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alternate fuel?

2K views 23 replies 10 participants last post by  DIRTE30 
#1 ·
can we run our cars on alchol, or a blend of alcohol and gasoline? not just a little added to the fuel but a big mix, say 50/50 or better? what about propane?
 
#2 ·
no real point in running such exotic fuels with no boost and an 8.5:1 comp ratio. If you're really running high boost, yes you can I suppose.
 
#4 ·
haha, dude your car isn't the submarine from u-571


^^lets see if anyone gets that
 
#5 ·
ARGH! I LOVE THAT MOVIE, but I haven't seen it since it first came out on DVD at my friends $100,000 home theater. It kind of put a bad taste in my mouth about watching that movie on my system... Granted I am a home theater GURU, but not one with THAT kind of cash!

Josh W.
 
#6 ·
yeah my thought process didn't even get as far as what the fuel would do to the parts of the engine, I stopped thinking after my brain determined it was a pointless idea on a stock motor. You get huge gains with a turbo motor tho. One of which is that you don't need an intercooler, because of the low vapor point of alcohol... it pretty much cools the intake charge by itself.
 
#7 ·
jimhorton1963 said:
can we run our cars on alchol, or a blend of alcohol and gasoline? not just a little added to the fuel but a big mix, say 50/50 or better? what about propane?
How about LPG? That's a mix of propane and butane.
Works pretty well with naturally aspired engines and the latest LPG injection systems offer zero performance loss. Unless you're looking to improve performance...
 
#8 ·
Alcohol or ethenol AKA e85 fuel is going to be a choice of fuel in the not too distant future. Gas is going to go up in price and soon it may be cheaper to use other fuels like alcohol, be educated or be forced to buy a newer multi fuel compatible car like a ford, GAG. Example: What will you do if you can no longer buy gas for under $8 a gallon but alcohol is everywhere for $4, and you can make it yourself for $2 a gallon? It'll happen in our lifetime. Procrastonate and you may find your self as the proverbial victim of the fossil fuel version of hurricane katrina...

There is a lot of work that is needed to be done, alcohol is much more corrosive than gasoline so the tank and all fuel lines must be teffon lined or made of stainless steel with silicone hoses and O-rings. Alcohol burns much more evenly so it's octaine rating to gasoline is about 101 octaine (can any one say high boost turbo :D ) Anyway, you'll need larger injectors, adjustable fuel pressure regulator, and know how in crease your spring tension in your AFM, because you need more alcohol to prevent a lean condition. You can find more info on this subject on the web.
 
#10 ·
Mixing won't be a good option, until an aftermarket muliti-fuel ratio sensor and piggy back ECU can be built to assist adjustment of fuel delivery, spark, and exhaust O2 adjustments and feed back due to the inability to get the mix exact. So supplementing would have bad results, so for now using alcohol would be an all or nothing ordeal. Unless you feel like keeping a stock AFM and stock fuel pressure regulator on top of completely draining the fuel system to switch back and forth.
 
#12 ·
well folks, now its time to really consider this as a fuel replacement. this fuel has started to show up at some of my local gas stations. its called e85. its a blend of 85% ethenol and 15% gasoline. its 40 to 50 cents cheeper a gallon.
the research that i have done showsw the oppsite from what most nay sayers have posted here. if my fuel system can tolerate the curent blend of 10% ethenol (which most made after 88 can) it will tolerate the 85% blend. if my oxygen sensor is functioning then the ecu should be able to vary the fuel injection pulse width to provide the correct mixture. however, if this is not the case then there are some after market kits (not certified by the epa) that can be purchased for use in other countries. as eluded to in an earlier post, this fuel will be the norm sooner than we think. how hard is it for you to find fuel that has no ethenol now?
 
#13 ·
It will not, the stock computer cannot adapt to provide enough E85 to your motor, you car will run lean, and you will damage your engine. A gasoline engine running on E85 requires up to 20% or more alcohol to even run properly. Plus if you don't line your tank and replace every rubber line your car and possibly your fuel pump, it will be in the salvage yard in no time.

I have not heard about a O2 conversion kit, the only EPA condoned kit that is available is the FlexTek and it is basically an injector driver and a bi-fuel converter that can be installed on most multi-port fuel injected vehicles allowing you to choose between fueling up with either Ethanol, gasoline or a mixture of both. This system costs about $700.
 
#14 ·
Guys,
I Do Not believe that E85 or any other type of ethanol based fuel will ever take a serious strong hold as there is just no way that we could ever grow enough Corn to be able to keep up with the amount of fuel this country consumes on a daily basis! Even if the entire country was farm land and everyone in the country was a farmer! Do the research... just aint gonna happen. The fact is that Fossle fuels are cheap and efficient when compared with many of the alternatives that are supposedly so much better. Yeah E85 is cheaper now but that's because the demand is very low and supply is disperportionately high due to the fact that there aren't that many vehicles able to use the crap! Even if in 5 years all cars were miraculously able to use it, it wouldn't help because we couldn't supply anywhere near as much of it as the amount of fossil fuel we pump every day. While I do agree that at some point we will need to find a better way to fuel our vehicles I don't think that a bio-based fuel will ever be the answer because of the terrible yeild rate of fuel to gross weight that corn or any other "renewable" source offers. Electricity is a much more feasable source as it can be produced from nuclear sources that have exponentially HUGE yeild rates for little to no emissions and one little ball of uranium will power hundreds of thousands of vehicles for upwards of 2 to 3 decades and it only takes up a hundred acres or so of land to have an operational plant! Currently I am making Bio-Diesel in my garage out of recylced waste vegitable oil (WVO). I see no reason why we shouln't make good use of the biologically produced waste as it makes an excellent fuel source and we are already making it for other uses (cooking). But I'm not under the illusion that we could ever power the entire planet off of the stuff! There's no way.
 
#15 ·
Gasoline isn't going to last forever. And so long as companys such as GM, Ford and their likes continue to shun effiency and build unessarly large vehicals and people who use these vehicals for personal transportation there could be another fuel crisis within our life time.

Are E85 or other variants going to replace fossl fuels right away? With current technology it is impossable to stop cold turky. However looking at the advancments made in technology over the last 50 years, we can weine ourselves off fossel fules, we have to. Even if we prepare ourselves for the peaking of oil production with a sensible, broad-based energy plan, we'll still be faced with the pain of prices marching relentlessly higher for years to come in order to match demand to steadily diminishing supplies. If we're not prepared, though, the bad news of peak oil becomes potentially catastrophic: An oil shock leading to global recession at best and a long string of resource wars at worst. Given the choice between these two bad alternatives, and the long lead time required to implement any kind of serious energy plan, we'd be well advised to get started now.

I belive that there won't be a seperate pump that sells E85 at every station in the future, instead, I feel gasoline will be diluted with ethonol with increasing percentages to make it last untill the next "eurika" comes along. Bio-fuels will become part of our lives. Like it or not, conversions or upgrades are the only option to keep our allready paid for cars and vintage steel on the road.

Finally, you wouldn't know it from the hulking SUVs and traffic-clogged freeways of the United States, but we're in the twilight of plentiful oil. There's no global shortage yet; far from it. The world can still produce so much crude that the current price of about $70 for a 42-gallon barrel would plummet if the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) did not limit production. This abundance of oil means, for now, that oil is cheap. In the United States, where gasoline taxes average 43 cents a gallon (instead of dollars, as in Europe and Japan), a gallon of gasoline can be cheaper than a bottle of water—making it too cheap for most people to bother conserving. While oil demand is up everywhere, the U.S. remains the king of consumers, slurping up a quarter of the world's oil—about three gallons a person every day—even though it has just 5 percent of the population. However, If there is no plan to find an alternative, your grand-children or their children will be on horse back cursing us.

That's my say on this subject and I'll leave it alone.
 
#18 ·
Morgenster said:
How about LPG? That's a mix of propane and butane.
Works pretty well with naturally aspired engines and the latest LPG injection systems offer zero performance loss. Unless you're looking to improve performance...

Yea it will run on LPG, u gotta install a LPG conversion kit in the car and it runs fine until the LPG starts to freeze and theres is no pressure for good accelaration, for this they have a heater mat which the put over the cylinder and pipes to prevent it from freezing with the high pressure. It runs really really good and also gets good gas mileage. the engine also runs quieter and u can smell LPG from the exhasut haha..

We had conversion kits in India, in our suzuki van and Nissan swapped suzuki, it ran really good and it gave us like 42-44 mpg. thats after i converted my units, but its really good.


Preyash
 
#19 ·
Starmavin,

I agree with everything you said, my only point was that I don't believe that E85 could ever be produced on a large enough scale to be the "replacement" fuel for current petrol based gasoline. Like you said we slurp up sooooo much of it that if we don't curb our usage of it by increasing the efficiency of our vehicles, it won't matter what we replace it with, it won't be enough! Of course this is all coming from a bunch of rev happy boost heads on a BMW forum:driving! So ya'll can take it for what it's worth.:D
 
#20 ·
DIRTE30 said:
Starmavin,

I agree with everything you said, my only point was that I don't believe that E85 could ever be produced on a large enough scale to be the "replacement" fuel for current petrol based gasoline. Like you said we slurp up sooooo much of it that if we don't curb our usage of it by increasing the efficiency of our vehicles, it won't matter what we replace it with, it won't be enough! Of course this is all coming from a bunch of rev happy boost heads on a BMW forum:driving! So ya'll can take it for what it's worth.:D

Sure you can, just make it profitable for 3rd world central american countries to grow large quantities of corn/other ethanol capable plants, and fund their govt's like we did in the 70's/80's and grow up our own gvt's down south again. We'd control their economies (as in part they'd partially control ours, better them then the middle east though) effectively, and we'd be enriching a part of the world that is impoverished, but generally stable.

Which really is the out we are looking for. We ARE a nation that builds nations. We are in no position to do so in the middle east, but we are able to exert our will on the central american peoples. It has the right clime to be able to produce large crops, and the land mass and overall civil stability.

This idea should also appease the "get out of our country" gung ho americans who hate mexican's/spanish immigrants comming into the country as this would create a better climate of them wanting to better their own country and make money on their home turf so to speak.
 
#22 · (Edited)
And that is exactly what the oil companies want you to believe, so they can continue to plunder your wallet, and "fuel" this war.

With bio-fuel's "current yield rate" is more accurate. I'm doing research, I haven't stopped following it, this isn't a glance at it and it's over subject. Advancements in technology are bettering yield rates every day. Heck they can now make ethanol from sawdust, grass, and tree leaves. Brazil is doing it, with its sugarcane-based fuel, the nation may become energy independent this year. Brazil is turning sugar cane into the equivalent of 300,000 barrels of oil a day. And I'm sure that the hundreds of thousands of acres of tobacco fields in the US and around the world could be put to much better use... Even bio-diesel production has changed, there are new procedures that cut the older production times in half and produce a better fuel.

Give it 6 years, once more efficient cars come out and drop world wide usage and I'll be willing to bet that bio-fuel tech may get to a point where yield rates will close in on usage due to these cars and becomes a threat to gasoline companies. Then they will drop their prices drastically in order to make bio-fuels seem less attractive. Can you say $1.00 a gallon again?
 
#24 ·
That's awesome for Brazil but we use exponentially more fuel per capita than they ever dreamed of! I hope, for everones sake, that your right about the bio-fuel research and progress, but if you seriously believe that the oil companies are going to let someone else out there cut them out of their own game, you're seriously mistaken. I'm not one of the "big oil" bashers at all. This is a Capitalist economy and I'm not bitchin that the oil companies are making record profits and I don't think that they are some kind of evil empire out to run the world, but I do know that there are some incredibly intelligent and talented men running these companies and you can bet your ass that they are at the forefront of exploratory efforts in the realm of alternative fuels. Because, like you said, somday we will run out of the dino juice and something is gonna have to give and they are sure as hell gonna make sure they aren't getting beat at their own game! I would really love to see some sort of bio-based fuel become the alternative for oil as I believe that the internal combustion engine still has alot more to offer than the "big three" and the likes, have shown us! Once the supply of "cheap oil" goes away I'd hate to see our beloved toys go the way of the dinosaur and be replaced by boring electric cars that don't have so much as an exaust note to exhonorate our right foots' urges. Not to mention the awesome resurgence of the great American farmer that would follow. I just haven't seen anything as of yet that would suggest any of that is feasable and have actually heard of some research that suggests that there may be a whole "motherload" of crude that has yet to be tapped that may be available through some unconventional drilling methods. Either way I would really love to see more fuel efficient vehicles being pushed to the forefront in this country. I hate reading about all the sweet diesel powered cars over in europe that our stupid beurocratic legislations won't allow to come over here, while our refineries are backed up with making damn butique fuels for all of CA's 10,000 emissions reg's and can't get in gear to meet tier 2 diesel requirements so we can actually help ourselves out of our own gluttony! OK getting off the soap box now.... Damn I have a big mouth! :yawn
 
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