10% ethanol
Submitted: Friday, Aug 08, 2003 at 08:14
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haze
growing up on the
farm 50 odd years ago our cars etc. were fuelled from mainly 44gal. drums. Every few fills dad would pour some metho. into the tank, he claimed this broke down any water which through condensation etc. was often in the 44's. Thinking about this other day realised "metho" is ethanol, and we are going to get (already have?) 10% in our petrol.
I thought I might put some petrol in a jar and add a spoon of water. As expected the water settled to the bottom. So I then added a couple of spoons of metho. Hey presto the water dissapeared but the result was a quite cloudy looking cocktail.
My question is, am I way off beam, or are we being sold a pup. ie. will we end up with something like 90% petrol, 9% ethanol, 1% water.( Assuming the water is put into the ethanol before adding to the petrol.) and even greater profits to the Co's.
Perhaps an Industrial Chemist could comment
Cheers haze
Reply By: joc45 - Friday, Aug 08, 2003 at 13:12
Friday, Aug 08, 2003 at 13:12
Cupla things here-
Ethanol is very hydrophillic, and when produced thru normal distillation, it still contains no less than about 7% water; ie, the max purity obtainable is about 93% - trickier means are used to remove the last of the water to make pure alcohol. I guess this means that it would make your fuel also an attractant to water?
I recall an article a few years ago on Brazil's "success story" of using ethanol, produced from cane sugar, in cars. Only thing was that to make the ethanol cheap enough, they had to employ a sub-strata of extremely low-paid workers to make the whole business viable. In addition, valuable food-producing land, plus deforestation for more land was being taken up just to run cars.
Gerry
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Reply By: Mick - Monday, Aug 11, 2003 at 09:20
Monday, Aug 11, 2003 at 09:20
In contrast, ethanol adds oxygen to the fuel burn making petrol and diesel burn more efficiently and cleaner, with reduced particle emissions, especially fine particle emissions, and substantially reduced carbon dioxide and harmful carbon monoxide emissions.
Generally, for each 10 per cent ethanol added to fuel particle emissions reduce by 10 per cent. If ethanol were mandated for fuel, replacing other harmful additives, it would have major health benefits for the community and savings on health budgets.
So why have the petroleum and motor vehicle companies run a media campaign against ethanol claiming it damages some engines?
Their campaign has come at the same time as the Federal government has been considering mandating ethanol in fuel. Clearly, if the government mandated say 10 per cent ethanol in fuel it would mean the oil companies would lose 10 per cent of the fuel market to ethanol producers.
Yet in the US, the same car companies are recommending ethanol for many of their vehicles. Two papers citing 22 car companies and 12 small engine producers recommending ethanol for their engines can be found at www.iowacorn.org/amro.htm and www.iowacorn.org/semr.htm.
In Brazil cars run on up to 85 per cent ethanol, and some of these cars are produced in Australia.
Car companies accept that up to 10 per cent ethanol in fuel requires no engine modifications, while over 10 per cent requires engine timing and minor component changes.
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