Ethanol Z

[Guest Z2nr]

I am thinking about building a 3.1 stroker for my z, and was thinking about running ethanol in my car.

 

I have done a couple lab experiments with it, as well as going to a couple sites on the net:

 

http://www.drivingethanol.org/default.aspx

http://running_on_alcohol.tripod.com/index.html

 

I am kinda doing it for a project for my chem class to see if a high performance car can be run on e85.

 

I have been doing a lot of research on ethanol and alcohol as far as emissions, and they seem to be much cleaner than gasoline.

 

I am a chemical engineering student as UCSD and from a chemical stand point ethanol makes more sense. It will reduce mpg a little because it contain less btu, but tue to the higher octane and slower burn, it makes a good performance fuel.

 

There are even people using biodiesel, Josh Tickell the guru of the stuff has a 240z with a diesel engines that he runs on biodiesel, which is like ethanol but a diesel version.

 

http://www.joshtickell.com/

 

I want to build an eco friendly performance car for my project in chemistry, and I think it would be really run, to have a higher performance car that's different.

 

Has anyone ever done this. I know that ethanol can be corrosive to certain plastics and rubbers, I am going to do some chem tests and find out, and will in the future possibly post a conversion for anyone who want more performance, and want to help with air pollution.

 

Does anyone have positive suggestions.

[myplasticegg]

Chryco had some 4cyl cars that were flex fuel... pretymuch run whatever you can find. Maybe you can turn to that for ideas?

 

sorry, i just checked it and it is methonal

http://www.thedodgegarage.com/na_efi_ffv.html

[Guest Phil1934]

There's a topic on http://www.realoldspower.com in the hardcore section.

[Yokohama]

As you know, anything above E14 will require that fuel system mods be made. You would need to have things like nickel plated fuel lines, specal injectors, hose, etc., to resist the corrosice properties of ethanol, espealy at E85. Look at places like Brazil that use ethanol.

 

 

Of course, E100 has something like 113 octane, so E85 will be very high as well.

[Tony D]

methanol needs precautions like SS injectors. Ethanol is not nearly as corrosive.

I ran a VW bus for a project for almost a year back in 1979. Distilled my own from Sugar Beets.

Fuel mileage being "little" worse is an understatement. More like 1/2! I got about 5 to 8mpg as opposed to 12 to 19 with gasoline.

The only real difference between the two engines was the flycut on the heads for the compression increase. Same dizzy Bosch 009, just twisted a bit further for running on Ethanol.

 

Methanol (M85) is the stuff that's nasty. Ethanol (E85) isn't that bad, nor is it really requiring of anything special in line of fuel system components.

[teamz]

As you know' date=' anything above E14 will require that fuel system mods be made. You would need to have things like nickel plated fuel lines, specal injectors, hose, etc., to resist the corrosice properties of ethanol, espealy at E85. Look at places like Brazil that use ethanol.

 

 

Of course, E100 has something like 113 octane, so E85 will be very high as well.[/quote']

 

This is correct from my research. I checked with engine builders and carb people and E85 will require the same fuel system components as any other alcohol. We have an ethenol plant here and they verified the corrosive nature of the fuel.

 

E85 is 104 octane. and fuel mileaage will be about half. Get a bigger fuel tank.

[Guest Z2nr]

I think that possibly on old cars maybe the difference was much more. Like on a 240z the engine will probably be affected by it a lot, but in a modern FI engine, the ecu can be programmed to take advantage of the longer fuel burn to make up for it having less btu's.

 

If you are getting 1/2 fuel effiency from ethanol, you are not tuning it right, ethanol has 76,000 btu/gal and gasoline has 114,000 btu/gal, that would equal about 1.5 gal ethanol would be equal to 1 gal of gasoline.

 

What you need to increase the effiency of ethanol is much higher compression than a gasoline.

 

I honestly believe if one wants to extract the maximum performance and mpg out of ethanol, there has to be better designs to take advantage of the differences of the fuel. I am a student at ucsd and I saw personally the silverado build by uc davis, and it was impressive. The UC Davis Future Truck 2002 team built a truck getting 30 miles per gallon or better on ethanol, reducing emmissions by 67%, and able to accelerate from 0-60 mpg in only 7 seconds.

 

I agree that if one wants to get the most for their dollar with ethanol, there needs to be more comprehensive conversions availible to convert their gasoline cars, and more testing needs to be done, but so far it's promising.

 

Back in the day there was not that much research done on correctly converting a street car to run on ethanol, but now as you can see students are now understanding that you can make up for the btu difference with the higher octane level, in the future cars will be able to get more mpg and more performance as well as reduced emission and cost of ethanol over gasoline.

 

In other countried flexible fuel and ethanol vehicle out sell petro cars 4 to 1 so it only seems that here in america that it is like pulling teeth to get people to switch. Stuff back then was different, just like when sysnthetics could not be run in rotaries until the technology and oil production improved, now synthetics are considered better for rotaries.

 

Things change, and hopefully for the better. To read about the ethanol challenge click below.

 

http://running_on_alcohol.tripod.com/id12.html

[Tony D]

Yeah, Brazil's Alcool Programme was highly successful...

 

Advances in electronic technology are solely responsible for gains in efficiency. Without EFI, Ethanol really gets sucked down, is almost impossible to get the car to start in sub-zero temperatures, and it's a continuous fight to keep water out of the fuel system, as ethanol LOVES water!

 

The problem is the energy used to produce ethanol is far more than that of conventional fossil fuels. Matter of fact, most ethanol produced for automotive usage outside the mideast portions of the USA comes from hydrocracked petroleum because it's simply cheaper and more efficiently produced by that means as opposed to terribly inefficient biomass alternatives for base stock production.

 

It has less BTU's, you will always use more per miles travelled than gasoline. It's not the miracle fuel ADM touts it to be, not by a long shot. Living with it as a sole source fuel opens your eyes. I recomend you try it, your eyes will be opened in more ways that one.