Hey there and welcome to my E85-thread.

This thread will be a translation off some swedish documents about E85.

"What is Ethanol?

In common, we call it spirit. It's an alkohol which is consists off 2 coal-atoms, 1 oxygen-atom and 6 hydrogen-atoms.

Toxic to consumes (which happens anyways) but burns good and at a complete combustion the only resulsts are carbondioxid and H20 (water)."

"What is better with Ethanol for the enviroment?

In city-enviroment the biggest plus-effect is the lower HC-emissions which in petrolcars is a blend off carcinogenic subjects like bensen and such.

NOx and CO-emissions are lower, especially NOx is a big problem even for modern dieselengines.

Ethanol doesn't contain any sulfur which is a problem for all fossil fuels, partly because off sulfur in combustion creates sulfuric acid, partly because sulfuric acid interferes with catalystic exhaustcleaning and even can "poison" a catalyst in a short time!

Globally the biggest upside with is that you can manufacture Ethanol carbondioxid-neutral, from sugarcane as an example.

In that way, you pull down the polluttion with carbondioxids in the atmosphere!"

"Is Ethanol good for a petrol-engine?

NOTHING proves that in real life that damages can appear thanks to ethanol-fuel in an engine constructed for petrol.

The 2 most common warnings usually sounds like this:

1."Ethanol can make your engine overheat"

This is something that's a lie, the radiating heat from ethanol is LOWER then petrol.

Moreover, evaporation energy represents a bigger source to temperature-shifting, but downwards. This is well known among engine-tuners.

This means that you usually don't need to use as much extra fuel for an extremly tuned engine which both saves fuel and economy!

2."Ethanol is corrosive and can make corrosion-damage!"

Nothing can be more WRONG, in fact the truth is that you get less corrsovie damage and degradation off engine-oil since you get awaqy from a big part off the problems that appears with petrol-combustion.

No documented materialproblems exists that shows that fuellines or other components would take damage off ethanol instead off petrol (except for one rubber-type, but that isn't used in the car-industry)!"

"Does fuel-consumption rise with Ethanol?

Ja, the fuelconsumption will rise with approximatly 30% but the energi-consumption shrinks!

Ethanol contains approximatly 40% less energi then fuel.

But the engine at the same time gains a higher efficieny that makes the fuelconsumption to only rise with 30% or less!

This is thanks to following factors:

1. A better completed combustion due to a more homogeneous fuel where a part off the oxygen that is used in the combustions is already in the ethanol-molekules.

2. A quicker main-combustion which give less cooling-losses and longer expansion-phase.

3. A cooler average-temperature which also leads to less cooling-losses.

4. A bigger part water-steam in the exhausts which give better thermodynamics while in the expansion-phase.

5. Lower temperatures also means less cooling in the form off extra fuel which is used in most turbo-charged engines today.

With Ethanol in the tank, the engine can be driven harder without any extrafuel which leads to a lower consumption.

6. A non-catalyst engine can be driven alot leaner then what's possible on engine. It can also take higher grade off EGR.

These both factors gives the oppportunity to lower energi-liberation which give the opportunity to open the throttle more at the same speed/effect from the engine.

In that way you can lower or eliminate the biggest effectivity-drawback that otto-engines have against diesel-engines, pumplosses at low loads.

It's common to count that up to 25% off all the losses that exists in an otto-engine at smooth driving.

With an ethanol-optimized engine you can use E85 extremly high octane so that the fuelconsumption is lowered but at this point it's only SAAB's biopower that uses this (to a certain degree) in production.

This is shown in practical attempts that you can come down to the same low specific fuelconsumption like in a modern diesel-engine.

You continue to develope the engine with for example direct-injection or make the engine have run leaner to get even lower, preferably used with a DeNoX-catalyst off that type which is used in a direct-injection otto-engine, these stores NOx in some times lean-driving to then let a catalytic regenerate the catalyst so that a new storing-period can start again.

(You don't even have to build an advanced DI-engine to make an ethanol-engine go lean, it works welll with just leaning out the mixture in any engine since Ethanol has a bigger combustable area then petrol).

You can get even lower if you combine an otto-engine with HCCI- Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition.

According to saab you can gain a 50% efficiency in a car engine with Ethanol in that type off engine

In conclusion, you can note that there is a bigger effectivity-potential in ethanol then in other known engine-fuels.

As a sidenote, when you read a test about ethanol-cars the onboard-computers fuel-consumption is often tuned for petrol, meaning it will show wrong figures for E85."

"Is Ethanol good as a racing-fuel?

YES!

It's well known in the racing-circuits that Ethanol can give opportunity to higher power output thanks to it's cooling effects.

Also, the higher octane is another possibility to raise the engines performance without enginedamage.

Since the exhaust- and climate-question rose to attention, ethanol is the fuel used in Indycar, Swedish rallying, JTCC and STCC.

Also moving towards it is Formula 1..."

I know this isn't all about the subject, but I will update the thread with more information (that is, when my fingers wakes up again).

This info is displayed in swedish at "etanol.nu" for those off us which are blessed with the swedish language.

If there is any faults or can be rewritten to make it more understandable / sounding less like someone who's using Google Translate, feel free to update me.

And if I'm in the wrong section, could a moderator please move it? Thanks in advance!

Here's a little video I want everybody to watch aswell as an ending :

That is a very interesting article - thanks.

There is a very big problem with ethanol as a fuel. The article correctly states that it can be made from sugar cane and that seems very attractive but the problem is supply. As long as you use waste sugar cane to produce ethanol to supplement fossil fuels then that is OK. The problem arises when short sighted fools in the EU pass an edict that all fuels will be 20%(?) ethanol (or other biofuel)by 2020(?).

Where will this biofuel come from? The price will rise as demand starts to outstrip supply. The greedy money men will latch on. Vast areas of land, desperately needed to grow food, will be turned over to the new cash crop - bio-fuel. It is already happening in Indonesia where vast areas of forest are being destroyed to be planted with palm oil to "grow" bio-diesel.

We struggle to grow sufficient crops to feed the growing population - where will the extra land come from? Bio-fuels made from waste are a minor supplement to fossil fuels but can never be a long term viable alternative.

"Ethanol-production does not contribute to the starvation in the third world.

Atm biofuels production stands for only 1% off the worlds available agricultural land, so to state that biofuels is pushing the foodproduction to the side is a big exxageration - to say the least!

In newspapers you can read twisted articles where ethanolproduction has created starvation in poor countries in the third world.

This is a missonception, on the contrary does ethanolproduction give a possibility for many poor (African) countrys to get out off poverty, claims the aid agenct "Kooperation utan gränser" in a report which is named "Med utveckling i tanken" ("With development in the thought" , we swedes use the same word tho for thought as for tank)."

Here's a link to the swedish article : http://www.utangranser.se/Default.aspx?ID=781

Edited 4 August, 201114 yr by Confide