The AUSubaru.com.au Forums

Like many people I used 95 octane E10 believing it was good stuff thought I noticed my fuel consumption was going to the dogs .

I came across this thread from an American site and its an interesting if long read .

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthread.p ... 12697.html

Read it anyway but the guts of it is that one feller found his consumption going backwards in a place where it became impossible to buy E0 or straight ULP with no Ethanol in it .
He reckons that his consumption was worse than the 10% by volume of ethanol the fuel has ie burn more fuel overall and gain nothing except higher fuel bills .
If you are a suspicious critter like I am you could suspect that the oil/fuel companies know this and it may be a clever way to get you to buy more juice and make them more money .
The scenerio could go like this . Joe average never fills his tank up because he never has the money in his pocket or won't part with it all in one go . He has no idea what his fuel consumption is because he can't be bothered monitoring it . All he knows is his car won't go without petrol so when its almost gone he has to put a bit more in it . He rocks up to the servo and the first things he sees is the cheapest "budget E10" so throws that in thinking he's saving money . He doesn't actually know how far he goes per litre of fuel used so if his consumption was suddenly 12-15% worse he's none the wiser .

Now the Greene types have been legislation that we have to put ethanol in all pump fuels because we're all in danger of being cooked by global warming . It's good 'n that because plants suck that nasty C02 gas from the atmosphere and burning ethanol gives off in theory less of it .

The trouble is that very few if any automotive engines are designed to burn ethanol and so will never run optimally on it . They are designed to run petroleum fuels and live with their burn and detonation characteristics .
Ethanol is a very different fuel to ULP and doesn't have the energy value that ULP does . So in other words it doesn't suit the characteristics petrol engines have and won't give what you'd call real good fuel consumption because of it . Some manufacturers are developing EBDI or Ethanol boosted direct injection engines but they are very different to anything you could run pump ULP in . They run quite high static compression ratios because ethanol has a higher octane value than even premium ULP and is more detonation resistant because of it . Boosted means forced induction to increase cylinder pressures in a controlled fashion .
The value in direct chamber injection is because ethanol has a greater evaporative cooling effect than ULP so its a bit of a charge cooling win .

Anyway I'm going back to straight ULP for a while to see if my consumption returns to what I used to get and I'm curious to know if anyone else who has used E10 would try my theory out .
At the end of the day even if I break even on dollars per Km I'll use the straight ULP because my cars run noticeably better on it .

Note the links at the bottom LHS of the first page in this link because some of them are interesting reading too .

A .

Forgot to add , the Marine and Aviation world avoid ethanol like the plague and there has to be something in this - maybe a greater risk of dieing if the noisy thing goes quiet at the wrong time .

and not only that but why would we grow a food crop and then put it in cars instead of feeding the starving people of the world ??

not to mention the amount of space (ie; forests) we need to grow it in the first place.

Total Madness and I will NEVER buy ethanol based fuels.

Yeah, alcohol belongs in the stomach not in the tank:)

Corn is the one of the biggest agriculture products in the US. Try buying grass fed beef in the US, good luck. There are a very small number of vey large companies that own the food chain, from farm to (virtually) your plate. Hence all the corn, its simply the highest yielding per area (not to mention its subsidised). Now if you were a large multinational, plowing millions of research dollars to find other ways to use your high yielding crop (corn is in almost every food product as a reuslt) why woulnd't you throw a few million to coming up with a green spin to adding your product to fuel? Make it good enough and your arch-enemy green groups will be unwittingly lobbying on your behalf. Now sit back and watch demand go through the roof, prices rise and the dollars roll in. Who cares about a few global food crisis' in the process?

few things ive found and I PERSONALLY believe

E85 give 30% more power but also burns 30% more, needs lots of tuning and the like
food should not be used to make fuel, waste should eg V8 super cars ethanol
the human population is too large already
the australian government should not be giving money to other countries when we need it

more but less important =D

Ethanol has stoich A/F ratio of 9.6:1, Petrol is 14.7:1.

Mix Ethanol with Petrol, the stoich goes down in proportion.

So in closed loop, we need more fuel to maintain the programmed O2 operation.

Above 10%, other craziness happens, like separation in the tank.

It's all about cents/km. I get more km (less cents/km) out of both of mine on 98.

No ethanol for me.

To be honest, I wouldn't put anything past the American government or any American company. It's as simple as this; they like money and they will do anything to get it.

sadly the rest of the world is following suit

I keep hearing of those disgusted with the increaee in consumption when using ethanol blends available and return to non ethanol blend to get best kms per litre and dollar economy

Now, what with the floods and cyclones tearing through our sugar can crops (90% of our sugar came from that region I hear. Surely must be less waste product to use for a whle to make their ethanol. Does that whack the price up or even deplete our stocks of ethanol for a while?

gees we'd be screwed if we all relied on ethanol 85 when such massive disasters occur

Ethenol is also hydrascopic and absorbs moisture from the air,
thus filling, slowely with prolonged use, the tank with
water.

Causing Many obvious problems

I think there are a few points that need to be raised as well:

- Ethanol is renewable, crude oil isn't (not in our life-time),
- Ethanol has less emissions than petrol,
- Properly set (correct compression ratio, air in the mix, etc, etc), an ethanol engine is quite powerful and fuel efficient to similar petrol cars. Now, I agree that an ethanol engine will never be as fuel efficient as a modern petrol engine, such as some european ones. We need to realise the fuels are different and behave differently.

By no means am I a supporter of ethanol only, or pre-mixed alternatives such as E10 or E85, but I reckon we can't simply rule the fuel out. It might become a more viable option in the future, when petrol prices continue to hit record highs.

Anyway, my 2c worth...
Pedro.

ethanol fuel sucks balls we are all being conned and the government should do an enquiry into fuel and it's octane rating and average consumption I simply cannot stand the fact that one servo has good fuel and the same brand fuel at another servo makes my car ping it's head off, no consistency at all. It also seems that if someone so much as farts in Afganistan or Egypt the price of fuel goes up.
Yep we are all suckers,
I now run my car on straight gas i recomend you all do the same.......

pezimm wrote:I think there are a few points that need to be raised as well:

- Ethanol is renewable, crude oil isn't (not in our life-time),
- Ethanol has less emissions than petrol,
- Properly set (correct compression ratio, air in the mix, etc, etc), an ethanol engine is quite powerful and fuel efficient to similar petrol cars. Now, I agree that an ethanol engine will never be as fuel efficient as a modern petrol engine, such as some european ones. We need to realise the fuels are different and behave differently.

By no means am I a supporter of ethanol only, or pre-mixed alternatives such as E10 or E85, but I reckon we can't simply rule the fuel out. It might become a more viable option in the future, when petrol prices continue to hit record highs.

Anyway, my 2c worth...

Pedro.

Agree, Ethanol is a grain alcohol. If we build an engine to take advantage of its high octane, we can make some good figures, both power and economy.

Fuel economy needs higher compression ratio to increase thermal efficiency at part throttle which we can have for ethanol use only.

pezimm wrote:I think there are a few points that need to be raised as well:

- Ethanol is renewable, crude oil isn't (not in our life-time),
- Ethanol has less emissions than petrol,
- Properly set (correct compression ratio, air in the mix, etc, etc), an ethanol engine is quite powerful and fuel efficient to similar petrol cars. Now, I agree that an ethanol engine will never be as fuel efficient as a modern petrol engine, such as some european ones. We need to realise the fuels are different and behave differently.

By no means am I a supporter of ethanol only, or pre-mixed alternatives such as E10 or E85, but I reckon we can't simply rule the fuel out. It might become a more viable option in the future, when petrol prices continue to hit record highs.

Anyway, my 2c worth...
Pedro.

Good points there. Also littlewhiteute is right, if an engine is designed specifically to run on ethanol it could get good figures.
But that's all assuming we use internal combustion forever, which I think we won't since they're only about 25%(?) efficient at best, and produce huge amounts of waste heat.
The energy density for petrol and even ethanol is huge (think of how many kilojoules would be in a kg of petrol, compared to 1kg of the best batteries we have)
You could get a person to work and back on a teaspoon of petrol, if there was a system efficient enough use every kj of energy in it, which there isn't....yet

The old rule of thumb was that one third of the heat went into the cooling system , another went out the exhaust pipe and the last third went down the pistons and connecting rods to drive the crankshaft . So with this theory a third or 33% at best .

Please don't read me wrongly I'm not dead set against ethanol but I am against the urban myth (IMO) that budget E10 is cheaper effectively than E0 or 100% ULP . The difference in price does not compensate for the drop in consumption so I suspect it is a scam by the oil companies and getting a free ride off the eco Nazis and our local resident socialist lefties .

As has been mentioned in the right circumstances E85 can work well but really only in engines that are unsuitable to burn straight ULP .
The horsepower heroes like E85 because its far cheaper to buy than high octane race fuel and when tuned to suit high compression or boosted engines can run closer to best mean torque ignition timing before unsustainable detonation sets in . Engines with modern control systems can pull timing faster and further than older ones could but you can get brief rattles if you know how to tease them .
Also late systems are using faster wide band pump cell oxygen sensors and the computers have the ability to "self learn" and change their parameters to stay within set emissions parameters .
Note in one of those links the feller mentioned cars pre 2000 suffer more than later cars , I think its because the management systems are more capable of detecting operating differences and compensating to regain what the fancy electronics measure as relative normality .

I personally think low percentage ethanol blends are a farce and the ones who like it are the people in the ethanol industry or the green commos pushing impossible to realistically implement agendas .

Anyway Ellie is nearly to 300 km on what my gauge says is ~ 1/2 a tank so if it runs low somewhere near 600 then I'll know tawd lass is a tea totaller .

A .

if you did maths, E10 is a waste of money on kms, youre really paying more than ULP.
LPG is worth a go. Ive got work's egas falcon and you can get 650kms with 85 litre of gas and still getting better mileage since its being running in.
Cheers
AP

Try the Falcoon wagott EGAS for distance at 118 litres useable accrding to the manuals - gives a safe travel distance ofn the highway for 850km !

LPGs only real advantage is its price , a reasonable car should be able to get 10/100 (ULP) on the open road but from a performance perspective today's LPG is low octane garbage .

I think the best compromise for performance and consumption is the lowest octane ULP that you can use without detonation .
Just don't forget that high octane ULP actually is harder to ignite that lower octane stuff and if you don't have detonation issues it can actually be a step backwards .

A .

found this
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 072616.htm
what are we breathing?

also this has some info...
http://www.fuel-testers.com/ethanol_fue ... tages.html

Some of todays LPG may be garbage, and I thnk my last load was the first I have ever had that my EA81 twin carbed Brumby has pinged quite severely at high revs medium load in third (or any gear for that matter) at half mark on temp gauge.

LPG increase in consumption has been similar in that as LPG only has 80% the energy of 'petrol' , litre for litre, in the olden days of leaded fuel. Never seen this figure altered for ULP days though, so it is part of the old 80/20 rule that applies to a lot of things?

As a result, when converting a petrol emgine to LPG and comparing consumption it can be expected to use 10 to 20% , even 25% more in volume of LPG in worst cases - as far as the old school smogger conversions are concerned. Systems of closed loop may expect better results than 20% extra, then the vapour injection even better, then we get to liquid injection where for some years now the test engine , a 4.0 Ford inline six produced more power, torque and better or same economy in LPG than for 'petrol'.

I conside myself lucky to have a 15% increase in most of my conversions of the smogger variety.

Due to the price difference of about half for LPG we do not hear so many complaining. maybe the same would be for the sweeter fuel blends if the price difference to Ezilch was similar

Well I managed to scrape in 600 Km from the Caltex 95/BP98 E0 mix .
Ellie actually started to go a bit flat with about 5 km to go and it was all over red rover , well red charge and ignition lights , at 599.800 Km . Determined to get the win I coasted barely over a small hill in Engadine and rolled the last 200 meters into a back street . Out with the strategically placed 10L fuel container and off again in minutes . The nippers thought this was most exciting cept the daughter thought we'd be walking home .

The next experiment will be a very full tank of BP95 and see if I can get the 600 out of that , hopefully without the "dead stick" landing .

Cheers A .