On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 01:47:34PM -0600, Chuck Renner wrote:
>
> The current claim that's being made by ethanol backers is that when looking
> at the total energy cycle, it's more efficient. In other words, fewer BTU
> are used to create one BTU of ethanol than for 1 BTU of gasoline.
>
> However, I haven't looked into their numbers in detail, and in fact a number
> of studies claim just the opposite. There are a lot of numbers that the
> proponents may be excluding in their production costs as well. And what of
> the secondary effects of soil erosion, pesticides, fertilizers, etc.? If
> the ethanol is made with corn, and all the cars in the US ran on 100%
> ethanol, 97% of our land area would need to be planted with corn.
>
> As for the energy stored, one gallon of ethanol has a value of 77,000 BTU.
> A gallon of gasoline typically has a value of about 115,000 BTU. The E85
> blends (85% ethanol) have about 81,000 BTU per gallon. So you can't go as
> far on a gallon of fuel that contains an ethanol.
On the flip side, you can run an ethanol engine at much higher
compression, regaining some of that back in higher
efficiency. However, I've heard that the actual environmental effects
of an ethanol spill are actually worse than a petrol spill, and
methanol is even more toxic.
--
I've found something worse than oldies station that play the music I used to
listen to. Oldies stations that play the "new" music I used to complain about.
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