Feral replied:

Sorry Brewman,
But pigs might fly too....but I have never actually seen them!!!

If you believe that a 10% blend of Ethanol in your petrol will improve fuel economy by 25% or more, you have been taken hook, line & sinker by the propaganda peddled by Howard Government. The only reason why ethanol is the talk of the town is that the CEO of the company is lobbying the government so hard that they will pass any blend through. At the end of the day it is your motor that is stuffed and the expense that goes with it. It always falls on the little consumer to prove that others have done wrong. We do not have a multinational corporation with its associated legal team to back us up, do we?

This is my gripe becuase all the talk of the so called summit on petrol pricing was on ethanol.

Where is my price reduction through reduced taxes!!!

Cheers,
Lyndon.

GaryInOz (Vic) replied:

Well...The Brazillians and in fact most of South America have been using it for 20-30 years, at anything up to E20. Yes, it burns just like petrol so is as safe as petrol.

With the increased use of EFI, there is not as much rubber in contact with the fuel as there used to be, and the rubbers have to be of higher quality (typically synthetic compounds in critical areas) to withstand EFI pressure, so there shouldnt be any issues with decomposition of the rubber parts clogging the injectors.

Typical intitial transient problems are rough running and clogged fuel filters. THIS IS NOT THE FAULT OF THE E10 BLEND, it is simply a manifestation of the hygrophyllic action of the alcohol, picking up the water in the bottom of your tank (with whatever dirt/debris is attatched to the water) and carrying it through the fuel system up to the filter. The ultimate end product of this action is a fuel system that is cleaner than what you started with.

Don't believe any other B.S.

Practical upshot as proven in tens of millions of vehicles overseas: harmless (with apologies to Douglas Adams - Hitchkers Guide To The Galaxy)

To the disbelievers - What makes Australian vehicles so special in the world??? Particularly as most of them roll off the same production lines as the rest of the world.

Feral replied:

Which car???

Because some cars will detect which fuel it is using, and make the adjustments and others do not. You might have been able to put rocket fuel into it and it could have run better, or even water!!!

The devil is always in the DETAIL!

Cheers,
Lyndon.

locallaw replied:

Gidday,Wasnt there a car taking part in the solar race from Darwin to Adelaide running on straight Ethenol and that car is older than a lot of people on this forum.Seems to be running ok.
Just my bit.
Seeya Locallawoff

Member - MrBitchi (QLD) replied:

Wow... talk about a polarised post..... Come on guys, no need to bite each others heads off.
Yeah I too find it hard to believe a 25% economy improvement. Have just filled the tank in the Paj with E10 and will monitor it over a few tanks full.

Yes it is safe, at least as safe as petrol ;--)p

Davoe, cars mported to Brazil may need the mods you list but they are running a far higher concentration of Ethanol then we are.

Environmental issues? Burning OIL is better than farming??? Give me a break. Growing cane may not be the best thing for the planet but it sure as hell beats digging up and burning fossil fuels. When you burn oil you release CO2 into the atmosphere, for a net increase overall. When you use ethanol it's CO2 nuetral as the cane absorbs CO2 when growing and then it's released when burnt, reabsorbed when growing.......

Stuffed engines? Lets see the evidence. If it was so damaging to engines do you think the Brazillians would use it so readily? Most of them are so poor they couldn't afford to pay for unnecessary engine repairs. My workplace has 5 vehicles, all of which have been using E10 since it first became available with absolutely no ill effects whatsoever.

I too would like to see some more scientific testing in relation to economy but in the meantime I'm willing to give it a go myself. After all, the result that really counts for me is my hip pocket.

Cheers.....

Wombat replied:

Stu,

I posted about E10 as an alternative to premium unleaded in Helen's Nissan 200SX a couple of weeks ago. She is now on her third tank and it appears that she is getting about 12% worse economy than she was previously using PULP. This is a direct contradiction to the figures which Today Tonight are touting. I would suggest that the figures are going to differ depending on the type of vehicle, so therefore "suck it and see".

Scubaroo replied:

I also find it hard to believe they experienced worse economy using PULP than ULP.

Given I've only driven about 100km in the last two weeks (back on the trains), I will give E10 a go in the Paj as well when it's down to it's last of this tank. Mitsu reckon their engines are good for it.

Fully echo MrBitchi's comments about the differences between pulling carbon out of the ground versus recycling it via sugarcane. Funny how half of the people on this forum slam ethanol, and the other half can't wait to start pumping biodiesel into their oilers. Where do people think all of the raw materials for biodiesel comes from? Fish and chip shops? It's going to be palm oil from Malaysia.

Member - Nifty1 (NSW) replied:

Actually the largest producer of Ethanol is Manildra and they use wheat to do it, not sugar .

Feral replied:

Here is an article from The Age....please remember that the original question was is it safe. This government and big business could not care if it is safe or not. As long as it makes money and political mileage it's all ok.

REMEMBER when ethanol was considered poison for your car's engine?

Now, thanks to crippling world oil prices, ethanol is back as an alternative fuel — and no one stands to gain more than Australia's ethanol sheikh Dick Honan.

Two years ago, Mr Honan, chairman of the NSW-based Manildra Group agribusiness empire, faced ruin at the hands of a ferocious consumer backlash against ethanol.

Mr Honan was also at the centre of a political scandal over accusations that Prime Minister John Howard had bent the rules to help his business fend off competition from overseas.

Hardly a day went by in Federal Parliament in 2003 without then opposition leader Simon Crean trying to link Mr Howard to some political calumny involving Mr Honan.

Two years later and Mr Crean and Mr Honan now regularly talk about what role ethanol has to play in creating a sustainable local biofuels industry.

A federal Labor Party ban on accepting Mr Honan's political donations, imposed in August 2003, has been reversed.

This week Mr Howard secured a commitment from Australia's oil companies to put 350 million litres of biofuels a year in petrol by 2010 a commitment from which Mr Honan stands to gain millions and finally realise his dream of establishing a sustainable alternative fuels industry in Australia.

An intensely private man, Mr Honan, 65, came in at 123 on BRW magazine's top 200 rich list this year with a personal fortune estimated at $230 million.

He is an accomplished manipulator of the political process and is often seen in the corridors of Parliament House in Canberra.

Mr Honan's closest political affiliation is with the National Party, with whom he shares the common interest of wanting the Government to make it compulsory for all petrol to have a certain level of ethanol.

But Mr Honan's return to favour with the Australian Labor Party began almost immediately after last year's federal election when a senior Victorian Liberal Party figure put him in touch with Con Sciacca, the Queensland Labor MP who had just lost his seat.

As Mr Sciacca tells it: "The question from Honan was 'what the hell have I got to do? I just can't seem to get this debate off the ground … my major problem is that I can't get anyone in the Labor Party to even listen to my arguments after what happened a few years ago with that concerted attack from Crean.' "

With Mr Sciacca on the Manildra Group payroll, Mr Honan soon found the doors of Labor figures a lot easier to open.

"I arranged by using my friendships within the party, to get him through the door and I arranged to have a series of lunches and dinners and meetings all around Australia," Mr Sciacca told The Age this week.

"My brief was to get the federal parliamentary Labor Party and the party organisation to really listen to Honan and we succeeded in doing that."

Labor's resources spokesman Martin Ferguson agrees with the suggestion that Labor is again keen to promote ethanol as an alternative fuel, but dismisses Mr Sciacca's role.

"I had one meeting with Sciacca and a couple of meetings with Honan without Sciacca," Mr Ferguson says.

"Con Sciacca might have had a highly expensive lobbying campaign based on taking Labor Party members of Parliament to dinner, but it had no influence whatsoever on the position of the Labor Party because Labor Party policy development can't be bought by some slap-up meal."

With Australia notching a fuel trade deficit of $6.6 billion last year, compared with $1.3 billion in 1997-98, Mr Ferguson says alternative fuels, such as ethanol, liquefied petroleum gas and biodiesel, are valuable ways to reduce the reliance on imports.

He said Mr Honan might be a short-term beneficiary from the use of ethanol, but there were more players ready to enter the market.

According to the Biofuels Taskforce, Mr Honan has a yearly ethanol production capacity of about 70 million litres (with the ability to expand to 100 million litres). Based on 80 cents a litre, it is worth about $55 million.

Mr Honan's success in convincing Labor to end its campaign over his relationship with Mr Howard, and to help restore confidence in ethanol-blended petrol, has guaranteed his group a rosy future as a fuel supplier.

Cheers,
Lyndon.

awill4x4 replied:

25% increase in economy.
Geez!!!!! I didn't know that E10 was made by Fitch ;-)
Regards Andrew.

Spade Newsom replied:

My biggest concern with with the issue of ethanol in fuel is the fact that Australia will eventually be at the mercy of OPEC and other oil rich countries. We are now heavily dependant on oil and we do not have enough to support our future demands.

We must now come up with an alternative to oil or at least ensure our oil reserves can last many years to come so that we can be self sufficient at producing our own fuel. The Yank's might come and save us if Indonesians invade however don't expect the Yanks to save us if we can't afford our fuel Bill.

We must remain a self sufficient country and locally produce (or at least have the capability to produce) all of our essential resources.

The Yank's and Europeans don't heavily subsidise their farmers for nothing. It costs them a fortune for all the farmer subsidies, however they know that if they lose the cabability of producing enough food to support themselves they can become very vulnerable.

The demise of globalism is a very real possibility and if it happens the winners in the world will not be the countries with the largest corporations as they are now, but the countries that are the most self sufficient. There are some interesting books around at the moment that discuss this at length that make very interesting reading.

All of the above sounds quite doomsday but it is not as wacky as you might initially think.
IMO supporting ethanol for the above reasons alone is worthwhile. I also support using sugar cane over grain to produce ethanol as I believe it is also in our interest. Sugar cane is less efficient at producing ethanol however it grows well in soils that are much poorer than what you might grow grain in. Leave the better cultivation country for the production of food.

Just an opinion that some may find interesting and others a crock.

Justin replied:

Great Discussion, good debate from all sides.

I think I'll lean to the side that farming has a greater environmental impact than mining. The net CO2 emissions from fossil fuels complicates the debate a little though. But then, I hear that farming is also a pretty intensive user of energy, usually in the form of fossil fules. So, the net CO2 savings from ethanol from farming is probably less (or even negative!) than we think.

The only thing missing, is that no one has said "hey, instead of looking for new/alternate uses of fuel, why don't we just use less?"

This is the simplest, and cheapest solution, but unfortunatley the least palatable for people to accept. This is becuase we, in modern consumerist societies believe in dangerous things like: "It is my right to drive whatever, where ever and whenever I like" - Perhaps one day we will reliase that we can not afford to have rights like this.... If we want this right, we should be prepared to pay the true cost....

In answer to the question, I doubt 10% fuel will do much damage to new cars, but the increase in economy is a joke...