andenbre

iTrader: (4)

It seems like a natural progression from alc/meth/water injection. eliminate the piggy back, its additional complexity and potential failure, its cheaper to run, potentialy alot cheaper to set up, and emissions frendly. while not the answer to an energy crissis in and of its self (I beleive in hydrogen fuel cells) it sure has a lot of ++++

IMR-TIM

iTrader: (2)

+1

I'm going to be very interested in this if E85 is ever abundant up here in the Northeast. Once I get my next Evo, my current Evo may be converted to this. I will be looking out for posts on re-tuned converted cars and dyno reults.

Thanks Paul

Erik@MIL.SPEC

iTrader: (94)

Umm, try growing sugar cane in Kansas and see what happens. It's a giant, worldwide conspiracy called THE WEATHER.

stryderlis

iTrader: (17)

Lucky me, I have 106 stations within 100 miles of me. I live in MN if you're wondering.

High_PSI

iTrader: (50)

Oh please.......

Erik@MIL.SPEC

iTrader: (94)

Oh please? The kid makes some silly comment on how it's a conspiracy that we don't use sugarcane, when sugarcane is grown primarily in tropical climates...like Brazil.

BTW, FYI, they do grow sugarcane in Florida and Louisiana, along with Hawaii.

MalibuJack

iTrader: (5)

Conventional farming is just part of the story.. There are hydroponic technologies, done in climate controlled warehouses that can grow anything, anywhere.. Its just that the production costs have to drop by offering a return on the investment to build these things.. Plus you have different types of genetically engineered crops that are good for producing ethanol, but cannot be used in producing food for human consumption..

The advantage of ethanol is it can be produced and blended anywhere you can grow crops and build a distillery. This is a great thing for everyone, except the government since the government wants to tax the whoozit out of everything.


My car is already set up for E85, I am running injectors on a stock ECU 1000cc, approximately 30% larger than I've found really necessary on my car, though the stock ECU can be convinced to run injectors as large as 1600cc fairly well.

The only thing necessary besides a fuel pump and injectors, is a tune for E85 or 93.. The problem is if you fill up on one, while having some of the other left.. That is where the flex fuel ECU technology is advantageous because their fully closed loop systems.

any EMS that can run fully closed loop, and run a tune based on lambda can automatically adjust, only I'm not aware of any standalone that can do this for most markets.

I do recall Holley's ProJection product is supposed to allow that sort of tuning for V8 cars..

True flex fuel vehicles also need to know what sort of fuel their running so the timing and boost can be altered accordingly, not sure how that would be done, specific gravity or something along those lines.

andenbre

iTrader: (4)

I beleive there is an inline sensor that is monitored by the ecu that determins ethanol content on the e-85 flex vehicles

andenbre

iTrader: (4)

I am planning on doing this to my car seeing there are 5 e-85 retailers in my imediate area including one less than a mile away. one issue I wonder about is weather or not the ethanol attacks conventional fuel hoses, lines and seals like methanol does. I worked as a tech for a dyno lab a that did astm and sae lab & dyno testing for the oil/transportation industry about 10 years ago . We had methanol, cng, and other experimental fuel vehicles go through there and I remember the methanol car had stainless fuel lines, plastic tank and special fuel hoses.

TrinaBabe

iTrader: (3)

Yes my was running E-85 at around 26psi on a GT35r with no intercooler perfectly fine. The gas mileage is terrible and it really comes out to be almost a wash as for as money is concerned. Im sure if you dont ever beat it you may come out on top but it wont be by much due to the much lower MPG you get with the stuff. It is however a great way to get more go go juice out of the car without running "race gas". Its also much cheaper than normal gas much less any type of race gas.

E85 is not at all corrosive to any of the fuel system as far as I can tell. I just pulled out my fuel cell which was aluminum, all my fuel lines have aluminum fittings, aluminum intake manifold, etc, etc... nothing looks corroded at all. Even the cell which had fuel in it for the last 4 or 5 months looks brand new. The E85 didnt do a thing.

TrinaBabe

iTrader: (3)

And with the AEM EMS you could get the car to run on either type of fuel without changing the map. It has no problem running on closed loop but the side effect would be jumping AFR values because the swing would need to be so great. The cure to that would be a switch mounted somewhere on the vehicle and you to know what type of fuel is in the car. You can have the switch set up so when its on the EMS is running a nitrous map which can enrich the fuel map and advance the timing. Whens the switch is off you can have it run your normal 93 octane map. Very simple to do.

DreamLike1

and you are an environmental engineer? Sorry, I just doubt you fully understand how many Joules per square mile you achieve with each different technology. Personally I would bet corn crops are much more productive from an energy standpoint... Wind generators are pretty ineficient

vwjeff

iTrader: (13)

High_PSI

iTrader: (50)

Calm down sweetheart. Sugur is by far a more potent fuel, Corn not only is inferior but can be gown in our climate. France does it, I guess they have a tropical climate too


Though corn has broad political support as a feedstock in the United States, it is one of the least efficient sources of ethanol. For example, ethanol yields per acre for French sugar beets and Brazilian sugarcane are roughly double those for American corn.

Also important is the amount of energy used to produce ethanol. Growing, transporting and distilling corn to make a gallon of ethanol uses almost as much energy as is contained in the ethanol itself.

Placing greater emphasis on land efficiency — that is, maximizing energy yield per acre — will be essential to making the best use of ethanol.

Sugar beets are a better source, producing nearly two units of energy for every unit used in production.

Sugarcane, though, is by far the most efficient of the current feedstocks — yielding eight times as much energy as is needed to produce the ethanol.

Given their positive energy balances and higher yields, it makes more sense to produce ethanol from sugar crops than from grains.

Please, think before you post m'kay?

nolimits1320

iTrader: (10)

"potency" isn't the only trait of fuel that makes it useable. Oil propaganda is all over, especially since thier budget is considerably higher than ethanol producers...so you'll find plenty of negative hype. Ethanol has proven itself as an alternative fuel, from full race to the street. I've been running ethanol personally for years with great results. I grow tired of people telling me how bad ethanol is (and reading it on forums like this), when not a single one of those people have even worked with it. Try it....then get back to me with your actual fuel consumption and results. At least then you'd have something worthy to say.

Ethanol isn't the only alternative fuel source, and never will be....but it's real and here...and will be for a long time to come.