Ethanol (E85) and other alternative fuels

*Disclaimer* Make sure that you're vehicle is capable of running alternative fuels before using such fuels

E85

For the past 10 years or so, there has been more and more talk about using ethanol as a fuel for our modern day vehicles. Many people have different opinions about ethanol and many people don't really know what it is completely. In order to help people understand ethanol better I decided that it would be a good idea to make a post about alternative fuels. My background and a small passion of mine happens to be a part of the automotive industry and I have been trained as an alternative fuels technician.

That brings me to the first question, what is ethanol? Well, to put it in scientific terms, ethanol is ethyl alcohol which is a renewable alcohol and is drinkable. In fact pure ethanol is moonshine or 200 proof alcohol. If you know anything about alcoholic drinks at all, 200 proof alcohol would pack a punch and would not be good to ingest all by itself, but nevertheless you "can" drink it. Which brings us to E85.

E85 is 85% ethanol (thus the 85 part of E85) and 15% gasoline. Now why would they mix gasoline into the fuel, especially if this fuel is going to replace gasoline some day? I'll get to the second part of that question in a moment, but the first part of the question "why mix gasoline into it" is because it will still have many of the properties of gasoline, yet people will not be able to ingest it. The next thing to know about E85 is it's octane rating (resistance to detonation or pre-ignition). Some people have given it as high of an octane rating as 105-110 or as low as 94-96, I have unfortunately never seen a conclusive test about this, but either way the octane rating is higher then any other gasoline choice that you have at the pump.

Now onto some of the positive and negative factors of E85.

E85 does not have the energy potential that gasoline does. This is going to sound like it contradicts one of E85's good points but I want to throw this in here to explain it a little bit. In fact, E85 produces a little over 70% of energy that a similar gallon of gasoline would produce.

However, that does not mean that your vehicle will produce 70% of the hp that it makes on gasoline. This is the confusing part but let me explain. Being that E85 has a higher octane rating then pump gasoline that means that E85 is more resistant to "knock" or detonation. Because of this, a vehicle can have it's timing adjusted or be given a higher compression ratio if the vehicle is run solely on E85, and by doing so the vehicle could have even more power then it would have on gasoline. Think of it as a cheap race fuel due to the alcohol in E85. Cool, huh?

Also, a negative is the price of E85. Well, not so much the price, but that at least in the United States, the price of E85 is due in part because of subsidies. Some argue that if it were not for such subsidies then E85 could be just as expensive as regular unleaded gasoline, if not more. Thus making it not as worthwhile to go with E85 if your vehicle is a flex fuel vehicle and can be run on either E85 or unleaded regular.

A positive though related to this negative is that maybe it's still worth the price of E85 even if it ends up being the same price or a little more then regular unleaded gasoline. If say the octane rating is 96, one would expect that the price of such a fuel would be at least 30 cents a gallon more then regular unleaded. So maybe the whole price thing isn't as bad as one would think.

Lastly, E85 cannot replace gasoline as a fuel for automobiles (told you I would come back to this). It's impossible for this to happen because in the United States we cannot produce enough corn to produce that much fuel and in Brazil they are in a similar position with sugar cane (although better then the US). Because of this we will still need gasoline not only to run vehicles that are not "flex fuel" vehicles but also to mix into the ethanol to begin with.

This however, is also not a complete negative. The reason is because E85 was never meant to replace gasoline at all, it was meant to slow down the demand of foreign oil. Many people make bold claims stating that E85 is not the answer and such, but if they sat down and thought about it, what else do we have that's available? We have to start somewhere.

In truth, the Earth was made by the Lord and we should take care of it (see Gen 1:3, Ps 24:1). If we get in a rut and keep using gasoline as our primary (and almost only) fuel source, then we will continue to pollute the Earth. But if we start to wing ourselves off of gasoline and foreign oil, we can be better stewards of the gift of the world given to us by the Lord (see Gen 1:29) and we should use other fuels such as E85 when possible.

There are many more things that could be said about E85, but I believe that this is a good start and I think I will continue later with a different alternative fuel.