Thread: E-85 = Higher Octane = Cheaper than street gas?

E85 does not have poor combustion properties at all, I don't know where you guys get this stuff. It just does not burn as efficiently as it could while used in the current internal combustion engines designed around gasoline. It's not the fuel at all. While it does contain only 72% of the energy of gasoline, it still burns slightly more efficiently. The problem now is when you switch to E85 with 28% less energy when compaired to gasoline, your MPG drop almost that much. E85 SHOULD be a hell of a lot cheaper than gasoline right now but the mark up puts it about 25% less than gas so your stuck with 25% less fuel economy and at 25% less cost. The only benifit is better emissions which most drivers probably don't care about. In most places, the mark up puts E85 at the cost of 87 octain, like you said. My '07 Silverado only gets about 11-15 mpg on E85 and is built for it being a flex fuel vehicle.

Problems with running it on a non flex fuel vehicle:
E85 is electrically conductive and wears the hell out of many parts in a non FFV so you have to eliminate bare magnesium, aluminum, and rubber parts in the fuel system. You'll need to use a fuel pump capable of operating with electrically conductive ethanol instead of non-conducting dielectric gasoline, specially-coated wear-resistant engine parts, some monster injectors(for injecting approximately 60% more fuel), stainless steel fuel lines (sometimes lined with plastic), stainless steel fuel tanks in place of terne fuel tanks, and, in some cases, the use of acid-neutralizing motor oil.

E85, being up to 85% denatured ethonal, can also cause engine damage, since prolonged exposure to high concentrations of ethanol may corrode metal and rubber parts in older engines. Another risk is that of water contamination, which can produce engine wear directly and through corrosive formic acid in the combustion process. Oil and acid neutralizer additives can counteract these risks.

It's not impossible, you can build a race car for E85 but it'll take a lot of precautions. Saab created a turbo "Biopower" engine that makes way more power when run on E85 rather than gasoline.

Lee said it. Here's some numbers:

E85 has 81,800btu (british thermal units) per gallon
Regular Unleaded has 114,100btu per gallon

This equates to 28% less heat generated by the e85. Heat is used to expand the gasses in the cylinder through combustion and create mechanical energy out of a chemical reaction. This isn't very efficient, but in the past 100 years we've made the internal combustion engine pretty damned efficient considoring...

So, the e85 takes a little more energy to combust (that's the octane rating) and produces a little less energy from that combustion... but it burns much cleaner than gas (burning pure alcohol should leave you with minute traces of co2 and water) and is renewable (we can make it out of everything, not just corn, but also sugar, soy, hemp, etc... (hemp is another subject, we could be producing the countrys fuel with hemp on less than 6% of the US land mass... but I'll try and stray away from that political topic, you want more info, go to www.jackherer.com and read his book free online))

So... in the end, you're not saving as much money, because you have to burn more e85 to get the same energy, and good luck finding a place in california where you can pump it... but, if you should happen to be planning fuel system upgrades anyway, there is no harm in planning them to include burning ethenol or methanol, but if you're just trying to save money, you're not going to.

On the flip side of this, if you are trying to do you part to save the environment and boost the economy, then you should definately consider doing it, and harassing your representatives to make it more accessible, because it will boost the countries economy if we start producing more of our own fuels and stop importing everything from overseas, and producing less hydrocarbons from burning fossil fuels will help save the air.

Originally Posted by jbGST

98Spydert, your post is almost a direct copy of some article I read earlier on the net,,,, but you guys are right since it does have less "power" the octane isnt realy going to do much good especially considering the amount of xtra fuel i would have to run it would defeat any perfomance value.

It is not a direct copy of anything, I wrote it. But it does contain all of the common info shared around the net that I've got saved. It's nothing new. I don't have a lab to come up with those stats myself :P

I think once it gets bigger and more popular, it would be great for a high performance street car. If the price drops down to where "people" expect it to be, the 105 octane would be well worth the drop in energy. For now though, I agree with you. If it's equal in price to pump gas, the money it would take to convert our old DSMs to FFV just isn't worth it.