I have a 99 ford ranger ext 3.0 v6. It has that flex fuel badge thingy on the back, that means I can use e85? Are there any advantages powerwise or economy wise? Let me know, because my dad is a huge proponent of e85 in his yukon XL, so I'd like to take after my dad, but only if I know it if beneficial

I'm sure this is a:repost: but I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for in the search, thanks:lol:

From what I understand, and I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but the E85 is cheaper at the pump. Im not sure how much cheaper but I assume it is worthwhile.

On the other hand, E85 does not store as much energy as gasoline, so it will take a little more E85 to run. You will get less mpg, but the cheaper cost of the fuel should offset that. I am not sure, but I think that you will lose just a slight amount of power, but not enough to notice.

If I were you I would fill up and see what you think about it for yourself. Even if the money savings is just a little bit, you are still burning a much cleaner fuel, and that is good for all of us.

Joey

This is a pretty good read about it.

http://www.ethanol.org/index.php?id=50&parentid=8

If you have a FFV then you'll still lose mpg but you will gain power, roughly 5% I believe. As far as low cost making the decreased mpg worthwhile it depends and currently is rarely the case. A quick way way to determine if it would be worth it is to divide the price of gasoline (pure gas not e-10) by 1.35 and if the price of E-85 is lower then that then its worth it money wise. If not then all your gaining is some power and a better running engine.

Yes, you gain horse power and torque with E85. 9HP and 12 Torque

HP: 143 on gas and 152 on E85

Torque: 180 on gas and 192 on E85

Assuming everything is stock.

Also CUTiger, how did you find that equation?

Here in WA state there are municipalities and companies with their own E85 filling stations, and of course the dealers are selling the flex fuel vehicles here, but . . . as of the last time I checked, there is only 3 gas stations in the entire state open to the public that sell E85. Prices at all are at $2.99/gallon compared to $3.75 for regular gas. So, if you have a flex fuel vehicle, and live next to the Idaho or Oregon border you can use it but according to the formula by CUTiger you will be spending about $4-5 a tank more to contribute to the current worldwide food shortage.

2.99 a gallon?!?! I'd kill for that! It's 3.19 around here, and regular is 3.49. I'm definitely losing money running the corn fuel, but the smell is awesome. Much better than how my car smells on gasoline.

I'm curious to know where I'd see this "extra" power from e85. My car doesn't have any extra get-up-and-go with it. However, I'm about to have the car tuned to take much better advantage of the higher octane fuel. :)

Currently here E85 is $2.89 and gas is $3.64. But according to CUTiger's equation, Im still losing money, so I dont know.

85% less pollutants into the atmosphere by using E85 compared to regular gas.

Also CUTiger, how did you find that equation?

By taking the heating value (btu/lb), converting it to (btu/gal), then found a break even volume.

So For every 1 gallon of gasoline you'd need ~1.35 gallons of E-85 to achieve the same amount of work, if you divide the cost of gasoline by 1.35 then it'll give you an instant break even cost. Also if you go to a station that sells E-10 divide the cost by 1.03, E-10 should be ~$.08 cheaper. Granted 10% ethanol is a good substitute for having tetra ethyl lead in the fuels(and actually was presented as an option when they were deciding on what to add to fuels [lead or ethanol] well tetra ethyl lead was cheaper so guess what won), so it would be worth paying a little more for, just have to be aware that your not going to see the same mpg with it.

1) Ethanol emits much fewer emissions. NOx are close to gasoline, but the other pollutants are almost eliminated while the CO2 is mostly carbon neutral. Carcinogenic compounds and aromatic hydrocarbons are negligible with ethanol. There is some of these in E85, but far fewer than gas alone.

2) Ethanol is an oxygenate, which is why it replaced MTBE in gasoline and has the added benefit of not contaminating water resources like MTBE.

3) Ethanol has a higher latent heat than gasoline. While the energy density is lower than gasoline, you can run more agressive compression, ignition timing, and valve timing to compensate for the power and MPG loss; and ultimately make more power! Indy cars have been running alcohols for a long time due to their benefits over gas (even race gas). Don't get stuck on octane and energy density, they aren't the only players here. There are ways around density...

4) E85 burns MUCH cleaner than gas, and it keeps your engine clean. Your engine and fuel system doesn't gum up with mostly ethanol blends due to ethanol's solvent properties constantly cleansing the system. You don't get as much soot in your intake and exhaust tracts or in your engine oil... i.e. - you can run slightly longer oil change intervals when burning nothing but E85 (same goes for bio-fueled diesels). Soot and ash from petroleum products wear out your engine oil faster, and you avoid this accelerated oil degradation by using biofuels. The particulate matter emissions from bio-fueled engines is pretty much nil.

5) BUYING BIOFUELS IS INVESTING IN YOUR FUTURE!!! Making ethanol from cellulose materials and landfill waste is becoming a reality and a viable way to make ethanol. Advances in enzyme technology and processes like Syngas are making this cheap and possible. You may also want to check into the Thermal Depolymerization process, which can make a crude oil-like substitute from about any organic waste material.

6) Buying biofuels contributes to your local economy, not the deep pockets of Big Oil. The advantage to biofuels is they can be made in most locations across the US, not just a handful of refineries in sparse locations and pumping it through pipelines. The money mostly stays local, going to the farmers, refiners, and shippers. 2,000 ethanol operations spread across the entire country is much more economically and environmentally beneficial than just 30 petroleum refineries in a few areas and shipping/pumping the finished products to the points of sale.

(side tract)
Don't mention the financial advantages of petroleum over biofuels either... a true life-cycle cost of it must account for those very expensive rigs, pumps, pipelines, ships, refineries, etc to extract, refine, and handle petroleum products. There have been TRILLIONS of dollars invested in today's petroleum infrastructure over the last century. Biofuels have gotten maybe 0.00001% of this amount so far. It is VERY expensive to look for oil alone: http://industry.bnet.com/energy/2008/05/08/cost-of-offshore-drilling-rising-as-fast-as-oil-prices/ then after reading that, imagine what it costs to extract, refine, and take the finished products to market. It's much more expensive than people naively believe. methinks biofuels will have a very competitive advantage in production costs when they become larger, taking advantage of economies of scale (using a non-finite resource at that, which stabilizes prices).

Here's some more brain food on oil: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/1/6/231010/1735

7) If you build an engine specifically for E85 or E100, you will get better mileage and more power across the entire rpm range as compared to a similar gas engine. While 9:1 compression, lazy 15-20* of ignition timing, and slow valve events work fine for 87 octane gas alone, it is nowhere NEAR optimal for alcohols. If I were rebuilding a high-mile 3.0 or 4.0 from a Ranger or B-series, I would build it with 12-13:1 compression, do a mild bowl clean-up on the heads, get a slightly more aggressive cam (~5-10% larger on all measurements), have the timing tuned as far as it will allow, and only pump E85 in the tank (there are six E85-equipped stations within 20 miles of my house, two of which are within three miles). I can promise you there is more power and mpg waiting for you after these mods. The higher compression compensates for lower energy density by increasing thermal efficiency (meaning you extract more output power out of a given input energy). It also compensates for the slightly larger cam (higher compression tames more aggressive camshafts). The engine makes more power while running cooler (remember the latent heat of ethanol is almost three times higher than gas alone, and this contributes to more power also).

It was either Saab or Volvo that was developing a VCR, or Variable Compression Ratio engine to help efficiency with different fuels. It got shelved a few year ago though, but I see it coming back soon. It was a neat technology, do some searching for it.

Corn (grain) ethanol is not the greatest thing as far as efficiency [time, money, materials, water], which is why the government capped the production to 15 million gallons a year from this source (the maximum amount that keeps our food sources "safe"; you realize we planted more than 50 MILLION acres of corn alone in 2000, and today our grain exports account for 60% of the total world grain exports... yep we're feeding everyone else!). Any ethanol made after the 15 million gallon mark must come from cellulose materials or other organic waste. All you need is to obtain fermentable carbohydrates (sugars) to make ethanol. The challenge with cellulose materials is to break down the cellulose and hemi-cellulose materials in to sugars. There are a couple of technologies that is making this happen right now, they are just working on how to scale it up to true commercial scale. Canada, Japan, and the US are operating cellulose ethanol plants right now and are ramping up to millions of gallons of ethanol per year without using corn grains (or other food sources).

And the greatest things are: most cellulose materials like switchgrass and some other prairie grasses take very little water and fertilizer to make, they ARE NOT grown on lands suitable for food crops, they can be harvested multiple times a year, they are great soil erosion protection/ soil remediation measures, they require no tilling between harvests (saves fuel and soil erosion), they can be easily harvested RIGHT NOW using existing cutting and bailing equipment, they can produce ~3-4 times a much ethanol per acre per year as corn grains (~1,100 gal/ac/yr versus ~360 gal/ac/yr for corn grains), they are carbon neutral, good for the economy... I mean how can you argue with that? Here is some more good reading http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/switgrs.html

I hope someone appreciates this...

12 or 13:1 id nothing for E85, you can add 15lbs of boost on to that....