I want to know, if the market for ethanol expend, do all the vehicles that are on the roads now will have to be modified to be fueled by ethanol...
Do we have to change car if we switch from gas to ethanol?
There are conversion kits but only one of them is EPA approved due to the lengthy approval process however all of them have been proven over decades in Brazil.
The conversion kit works by multiplying the output signal of the fuel injection computer by a factor of 3 allowing fuel blends up to 99% ethanol for most cars. This works because the computer works by feedback from sensors and most cars have fuel injectors capable of the high flow rates. For those cars that do not have fuel injectors capable of the flow rates needed, you would have to replace the fuel injectors with after market injectors. This does mean that the granularity of adjustments made by the computer is much larger hence it's likely to oscillate around the ideal flow rate rather than be the ideal flow rate but that shouldn't be noticeable. Of course, you could replace the fuel injection computer with one from a Flex Fuel version of your car but that would violate it's EPA certification. As it is, using the conversion kit is a grey area with regards to the EPA regulations.
All cars since the 80's are required to tolerate up to 15% ethanol content and are often designed for up to 33% ethanol content so modern cars no longer have natural rubber in the fuel path for the ethanol to dissolve. Purpose built Flex Fuel cars do have heavier duty fuel lines, have nickle plated fittings and a larger fuel filter but the mild steel fittings and regular fuel lines should suffice, the fuel filter should be changed more frequently if you convert.
Currently, there's currently no economic advantage to filling your car with E85, it'll cost you more per mile even with the subsidy. This isn't Brazil where sometimes it's less expensive to use ethanol and sometimes less expensive to use gasoline. Ethanol simply isn't a good idea for us.
Do we have to change car if we switch from gas to ethanol?
Yes, a regular car that is not suited for ethanol will have to either be converted or scrapped. That is why more and more cars are becoming flex fuel cars that can run on either. But Dont go expecting gas to fall behind ethanol anytime soon
yes as the engine will be different
They need an E85 ethanol conversion kit.
It's available for only about 350 $...
Ethanol is very corrosive to normal fuel line components so %26quot;flex fuel%26quot; vehicles are built to handle it (they can also use reg gas with no harm either).
Now the important part. Unless you have extra money to burn (pun intended), you should NOT use ethanol.
1) In a world that has people starving, how do you justify burning a food in your car ??? (it's made from corn in the US).
2) Ethanol is 20% less efficient (power wise) than gas. So if you use 10 gal of gas - you need 12 gal of ethanol. That means that if gas is $2.50/gal, then ethanol better be less than $2/gal to be cheaper -- It is rarely cheaper than gas and therefore you are spending more money per mile - hope you have the extra $$.
3) They didn't tell us the whole story when they sold us on the ethanol plan here in the US (Brazil is different because they use sugar cane). It costs quite a bit of fuel to produce the ethanol so you may think YOU didn't burn any fossil fuel - but it was used to produce the ethanol - so don't strain yourself patting yourself on the back.
Hope this got you thinking.
Ethanol is stupid, it takes more energy to make than it is worth. The farmland should be used to grow the food for eating. Sugar cane is the only plant with enough energy to make it worthwhile but the good old USA wants to subsidize its corn farmers while billions of people on this planet starve. If we save the rainforest's from being cut down the trees will filter the air and do 10 times as much good for the environment as running ethanol or bio diesel. If we are to make the switch to cleaner energy then it should be done intelligently, solar/wind/geothermal/hydrogen fuel cells the technology is here people educate yourselves
