Constructal GDP

Dave F says:
Boy, can I just say that when I look at the diagram, I am reminded of an automatic transmission? The lost energy is heat. That is strange given the fact that economy is the transmission of society, transforming raw materials into finished goods, with the lost energy being the heat lost to provide hot air to the political system. Change the fluid every 2 years…
I think you identified the key point…. We are NOT changing the fluids every two years as required. Instead we leave the same “corrupted” fluid in place for twenty to thirty years. No wonder the engine is in trouble!

Kum Dollison says:
November 18, 2010 at 9:30 pm
“If I were forced to use either gasoline, or ethanol to heat a pan of water I’d choose gasoline.”
Odd that an avowed ethanophile would say that. Actually chemists traditionally used ethanol for that job, not gasoline. An alcohol spirit lamp burns quietly and safely, whereas gasoline has an unfortunate tendency to produce unpleasantly explosive mixtures (a good way to land yourself in hospital is to use it for lighting fires).

From Kum Dollison on November 18, 2010 at 7:03 pm:

Ethanol has a much higher Octane Rating than gasoline (114 vs 84 for the RBOB it’s blended with.)

You really need to get off of this “It’s got high octane!” kick. From the Renewable Fuels Association site comes the Changes in Gasoline IV manual (pdf), which yields this on pg 31:

Octane: A minimum octane for E85 is not specified. FFV’s can tolerate the lower octane of gasoline i.e. 87 (R+M)/2. There is no requirement to post octane on an E85 dispenser. If a retailer chooses to post octane, they should be aware that the often cited 105 octane is incorrect. This number was derived by using ethanol’s blending octane value in gasoline. This is not the proper way to calculate the octane of E85. Ethanol’s true octane value should be used to calculate E85’s octane value. This results in an octane range of 94-96 (R+M)/2. These calculations have been confirmed by actual octane engine tests.

That’s about the rating of premium gasoline. What you’re talking about, the higher compression possible etc, can be achieved with premium. Mileage is generally the same whether burning common 87 octane or 93 octane premium, it’s the same energy content.
If you wanted the “performance benefit” that’s possible with E85 but using normal gasoline, all you’d need is an engine system that could measure the octane of the gasoline in the system and adjust accordingly. Don’t need the performance boost, use common 87. If you want it, use the pricier stuff.
At current national average prices, 87 is $2.883/gal, premium is $3.172. And the E85 MPG/BTU Adjusted Price is $3.306/gal. That’s paying a lot extra for some added performance from E85 versus premium over 87.
Also, from the mentioned manual, same pg:

Gasoline Gallon Equivalence (GGE): E85 blends contain less energy than gasoline, which results in fewer miles per gallon. Fuel cost, on a miles driven basis, must be considered. This is where things get a little more complicated. First, E85 is really E75 in the winter, E80 in spring and fall, and E85 in summer. Ethanol does not contain as much energy as gasoline (lower btu/gallon). In fact, E85 (E75, E80) contains about 73% to 76% the btu content of gasoline.

What is so wrong with ethanol that they can’t use as much when it’s colder?

Kum Dollison,
Actually I have no idea what I will be paying for gasoline after the subsidy and tariffs expire because I have no real idea the available quantity of foreign made ethanol.
You never answered the question, do you support the current 54 cent per gallon tariff on imported Ethanol that further steals wealth from the American consumer?
Do you support the 10% Ethanol mandate imposed by economically illiterate government bureaucrats?
If you believe ethanol is competitive with oil than you should be petitioning to have the mandate, subsidies and tariffs removed. You should also be for repeal of all agricultural subsidies, (especially on corn) – as these directly effect the price of ethanol. Otherwise you are pro-American consumer exploitation.
Like I said before ethanol would not exist without the government.

You never answered the question, do you support the current 54 cent per gallon tariff on imported Ethanol that further steals wealth from the American consumer?
Of course it steals wealth from the American consumer because it makes them pay more for transportation fuel. Why do you want to punish the American consumer?

As for subsidies: The U.S. Subsidized “Fossil” fuels to the tune of $52 Billion, last year alone.

I am for removing all subsidies but these are minuscule compared to ethanol, especially once your calculate in the extra taxes and regulation imposed on the oil industry,
Big Oil” at the Public Trough? An Examination of Petroleum Subsidies (PDF) (Ronald J. Sutherland, Ph.D. Energy Economist)

Yes, I absolutely support the mandate. The oil companies would have never let ethanol get started without being forced to.

The oil companies do not control what energy sources we use, the market does. It is clear you don’t care about how much the government punishes the American consumer and steals their wealth, you just care about your emotional ideology based on fantasy conspiracy theories.

I do support some sort of “safety net” for farmers. A well thought-out support structure actually serves to make food cheaper. Remember, we pay the lowest prices for food of any nation in the history of the world.

So you are a socialist, this explains your economic illiteracy when it comes to ethanol. We pay the lowest price for food of an nation in the world because we are the wealthiest nation in the world, it has nothing to do with subsidies. Subsidies merely distort prices, they artificially make the product being subsidized appear cheaper while robbing the capital away from other more productive uses of that capital in the economy. Ethanol subsidies BTW make food more expensive but you obviously don’t care if the poor of the world are hungry and starving just so long as your emotional ideology is fulfilled,
Ethanol Fuel From Corn Faulted As “Unsustainable Subsidized Food Burning” In Analysis By Cornell Scientist (Cornell University)
Biofuels Could Lead to Mass Hunger Deaths: U.N. Envoy (Reuters)

From Kum Dollison on November 19, 2010 at 7:05 pm:

Ethanol runs cooler. It’s harder to ignite in cold weather.

Dang, I thought you’d have mentioned the info from that manual I mentioned, pg 31 of the pdf although pg 29 as numbered, where I got the other info. From the section on Vapor Pressure:

It is often difficult to meet the minimum vapor pressure requirements with today’s lower volatility gasolines. If a customer is complaining of poor cold start and poor warm up performance when operating on E85, it could be because the fuel’s vapor pressure is too low. This can be remedied simply by adding more gasoline to the blend.
ASTM is currently assessing the possibility of lowering requirements for the ethanol portion of the blend and increasing the hydrocarbon portion. This would increase vapor pressure for colder climates and/or where gasoline used in the blend is of lower volatility.

I have also read how in colder parts of the US, for ten months of the year they sell 70% ethanol (reference).
To skip ahead:

94 – 96 Octane is Not anywhere close to “premium” gasoline. That puts you into the Super-Expensive “Race Gas” territory.

Nah. And some readers might be getting confused. As the Wikipedia Octane rating entry puts it:

Generally, octane ratings are higher in Europe than they are in North America and most other parts of the world. This is especially true when comparing the lowest available octane level in each country. In many parts of Europe, 95 RON (90–91 AKI) is the minimum available standard, with 97/98 RON being higher specification (being called Super Unleaded). The higher rating seen in Europe is an artifact of a different underlying measuring procedure. In most countries (including all of Europe and Australia) the “headline” octane that would be shown on the pump is the RON, but in Canada, the United States and some other countries the headline number is the average of the RON and the MON, sometimes called the Anti-Knock Index (AKI), Road Octane Number (RdON), Pump Octane Number (PON), or (R+M)/2. Because of the 8 to 10-point difference noted above, this means that the octane in the United States will be about 4 to 5 points lower than the same fuel elsewhere: 87 octane fuel, the “regular” gasoline in Canada and the US, would be 91–92 in Europe. However most European pumps deliver 95 (RON) as “regular”, equivalent to 90–91 US AKI=(R+M)/2, and deliver 98, 99 or 100 (RON) (93-94 AKI) labeled as Super Unleaded – thus regular petrol sold in much of Europe corresponds to premium sold in the United States.

The extra-pricey premium in the US is very close to “Super Unleaded” in Europe, which is itself at the low end of the 94-96 range for E85. That is not “race gas” which is 100 AKI and higher. If the market was there, with engines that could provide that performance boost with higher octane but still run fine at 87, gasoline at 94-96 would be freely available.
As to the rest, well… I don’t like the Wikipedia Ethanol fuel entry, as with the E85 entry it looks abandoned, info getting out of date, references going to now-dead links. But it does have these good parts:

(…) Ethanol (E100) consumption in an engine is approximately 51% higher than for gasoline since the energy per unit volume of ethanol is 34% lower than for gasoline.[20][21] However, the higher compression ratios in an ethanol-only engine allow for increased power output and better fuel economy than could be obtained with lower compression ratios.[22][23] In general, ethanol-only engines are tuned to give slightly better power and torque output than gasoline-powered engines. In flexible fuel vehicles, the lower compression ratio requires tunings that give the same output when using either gasoline or hydrated ethanol. For maximum use of ethanol’s benefits, a much higher compression ratio should be used,[24] Current high compression neat ethanol engine designs are approximately 20-30% less fuel efficient than their gasoline-only counterparts.[25]
(…)
Ethanol’s higher octane rating allows an increase of an engine’s compression ratio for increased thermal efficiency.[22] In one study, complex engine controls and increased exhaust gas recirculation allowed a compression ratio of 19.5 with fuels ranging from neat ethanol to E50. Thermal efficiency up to approximately that for a diesel was achieved.[28] This would result in the fuel economy of a neat ethanol vehicle to be about the same as one burning gasoline.

Twist it however you want, ethanol still has less stored energy than gasoline. Due to better combustion properties, you are able to use inherently more efficient higher compression ratios. But, flex-fuel vehicles are a compromise, they cannot be as efficient as an ethanol-only vehicle. Pulling out all the stops, with turbos and lots of exhaust gas recirculation with complex computerized controls, you can get an ethanol-tuned very high compression engine that will yield about the same mileage as gasoline, and won’t work with plain gasoline.
You just can’t get there with E85 and flex-fuel. Period.

But, that’s just it, Kadaka; the most advanced engines with varible ratio turbo, VVT, and Direct Injection Can Dial it Back for Gasoline.
When the O2 sensor detects straight gasoline the turbo is dialled back – decreasing the compression, and the EGR is decreased, in effect increasing the volume available for fuel in the Cylinder. You Can run both E85, And Gasoline at their Optimum Efficiencies. This is what the 2.0L DI Turbo Engine in the new Buick Regal does.
You Will see more, and more of these engines in the coming days.
* Right now you’re getting about 4% less mileage, and 20% more HP.
The next iteration will have the soon to be available Heated Injectors. At that point you should have Equal mileage, and still about 20% more HP on E85.
Pops, it’s too late in the thread to spend another 30 minutes knocking down all those old chestnuts. Maybe some other time.
Oh, and your boy “Pimental?” He’s an entomologist, and has been pitching “Coal to Liquid” for many years. He is, to put it bluntly, “not a disinterested observer.”
He stated that it would take our entire corn crop to produce enough ethanol for a 10% blend. We’re at 9%, Now, and we’re using, after accounting for DDGS, approx. 20% of our corn crop. And the crop, itself, is about the same number of acres (between 85, and 90 million acres.)

Yeah, Pops, he’s so qualified that he stated that it would take our Entire corn crop to replace 10% of our gasoline, and a couple of years later we’ve replace 9% of our gasoline using 20% of our corn crop. He was still using 120 bu/acre yields in 2007 when yields were running 150 bu/acre (national average.)
In 2007 a study was done by Ia State that concluded that gasoline prices would be, on average, $0.35 gal higher if ethanol wasn’t in the market place. It’s, also, a fact that the Ethanol Industry pays way more in taxes – fed, state, and local – than it receives in subsidies.
As for the “food” argument Poor people don’t eat field corn. Field corn is eaten by cows, which are, in turn, eaten by RICH People. BTW, even with the anomalous China-driven Commodity spike field corn is still selling for less than 10 cents/lb.
And, btw, when you make ethanol from corn you don’t use the protein, vitamins, and minerals. You just utilize the Starch. All the Nutritious stuff is returned in the form of DDGS, and fed to the cows in lieu of the whole corn. Cows grow faster, and put on more wt when fed DDGS than when fed straight corn.

Well, Kadaka, the anti-ethanol crowd keeps referencing those people in Bangladesh, Africa, etc that live on $1.00/day, or so. You are, I would say, Incredibly Rich compared to them.
I was just trying to make the point that those people are not eating (and, never were) corn-fed beef, in the first place.
BTW, there are 2.6 pounds of corn in a pound of beef. Corn, before the big “spike-up” due to Russian buying was up about $0.04/lb compared to pre-ethanol price.
It looks like your “Quarter-Pounder” is up about A Penny as a result of ethanol
How will you Ever survive.

I defy you to find the slightest connection between field corn prices in the U.S. and any of the “food protests/demonstrations, etc” anywhere in the world. White sweet corn in Mexico, Bread (bakers went on strike) in Egypt, Rice in India, or China. Go on. Show the causation. I’ll wait . . . . . . . . . . .