Ethanol Increases Smog
 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070418/ap_on_he_me/ethanol_health_risks

Interesting...the EPA's new, self-given mission is at odds with its original mission.

Sure does taste good though. :)

I prefer mine at around a 6% concentration, made from hops and barley. My wife complains about the smog though...

Especially when preceded or accompanied by ingestion of organic legume-based product typically favored by our neighbors to the South. :)

No surprise here. Ethanol has a higher vapor pressure than gasoline and evaporates faster. This has been known by air pollution agencies for years.

Why don't we ever see in the news how inefficient ethanol is? From what I understand it is only about 70% as efficient as gasoline, and therefore wont we need to burn much mroe of it, thereby producing more greenhouse gases?

I used to use ARCO gas in my Mazda 626 and got consistently 19 mpg, I switched to Chevron and it consistenly went up to 21 mpg. I'm talking about 8 years of driving with ARCO and the last 2 years with Chevron, its my 10 y/o daily beater, driver.

So roughtly a 10% increase in MPG. If ARCO is not 10% less than Chevron, don't buy it. Also, ARCO now charges 45 cents ATM transaction fee, with a 10 gallon tank, that an additonal 4.5 cents/gallon that you have to factor in. BTW, ARCO gas is coincidently 10% ethanol, so what are you getting? Answer ... filler.

Pretty simple really...Gasoline has approx. 125,000 BTU's per gallon. Alcohol has approx. 75,000. You must burn more alcohol to get the same energy as in any given volume of gasoline. Ahhhh, but the tax you pay at the pump? The same per gallon...
who really wins here?

Anyone ever see the jets in an alcohol burning race motor?

BIG. End of story.

Tom

Still, it is a case of import vs. domestic capability. In either case, hydrocarbons have a limited future because the supplies are limited. We need alternatives that take advantage of other technologies, whether they be nuclear solar, geothermal, wind. Perhaps none of these is a universal solution, but together......

How long should we fund those who fight against us?

Why not butanol? From what I read, it's just MUCH better than ethanol, and can be used as an almost 1:1 replacement for gasoline...

What is butanol made from?

The government will eventually get around to taxing me for my cattle. You see, they fart... a lot. (You would too if you ate corn and grass.)
It will be an Al Gore "green tax" and it will be BS (sorry, couldn't help it).
The earth has heated up since the last ice age and while I'm sure that some linkage might be made to the industrialization of the world I'm sure not going back to a friggin' cave anytime soon. Al Gore is as full of it as my bulls. When he drives a POS S-BOX Mini-Mobile I'll drive one. Until then, KMA and leave me alone.

Right now corn prices are silly and cattle prices have been weak. Why? Because corn is expensive to buy as you are competing with the ethanol producers. Cattle eat corn. Who wins? Not the cattle.

Makes complete sense; right?

(Only our leaders could screw up a wet dream.)
I also blame the grain lobby, big gas and anyone else that believes this load of crap.

Also and FWIW, when diesel fuel had it's aromatics changed in the process of removing sulfer it screwed up the "old" seals on a lot of diesel engines. Mercedes, Ford and others know. My experience was a $1,400 bill from MB for my dad's car which with 110,000 miles ran perfectly until the second tank of low sulfer.

Alcohol does not like a lot of things and will damage a car not meant to run on it. It will CLEAN a gas tank nicely and send it all to the engine. Beautiful thinking on the part of some not so deep thinkers.

FWIW, we're planting about 80% corn this year because we are greedy Americans and want to get ours while we can.:rolleyes:

I feel a damn sight better now...

Tom

Ethanol was promoted more as a way to reduce 'energy dependence' than as a lower-pollution solution. It wasn't an EPA-driven concept.

Bob Dole, known as "the senator from ADM" was a big proponent of getting an Ethanol content mandate into law.

It finally happened in '05.

Well, to heck with him too.

Tom

To HECK with ALGORE you say? Oh...yeah, moderators...;) Hey guys, did you know that Turkey still has leaded gasoline? Yup, the stuff our pre alcohol cars were designed to run on...:rolleyes:

The same stuff ethanol is made from.

Not sure if it's legit, but here's some site about it, http://www.butanol.com/