Well yes your correct but ethanol and methanol burn faster than gasoline. Ever seen the bottle experiment. Gas will burn the bottle because it’s slow burning. Methanol and Ethanol won’t. They have a high octane but when they light off the burn ridiculously fast. This is part of what makes them suitable for bigger power applications in particular.
Depends on the stock engine but yes this is correct for low compression ratio (less than 9.5:1) naturally aspirated engines.
However this does not apply to 9.8:1 and greater compression ratio due to timing being able to be adjusted by the ECU to burn it better. It depends a ton on the engine architecture. Once we throw turbos at the mix like the Ecoboost then yeah it really does run better and make more power on 91 octane stock vs the 87 called for. This has been a proven concept on Dino’s and it’s just because of the tendency for the engines to not. Like my engine has a 10.1:1 compression ratio. I can view the knock sensor data … it does knock lightly on 87 where as midgrade she’s fine and doesn’t retard timing and I do get slightly better fuel economy. Back in the day 10:1 would require the premium fuel of the era aka 89-91 octane … back when everything was 2 ticks lower… it’s just a matter of thermodynamics of compression at that point. It’s amazing we can make what is considered high compression for gasoline run on regular fuel nowdays… I still think it would be wiser if we moved to higher octane fuel and designed the engines to take advantage of it. That would make them more thermodynamically efficient
It’s all in engine architecture but yes I don’t recommend running higher octane more expensive premium fuel unless your engine calls for it. That said if you want to experiment with ethanol just read what your doing and know your engine and then have fun.
I think part of the reason my little 4 banger really handled it well is due to ceramic coated exhaust chamber and ports… probably why I never saw any issue with heat. Solid little design by ford and Mazda.
Yup and that’s the fun shit how do we get more of our generation into cars… feel like we joined our ancestors as a dying breed
Sort of skeptical that 100% ethanol will ever take off, and honestly, I hope it doesn’t. The amount of additional farmland alone that would be needed to produce the plants which would then be converted into fuel would be astronomical.
Combustion is not an efficient means of kinetic or electrical energy production. Let’s be INCREDIBLY OPTIMISTIC, and say that a combustion engine can be 50% efficient at producing kinetic or electrical energy (it’s much closer to 25% for most cases). 50% of the energy is fucking gone due to heat, light, sound, and other losses. That’s horrible, and we need to begin using more efficient means of energy production, that IS NOT COMBUSTION.
Not sure about BMW doing it, but I’ve seen it done on custom Supra. Iirc it’s at around 850C water is forcibly split into hydrogen and oxygen. Same principle as the solar heating plants with mirrors in Sahara and Spain
Ehh sort of it depends on the method. As I discussed and posted a chart of … if we use switch grasses which cna grow in our western deserts which largely are unihabitable and not farm land for food… we could not only harvest it and turn it into fuel but we can also use it to grow cows. Multiple purposes so i can see ways we can be independent as a country energy wise and I definitely encourage us first us made solutions…
We should take this into the garage this is an interesting discussion where I both disagree and agree at the same time
Yup and it’s not that it splits into hydrogen and oxygen. It’s that the water absorbs a ton of energy in the form of heat. This cools the charge and allows for cooler denser and there for more air to enter the chamber which means more fuel and translates to more power and more efficiency
Sorry, there was a lot, so I read a few paragraphs on and off. Not sure if you sourced any of what I’m about to talk about, but I’d imagine that turning deserts into farmland would also be very inefficient and improbable, simply based on the fact that transporting electricity, water, and fertilizer will be incredibly costly, hence why in pretty much every country worldwide, they opt to cut/burn forests, instead of planting there.
The scientific calculations for the inefficiency of combustion is already known and have been for a long time (ex. car engines really haven’t improved in efficiency SIGNIFICANTLY in a a very, very long time. Most improvements from gas mileage come from aerodynamics and weight), however, I’m curious about what your rebutable would be.
That was the thing about these grasses. They already grow there in the deserts without water. Heck they are all around the sagebrush out here… it would just be about making a proper field… water isn’t a problem because they germinate in the early spring and grow stupid tall before even turning brown. Plenty of material to work with and that’s why those researchers were optimistic because it would not require the pumping of water unlike the other sources. Unfortunately the thing is conservationalist may get worried because the grass is already invasive but what better way to get rid of invasive species than to throw it in our fuel tanks! Haha it will take time if and when they figure it out that would be pretty fricken cool to see them farming what used to be extremely unproductive land. The coolest part would be how much CO2 it sucks out of the atmosphere in the process of growing those grasses for fuel (of course offset for the CO2 of the cars and harvesting) it would still come out on top
You are however correct. The current methods of production from corn are absolutely not the best… ideally 37-51 percent reduction in life cycle emissions which is good but we can do way better
The grasses idea was even looked into by the airforce a while ago but not for ethanol… to use “gum weed oil” as a replacement for some fuels. Cody’s lab does a good video on this. It was just easier to keep using jet fuel.
Of course it’s easier. Green has never been easy and why should it be. Replicating nature has always been difficult… haha. That’s said I think we could also manufacturer fuels using Fischer trope process of gas to liquid and make extra pure no sulfur fuels from gasoline to aviation applications
Not sure if this is a joke or, not, but that’s not how mass farming works. We don’t produce most of our meat from wild pigs, cows, or chickens. We don’t produce most of our vegetables or fruits from foraging either. The reason for this is because of how inefficient and unsustainable this would be. If that grass was chosen to be used for ethanol production, there would massive farms created for it, to keep the fuel sustainable (ie. growing year over year). Simply pulling the grass from the deserts now would mean that the grass will grow in fewer and fewer amounts year over years (similar to overfishing, overhunting, and clearcutting; nature just doesn’t recover that quick).
Regarding the L1 Garage post, there’s a lot of bias in that post and you mainly talking about the energy consumption numbers for electric, but for whatever reason, you don’t seem to talk about the energy consumption numbers for gasoline/ethanol based vehicles. For example, you talk about the mining of lithium, cobalt, and manganese, but don’t talk about how we obtain our fossil fuels and their destruction to the environment. You also talk about how most of our energy is produced to-this-day, but don’t talk about the percentage in the past, nor how it’s transitioning into the future.
Nonetheless, when I get about an hour or two to find some sources (that aren’t from obviously biased sources like “corvetteonline,” “biofuels-news,” and “ethanolproducer.” Like really? You’re gonna use obviously biased sources as sources? At least use what they sourced (if they even sourced anything themselves, which from a quick glance, doesn’t appear that they did)), I’ll create a reply to the L1 Garage post.
I’ll pull the resources for the research when I get home the post is a work in progress.
It was a joke. I know this isn’t how farming works. The point of the grasses was to demonstrate that they already grow well there jn the wild and as such making mad farms for them not only would be easier than corn but also easier than genetically modifying algae like others are investigating into.
If you want the numbers on gasoline and Diesel they are readily available aren’t they not? Lithium is a rare substance at this point. We can only make so many batteries and it’s rather difficult to recycle. I’m not quite sure on lithium but i don’t think lithium is the way forward in energy store. I wasn’t biased in the post in garage. I used references to a source that you can find done by 3 German researchers. Now if we say figured out the fluoride ion battery which is research id be onboard with electric. From my background which is not petrochemical engineering nor mechanical. I am an electrical engineer and I can tell you there’s a ton of inefficiencies with electric motors. I compared the electric car process with the current and not past energy cost to aquire gasoline and how it currently hurts our environment due to the past not being a fair comparison. We didn’t have electric cars in mass production in the 90s etc. I’ll get to more of this jn the garage. I actually enjoy the discussion about electric and how we can make it better from source to road but current tech is grossly over hyped. I will not contest that its cleaner however Im not onboard with the “zero lifecycle emissions” proponents yet
There are issues getting solid studies on ethanol. The problem with getting those studies is every single negative study ever published has been by a fossil fuel company somewhere… Every good study is typically independent though they could be very scientific they are often discredited because they aren’t part of some institute. Kind of a reason I detested academia post grad… it’s a bunch of people over famed sitting in high chairs smacking people around with their degree as if it makes them qualified to say what’s good and bad who would rather attain money and fame. There are many exceptions to the rule but I hate the strangle hold oil has on economy and if this is just one way to haste the end of it we should examine it.
Look heres a study on ethanol being positive for the engines for example where I said it would damage them despite @Adubs contesting. https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/811199/ See though the problem is… Its behind a damn pay wall. So my problem is grabbing free sources. Its hard to list sources behind a paywall because its impossible to verify … Though since you asked revisit my sources drop down. Ive added everything from my growing 1 tab which may or may not have included a lot of other miscellaneous things. (oops)
… Though since you asked revisit my sources drop down. Ive added everything from my growing 1 tab which may or may not have included a lot of other miscellaneous things. (oops)
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