
What Is E85 Ethanol???
E85 is an alcohol fuel mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, by volume. Ethanol is derived from crops (bioethanol) is a biofuel. Ethanol is a renewable resource.
E85 as a fuel is widely used in Sweden and is becoming more common in the United States, mainly in the Midwest where corn is a major crop and is the primary source material for ethanol fuel production.
E85 is usually used in engines modified to accept higher concentrations of ethanol. Such flexible-fuel engines are designed to run on any mixture of gasoline or ethanol with up to 85% ethanol by volume. The primary differences from non-FFVs is the elimination of bare magnesium, aluminum, and rubber parts in the fuel system, the use of fuel pumps capable of operating with electrically-conductive (ethanol) instead of non-conducting dielectric (gasoline) fuel, specially-coated wear-resistant engine parts, fuel injection control systems having a wider range of pulse widths (for injecting approximately 30% more fuel), the selection of stainless steel fuel lines (sometimes lined with plastic), the selection of stainless steel fuel tanks in place of terne fuel tanks, and, in some cases, the use of acid-neutralizing motor oil. For vehicles with fuel-tank mounted fuel pumps, additional differences to prevent arcing, as well as flame arrestors positioned in the tank's fill pipe, are also sometimes used
Use of E85 in non-FFV vehicles is generally experimental, with some users recommending light blends as low as 20%, while others have successfully run 100% E85. The main attraction of burning E85, of course, is the lower price per gallon at the pump of E85 versus gasoline. Other advantages include the common benefits of renewable energy sources, such as less environmental impact and less reliance on foreign energy.
Use of E85 results in reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and energy use for each gallon burned, compared to the emissions and energy use for the gasoline it replaces.
Using corn based fuel ethanol production, E85 has a significant impact on total fossil fuel / energy usage and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As process efficiency increases over the coming years, these benefits are expected to continue to improve.
Using dry milling process technology (circa 1999) each gallon of E85 burned reduced petroleum usage by an estimated 0.949 gallons. Reduced GHG emissions by 23.8%, compared to burning a gallon of gasoline, and reduced life cycle fossil energy consumption by 44.4% compared to gasoline.
I’m here to tell you, you can do anything to your old car that they do to the new ones, maybe not quite as easy, but remember the old days, we had to build most of the modifications that we wanted on our car, by ourselves, and that is something that you can’t do with a new car, if you need help doing a conversion, then you might want to join our mailing list because this is one of the subjects that I will cover in detail in our ezine.
Typically those who support fuel ethanol, understand that the use of corn derived ethanol is only the first step in a long series of possible sources for ethanol. Ethanol can be brewed from any organic source that contains sugar or starch using current technology. This includes other crops besides corn, such as rice, wheat, barley, potatoes, sugar beets, and sugar cane. At the moment the most cost effective crop is corn. There is however no reason to assume that will continue into the future. Alternate feed stock streams are already coming on line as producers and manufactures realize that their waste can be converted to a product with market value. For example Coors Brewing Company is producing 1.5 million gallons per year of fuel ethanol from waste beer and is expanding that output an additional 1.5 million gallons per year in the near future. Others have discussed using otherwise waste crops like freeze damaged fruit, over ripe produce like apples and even out of date bakery goods like stale bread and cakes as possible feed stock streams for ethanol plants.
When ethanol from cellulose sources becomes cost effective it will drastically increase the supply of feed stock at very low cost because many of these are currently waste products from other processes or discards, like waste paper from trash.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "E85".
What Is e85 Ethanol???
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