My understanding is that ethanol-added gas reduces emissions and also power. And since corn is cheaper than oil, that 10% ethanol gas is also cheaper. So a few questions
Does ethanol gas reduce emissions significantly?
Does ethanol gas reduce power significantly?
Are there any other benefits to ethanol-free gas like less carbon deposits, easier on valves, easier cold starts etc.?
Aside from price, are there any other disadvantages of ethanol-free gas?
It produces different emissions. Whether they’re better or not is highly debatable.
No, it improves it in some cases, if an engine can use the octane right.
Cheaper. The US Midwest is a corn producing wonderland, churns out a lot and makes it potentially more renewable.
Not easier on the engine, but it’s bad for an unmodified engine. They’ll tolerate a small amount, this is quite common. But E85 or higher will wreck traditional parts over time.
An engine such as the one in the Challenger SRT Demon 170, that delivers over 1,000hp but only with E85 (170 proof) fuel.
According to the marina where I keep our pontoon, the ethanol free gasoline they sell is worth the extra price ($1.70 a gallon)because ethanol is bad for marine motors, specifically.
Ethanol has a very high octane number, even higher in gasoline blends than neat. So, ethanol is a very good octane booster, surpassing even tetraethyl lead or MTBE (which both have significant health concerns).
In admixes below 20% EtOH, ethanol has a lot of positive effects and only two negative effects: a somewhat reduced mileage and lack of warranty from the car manufacturers. The former is minor, the latter may be very significant for the consumer.
Not sure if E85 has that much of a price advantage. With less energy per gallon (25-30% I believe) wouldn’t you need to see the that much difference in price to make it break-even?
Prices near me show Regular at $3.09/gallon and E85 for $2.94/gallon. That’s only about a 5% price savings with E85, but I’ll need to buy 25% more fuel for the same distance. So E85 costs about $3.68 to get the same amount of energy as in a gallon of gasoline.
Note marine gas is a specific thing in many cases - it’s taxed differently than car gas, and doesn’t reflect the consumer car price necessarily. It is accordingly dyed (red in the US) to prevent people from exploiting the tax savings.
Some car gas stations also sell ethanol-free gas alongside the regular pump for a premium. And sometimes high octane (I’ve seen 100 RM/2).
Cost per octane-equivalent it’s cheaper.
Ethanol as a fuel only makes any sense now because it’s heavily subsidized. But it generally takes more fossil fuels to produce it than it replaces.
Does ethanol gas reduce emissions significantly ?
No. It is primarily an octane booster.
Does ethanol gas reduce power significantly ?
Depends on what you mean by significantly, but generally, yes. Ethanol has about 88,000 BTU per gallon. Gasoline has about 115,000 BTU per gallon. So yes, there is significantly less energy per gallon in ethanol. The more ethanol is in your mix, the worse your performance.
Are there any other benefits to ethanol-free gas like less carbon deposits, easier on valves, easier cold starts etc.?
Not that I am aware of.
Some people consider using ethanol-free gas to be a good way to say “fuck you” to Big Corn, but that’s more of a political thing and has nothing to do with any technical reasons like carbon deposits, etc.
If you are comparing it to ethanol fuels, high ethanol concentrations can also damage the fuel systems of older vehicles, though generally speaking even older vehicles can usually use up to 10% ethanol without damage. Once you get up around 20% though, all bets are off.
Aside from price, are there any other disadvantages of ethanol-free gas?
That depends on what they are using instead of ethanol to boost the octane rating. I don’t know if they still use tetraethyl lead but it’s some pretty nasty stuff. MTBE isn’t much better.
You have to be very careful with E85. It will of course be significantly less expensive than E15 and lower fuels, but quite often the gas stations will be taking advantage of the fact that most Americans can’t do basic math and can’t figure out that their cost per mile is actually worse with E85 and are only looking at the fact that E85 is so much less expensive. Another trick they will do is advertise the cost of E85 per liter instead of per gallon, making it that much more difficult for folks to figure out how much it is really costing them.
I could only find the price of one E85 station around here. It was advertised in gallons and not liters, so no deception there, but the cost difference of E85 was nowhere near enough to make up for the reduction in mileage and energy content, The cost per mile would actually be significantly higher using E85 vs the E10 from the same gas station. (York, PA, for what it’s worth)
I’ve been using ethanol free in my craftsman lawn mower with hope of not screwing up my carburetor! Hopefully I’m correct?
In South Carolina it is 4.09 a 1.09 more than regular 87 oct.
My Craftsman lawn mower, with Briggs & Stratton engine, is where I go to burn gas that is well past it’s prime. Like the gas you smell and know it shouldn’t go in something worth more than $300. Yeah, it smokes a bit more at startup, but that sucker runs with it. This is a 23 year old mower and still going strong’ish.
With that said, I do drain the tank and run it till the carb is fuel free before storing over winter, like all my other small and moto engines. Editing to add: I do have fuel injection in one of five motos. Still run it dry like the carb’d versions.
I do buy ethanol free gas for all my small engines and motorcycles. But that Briggs & Stratton will run on nearly anything you can light on fire from what I’ve found.
My small Briggs rotary burns the stuff I drained from the tank of my toy car (1990 TVR with a Ford 2.9 V6), when it wouldn’t start after standing for five years. And starts first pull!
Depending on how the ethanol stock is grown, the process as a whole may use more fossil fuel than just putting it in the car. – as @Chronos said.
Some old vehicles, including some old tractors, won’t run well on it. While not many cars that old are still in use, quite a lot of those old tractors are.
Depends on the model.
The NY Times recently did a feature on the man who invented both tetraethyl lead and freon-12. Both inventions solved big problems, but both wrought havoc on the planet’s environment. The hazard of Freon-12 were not known for many years, but the hazards of tetraethyl lead were obvious right away. The alternative to Freon-12 took a long time to find, but the safer alternative to Ethyl (the trademarked name) gasoline was already known before the world started using Ethyl.
The safer way to prevent engine knock (pre-ignition) was ethanol. The reason they went ahead with Ethyl gasoline was that they couldn’t patent ethanol. The Ethyl patent was a big money-maker.
Not just the tractors-- It takes energy to distill the alcohol, too.
I meant the energy use as a separate issue from the old-engines issue; they’re both drawbacks, but of different types. The overall energy use problem is a larger one, of course.
So far as I know the only gasoline that still has tetraethyl lead is aviation gasoline which is also ethanol-free.
Ethanol will damage rubber components in older small engines. A lot of carburetors use a rubber diaphragm to pump the gas. I’ve seen a lot of ruined fuel lines. It’s dangerous because the line can break unexpectedly and cause a fire hazard.
We have a few places here that sell ethanol free. I only buy it for my mower and chainsaw.
Bolding mine.
A very good alternative to Freon (R-12) was available, even before R-12 was invented, specifically, propane. It’s performance as a refrigerant is nearly the same as R-12 for the pressures and temperatures involved. Like tetraethyl lead, however, you couldn’t patent propane, so the fears of using a flammable gas as a refrigerant were overstated and laws were passed forbidding its use [as a refrigerant] in motor vehicles.
Interestingly, it is perfectly legal to use propane as a fuel in motor vehicles, which poses a more significant danger than using it as a refrigerant simply due to the amount carried. Frankly, gasoline is much more dangerous than propane.