In very round numbers, gasoline has about 20,000 BTU per pound, ethanol 12,000, methanol 10,000.
Doug Woodard St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada On Fri, 9 Sep 2005, Zeke Yewdall wrote: > My understanding is that ethanol will run fine in existing gasoline > engines. The difference is in compatibility with seals, and ability > to vaporize at lower temperatures. It's got a bit higher vapor > pressure, so in northern US, it can create hard starting in the > wintertime. > > It does have a bit lower energy content per gallon, and higher oxygen > content, which could confuse the electronic controls systems that most > cars have now. They measure input airflow, and oxygen content in the > exhaust, and decide how much fuel can be put in and still assure > complete combustion. I don't know if ethanol might mess this up. > Older cabureated cars you'd probably just have to reset the jets. > > The lower energy content per gallon also means that the mpg is a bit > less. Somewhere around 10% I think??? If you designed the car to run > only on ethanol, then you can typically use a much higher compression > ratio (12:1 or so instead of 9:1 or less). This gives you back alot > of the performance and mpg losses from using the lower energy content > fuel. [snip] _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
