Hello fellow coopers....The goverment is beginning to add 10% ethanol to the fuel we burn because of clean air standards. The good news is that cooper owners with 07's or lower won't see hardly any of a power reduction in our speed; but the 08's will because Mr.cooper maker has converted them to burn 87 octane fuel and the additive will have a noticeable engine slow down....but that's ok...we'll just speed away

Your comments or questions are welcome.

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What? Are you saying I don't have to put 91 octane in my '08?

 

Ethanol is the biggest scam corporate farmers have ever pulled. Reduced power, more NOx emissions and less food driving prices higher. ADM has done a great job fooling all the people all the time.

 

I don't know *what* he's saying, but the octane requirements for the first-gen and second-gen cars are the same.

(And seriously, who waits seven months after joining NAM before making their first post?? )

 

I'll second that.

All bio-fuels are just trading one form of fuel for another with no appreciable gains nor ecological improvements.

Possibly a few areas of the world can do cane ethanol efficiently with the use of .... slave labor or labor paid so poorly it is effectively indentured labor.

 

There are a number of viable bio-fuel feed stocks that can reduce emissions, are renewable, require much less resources to produce and have higher potential energy densities, and don't compete with food crops. Corn based ethanol is just not one of them. As far as I have read it's actually one of the worst possible feed stocks. The main reason we are using corn is the pre-existing surplus produced in the US due to decades of corn subsidies.

 

Amen MiniMaybee, If the federal government would allow more refines to be built. And the Gas companies would start competing with out our tax monies and pumping more oil we would have plenty to last hundreds of years.

 

Name one with positive EROEI taking into account all energy inputs.

And not the theoretical switch grass based on experimental hyper enzyme production....

 

Why not? As far as I understand there are already firms producing bio-fuels that beat ethanol using switch grass, algae, and waste materials as feed stocks, they just don't have the same money behind them that corn does. I believe recycled cooking oil bio-diesel does as well (not a very scalable solution though).

 

we have been getting the 10% blend down here in south florida and my mpg drops by 2 mpg. no matter how i drive. ive seen talk of making bio fuels from oranges down here as well. i just hope they can improve the performance of these fuels . so this stuff could be a all around winner for everybody.

 

The refiners have been adding 10% ethanol to supreme for years. Depends entirely on the blending economics at the time of production. Look at your fuel pumps. All the premium pumps will have a label saying " may contain up to 10% ethanols".

The '08 MCSs require 91 octane just like the earlier years.

 

The heat of combustion for ethanol is less than that of dino fuel, hence lower fuel economy. The oxygen sensor will sense the additional oxygen content and will instruct the injectors to feed more fuel per intake stroke. The power will not be affected

 

Recycled cooking oil (bio diesel) is great, but has a relatively constant quantity and already has a lot of 'fuel oil in it' from farming the beginning product and production. It is a great example of re-use of a an energy resource.

I am trying not to go into a long litany on physics and geology and a minor amount of chemistry.

One of the major problems of Ethanol is that it will have to be a JIT product because it goes bad very quickly, it is hygroscopic, and it cannot be transported through pipelines. Or it cannot be transported through oil pipelines (industry puts different products through oil pipelines and removes the beginning/end commingled product), and new very expensive ones would need to be constructed. So by the time one accounts for all the energy inputs of growing the stock, building the equipment, harvesting the stock, processing it into product and then trucking it to market you will end up negative EROEI. So you actually loose energy through the process.

Sure here are a number of alternative processes to make ethanol (or other bio-fuels), none of which have scaled yet, and depend on experimental enzymes that are not in production either. Once something is found to be efficient....see the next paragraph

Next is the problem that to produce enough bio-fuel to power todays fleet of vehicles we will need to plant vast areas of the USA the size of medium states to produce enough. Which will compete for land with ranchers, other feed crops, housing, and so on. There is an excellent article in Time a couple of weeks ago that talks about this problem in Brazil.

The scale of oil used for transportation is vastly incredible to keep our happy motoring lifestyle. The world burns 1,000 barrels of oil a second, the US is nearly 500 of that! Scale to that!

The only true renewable energy resources are the Sun, the Wind, and Gravity.

So again, is there a process which can make ethanol (or biofuel) with positive EROEI, given all energy inputs? The key to this is GIVEN ALL ENERGY INPUTS, show me the numbers!

Now I think you could make ethanol with a positive EROEI, but it will have ecological and sociological negatives. Like indentured labor, also water consumption/pollution and air pollution. Natural biological by-products of ethanol production are pollutants in quantity also. These issues are a problem in India and Brazil cane ethanol production.

6+ billion people competing for our oil under their sand.

 

I agree with the above, but I never hear about how much of the oil is used for insecticides, fertalizers, cosmetics and of course our friendly plastics. Does anyone remember the joy of no longer having to bring back glass bottles to get your deposite back? Now with the wonder of plastic bottles all we have to do is throw them in the landfill and make more. Progess!?

Somebody said somewhere that stations aren't required to post the 10% sticker. I've given up trying to find the pumps with no stickers.

 

The good thing about rising commodity prices is it incourages reuse of materials. The price of scrap aluminum has been bouncing around the deposit price (price dependent on state).

Article today in Forbes:
"SAUDI ARABIA -RIYADH, April 13 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah said he had ordered some new oil discoveries left untapped to preserve oil wealth in the world's top exporter for future generations, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.
"I keep no secret from you that when there were some new finds, I told them, 'no, leave it in the ground, with grace from god, our children need it'," King Abdullah said in remarks made late on Saturday, SPA said."

http://www.forbes.com/reuters/feeds/...SAUDI-OIL.html

 

Ahhh... oil, bio, hybrid... So happy to have no children, good life, and burn normal old gas with a clear conscience