E85?

[hydrobluesport]

Who runs it and has it tuned for. Pros and cons. Just saw a company that has a system to do fuel and ignition adjustments in real time. Too good to be true for $900?

 

[Burla]

Less energy then gas, absorbs water easier, and less lubricative value.

 

[ScLeCo]

If you're going to use forced induction it is absolutely worth it. I don't yet have numbers for the truck but I expect to pick up at least 50hp to the wheels.

I did gain close to 70whp in the Evo.

With that said I don't think it's worth it if you're naturally aspirated.

 

[michael harpe]

For boosted engines it's a good fuel because it burns cooler and has less detonation. But keep in mind it takes 2x's the amount of e85 to equal 1 of gasoline. You really you end up filling up twice as fast and therefore cost ends up being the same.

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[Tach_tech]

For boosted engines it's a good fuel because it burns cooler and has less detonation. But keep in mind it takes 2x's the amount of e85 to equal 1 of gasoline. You really you end up filling up twice as fast and therefore cost ends up being the same.

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That and it’s also quite corrosive so you have to make sure your fuel system is compatible with it.

 

[RedSRT4Me]

Who runs it and has it tuned for. Pros and cons. Just saw a company that has a system to do fuel and ignition adjustments in real time. Too good to be true for $900?

I've had my eye on the real time conversion kits like you're mentioning but $900 is way overpriced. Even at half that amount I still would be shopping for deals.

I have an E51 tune from Greene racing I load from time to time when 91 octane decides to get stupid and go north of $4/ gallon. E51 is only 2.70. Power gain is nice, mpg tanks to about 10mpg.

Truck has basic bolt-ons. Nothing I would write home about but a 1500 with 37's that gets out of its own way.

 

[pacofortacos]

I didn't know any 5.7 was e85 rated???? 4.7's are but not the 5.7 as far as I know.
Also if originally a PA truck, I would highly doubt it as it has full blown Cali emissions on it.

 

[michael harpe]

I've had my eye on the real time conversion kits like you're mentioning but $900 is way overpriced. Even at half that amount I still would be shopping for deals.

I have an E51 tune from Greene racing I load from time to time when 91 octane decides to get stupid and go north of $4/ gallon. E51 is only 2.70. Power gain is nice, mpg tanks to about 10mpg.

Truck has basic bolt-ons. Nothing I would write home about but a 1500 with 37's that gets out of its own way.

E51?? Never heard of that. What state are you in?

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[Tach_tech]

I didn't know any 5.7 was e85 rated???? 4.7's are but not the 5.7 as far as I know.
Also if originally a PA truck, I would highly doubt it as it has full blown Cali emissions on it.

5.7s are not E85 rated but you can do it, just takes time and money.

There’s no separate emissions equipment for California Ram trucks. They’re all compliant, unless someone has removed the cats etc.

 

[kurek]

It's unfortunate that the fuel itself has become a controversial topic so it's hard to have a clean conversation about it most places, like politics or religion.


It's a complex topic too so I'll put this in three categories so when somebody's telling me I'm dumb and wrong later they can be specific where.

Combustion + Power

Ethanol is a specific molecule made of Hydrogen, Carbon and Oxygen.

Petroleum (Gasoline, specifically) is a narrow range of molecules made of Hydrogen and Carbon without oxygen.

The oxygen takes up space so for a given volume (a gallon, for example) of liquid fuel, petroleum will have more H and C atoms and therefore a greater number of BTU's per pound. This is why people say that ethanol has less energy; it's one of those statements that has some truth to it but it isn't the whole story.

The oxygen is also available for combustion so it factors into your air/fuel ratio. On petroleum your engine is injecting all the H and C, and you're getting the O for free in the air. On ethanol your engine is injecting all of the H and C but also some of the O, which means you're paying for a little oxygen that you normally get for free. A gallon of E85 can be visualized as similar to 3 quarts of gasoline and one quart of liquid oxygen.

A given mass of H, C and O atoms will have extremely similar energy content whether all the HC is a liquid and all the O is gaseous (burning petroleum) or whether some of the O came in the liquid fuel (burning ethanol) so the only real difference of consequence here is whether you paid money for the O.

But that oxygen is also entering your combustion chamber without dragging a bunch of inert Nitrogen with it, so you don't have to suck as much inert N through your intake tract or push as much inert N through your exhaust system. Your engine's effective thermodynamic efficiency is increased by reducing pumping losses.

Since ethanol is one specific molecule instead of a range of various alkenes it also takes a more specific amount of energy to initiate combustion; that happens to be a little bit more difficult than petroleum which is why the effective octane number of ethanol is much higher. A more aggressively tuned engine can extract a lot more power from ethanol due to higher effective compression ratios, more ambitious ignition timing and the direct delivery of liquid oxygen to the combustion chamber without as much nitrogen along for the ride. This is why many race vehicles use ethanol or methanol fuel, they wouldn't do that if it was a weak fuel would they?

Materials

For the past 40 years ethanol is a normal and expected component of motor fuel so all materials in all automobiles sold for use in North America are compatible with ethanol. It is not possible to make a material that is fully compatible with a dilute solvent then loses compatibility with concentration so any material compatible with E10 (the most common pump gas there is) is also fully compatible with E85 . Vehicles from the 1950s with natural cork gaskets might suffer leaks but they might anyway from being half a century or more old.

Ethanol itself is also noncovalent which is a fancy word for doesn't conduct electricity, so under typical automotive conditions ethanol cannot contribute to galvanic corrosion (the rust which occurs when two different kinds of metals interact electrically with each other)

However ethanol is hygroscopic - a fancy word for absorbing water from the air - and becomes conductive when contaminated with water. This ultimately does become a problem in the long term for engines that are used seasonally like lawnmowers or snowblowers or vehicles that get parked over winter. If I had such a vehicle I'd probably see about running my last tank as empty as possible & on 100% petroleum before putting it up for winter, and then pour some fresh gas in the tank come springtime before starting it up.

Politics + Environment

We can get annoyed by greenies but climate change is no longer a controversy. The numbers have been crunched, it's a done deal. We know with certainty exactly how much of the carbon in the air came from us (both tax records on fossil fuel production and C14 isotope concentration, both numbers agree with each other) and we know with certainty how much that contributes to energy retention by the atmosphere (approximately 2.4W per square meter on sunlit half of planet as of 2017) and that increased energy intensifies weather phenomena which costs us all a lot of lives and money. That's not an opinion.

Petroleum is the ultimate result of sunlight that hit Earth millions of years ago and became plants. It was stored over a long period of time and is being released over a comparatively short period of time, that's the key mechanic in why we should care about whether we use fossil fuels. By comparison modern ethanol production is the result of basically the same process except it's produced and released at roughly the same rate. Plants pull carbon from the air, we mash 'em to make fuel and then we release the same carbon into the air again.

Just like all tech this process is getting better year by year, more efficient production means more profit so all the motivation we need is there and it's Americans who stand to make the most money from this thanks to the land, climate and infrastructure our ancestors secured & we've continued to build and maintain.

To put three exhaustively out of date ideas to bed: No, ethanol production is not net energy negative. That whole idea was wrong in the first place and came from a 1970's study that assumed all of the solids from ethanol production were simply dumped into a hole in the ground and weren't a valuable coproduct of fuel production. That product is DDG/DDS - dried distiller's grains - and it's crucial to meat and dairy production because it stores, transports and dispenses better than whole meal and it's healthier for the animals due to its high protein and low starch content. In other words it's not "food or fuel" it's "food and fuel", and if we stopped using ethanol as a fuel we'd still need to make just as much of it in order to keep feeding our livestock... so we'd have to start dumping that in the ground or drinking a whole lot more grain whisky. Tons of other products we all use come from the same crop from floor wax to shipping tape to synthetic "leather" shoes.

Finally the subsidy topic.. always controversial because all energy sources in the US receive subsidies and they're complex enough that anyone can look at the big picture and see what they want to see. The specific subsidy most people talk about with ethanol is the RFS, but that ended in 2011 so it's no longer relevant to 2019. Both petroleum and biofuels are massively subsidized in the USA and the exact amounts fluctuate wildly every year so any true accounting made in 2019 may not have been true last year and may not be true next year.

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I haven't converted my Ram to run E85 yet, was waiting for the warranty to run out before making any changes whatsoever to the powertrain. I've converted the last 4 vehicles I've owned & ran it in those whenever available.

 

[kurek]

E51?? Never heard of that. What state are you in?

In Arizona ethanol blended fuel is limited to 54% due to our average climate and elevation. We also have two different regional blends of unleaded (whether e10 or "e0") based on lattitude because the northern half of Arizona is higher elevation on average, thus lower atmospheric pressure resulting in a different rate of evaporation and different typical cylinder peak pressure in naturally aspirated engines.

We used to have E85 available but it was changed to 54% (stations will be labeled E54 or E51, some still say E85 if they have old labels that haven't been brought into compliance yet) to reduce evaporation during warmer months. The evaporation is both costly (lost product) and is a form of pollution so the reformulated fuel addresses that without making new hassles for the distributors or operators.

 

[michael harpe]

In Arizona ethanol blended fuel is limited to 54% due to our average climate and elevation. We also have two different regional blends of unleaded (whether e10 or "e0") based on lattitude because the northern half of Arizona is higher elevation on average, thus lower atmospheric pressure resulting in a different rate of evaporation and different typical cylinder peak pressure in naturally aspirated engines.

We used to have E85 available but it was changed to 54% (stations will be labeled E54 or E51, some still say E85 if they have old labels that haven't been brought into compliance yet) to reduce evaporation during warmer months. The evaporation is both costly (lost product) and is a form of pollution so the reformulated fuel addresses that without making new hassles for the distributors or operators.

And is this in relation to the laden European swallow or the laden African swallow? (You have to love Monty python to get this reference). Unless its an unladen swallow in which case it moves faster.

But I seriously enjoyed the tech answer. [emoji120][emoji120]

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[RedSRT4Me]

In Arizona ethanol blended fuel is limited to 54% due to our average climate and elevation. We also have two different regional blends of unleaded (whether e10 or "e0") based on lattitude because the northern half of Arizona is higher elevation on average, thus lower atmospheric pressure resulting in a different rate of evaporation and different typical cylinder peak pressure in naturally aspirated engines.

We used to have E85 available but it was changed to 54% (stations will be labeled E54 or E51, some still say E85 if they have old labels that haven't been brought into compliance yet) to reduce evaporation during warmer months. The evaporation is both costly (lost product) and is a form of pollution so the reformulated fuel addresses that without making new hassles for the distributors or operators.

What he said