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Non-Tech : $2 or higher gas - Can ethanol make a comeback?
DAR 31.93-1.0%Nov 6 3:59 PM EST
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To: richardred who wrote (1184)5/7/2006 9:03:34 PM
From: Bid Buster  Read Replies (1) of 2801
 
Those mileage reports are correct and its due to the lower heat energy of ethanol (82k btu per gallon vs 114k btu per gallon for gasoline give or take a few btu's)

So the break even point for ethanol is if it sells at 30% less than gasoline.

A 12% improvement in mileage could be seen by an increase in critical compression ratio for ethanol fuel by raising the ratio to 12-1 but that would preclude using gasoline as detonation would blow the thing up.

However propane has about the same btu per gallon of heat energy as ethanol and the octane numbers are very close to the same thus an engine designed with higher compression to take advantage of the high octane of both those fuels would be much more efficient then the current crop of flex fuel cars.
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