Moreover, Likis, points to the many benefits of using ethanol such as its high octane rating, ability to decrease deposits on intake valves and combustion chambers, alleviate starting or driving problems in hot or cold weather and the capability to withstand water contamination to a greater degree than gasoline. In terms of its octane rating, ethanol has a rating of Fuels with a higher octane rating reduce engine knocking and perform better than ones with lower ratings.
Since most the gasoline blendstock used has an octane rating of 85, ethanol is used to boost it to As such, the higher the ethanol content, the higher the octane.
For example, the octane rating for E15 and E85 is 88 and respectively. After staying in one place, ethanol starts doing its damage. Ethanol can damage anything that runs on gas—generators, lawn mowers, cars, etc. But there are ways to counteract these harmful effects.
If you know that gas-powered equipment will sit dormant for a while, you can use an aftermarket fuel stabilizer to mitigate the effects of ethanol-blend gas in your fuel system. Make sure that you drive your car frequently and if you plan on it sitting for a long time, treat it beforehand. Getting to know the science behind how engines convert fuel into energy is incredible.
For program disclosure information, please go to www. With few exceptions, ethanol is not an acceptable fuel on its own merits. To some extent, however, ethanol does succeed at diluting our petroleum-based gasoline to help stretch our supply. When the United States first embarked on this strategy, only a small percentage of ethanol was added to the mix -- generally, most engines didn't even notice and kept running as usual.
But now, gasoline is most commonly produced with 10 or 15 percent ethanol known as E10 and E15, respectively and some politicians want to push that to as high as 20 percent. We should also note that there's an ethanol-gas blend known as E85 -- which contains 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline -- but that's only acceptable for use in specially engineered vehicles marketed with a "Flex Fuel" designation. How much of a difference can there be between E10 fuel, which is in widespread use although not warmly embraced and E15 fuel?
How much damage can be caused by that extra 5 percent? The evidence is compelling enough that in , several automakers said that owners of older cars running E15 were in danger of voiding their warranties.
Although it must be said that most cars older than the Environmental Protection Agency's model year cutoff were unlikely to still have valid, unexpired warranties, anyway [source: Evarts ]. So what's the big deal? We're used to E10, after all -- and presumably, our cars are, too. But when the EPA designates a fuel blend as "legal," they're really enabling themselves to saturate the market with this diluted gasoline, since the agency can ultimately control what's available to consumers.
If E15 is cheaper to supply than E10, drivers will gradually be forced to buy it. It's that, or don't fill up at all. Mike Allen of Popular Mechanics says that under ideal conditions, a gasoline-ethanol blend is perfectly acceptable. But consumers cannot control those conditions, and they have no way of knowing if the fuel they're buying has been contaminated. All gasoline is susceptible to changes due to weather and moisture content, but ethanol exacerbates this problem.
A higher concentration of alcohol in a gas tank any gas tank -- at the production facilities, the tankers traveling on the highway, the storage tanks at a gas station, your car's reservoir and even the red plastic can sitting on the floor in your garage means that the alcohol can grab and hold more water than straight gasoline.
If the water concentration gets high enough, the alcohol and water will drop out of suspension, turning the fuel into a globby mess that your car's engine can't use.
And it can happen at any stage of the transport, storage and usage process -- even getting worse as it goes along. In short, ethanol increases the chances that your car will be damaged trying to process and burn contaminated gasoline. Let's assume that most of the time the fuel's environmental conditions aren't seriously compromised, its ethanol stays in suspension, and the gasoline is properly reaching its destination.
The ethanol in the fuel is still doing damage. Many older fuel system components weren't designed to resist alcohol's corrosive properties, and as ethanol travels through the system it can cause considerable damage.
Gasoline companies sometimes even market specific blends as having "engine cleaning" properties, but if the alcohol in the fuel cleans old deposits from engine components, those deposits won't simply dissolve -- they'll probably just get carried along until they're stuck elsewhere.
A study by Auto Alliance showed that some cars model years to showed internal engine damage as the result of using an ethanol fuel blend.
0コメント