The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 205
paper indicate. Therefore, if you lose 8-15% in MPG but save 15-25% in cost
per gallon, then using E85 is more economically efficient.
Follow up from TS:
You are chemically incorrect and it has nothing to do with how the engine
"feels". The reality is that gasoline simply has a lot more power density than
ethanol so you will go a lot further on a tank. You cannot change the laws of
chemistry.
Now granted, ethanol can be burned at higher compression so in an optimized
set-up can actually produce more horsepower than gasoline, but that still requires more fuel for the energy produced.
Reply from MARC
Hi TS - Thanks for your latest reply. I think you missed the sarcasm in my point
about emotion.
It's not a question of being "chemically" correct or incorrect. It's a question of
mechanics, that is, engine optimization. If we were discussing heating water to
create steam to power a steam engine then the BTU difference between ethanol
and gasoline would be important. But there's no water heating involved in an
internal combustion engine. The factors that come to play are the mechanics of
the ICE.
To test the irrelevancy of BTUs, as I'm sure you know, diesel has a higher BTU
rating than gasoline. Yet, if you put diesel fuel in a gasoline-powered engine
you would get far fewer miles, perhaps none. And if you put gasoline in a dieselpowered engine you wouldn't get 10% fewer miles, you would probably not get
any miles as the engine might not start.
An internal combustion engine optimized to run on ethanol will deliver MPG that
is equal to, or greater than a comparable internal combustion engine optimized
to run on gasoline.
