpipe.

That is of course not a lot, nor is the ~3% fewer net BTU's contained in a volume of E10 vs. E0 and explains why our engines burn either fuel more or less interchangeably and most people saying they notice a big difference are probably interjecting their own personal bias into their observations.

 

[pacofortacos]

"we all know a big enough gas leak in your house can cause it to blow-up right... well not really. The explosion hazard only exist in a 10% range and that is from 5% to 15% natural gas, under or over the explosion hazard doe not exist,"

I did not know that!
I figured more gas (up to a much higher point) = bigger boom lol

I did know about gasoline though.

 

[pacofortacos]

We could do the math.. Oxygen has a molar density of .71 grams per liter (STP) and weighs 1.14kg/L and about 34.8% of an ethanol molecule by mass is oxygen.

So if you burn a liter of pure petroleum (750g) at 14.7:1 you're also drawing in 11kg of air, of which 8.6kg is nitrogen. If you burn a liter of E10 (753g) at 14.08:1 you're drawing in 10.6kg of air of which contains 8.27kg of nitrogen and the net result is you're pushing about 397 grams or about 3.37% less mass out the tailpipe.

That is of course not a lot, nor is the ~3% fewer net BTU's contained in a volume of E10 vs. E0 and explains why our engines burn either fuel more or less interchangeably and most people saying they notice a big difference are probably interjecting their own personal bias into their observations.

The only fuel I ever noticed a big difference with was 90 Rec fuel and then really only when towing - it does give better mpg by a couple and more power vs. 89 E10 on my truck.
Could be the detonation related though in the summer heat.

I have tried 87 E0, 87 E10 and 89 E10 on trips (all on the same trip) out west when driving into a headwind in the middle of winter - at most there was 1 mpg difference between them but with the given variables I couldn't attribute it to fuel. The 87 E0 did seem to be a tad smoother running esp. at idle but it could have just been a good quality fuel.

 

[kurek]

The one thing I can't figure out - unless they couldn't get past the EPA - is why Ram never made the 5.7 flex fuel capable?
It would seem to be able to be easily done - again unless they couldn't get it to pass EPA standards.
.

That part is a bit of a mystery to me too actually - for purposes of this particular node of the conversation let's focus just on burning fuel in the engine and not all the externalities of it - they're already manufacturing all the parts necessary for a flex fuel vehicle, all the materials science is done, all the hardware exists to do it - this is self evident since they make flex fuel vehicles.

The EPA grants extensions to CAFE requirements for flex fuel vehicles, don't quote me on this but I think it's 150% of the allowable consumption/emissions rate for a non-flex vehicle. So Ram could "get away with" being 50% worse on fuel efficiency, so to speak, on gasoline if they also set the vehicle up to be flex fuel even if 0 customers ever actually ran it on corn sauce.

So why not, right?

I have a guess but this is only a guess so don't look any deeper than it deserves - oversizing a fuel injector gives you less granular control of the injector and that makes both emissions and responsiveness more difficult to manage. Like if you look at our Hemi trucks they don't have EGR because Chrysler was able to dial them in well enough on fuel and spark control and run that second spark plug so they keep NOx and other emissions minimal. But if your fuel injector's duty cycle range can go from 0% to 100% and you need to leave some reserve at the top and bottom of that range to account for elevation changes and vehicle age/wear characteristics, now maybe you're only using the middle 80% of that range... now you have to allow for another 30% of that range to account for the variability in fuel AFR between the two different fuels AND probably another 10% on top of that for cold starts on E85 because its volatility at sub zero temps is like maple syrup so now you only have 40% of the resolution in those injectors.
That reduced resolution might be the difference between needing or not needing EGR or other emissions controls - I'm certain they COULD do it but maybe they didn't think it would make a big enough sales difference for customers who have a stereotype of not taking up environmental or economic issues in the first place.

 

[pacofortacos]

Entirely possible, I thought I had read that the hemi was borderline on emission as it was.

And we all know how many people would be on here saying my new Hemi Ram only gets 11 mpg when using E85!