Anyone have any ideas on using E85? I've talked to a lot of people whos vehicles aren't "flex fuel compatable", but they do fine. To my understanding the biggest problem is the excessive heat caused by the combustion, but it doesnt seem to hurt thier vehicles at all. Anyone else using it?

 

I'd think it would be O2 levels over combustion temps. Don;t recall that being an issue. I know a really tall dark fella who frequents the board that has been doing some research and trials, but I'll let him come in here.
I also think Five7 is running e85 on his old chebby at the rack and doing pretty damn good to boot... but that's a carb app.

 

Like I said, the only reason that has been presented to me is the increased combustion temps. Several people I have talked to use a 50/50 with unleaded.

 

Alcohol is corrosive, thats why there are "E-85" approved vehicles. These vehicles have parts that resist the corrosion, and also have the setup to accept it. The "flex-fuel" vehicles' computers automatically detect the use of E-85 by O2 output and adjust accordingly. Unless you can change your settings on the fly (with the use of a laptop), or you make your own, setting up your car to run E-85 probably isnt a great idea.

If you are making your own E-85, there are tons of sites out there with blueprints for your own still, permit papers for legality, and everything in between. To make your own E-85 though, the alcohol has to be 200 proof to mix with the gasoline, so you have to buy special filtering material to remove the water, since distilling can only get you to around 97% alcohol. If you are running only alcohol though, it doesnt have to be pure, but you make it much more difficult to use gasoline if your still blows up and your fuel supply is cut off.

Also if you make your own, you have to pay your state and federal taxes for road use if you use it on the road. You also have to treat the alcohol with gasoline right after you have purified to satisfy the ATF so they dont think you are drinking it. Along with the permits, the ATF can drop by ANYTIME to inspect your still for safety and conformation.

A still can run you anywhere from $400 to well above a grand, depending on quality and materials used. You easily return your money after a few months. But you have to consider that it will cost you around $2.00 a gallon to amke, assuming you arent selling the by-products such as the mash etc. The mash can be sold to farms for animal feed or fertilizer, allowing you to lessen your expenses.

There are also tax exemptions for using and making your own E-85, so check your local and state laws for that.

 

Actually according to some of the things I have read the fittings and whatnot arent really the problem. The problem according to most of what i have read until now, its more a matter of the difference in the way it burns. But, like i said, there are several people i know that are using it in a 50/50 right now. I commute 138 miles round trip daily. Mixing 50/50 would be good for 25 dollars a week for me. I'm just not sure that i am brave enough

 

Who can pass up an opportunity to put a legal stil in the back yard.

 

You are half right. Alcohol IS in fact corrosive, but to a certain degree. There ARE safe levels of mixtures to where it won't harm your systems, but Im not sure about E-50 (50/50). I know E-10 is perfectly fine to run stock, and so is E-15.

 

Their cars are in fact running better on it. It seems to make a difference, however slight. The gas mileage doesnt appear to suffer much from it either. For what its worth, one of them is an automotive instructor at a very well respected tech college here.

Living here in illinois I have been running 10% almost my entire life. Its just a matter of what that extra 40%will do.

 

THE ABC'S OF FUEL ALCOHOL

How much does it cost to produce 1 gallon of ethanol?
It will cost about $1.10 to $1.20/gal to make the alcohol from various feed-stocks like corn, barley, potatoes, or Jerusalem artichokes. You will also have by-products which you can sell or use as animal feed, reducing the total cost down to about $.95/gal.

Or, you can make it the cheap and easy way for only $1.20/gallon on a large scale, buying molasses by the ton (if it is a high sugar molasses). See my page on Molasses and Rum.

What materials are required to make ethanol once I have a still set up?

First, you need a good source of feedstock. By feedstock, I mean a good source of sugar or starch (carbohydrates) which can be fermented in the same process as which you make beer or wine. You aren't going to drink it, so it can be somewhat contaminated: For example, we once made a batch from a weeks' garbage from a low-security prison (one of our CAPFA founders worked there), so he separated it out for us. It was mostly lumpy mashed potatoes and stale bread, and we had to fight off the flies while we ran mixed it with water and dumped it into a larger fermentation tank. Then we covered it with window screen to keep the flies away.
Another time we used 5 year old dehydrated prunes, which I soaked for a week to get them soft enough to grind by hand, with a baseball bat. Realistically, you want to do all this on a farm where you have access to hammer-mills, large tanks, and various means of handling large amounts of feedstock (and the resultant waste). Corn (dry kernels) is one of the best, as it is over 70% starch. Also,you can use sugar beets, Jerusalem artichokes, rotten apples, grape skins from a winery, and much more. Molasses works great, too.

3. Can you buy a car already set up to run on Ethanol?
There are lots of cars you can buy that are already set up for E-85: Ford Taurus, Chrysler Voyager Minivan, Ford Explorer, dodge Ram pickups and Mazda 3000 pickups, and much more. Go to my web page, "Converting your Engine" and click on the photo of the Sebring convertible to find out which cars are already factory-ready for E-85 fuel, which you can make yourself.

4. How much feedstock does it take to produce one gallon of ethanol?
180-proof is 90% pure ethanol. To make it, start out with something cheap and readily available to make your own beer. I suggest you start with ordinary corn, wheat or barley, and start by following an ordinary recipe for making beer at home. Corn is best, with more starch. Grind it with a 1/8th inch screen mill (if it is too small, it is like flour and will ball up in water, so a course grind is better). For starters, use two 50-pound sacks of grain (40 kg). (I don't suggest buying this on a regular basis, but just for your first run if you dont have anything else available for free).

If you make 80 litres (20 gallons) of beer at a 10% alcohol content (which is about what you get working with corn) you end up with a little over 2 gallons of high proof (.10 x 20 gal/.9 = 2.2 gal of 180 proof).
In metric, this is .1 x 80 ltr/.9 = 8.9 litres.

You will soon discover that for making fuel, you will want to start with a minimum of 100 gallons, hopefully at a 10% sugar concentration, to get 10 gallons of fuel to be efficient. This is not a project for the your kitchen, as it will get a bit messy, Better to do it in the garage.

5. Does ethanol have a shelf life, and will it lose its octane level like gasoline does?
If it is sealed, it will last for years and years. If opened to the atmosphere, it will suck moisture out of the air and get a little bit diluted.

6. Isn't ethanol bad for certain fuel system components in fuel pumps and carbuerators?

No. Todays cars are built to be compatible with ethanol-blended fuels. When ethanol was first introduced in the 1980s, some cars experienced deterioration of some elastomers (rubber-like parts) and metal fuel system components. Very quickly, manufacturers upgraded their fuel systems so that today, they are now all compatible with ethanol fuels.
7. Can you make ethanol out of straw, grass clippings, or wood chips?

Yes and no. Alcohol is now being made from straw by a Candian company, Iogen, which is using a genetically modified organism (GMO),in this case,yeast to do just that. See my page on making Ethanol from Straw.

Making Ethanol from Straw

But this yeast product is not for sale and certainly will not be available to small scale producers. Other techniques have been tried--I even have a 25 year old book on making ethanol from sawdust-but they tend to be expensive, dangerous (involving strong acids) and have toxic waste products.

 

Actually, that figure is incorrect as it does not consider the cost of the energy to "cook" the ethanol. The true cost to produce ethanol (from anything other than sugar cane) exceeds the cost of the gasoline you want to reduce. And, as energy costs go up, so does the cost to produce ethanol as energy is a major input cost.

Ethanol is a "conveyor" of energy like fuel cells and NOT an actual source of energy. They all require energy as an "input" (like a battery) to get the energy back in a useable form.

I had an article from an investment company when I was researching investing in energy that disclosed the real costs to make ethanol and it is NOT as cheap as everyone says because people forget to include ALL the energy it takes to make the ethanol in the first place. Unfortunately, the "link" no longer works.

 

Ethanol is not just a conveyor of energy. The studies I have read on ethanol show its net energy production to be between 33% and 67%. These studies are quite exhaustive. They include the fuel(energy) used to produce/harvest/transport a corn crop, the fuel(energy) used to produce the fertilizers (nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus). They even included the energy used to produce the machines.

If those figures on the net energy return of ethanol seem poor, keep in mind, the net energy return of petroleum is not 100% either. People do tend to forget that. It takes energy to drill for and harvest crude, it takes energy refine it, energy to transport it halfway around the world, energy to build/maintain the tankers that transport it halfway around the world.

Ethanol does have it's problems. With current technology, it is not possible to produce enough ethanol to replace 100% of the gasoline used in the US, but if it can replace 10%, isn't that a good start?

Another thing to consider, is as the technology used to produce ethanol improves, it's net energy efficiency will improve. Some of the studies on ethanol that show a low net energy return arrived at that number because they based their figures on out of date farming practices. Average crop yields today are easily twice what they were 20 to 30 years ago. Farmers are using bigger machines that cover more ground, in less time, and use less fuel.

 

Glenn, I'll be using wood to cook mine. How does that figure into it?

Black, as I stated (I think) in the stickied post, I'd LOVE to see the net gain or loss on -gasoline- taken to the extent of the studies done on ethanol. How much do tankers cost, oil rigs, shipping, refining, etc. I can't find a thing.
Nor have I found anything that shows the various net gains or losses depending on how you raise, harvest, brew and store the ethanol. I'm dying to see a study that is contextually relevant to both concurrently and equally. Let me know if you come across anything.

Phat... neat site.