when is there going to be an ethanol fill up station. I am tired of paying $3.50 a gallon for gas!
2006-07-21 08:16:24 · 4 answers · asked by Young Glory 2 in Cars & Transportation ➔ Commuting
Many gas stations put a small amount of ethanol in their gasoline (typically around 10%), as they sometimes do other additives. Certain cars can burn mixtures of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, and a few such E-85 stations have popped up in the Midwest corn-growing regions.
Its principal advantage is it pollutes less than gasoline. Also, most U.S. ethanol is made from American corn, so less money goes to buy foreign oil. (The Brazilians make it from sugar cane.)
Its disadvantages are you will get fewer miles per gallon burning ethanol than gasoline. It is costly to ship, since it is easily contaminated in pipelines, and must be transported in a tanker truck. And it takes almost as much energy to distill corn into ethanol as there is in the ethanol itself, so you're saving a little energy, but not much.
Turning every corn plant in America into ethanol would barely put a dent (less than 10%) in our gasoline usage, so ethanol is a supplement but not a replacement to gasoline.
2006-07-21 10:00:31 · answer #1 · answered by Rochester 4 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Guys like you crack me up. If you did any research at all, you would know how inefficient ethanol is as a motor fuel. You would also know that unless we grow corn on every square mile of the United States and process it all into ethanol, maybe we would have enough to run the nation's fleet of gasoline-powered vehicles for about a week. You would also know that ethanol takes a tremendous amount of energy to produce, energy that comes from petroleum and other non-renewable sources. You would also know that in order to burn ethanol at anything other than a ten percent ethanol to gasoline ratio, your vehicle must be heavily modified or purchased ethanol-capable to start with. If you didn't know all that when you started reading, you know it now.
2006-07-21 17:04:01 · answer #2 · answered by Me again 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Your car has to be able to burn Ethanol, just running E85 in a car not set up for it will damage the fuel system seals and rubber components. E85 isn't cheaper, just not dependent on OPEC for all of it's contents.
2006-07-21 08:22:45 · answer #3 · answered by wrenchman1995 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It doens't work that well. And you need a diesel engine anyways.
2006-07-21 08:19:23 · answer #4 · answered by Lupin IV 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋