How pure is the Ethanol you're talking about? Here in the US, they have trouble getting to the level of purity found in the Ethanol in Brasil. I know the IRL is bringing their fuel from Brasil. The tuning of an engine to accept Ethanol will determine the performance one requires. You can go either way if you want, but most want all the power they can get. If the US and other countries increase the amount of Ethanol to let say 25%, the price of gasoline can be cheaper. There are a lot of vehicle that is Flex Fuel and the number is increasing. A 75% gasoline/25% Ethanol mix would be nice. I think the current number is 90% gasoline/10% Ethanol (Or is it 85% gas./15% Eth.). All this numbers are confusing, but most Brasil is in a warmer climate zone so they don't have to worry about frozen gas lines :lol:.

Brasil has plenty of surplus. Every year, they decrease the price of Ethanol in Brasil due to the surplus. Plus, Brasil hardly imports any petrol, we have plenty of that too. All I'm saying is that the US was going to import more Ethanol from Brasil, but US changed their minds and posted a 100% duty on Ethanol from Brasil. How do I know this? My family was pissed when they produced a bit more thinking the US was going to buy our Ethanol, which didn't happen. Who knows, maybe more conspiracies to go around :rofl:.

I love :love: this forum :yes:. Also, don't drink Ethanol :drunk:. Many people got really sick when Brasil made the switch thinking it was plain simple Alcohol :rofl:.

Luc if I had to guess, the purity of our ethanol is probably about the same as the trash we call 'food' so not good...

Finn, good to know my gas lines won't be freezing, but have a look at this- www.fuel-testers.com/list_e10_engine_damage.html

As usual, the public has no say in the matter.

@ Luc: What I meant is that if the US switched a lot of the gasoline usage to EtOH, it would overwhelm world EtOH supplies. From the figures I saw, the US and Brasil produce ~4B gallons of EtOH a yr each. The US consumes ~400M gallons of gas a day. IE, we would burn thru the world supply in less than a month.

From the US perspective, we spend a lot of (tax) money, and have a huge corn lobby, building and protecting a(n inferior) corn-based EtOH supply.

From Brasil's view, they've spend decades building pure EtOH based transportation and economy. If left unchecked, the US could piss thru a lot of it very quickly, forcing prices up. As Red pointed out, EtOH burning engines have to be specially designed, so it would not be easy or cheap for Brasil to switch to a petroleum fuel supply to replace the lost EtOH.

I'm not suprized Brasilian EtOH is much cleaner than US corn based EtOH as the starting material is so much cleaner (ie pure sucrose sugar.) Corn would have a lot more complex sugars and starches, as well as plant oils, chaff and other crap that would have to be processed, refined and distilled out.

@Red, I saw some of that too. Where EtOH is a bad lubricant, and more readily washes away lubricating oils as well. I think it burns hotter as well, IDK. I know it changes octane ratings too. Lots of problems to deal with.


BTW, you can drink ethanol just fine. Everclear is ~95% EtOH, tho I wouldn't drink that. ;) Methanol's the bad sh!t, and will make you go blind if you drink it. One more reason Nitro fuel is so bad!

As many who knows about this stuff say, "The US should learn from Brasil." You will never see that info in Brasil and we've been running pure Ethanol for a while now. Some vehicles will also work from any type of mixture you put in it. Deep south in Brasil get pretty cold and it also snows over there and none of the cars suffers any problems. You should send those guys an e-mail asking them to explain how Brasil made it work so good :lol:.

We make more than that Finnster. We make so much that we have a lot of surplus of it. It wouldn't hurt Brasil one bit if the US decided to mix more Ethanol into the gasoline. Brasil has plenty of petrol too, so we are good. More and more deposits are being found, but since Brasil doesn't consume as much as we do here in the US, we don't refine it. Cars built in Brasil are all flex fuel and since here it would be a higher mixture of gasoline, it would provide the protection the engine needs. I have a converter that allows any gas cars to run on E85. I used it in my VW Passat in Florida and ran well. I hope the US imports ethanol from Brasil, it would make my family happy :lol:.

I get the impression alot of this is driven by the environMENTALists, but I don't see what good it will do when we have piles of unusable motor vehicles. This on top of our ultra-retarded cash for clunkers euthanasia programs.

Luc we could definitely learn a few things from Brazil- sorry you spell it Brasil don't you. Well at least we have one Brasilian to learn from!

I've seen that acetone is a good additive, and people claim it will actually increase mileage. I don't know, it seems our gov't will make our vehicles guinea pigs without us doing more of the same. I'd pay to see some of these idiots drink what comes out of the pump, that would be satisfying for me.

I want to know how the idea of using algea as a fuel source is. Two different but similar approaches:

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/20319/
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science...oil/index.html

I rather like this a LOT. The second link, while supposedly not as energy dense, seems to be more of a green solution.

You can spell Brasil the US way, I won't get angry :lol:. I'm still learning new things everyday, but when it comes to Ethanol, Brasil is like the Middle East when it comes to petrol :lol:. I use a cap full of acetone every time I fill my gas tank. It didn't work very good in my Dodge RAM :lol:. Want to see some foul work at play? Look at how out of nowhere some auto makers have somehow increased their MPG when things were at it's worst. It seems that the whole BS system is just collapsing on itself. I urge people to go visit other countries and learn from them and then see how things plays here. If I knew better, I wouldn't have someone I love so much be in the position she's in. Trust me on this one, when I get all the stuff I need to make my point clear, the whole world will change (For the better I hope).

What kind of results did you see with the acetone lutach (good and bad)?

I agree, and no doubt more of us would, if we weren't spending all our money on fake gasoline....

Brian both those look like good options. I think dead lobbyists would make a better (and almost limitless) fuel source however :yes:

More conspiracies! Gotta love it!

Where are you from?

Chris Sxxxxxxxx (Hollywood), you're a webprogrammer right. Have you done a little hacking? If so, you can easily find good and true information if you wanted. You would be surprised of the things I know.

@Luc: No prob man, I'm sure you do. Some some old numbers I saw.
Politics and protectionism is all wrapped up in this. Energy business has some sharp elbows. I'm all for more EtOH.

@ Brian:
That's interesting stuff. I'd seen a bit of it before, but nothing recent. I kinda wondered if was a BS ploy by some of the oil companies to green wash their biz. Exxon has been touting the tech, saying they invested a few hundred mil it in, but that's pennies to what's put into oil.

Funny reading some of that. I met my wife as as an undergrad in a lab she was doing a PhD degree in that was located in CO and worked on cellulosic biomass conversion for fuel ethanol at the time (late 90's.) We worked w. NREL in Golden quite a bit and got some grant money from them. Overall tho, we were the poorest lab in the dept. There was no money for alt E research when gas is $1/gal.

Now its a booming field. My wife left and works in a completely different field now. My bro in law is a Chem E prof, and he is always bemoaning my wife she didn't stay in the field as its so hot.

As far as the article goes, they did gloss over a huge caveat. Basically the same one we wrestled with, where do you get the sugars to start with to ferment into EtOH? That's the bitch. Getting sucrose from sugar cane and beets is fairly easy, but that crop is limited to warm & wet areas. If you really want to displace oil, you need way way more. Simply from corn and such displaces food crops. You can get it from all these other sources (ie farm waste, grass cuttings, paper, etc) but its really hard to process, as there are so many other plant fibers and compounds that F up your process (ie enzymes or catalysts.) You can't do it chemically (ie sulphuric acid) as its just too harsh and expensive to be viable.

It will happen eventually, but that article is FOS that its 5-10 years away for much widespread use. That's fishing for grant money. It will need alot of money and research and some smart breakthru's.

I saw somewhere that by producing a "flex fuel" engine, the car makers can assume a 50% gain in MPG as applied to the CAFE stds, never mind if its actually ever used that way. I wonder if a lot of it is just accounting tricks to get around new stds and for marketing.

Honestly, I think the whole thing is retarded. E85 is a joke, and so is adding ethanol to fuel (I think its 10%). I can't stand it! That shit makes my truck run like GARBAGE and wreaks havoc on my carburetor. I've had to retard the timing so much its not even funny because of that stuff and there is only one place I know of in BR that doesn't have it in there gas. E85 is BS to be honest. It cost almost just as much, and actually decreases the gas mileage. Not many benefits to be honest and around here, is HARD to find...The only benefits I've seen is if you have a high horsepower turbo or supercharged motor, since the ethanol cools the intake charge and lets you run higher boost with no detonation, but in most applications, like everyday use, its stupid. I'm more of a performance oriented person (obviously...) and I really dislike hybrids, Flexfuel, yada yada. Its all a joke really...I've seen hybrids and such get worse gas mileage than my car can get relatively stock. My car (2000 Camaro SS 6 speed) can get OVER 30mpg on the highway and over 20 in town with just a few small things done that not only help performance, but also help fuel economy. Intake, exhaust, etc. and I've seen them get upwards of 32mpg with the 6 speed, and still have over 350hp at the rear wheels. I'd MUCH rather that than some retarded hybrid that only gets a few more mpg if that. I dunno. I just can't stand all these ugly cars that people buy because they think they are helping reduce emissions and help global warming, but I don't really believe in that BS. The earths orbit changes quite a bit and is why its been getting warmer in the last few decades, but anyone notice how harsh this winter was? There was snow on the ground of 49 out of 50 states just the other day. It's only snowed maybe 5 or 6 times in Baton Rouge in the last 20 years, and 4 of the times have been in the last 2 years... Three, I believe, where this year...

Squee, that's kinda odd. I noticed an increase of ~2mpg and noticeably more power when I started using ethanol mix instead of regular gas. I even switched back for a time just to see if it was just perception. I just drive an '05 Mazda 3 (2.3L NA engine). Maybe the reduction in power and fuel eff only affects larger engines (although I can't imagine why).

Keep in mind, my truck is a '69 C10 with 3.73's in the rear, 3 speed auto with no overdrive, 357 smallblock with a Holly 650, yada yada, but that stuff (NOT E85, just normal gas with 10% ethanol) makes it run like GARBAGE. What I was talking about though, was E85. You actually get worse gas mileage with it, which the only upside to that would be that its cheaper than standard gas, but around here (and alot of places), its only a little cheaper and doesn't really make it any better of a choice than normal gas. I'm not sure how the standard gas with the 10% ethanol helps gas mileage on a fuel injected motor, just mine, and I get worse gas mileage AND performance.

Yeah, I don't use E85 (car not set up for it). I also have variable valve timing too, so maybe that helps.

I thought to get the best out of E85 or higher one needs to advance the timing. Why are you using E85 though? Most application that would fully benefit from it would be forced induction and high compression engines.

Set up your engine properly and you'll be surprised. You could either set an engine for more power or better efficiency, but the point of Ethanol specially the ones made from sugar canes, is the renewable factor of it. Doesn't higher octane gas have higher amount of Ethanol (Maybe Methanol) in it? I know E85 is 105 octane so it's almost like using 110 race gas.

Your right, E85 is 105 octane, but it only really makes it worth the extra money if your running FI or super high compression 12.0:1 or higher, and it actually requires more E85 than it would normal gas because of how it burns, which gives you worse gas mileage, and around here, the cost is around only 10 cents less a gallon than regular unleaded. I know if tuned properly, E85 is better than unleaded for FI, but like I said, thats the only way it proves useful for power (my only real concern). I'm not so much concerned with things like gas mileage to be honest.

I wasn't saying I run E85 in my truck, I just usually have to run unleaded with the 10% ethanol mixed in because unleaded around here without ethanol is almost impossible to find, and for some reason, no matter what I do, it just makes it impossible to get it tuned 100%.

The main point of Ethanol is basically it's renewable ability. I've seen the benefits of it (In many ways I may add :lol:) in the automotive industry. To make it similar or more fuel efficient then gas, one would need to set it up that way. Most just use it to gain power and like you don't care much for gas mileage.

Gas has gone up over a quarter in the past week. :grrrrrr:

It was at 2.42 a week ago and now it's at 2.69. :whip:

If you compare to the gasprices in sweden it´s still really cheap. Our prices would equal 6.5$ for a gallon

Kind of late but I wanted to fill up with todays price...

I bought 98 RON at AUD $1.34 p/litre today or USD $5.07 p/gallon

I bought regular grade gas today for $1.12 Canadian/$1.06 U.S. .I miss days when it was only $0.64

Your joking, right? :no:

wtf,im in ohio and it may be worth it to drive to canada for my gas if thats true?--josh