BTW, where the hell are you finding 180 proof vodka ?
They don't make such it thing. A few ounces would kill you.
Sounds like that you don't know the difference between "proof" and alcohol content.



Fred

 

sad to say your molecular science degree is failing you something awful. the rate of electrolysis on h20 is concurrent with the rate of amprege. let me try to find the formula, but basicly you need a very large surface area running significant amps. also it depends on the electrolite chosen . regular saline solution or brine has a decent separation rate but lets say a potasium chloride solution would potentialy have double the rate due to it's elecrtolitic properties. most people would run regular plates in the tank . alot of very thin plates would increase the amount of surface area. but if you use a mesh or even a a tight metal screening material you can increase the surface area exponentialy. and yes a simple alternator would not produce the necesary amount of hydrogen. but using 3 deep cycle marine batteries in line and a 200 amp or higher welding alternator you can creat and sustain the required voltage. i know it works. it has been done.

 

There was a recent artilce in WIRED that gave a 101 on alt fuel issues.

I tend to come from a "follow the money" approch to looking at issues.

In the case of fuels or alternatate fuels...

There seems to be TWO approachs to the issue
a) we need something cheaper
b) we need to protect the environment

While Id like to think we are all concerned with the environment - I think the population in general will only do so up until it slams their wallet.

So - Most people are looking at the COST of the fuel do to the "work" that they need.
Sure, not everyone runs an ROI calculation when buying a car - but Im sure they notice it.

So its not the MPG that matters - it the miles per DOLLAR that matter. Who cares if you get 200 MPG if the actual cost of one gallon of mystery fuel comes out to the same as a 200 gallons of gasoline?
Its not cheaper. So why bother?

At this juncture - the TOTAL life cycle cost of the energy supply - oil is still the cheapest.
By total lifecylce - one has to think of any alternative energy in the same way that Thomas Edison did when thinking about electricity
- how to make it
- how to transport it
- how to store it
- how to sell it
- how to USE it

We have a tremendous infrastructure for making crude oil into gasoline
- wells
- storage
- transport (tankers and pipelines)
- creating it (aka refineries - tho IMHO we dont have enough hence the seasonal "crunches" we see)
- distribution (gas stations)

Some issues with other current alt fuels
-- Alcohol isnt easily transportable via pipelines. It tends to go by rail car. Right now the rail infrastructure and alcohol generation plants arent in place (but people are working on it - see recent issue of Trains)

So - right now there is VERY LITTLE incentive to do alot of research into "alt: fuels" becuase you cant sell the alt fuel for "less" that what a gallon of gas will cost to to the equivalent work.

Now - if gas costs MORE... well then things change.
Thats what the Wired article dicussed - what happens if oil hist $70, $80., $100 a barrel?

First - suddenly areas that dont have oil all of a sudden DO have oil.
The reason they dont have oil is that it cost too much to extract it - if the got it out of the ground it would cost $80 a barrel and well since oil is $60 a barrel - you wouldnt have any buyers...

So - places like CANADA suddenly have ALOT of oil.
And Venezeula too (its why Chavez is making all that noise).

We *could* do what Europe does and tax the hech out of the oil to drive the price up to $5 a gallon. All of a sudden you start seeing
-- alt fuel usage (becuase it becomes CHEAPER than oil)
-- conservation (becuase its cheaper)
-- behavior change (becuase its cheaper)
-- investment (that tax money goes somewhere)

I doubt that will happen in the USA becuase no politician will do it.

 

Well lets just put out the facts and see what happens i dont want to get into a pissing match on this, but you are miss informed on ETHANOL. maybe not E85 i dont have alot of info on that cause i havent researched it. but i do have alot of info on ETHANOL and have friends that race with ETHANOL, so lets just get the Facts out and ill even site them so you can check

pH is often used to compare solution acidities. For example, a solution of pH 1 is said to be 10 times as acidic as a solution of pH 2, because the hydrogen ion concentration at pH 1 is ten times the hydrogen ion concentration at pH 2. This is correct as long as the solutions being compared both use the same solvent. You can't use pH to compare the acidities in different solvents because the neutral pH is different for each solvent. For example, the concentration of hydrogen ions in pure ethanol is about 1.58 ? 10-10 M, so ethanol is neutral at pH 9.8. A solution with a pH of 8 would be considered acidic in ethanol, but basic in water!

Quoted from http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/se...at-is-pH.shtml

This Qoute again proves that Ethanol in its pure form is not corrosive and is neutral. Highschool Chem taught us that if we werent asleep.

On the other hand Impure Ethanol, ie E85 or Commecially Distilled, is very corrosive.

Total retained biomass (as suspended flocs and entrapped cells) was >50 g/l for medium pH values between 4.0?8.0. The entrapped cells to suspended flocs ratio was highest at pH 4.0, whereas at pH above 5.2 it was close to 1.0. The observed enhancement of cell immobilization on the packing support at low pH seemed to be related to formation of bacterial filaments.

Quoted from http://www.springerlink.com/content/j373ug2444153x78/


Polyprotic acids
Acids with more than one acidic proton/hydrogen can release all of the protons. Thedescription of these acids ilinked to the multiple number of acidic hydrogen atoms. A diprotoic acid has "two" acidic hydrogens. A triprotic acid has "three" acidic hydrogens. This means H2SO4 has two acidic hydrogens that can be released form each formula unit.

Non-acidic hydrogens
These ideas explain why hydrocarbon compounds like gasoline and butane, C4H10, are not acids even though there are many hydrogen atoms in the molecule. In hydrocarbons, hydrogen atoms are attached to carbon. The C-H bond is nonpolar and strong. Hydrocarbons are not acidic because H is not bonded to an atom in Group 6A or 7A.

Quoted from http://www.800mainstreet.com/acid_ba...oxyacids-.html

This once again says Gasoline itself isnt the corrosive factor its the additives and other ingredients in the gasoline.

It could be transported like normal gasoline if it was 100% pure. And you could keep water out.

As far as being toxic and being absorbed through the skin once again its not the ethanol thats the danger here its the other ingredients. jeeze i mean otherwise we wouldnt have any body living in the hills of TN or KT. Ethanol is not the danger our bodys produce a small amout of Alchol as it is. The danger comes from our bodies inablity to process large quantities of it.

See above, and if you read up on this you will find that the major contributor to hangovers is purity of the ethanol. And as said above the quantity and duration of the drinking binge. Your body is perfectly cabable of breaking down and using Ethanol but just not in the quantity. It has nothing to do with the Corrosiveness partly because ETHANOL expecially food grade. Is not corrosive and has a nuetral pH

Info Fromhttp://www.drinkfocus.com/hangovers/causes.php

If the Ethanol has NOO water in it you are correct but think about the problems we already have and continue to have with cheep stations and water in the GAS and Gas doesnt even like water think about how much worse the problems would be with Ethanol Which absolutely LOVES water and will seperate from the gas once it obtains enough water.

Isnt that convient when there are other things to denature it so that we cant drink it??? But we have to use Gasoline so as to add to the potential for it seperating, and thus having a shelf life so once again you cant store it.

This is just what it appears, an excuse, yes Ethanol is "harder to ignite" the reson for that is its higher octane rating, and higher latent heat. but these both have advantages.

Octane rating with the higher octane rating of Ethanol you can have higher compression engines that burn even more effeciantly and create more power.

Latent Heat, with almost 3 times the Latent Heat of Vaporization of Gasoline Ethanol Cools and increases the Intake charge of an engine thus produces more power per power stroke then gasoline. Notice it doesnt produce more BTU's. you have to use more fuel to get that increase in HP but you can add that fuel now because your intake charge is increased.

Info from http://www.drivingethanol.org/motors...teristics.aspx

And once agian like i said earlier just think about the problems we already have with Water in our gas especially in winter.




Jeez man you really need to go look your ▓▓▓▓ up before you spout off. 2 ounces of 200 proof would be akin to 4 ounces of 100proof i dont think that would kill anyone. and just to prove my point Absolut Vodka and pretty much all Vodkas for that matter are distilled to 180-190 proof

Info From http://absolutad.com/absolut_about/history/made/

There is some debate back and forth on the proof issue evidently according to wikipedia the max proof is 175 that being 100% alcohol but traditionally 100 proof was 50% alcohol.


http://http://encyclopedia.tfd.com/Proof+(alcohol)

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/e...cle/002446.htm




Here is my last link its a guy here in CO that makes stills for fuel production. and sells plans

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

 

THREAD HiJACK!!!

The hangover comes from dehydration. You dont need to drink any alcohol to get a "hangover"

 

Everclear is 90% abv, and yeah a few shots is all it takes

 

A larger injector will help you as the pulse time isn't going to be changed under open loop. You don't use 02 sensor feedback at idle, during warm up, and may not use it under WOT (depending on ECU).

There are going to be limits of what the stock ECU can adjust for in terms of pulse width. As we know we're going to need more fuel and we're likely to hit the limit on that side of the pulse width, why not give it 10% more by default?

 

Wrong again

The ecu isnt going to adjust the injector pulse width unless it detects a lean or rich mixture. It would adjust the pulse width if it was still using Gasoline. Pure Ethanol uses approximately 30% more fuel then Gas when you have the proper mixture. the plus to this is that pure ethanol produces more power for that 30% more fuel. The exact hp increase is in the range of 20% to 30%. So your mpg goes down but your hp goes up.

So, yes all you have to do is increase the injector size. Your Ecu doesnt know what size your injectors are, or what fuel you are using (other then a flex-fuel vehicle will know what fuel), it only knows what the O2 sensor is telling it, and it will adjust, accordingly within limits, to obtain a proper mixture.

and if you dont believe me just google it

oh and i wouldnt say hijack at all this is all about alt fuels so its on topic

 

Ahhhhh, some people of this forum "that doesn't give wrong information", simply amaze me...

Hangover is not cause by dehydration.

From:
http://ask.yahoo.com/20020805.html

From:
http://www.beekmanwine.com/prevtopas.htm


From:
http://www.irishhealth.com/index.html?level=4&con=294


From:
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives...6552.Me.r.html


And it goes on and on and on.

Certainly dehydration doesn't help the matter, but it's not the cause of a hangover. Having seen people suffering from dehydration I and they can tell you that it isn't the same.



Fred

 

Since we don't run much, or often in open loop mode, idle and WOT, those states are kinda not really relevant as we spend most of our time, or at least I do, not in one of those conditions.

When we're running normally in close loop the ECU does use O2 sensor and uses it to adjust the pulse width to the injectors.

Just to put things in total perspective here.

I'm 58 years old and am an engineer.I work for a division of Pacific Scientific that's owned by Danaher. You can check out some of the stuff that we do on the web.

I, with a couple of other engineers at work, started working on an E85 solution for late model vehicles that aren't already "flex fuel" at the beginning of last year when I still had my Jeep. I was going to do a total conversion on it, though there isn't really much that needs to be done.

Most/all late model vehicles will run on E85, just not as efficiently as they should due to the fuel mixture problem. The ECU is set to try and maintain a ca 14.7:1 ratio.

Several companies sell a device (electronic) that hooks into the wiring harness of the injectors and increase the pulse width ca 30%+- from whatever the ECU is currently pulsing.

The problem with those is that the ECU will, often, still try to adjust the pulse width, based off the O2 sensor readings, again, depending on speed, etc.

I came up with a little device that works at the other end, instead of at the injector end and is really inexpensive to do.

We looked at a handful of vehicles and scoped the pulse width under various conditions and various changes.

I can tell you with 100% certainly, that the ECU will adjust the pulse width if you add bigger injectors, the best that it can.

The solution isn't messing with the injector end, but "messing" with the other
thing(s) that control the amount of fuel injected.

A simply device can turn most any late model (and that reason for "late model" is that it must be EFI'ed and it must have ethanol resistant parts {contrary to what some thing, ethanol is corrosive to some parts that are in older vehicles fuel delivery systems} already in the fuel delivery system. Anything from the early/mid 90's on will work fine), into a "flex fuel" vehicle that will run either E85 or regular gasoline with the flip of a switch, and when I say "run" E85, I mean consume it "correctly".

The reason that the ECU will attempt to adjust the pulse width is because the a/f ratio of gasoline is a lot different than that of ethanol (E85, etc.).

The O2 sensor does detect the a/f ratio correctly, even if running relatively straight ethanol. The problem is that the O2 content isn't correct when running ethanol for gasoline (which the ECU believes you are running), so it attempts to correct it (the a/f ratio).

Put another way the stoichiometric value between gasoline and ethanol is a lot different and because of that the O2 sensor reading(s) will not be even close to correct when running E85 (or even straight ethanol), and the ECU will attempt to adjust the pulse width of the injectors, the only thing it can really do to get the a/f ratio where it thinks it should be, to the "correct" value.

Now, you may ask what about LPG and CNG. Those work pretty much ok "right out of the box" because the stoichiometric ratio for both of those is just about the same as gasoline.

There are a lot of problems with E85, outside of the actual burning of it in vehicles.
Currently here in the US, corn is the stock base for it and that's no where close to practical. Nice move for our current administration to appease the populace of Idaho, etc.
Corn won't work. We can't produce anywhere near enough. We've increased production of corn and it's costing the economy a lot right now. The increase in land for corn planting has taken away land for other food stocks, which is driving up the prices of a lot of items in the grocery store, not just corn.
The price of fertilizer has gone way up, which, again, effects a ton of other things.
There is no infrastructure in place to transport ethanol. Stainless has to be used in many applications and, as such, the cost of stainless is heading through the roof.
Look at some of the companies involved in ethanol production across several different sectors and it's easy to see what's happening.
If you look at the fertilizer companies (TNH, MOS, POT, MON, SQM, to name a few) and see what their stocks have done the last year.
Look at the corn futures and see what they're doing.
Look at the companies that produce stainless, ATI for example and see what their stocks have done.
Now, look at the companies that produce ethanol and see what their stocks have done (gone down).


Anyway, I'm done with this whole discussion.
It's too obvious that there are simply too many wanne be rocket scientist here with no real (apparent) experience with what's being discussed.

Y'all have fun with it.




Fred

 

like don imus, i must appologize for this quagmire that has insued. the amount of bs that has been thrown rest surely upon the shoulders of those that threw it. once again, i'm sorry

 

You've done some work in this area, so lets keep the discussion going. It's good to remove disinformation:
Trust me, your HP isn't going to go up on E85 without adjusting other engine dynamics. If you think it will, let's do a little dyno based wager.. :-)


I've seen piggy backs also, they typically haven't worked very well with the early generation of toyota EFI systems. In theory, this would work better than larger injectors as you could adjust when to turn on the additional pulse width.

Pulse width resolution at idle can be very sensitive.. Adding 20% more fuel at idle could result in a vehicle that doesn't run very well (or pass emissions).
Again - armchair theory here...


I agree that you've got to design an ECU that deals with the alternate fuel, but if these guys are talking about hacking together some sort of system that would be drivable, they could try slightly larger injectors.. Again, this is a band-aid, and totally unnecessary if the stock ECU is allowed enough range to bring the mixture back to stoichiometric.

I was baffled for a while when people indicated that E85 was working in non-flex vehicles, but then I discovered that the narrowband 02 drives the mixture toward stoichiometric - not necessarily a specific air fuel ratio... It made a lot more sense at that time.

I still don't believe people are getting more power out of E85 without alternate tuning or engine modificiations.



[/quote]


So I'm very curious here... What do you know about first generation toyota vehicles and hardware compliance with Ethanol? Injectors have rubbers seals, but are we talking about additional wear or failure with a short period of time... We've got steel tanks - not stainless, but how big an issue is this in reality?

Note, I came darn close to filling up with E85 this weekend. Premium was hovering at about $3.14/gal. E85 @ $2.50. I didn't simply because I didn't want to have to mess with tuning bugs on the way home (250 miles). I was prepared to adjust my idle and set my target AFRs on the wideband to appropriate E85 levels.

I'm probably going to try in locally, but start with E85 / gas mixtures.
I understand it's more corrosive, but I don't think that's an immediate concern.

For a turbo motor, the high octane levels have obvious advantages. Another advantage is that running more fuel will also cool my EGT temps - I'm hitting 1400 degrees under boost cruise, which is pretty darn hot.

Quasi-educated discussion encouraged.

 

The proble with filling up with E85 is that your going to get less mpg with it so in reality your going to be paying the same if not more per mile for fuel unelss you can get E85 for cheaper then that with the qouted price of gasoline.


another thing about this because of the specific heat of ethanol it cools the charge and chamber more so runs cooler already without running more fuel or rich








On another subject

the whole debate with Fred TJ


I'm going to let it die here as well. I think most of our disagreement and conflict comes from my talking about burning 100% pure ethanol. And Freds talking about E85 and or impure Ethanol.

I also misspoke earlier when i said all you need is bigger injectors. You all so should use a Air Fuel controller to tune your engine correctly








I will make one last comment about my contention that part of the reason for adding gas is to create an artifical shelf life.



Ask some of your grandparents whether gasoline back in the day would go bad. ill tell you that ive talked to alot of people. farmers, ranchers, and so many others, The point is that giving a fuel a shelf life increases your profit margin, Because now people cannot store fuel and stock up when its cheap and use it when its expensive. Instead they have to buy it from the distributor every tank fill. And when that happens the distributor can change the price at any point. This would be less likely if more people had there own reserves because the companies would know that they were unlikely to make much mone because people would use reserves till the price came down. this would reduce the constant price changes.

anyway thats enough of my rant now

feel free to flame

 

http://www.change2e85.com

I don't really know enough to even begin to argue about the technical details.
But I'd love to convert to E85 and add a turbo to my 22RE.

Ron