See my comment above. Ethanol is not the causal factor in the tests which show E10 being dirtier. The reason is because of the cheap gas that is mixed with the ethanol. Essentially, the refineries sell crap gasoline that wouldn't normally be saleable. Then they boost the octane with ethanol to get a saleable product. Its a BS game.

 

No.

You burn pure EtOH and you'll get pollutants. CO2 is a pollutant... but if you assume all the ethanol is from biomass, there is no net positive CO2... but you could also get:

Carbon monoxide
NOx (because the air you burn isn't purely O2)
Acetaldehyde and formaldehyde

Granted some of these products aren't released in very large amounts and can be reduced by cats, but there are still pollutants.

 

But its still less than gasoline.

 

Which means we have gotten right back to my post that said if zero isn't in the domain of less, than pollutants = true. Which means the statement that ethanol combustion produces no pollutants is false.

 

But where is that statement at?

 

Hey...

Anybody figured out how to turn grass clippings into ethanol inexpensively?

We all cut our grass, don't need fertilizer or chemicals to grow it, and... well... the whole GODDAMNED COUNTRY IS COVERED IN THE STUFF... erm... except for the parts covered by deserts... and parking lots... and trees...

Hell, you get the point. ZERO exceptional costs required - everybody cuts their grass anyway, which means net emissions is might be LOWER than compared to gasoline refining. Just put 'em in a garbage can at the end of your driveway and let the garbage man pick it up for shipment to the ethanol plant.

I'm all for ethanol.

If we do anything better than anybody in the world... besides kick a$$ militarily... we grow stuff better. Sticking it to the Middle East is just icing on the cake.


BTW - if ethanol becomes more competitive with gasoline, then OPEC will just lower the price... then we get a price war... and price wars are good for consumers and bad for OPEC.

BTW #2 - hit the next idiot you hear tell you we're running out of trees with a brick. Wifey and I rode our motorcycles from Michigan to North Carolina (and back) for vacation last year, and you can't throw a damned rock anywhere between the two without hitting a tree. We most assuredly ARE NOT running out of trees.

 

Whoever said ethanol combusion produced no pollutants? That's just plain silly, athough it is true that ethanol poses no water quality threat - which is what I alluded to above.

The question is: Are ethanol blends more harmful than straight gasoline? While there are few studies which say yes, the vast majority say no. For every negative report on ethanol blends, there exist 50 positive reports.

Regarding set theory: There's no need to get advanced mathematics involved in here. Why? No one will understand what you are talking about. But since you brought it up, zero is most certainly in the domain of less.

 

Ha, you got me. Maybe I posted that in the wrong ethanol thread, since I usually open a bunch of threads in Firefox at once in different tabs. I do not know why I made the original statement that burning ethanol gives you pollutants, but the subsequent argument against me seemed to be that E85 makes less pollution than gasoline which I would have never disagreed with in the first place. I know for certian that certain ethanol fuel websites claim that burning ethanol only gives you CO2 and water, and since the CO2 is derrived from biomass it makes no net CO2 contribution to the air. So will jsut appologize for wasting space in the thread with this discussion

 

I saw a hemp biodiesel site that said something similar. Think they might have been smoking something?