See, Ford did the right thing, it's the availibilty of E85 that's the problem not them. Still nothing of the masses from the big three but hot air.

Hi All,

The real question is, if these cars use the variable compression ratio Atkinson Head technology with an Ethanol sensor to increase compression ration when running E85 ? If so, they could get nearly the same fuel economy per gallon from the E85. If not, its just more of the Big 3 con-game, which will lead to inflation economics in North America.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(donee @ Jun 16 2007, 06:13 AM) [snapback]462935[/snapback]</div>

Thank you very much.....


plus I thought E85 caused more 'smog' but less greenhouse gasses, I think they need to work on the emission system for E85 vehicles before they mass produce E85.

1.) E85 is 85% ethanol, which has about 70% of the energy content from gasoline. So MPG will also be 70% of that expected with gasoline. Think of that when you figure the cost per gallon.

2.) E85 will forever be marketing BS until we have the means to produce ethanol in quantity. That requires a technological breakthrough. You'll never do it using cow-corn!

Hi Fan-atic,

The way the big 3 are doing E85 vehicles now you are right. And, the E85 CAFE Loophole is atrocious! If anything it should be reversed until they fix the E85 volumetric Fuel Economy issue with these cars! In fact, for economic welfare of North America, they should pass a law that limits E85 to use in vehicles as described below!

E85 has allot more octane, however. Engines can achieve higher efficiency with a higher compression ratio, which higher octane permits. People more knowledgable than I, have worked out that if you build a E85 engine with the proper compression ratio, the Fuel Economy per gallon in such an engine running E85 will be about the same as a gasoline engine (with the appropriate gasoline engine compression ratio).

The Atkinson/Miller valve train concept allows the engineer to set the compression ratio within some limits. This opens up the oportunity to have an Ethanol Sensor, which could then use E85 optimally, and Gasoline optimally. Did Ford do this? I doubt it. But its technologically feasible!

The big problem with E85 is the energy efficiency field to tank. Right now its just a little better than 1.0 according to an interview with a Ethanol industry representative on TV I saw. She did not give a number, and the interviewer did not press her - thus my assumption "a little bit better than 1". There was at time when it was very much worse, and it took more energy to process the corn into Ethanol, than it could ever give back in a 100 % efficient engine, let alone a 15 % efficient E85 engine!

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(donee @ Jun 16 2007, 09:39 AM) [snapback]462966[/snapback]</div>

You are technically correct with the above statement but what no one points out is that gasoline production field to tank is less than 1.0. So ethanol production is more efficient than gasoline production and does not use a finite resource. It is way better than 1.0 if you use sugar cane instead of corn that we like to subsidize in the Midwest.

The problem with ethanol is land use and soil depletion. You can't just replace all of our current petroleum use with biofuels, you must greatly reduce fuel use by making our society MUCH less dependent on fuels. This is not just going from 25 mpg to 50mpg, it's replacing personal transportation with mass transport and just-in-time outsourcing with local sourced food and products. It is greatly reducing the fuel use of our homes and businesses through downsizing and improved building methods. In other words it is a huge cultural shift for the western world and the U.S. in particular.

Brazil has had most of it's new car production on E85 for some considerable time.....If they can embrace the technology and produce the volume of fuel (from sugar cane) necessary to keep their population mobile, surely the rest of the world can catch up?

i think ford did a good thing since its been long since acknowledged that there is no one solution within our grasp in the near future. so if a small percentage of E-85 hybrids can reduce our gas consumption a few percentage points, a few NEV electrics (they are not for everyone) eliminate a few points, PLEV can do a few more, (lets face it, the sun belt and hydroelectric power is the best place for these) biodiesel can take a few. hey now we are talking maybe as much as 20% or more. now that is a great start. now ALL the above mentioned solutions are really regional if you look at them.

NEV's in cities
Plug ins also in city or suburban areas that have the power sources mentioned.

biodiesel in the country where the fuel would be. sure also a small niche for a few in towns.

so localized options are hard to equate to the public, but there are so many government fleets that should and could go to these options. one of the things that make me proud to live in Olympia or the state of WA is what they had done YEARS ago and that was to mandate that all state sponsored fleets (along with the city of Olympia a few years later) use alternative fuel vehicles when ever such a vehicle could meet the needs of the fleet.

the result is a large (shrinking rapidly because of NEV's advancements) CNG fleet. diesel-electric hybrid buses (sure they only get 1½ mpg improvement but better than nothing. after all they only start out at 9 mpg) and most notably, an overwhelming preference for the Prius.

the state fleet of Priuses in Thurston County of which Olympia is the county seat and state capital has to be several hundred if not in the 1000's.

two years ago, there was an article in the local rag about the difficulties several state agencies were having in filling their purchase quotas for new Priuses. many directors were opting to wait up to 12 months for a Prius rather than looking at alternative options because each department's fuel costs was taken out of their budget. one department head figured that he saved enough gas money on them to be able to hire two additional workers.

The working conditions at sugar cane plantations in Brazil is little better than slave labour. If the plants are grown organically, and the fuel used by machinery is bio-diesel, as well as having pipelines and biodiesel trucks to deliver the fuel, wouldn't this increase the efficiency? I think the real problem is that there isn't enough land, and the strain of growing that much food for fuel is beyond what the planet can handle. Maybe they should only sell e85 cars where the fuel is available. They should limit is to areas close to where it is produced, so it doesn't have to be shipped or piped long distances.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jhinton @ Jun 16 2007, 12:29 PM) [snapback]462979[/snapback]</div>

Hi Jhinton,

I think you are wrong on this. Yes, it takes energy to make gasoline from petroleum, which is refinery to tank, but that neglects the energy in the petroleum , ie well (or dino's) to tank which is equivalent of field (or seed corn before its planted) to tank. The resulting gasoline has much more energy than the processing and transporation losses, let alone the other petroleum products.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TomorrowMatters @ Jun 16 2007, 07:18 AM) [snapback]462936[/snapback]</div>

Nope, that's biodiesel.

Ethanol really is cleaner; however, evaporative emissions are a problem. For a vehicle with a bladder, like Prius, that isn't a big deal. But those that rely on a vacuum for containment instead, like Escape-Hybrid, it's a challenge to overcome.

Toyota was definitely planning ahead with their choice of using a bladder. The hope is to have it well accepted as a norm by the time it is needed for more than just the PZEV rating. Ethanol created from waste biomatter will make a lot of sense as the technology for it improves.

Hi Fan-atic,

One of the results of Thermo-Dynamics (and I am no expert!) is that heat engine efficiency is directly proportional to Tin / Tout, with these temperatures in absolute (Rankin or Kelvin). Which in the case of the Otto Engine is T just after combustion (Tin) to T of the exhaust (after cylinder expansion). Its further been shown that expansion ratio is the same as this temperature ratio, and I am sure there are some qualifying requirements I do not know for that.

So, a 8:1 expansion ratio car with 15 percent efficent engine, is going to be a 15 * 11/8 = 20.6 % efficient engine at 11 % expansion ratio. Which might relate to a 41 mpg car, if it prevously was 30 mpg, assuming the same fuel energy content.

Or, if the fuel energy content went down to 70 % of the 8:1 expansion ratio fuel - a 28.7 mpg car - very similar to the 8:1 expansion ratio higher fuel energy density car.

8:1 compression ratio is usually what a 87 octane engine requires. 11:1 compression ratio is typical for a 100+ octane engine.

Again, I am not thermo-dynamics expert! And those numbers and methods may be all hooey, but the jist of what it says is what has been posted on various eco-car web sites by experts.

Most engines (even diesels) have the same compression and expansion ratios. The Prius / Escape have the variable compression ratio, with a fixed 13:1 expansion ratio. Its the compression ratio that requires the specific octane, and the expansion ratio that sets the efficiency.

I think that this SUV is a great idea, with one problem - it's an SUV. Ford needs to move away from their SUV fix and return to the automobile.

They came up with an E85 hybrid, and that's a start. I really hope that they move to put this hybrid drivetrain into a car or two, like, say, the new Taurus, the Fusion, or the Focus - especially the Focus.

At least they're going the right direction.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(donee @ Jun 16 2007, 12:57 PM) [snapback]463054[/snapback]</div>

Hi Donee,
Thank you! It's been a while since thermo class for me. Does this mean that a turbo-charged engine is also more efficient? One of the rumors I've read say that the next Prius will be turbo-charged.

Hi Fan-atic

A Turbo Charged engine can be tuned for power or efficiency. If there is too much drag on the exhaust, to generate a maximum of boost, to get maximum power, then I imagine the efficiency might be the same or less.

But, if a little turbo is used, then the energy that is recovered from the exhaust is less than the extra energy recovered from the improved cycle effiency, and the engine is more efficient.

The Turbo recovers waste exhaust energy, for the purpose of overcoming pumping losses. The problem in their design is the very narrow bandwidth of the aerodynamics of turbines and compressors. The HSD eCVT transmission can overcome this narrow-banded-ness to some extent.

There are two E85 sedans that sit every night at the Trenton Post Office. I have no idea where in NJ they can find E85.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jhinton @ Jun 16 2007, 11:29 AM) [snapback]462979[/snapback]</div>

I believe that first statement is not right in terms of magnitude. The fuel used to create the gasoline amounts to about 20% of the energy content of the gasoline, on average, for the US. At least that's what I recall reading in various well-to-tank studies. So 1000 calories of gasoline, in the tank, requires using an additional 200 calories of energy (fossil fuel) to produce that gasoline. For US corn-based ethanol, by contrast, it's in the neighborhood of 1-to-1: for every 1000 calories of ethanol in the tank, it took more or less 1000 calories of energy inputs to produce that. Whether its more or less depends on who is counting, and whether that's fossil fuel (US) or largely biomass (Brazil) depends on how the ethanol plants are run. And I think Tripp posted earlier about some ethanol plants that appear to be (or are expected to be) substantially more efficient. But right now in the US I think ethanol is in the neighborhood of 1:1 in terms of energy output per energy input, whereas gasoline is more like 5-to-1.

My opinion is that corn-based ethanol is not a winning strategy unless viewed as a bridge to something better. If they get to cost-effective cellulosic ethanol, that'd be a different story, or better, butanol, per some earlier threads on this board.

On the issue of soil, I could not agree more. Here in Virgnina, where the land has been farmed for a couple of centuries, wherever you see an old family graveyard on a farm, surrounded by a fence, the level of the ground inside the fence is always a foot or two higher then the surrounding terrain. No way I know of to grow more topsoil except to wait a long long time - when it's gone it's gone.