Enviromentally Friendly JK?
12-09-2007, 03:48 AM
#11
JK Junkie
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Correct me if I'm wrong but I could have swore my wroangler had a E85 sticker on it when I bought it. It said something like, " this vehicle excepts E85 '" bu the gas mileage was quite a bit lower...
12-09-2007, 08:32 AM
#12
JK Enthusiast
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12-09-2007, 11:26 AM
#13
JK Enthusiast
E85 is a con pure and simple. If every inch of the US was growing corn for E85 we would be able to produce enough eneryg to meet (less than 20%) of our demand. Oh, and then we would need to import food. Look at the principal shareholders in E85 production, they are all connected to well known politicians who support the scheme.
Lean burn technology is definatly better - coming from the UK its very common to see cars doing 40-50 to the gallon and tanking along at the unofficial 90mph speed limit
In the end i'd guess hydrogen will become the fuel of choice, either in fuel cells or as a direct fuel itself (some slight saftey issues to resolve there)
Lean burn technology is definatly better - coming from the UK its very common to see cars doing 40-50 to the gallon and tanking along at the unofficial 90mph speed limit
In the end i'd guess hydrogen will become the fuel of choice, either in fuel cells or as a direct fuel itself (some slight saftey issues to resolve there)
12-10-2007, 09:00 AM
#14
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Yea i agree that E85 is a con....I mean the concept could work but the choice of crop is horrible. Just because we make alot of corn in this country thats why we're pushing this type of fuel. But if you look in brazil they used this same concept successfully but the difference was that they used sugar cane instead and the principle fuel source for making ethanol is glucose. Sugar canes have alot more glucose than corn and is much more efficient to turn into E85. Plus you have to take into consideration the extra energy needed to ship the corn and the byproducts and even processing it, which is pretty much negate any gains in Co2 reduction. The future I think is gonna be a combination of several different types of fuel be it hydrogen, lithium, smaller more efficient gas engines and even compressed air power.
12-10-2007, 01:03 PM
#15
JK Junkie
Just give me a biodiesel and I will be happy. When you are using any type of bio fuel you need to replace all of the fuel components as ethanol and bio diesel are much more corrosive than normal gasoline, and will ruin your vehicle rather quicky. I know that there is a lot of technology into exploring other forms of bio fuels and one of the more promising ones at the moment is using woody bio mass (wood chips etc...) as at the moment we are putting over 2 billion tons of this into the landfills every year at the moment. They are also looking at using the stalks of the corn and this also may help as it would help to produce more ethanol per acre. At the moment though it is a fad, and is not economically viable as an alternative fuel because without the government subsidies we would be paying like $6.00 per gallon. If it is going to stick around someone needs to find a way to make is more economical. Also if every single corn crop was used in the United States it is estimated it would not be able to replace more than 10% of the current oil consumption.
12-12-2007, 12:32 PM
#16
Not a big fan of E85.....with the power loss, MPG lose in vehicles. But I hate the fact of the loss of corn production that feeds livestock has actually increased the price most feed.... therefore increasing the cost for meats & bakery goods!
Just wait a few more years and Alberta, Canada with the Tar sand will be the next Saudi Arabia and maybe help influence the Oil prices in the Middle East.
Just wait a few more years and Alberta, Canada with the Tar sand will be the next Saudi Arabia and maybe help influence the Oil prices in the Middle East.
12-21-2007, 02:34 AM
#17
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Just keep in mind that extracting the oil from the tar sand is only economically viable because of the higher price of crude, though I don't ever see it falling back much anyways.
12-21-2007, 05:36 AM
#18
yep
Don't forget that gasoline can be extracted from coal also.. And the US sits on a freakin TON of coal.. Also, Shell Oil is working on a way to extract oil from shale.. And the US has the largest shale deposit in the world.. There is more oil locked up in the US shale reserves then all of Saudi Arabia's oil fields.. And technological processes is making the extracting of the oil cheaper then before and with out having to do open pit mining..
E85 is still a crock, it will put corn at a higher price to feed cattle, feed me, feed the starving mexicans, and etc.
Volvo has a new one to rival the chevy Volt, that gets 80 miles before its gas engine kicks in! now thats cool!
http://www.chevrolet.com/electriccar/
Finally an electric car that looks COOL, and not like a prius!
I would sport the prius, but for the love of god, its just so damn fugly!!
12-21-2007, 12:21 PM
#19
It's is economically viable when the price of oil is at $65/US barrel. This figure came from my brother who works for Suncor and is one of the economic analyst for them. The cost to seperate the oil could be getting cheaper with the technology gains and more refineries to seperate the oil gets on line.
Last edited by RevyJKU08; 12-21-2007 at 12:24 PM.
12-21-2007, 01:17 PM
#20
Don't forget that most oil used is "Light Sweet" for making gasoline. If refineries were built to refine the more plentiful "Heavy Sour", you'd have a much higher yield of Diesel fuel. And since the sulfer reducers are now required by law, the old argument about the sulfer content is moot.
You take a cheap diesel source (lower grades of oil are FAR cheaper than the 'preferred' and more plentiful) create a diesel hybrid similar to the way a diesel locomotive is operated with all drive being electric and the power plant being diesel and then running that diesel power plant at some optimum efficiency (easy to do as it won't have to throttle up and down like a normal engine does) and you could easily have mid size cars getting 60mpg with the same peppy performance that you have today. Better in fact since electric motors have tons of torque off the line.
You take a cheap diesel source (lower grades of oil are FAR cheaper than the 'preferred' and more plentiful) create a diesel hybrid similar to the way a diesel locomotive is operated with all drive being electric and the power plant being diesel and then running that diesel power plant at some optimum efficiency (easy to do as it won't have to throttle up and down like a normal engine does) and you could easily have mid size cars getting 60mpg with the same peppy performance that you have today. Better in fact since electric motors have tons of torque off the line.