Concerning the 'power' of ethanol.... ethanol has a higher flash point (I think thats the right term) than straight gasoline, so you can run a higher compression ratio. That's how the manufacturers get more power out of an ethanol car -- they run a higher compression ratio or more spark advance or something along those lines.

So put the stuff in your car designed for gasoline and you won't see any performance boost. Just worse 'ethanol' mileage. All in all though I'd wager a vette tuned for and running on ethanol could be some good clean fun.

jsn

 

Gasoline has a small lubricating effect Alcohol does not.That is why we flush our fuel systems after a race. It tends to dry everything out. It is highly corrosive. All things being equal Pure alcohol makes about ten percent more power. It has an octane rating of 106. That is one of the reasons we use it. The alcohol used in Cart, Indy racing, Drag racing, World of Outlaws, Etc. is methanol not ethanol by the way. Ethanol is grain based mostly from corn and can be consumed by humans. (Farmers want to sell as much corn as possible so they talk politicians into these ideas).Methanol comes from either natural gas or cellulose (WOOD) and is extremely poisonous. Alcohol burns cold. NOT good when flying a plane.(They fall out of the sky when their motors quit ya know.) Causes icing in induction systems. Cooling in the intake works good with high compression. Ratios of 14/1 to 15/1 are common. Alcohol fuel requires changes in your jetting in order to keep from running to lean. To run alcohol fuel we use a formula which translates to aproximately TWICE the amount of fuel BY VOLUME. That doesn't mean double your jet size. A carb setup for PURE alky will use jets anywhere from 10 to 20 sizes larger and have fuel passages increased 40% to 50% in size. Needless to say alcohol gets poor fuel mileage. RUN LEAN ON ALKY...KISS YOUR MOTOR GOOD-BY! It will also wash the oil off of your cylinder walls if you are running excessivly rich = scuffed cylinder walls and oil contamination. Alcohol causes constant maintance problems with all fuel systems. It makes it difficult to read spark plugs as they tend to get washed off. IMHO it will cause some problems at the 20% level. Not blow your motor up problems but wear problems just the same. If they use it in your state change your fuel filter cause it will flush the crud into your carbs or F.I. and change your oil more often. Expect worse fuel mileage. In the race car we ran it in (more than 12 yrs.) we had to rebuild the carbs after every race, if we didn't we would have problems and we changed the oil after ever race. DO WE NEED ALTERNATIVE FUEL SOURCES?... YES!... BUT I DON'T THINK ALCOHOL IS THE ANSWER.

 

Then, I guess we have to find a cheaper, more efficient way of cracking long chain hydrocarbons into shorter ones in the range of gasoline. Or maybe, we'd have to disobey the tree huggers opinions and dig more for oil, look for more oil and take it from reserves. As we advance technologically in the near or far future, we can then have fuel cells mass made, or even resume using gasoline for hotrods, provided we come up with a better way to create pump and/or race gasoline. Hopefully I'll die before the world ends so I won't have to worry about future upcoming problems, especially in 2029 when a meteor gained a 1/10000 chance of hitting us. Then I can care less about what will happen to anything I own.

 

This is exactly right. Ethanol is added to gasoline under the guise of improving air quality, and yes, emissions are lower for the amount of gasoline burned. The catch is that fuel efficiency decreases (MPG goes down) so a car burns more gas when ethanol is added. More gas burned = more emissions, which reduces or completely eliminates the benefit of adding ethanol.

Ethanol laws are nothing more than political giveaways to corn farmers.

 

Hydrogen would be a good way to go. Yes, it need to be produced, but it can be done at a regulated plant. When an internal combustion engine runs on hydrogen the only output is water You can do away with all the emissions equipment. No need to regulate the cars at all.