How is oil different than orange juice?
One moves your car. The other tastes great.
But there's another important difference.
If you're thirsty and don't want orange juice, you can drink milk, soda or water.
But if you want to travel and don't want to use oil, you're out of luck. Maybe you can buy "E85" - (an ethanol fuel sold at less than 1% of U.S. gas stations) or biodiesel (even less available). Maybe you can ride a bike or electric train. In most situations, though, you'll almost certainly need oil.
If the orange crop fails and juice prices skyrocket, you can buy other drinks.
But almost all cars and trucks on the road today need oil. If oil prices climb, you have two choices - pay more or drive less.
We grew up with this lack of substitutes, as did our parents and grandparents. We consider it normal. But it is deeply abnormal. (What other essential commodities have no substitutes?) It damages our national security, natural world and pocketbooks.
In the past two decades, the United States has fought two wars in the Persian Gulf. The reasons are complex, but the proximity of half the world's oil is no coincidence.
Heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere are now higher than in all of human history and climbing sharply. Oil is a leading cause.
Recently oil prices doubled in 21 months. Oil dependence exposes all Americans the unpredictable swings of an unforgiving world oil market.
Most Americans can scarcely imagine a transportation system that doesn't depend on oil. But it's almost here.
Someday my grandchildren will ask my children, now teenagers, "What, you mean you couldn't plug in cars when you were young?"
To achieve freedom from oil, nothing would do more good more quickly than making cars that connect to the electric grid.
The United States has a vast infrastructure for generating electric power. But all those power plants and electric lines do us almost no good in getting off oil, because our cars can't connect to them.
"Hybrids" are now among the most popular cars in the U.S. They combine an electric motor and regular engine to go farther on a gallon of gasoline. The motor's battery is recharged by energy captured within the car. This is clever, but not enough.
The next big step in auto technology is the plug-in hybrid vehicle. Like conventional hybrids, these cars combine an electric motor and regular engine. But there's an important additional feature. Plug-in hybrids can - quite literally - be plugged into a wall socket.
The idea is simple, but the consequences are far-reaching. With plug-in hybrids, many drivers would need no petroleum for their daily commute. Cars could be recharged at night. Many drivers could travel back-and-forth to work or around town using the car's electric motor only.
Why aren't plug-in hybrids on the road today? Because batteries are expensive and might not last the life of the car. But prices are dropping quickly. Funding is pouring into battery research.
And here's some good news. This issue unites Americans. More than 90% of Americans believe oil dependence is a serious problem. Politicians from across the political spectrum support plug-in hybrids.
With leadership, we could put millions of plug-in cars on the road soon.
Oil. Orange juice. They'll always be different, of course.
Our total dependence on one is coming to an end. The only question is how soon.
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Check back at the McGraw-Hill Book Group for more Freedom from Oil excerpts, original articles, and member reviews.
For more information about David Sandalow and his book Freedom from Oil, please visitwww.freedomfromoilbook.com.
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Comments: 75
Of course the solar cells will not power the car alone, but for the occaisonal trip to the drug-store on the weekend with the car parked in the driveway all day -- you bet! That trip would be on Mother Nature.
There are relatively few hybrids on the road today with plugin hybrids being extemly rare.
E-85 vehicles on the other hand are being built by the thousands and the distribution system is already in place.
E-85 is a waste of technology as it takes large amounts of fuel to create It. If it makes you feel better that you aren't using oil more power to ya. Bare in mind though that ethanol is in vogue simply because Iowa is an important primary state. Politicians and farmers love it.....scientists keep their mouths shut because politicians fund them as well and they won't bite the hand that feeds their global warming hysteria research nonsense. Off the record scientists think ethanol is a bigger scam than global warming. One hand washes the other....
I have read the studies which indicate that ethanol production is so energy intensive that it is not worth it, I have also read later studies that broke the earlier ones down and showed where the earlier estimations were in error.
Ethanol is a positive energy fuel, just not by much, it is estimated that it takes .9 units of fuel in to get 1 out.
"Hydrogen cells are the way of the future."
You may be correct but we need solutions now, and ethanol looks promising.
But if you think ethanol is an energy intensive fuel hydrogen is much worse, using fossil fuels hydrogen is about 1 unit of energy in to get 1 unit of energy out, using electrolysis the exchange gets worse 1.5 units of energy in to get 1 unit out.
Stanley,
There's a Japanese auto maker that has built a prototype that charges by way of microwave transmissions (no more wires), no doubt still a ways away in the future yet but it might help in the examples you give.
Do you know how much land it would take to produce enough hydrogen to replace our transportation fuel using solar or wind?
Hydrogen is really only an energy storage system and as such it is a not very good one.
Read the hydrogen hoax article on the web.
If in fact you are as educated about this subject as you suggest, you should know that in our lifetime this is never gonna happen...The US was hijacked into oil dependence by Kissinger during the Nixon yrs with the Saudi's and until this gov't figures out a way to null and void that "Contract", we will never be independent....It has nothing to do with usable technology...It has to do with not pissing off the Saudi's...Cause if we do, this economy will crumble....
Wake up America....Once again your gov't has sold you down the river, for the almighty dollar, and your not gettin broke off.....Just gettin it broke off in ya!!!!!
The business people are so enthusiastic about globalism, but the rule of capital means that the US spends all of its money, does all of the work, and Saudi Arabia, China and India use either their natural resources or their people to basically buy the US.
So, what does it mean? Are we going to have to become Wahabists in our own country?
Are all the jobs in American going to go our of the country leaving a hollow shell of a country, and if so, what is to become of Demcracy? All the rich capitalists who have paid their money for America are not going to let the "native" riot and demand money or jobs that they do not have to give considering all the starving 3rd world people willing to work just to die more slowly.
All of America has to realize that we are already way too deep into this. If America votes in a Democrat, and that Democrat makes democratic changes in the country, the people with the money are going to be very upset.
Americans have to decide if they are going to take being made irrelevent in their own country ... OUR own country ... and to my sick stomach the answer seems to be yes. And why not, we have not cared for people inside this country just because they were Americans. The minorities, he non-white, the poor, the "different".
We have a democracy, and we have a moral code supposedly, Christianity, but both are just a superficial facade to what is really underneath that we do not want to look at, and that is money, and most of the owners of that money out there did nothing to merit the control and comfort they have relative to anyone else but are unwilling to give up any part of it for the common good, so much for democracy and morality.
The only thing that has ever done people any good is demand what they want. Look around the world, Europeans have a pretty good life. It seems to me that Americans either stand up and accept a European model of life that invests in their people to a greater extent, or by default we slip into a 3rd world model.
Energy and jobs are irritants, but the mistakes have been our own for decades now. Is America a nation controlled by citizens, or a commodity that includes a powerful military controlled by money?
Between the US and Canada we have more oil reserves than the whole Middle East combined....We have enough oil to last us for at LEAST another century, and probably longer...Pruhomme Bay (Alaska), itself has almost as much as Iraq and the Saudi's...It's pure bullshit what this gov't has done to this country in the last 50 yrs.....
To quote my favorite band Queensryche.........."Revolution Calling"
Americans are at a crossroad that for whatever reason we
refuse to make a decision about while idleness starves our
culture of vision and goals and enthusiasm.
> Between the US and Canada we have more oil reserves
> than the whole Middle East combined....
I do have to questions this comment. I don't think it matters
about oil, what matters is are we going to bring all Americans
in on the solution.
Oil reserves are very dodgy numbers, they are often state
secrets and classified so the numbers are off. In Saudi Arabia
that we know can pump as much oil as the 4 next largest oil
producers in OPEC it is a capital offense to release oil reserve
information.
Second, it is not just the amount of oil, but how difficult it is
to find, drill, pump, extract, pipe and transport, as well as
impurities such as sulfur and how much refining it takes.
Just something to think about.
And of course, if you owned oil under your land, would you
want to give it away when the price is upwards of $100 a
barrel, or you suspect that the price might get higher?
Soooooo, you are going to elect a woman who spent eight union-busting, mainstreet busting, off-shoring years on the board of Wal-Mart to bring change to America?
When are people going to wake up? The Clintons are and have always been more corporate than the Republicans.
For the most part you have always made informed and intelligent statements...You in a sense are a lot like me...We know what we have read and researched, we know, what we know...Seldom do I want to have to go back and find the article or cite the reference that proves my point....So I'm sure you and I both, if this thread takes off, will have to go back and "Prove" what we know to be true....
In the mean time, yes I still agree with you, with one exception....The drilling, pumping, extracting, piping and transporting has already, for the most part been done in Alaska...They just refuse to release the reserves....Because of our Saudi/Middle East contract....No matter what we outsource, no matter how bad the gov't screws us, they always have that trump card....The Saudi's promised, and so far have kept that promise, to always sell oil on the open market in American dollars......If we fuck them, they will fuck us, and if that happens.....In 1 hr you will see what will make the "Created" depression of the 20's look like a New Year's eve celebration....
This is serious shit, and the rich are manipulating this whole thing to their benefit...And will continue to do so...Until "We the People" stand up and demand justice!!!
For once I heartily agree. Clinton has accepted huge contributions from the Pharm, Insurance, military industrial complex, and various and sundry other big corporate donors, as has Obama, to a lessor extent. Both have already started paying it back by coming out in support of the Peruvian NAFTA agreement, something the great mass of Democrats oppose vehemently. I wonder why, eh? In Sicko, even Michael Moore, a onetime huge fan of Hillary, bluntly observes that Hillary has sold out, and why. It's no secret that a vote for Hillary or Obama is merely a vote to replace a corporate Republican with a corporate Democrat, and as Edwards quips, the only thing that will really change is the faces of the people at corporate cocktail parties in the beltway.
Detroit 2008: GM and Coskata announce worldwide cellulosic ethanol partnership
Also, progress on new air traffic control systems have been sluggish, which is important because it helps cause the massive backups in the entire airline industry, but also massively increases fuel consumption during landing (I've read as much as 100 gallons per landing). Acellerating that would do a lot of good to reducing our oil consumption.
Nobody is arguing that cellulosic ethanol is bad, and it is one of the most promissing technologies for reducing our oil consumption in the future (butanol offers even more promise), but corn ethanol is another story. First, you have to acknowledge that the energy conversion for corn ethanol is marginal at best. Second, corn cultivation has a lot of negative effects, including the enormous "dead zone" in the gulf of mexico and the plowing under of natural grasslands for cultivation. Also, increased consumption of corn for ethanol has driven up the cost of all agricultural comodities, and agricultural inflation has been one of the biggest drivers of inflation in recent years. Because of that, I think that those costs involved in producing corn ethanol are not worth the marginal effect on our oil consumption.
If we did not use Ethanol, we would have to use MTBE which is made from petroleum and pollutes the enviornment.
Beyond that corn-based ethanol builds the fleet and infrastructure for a cellulose ethanol economy.
> When are people going to wake up? The Clintons are
> and have always been more corporate than the Republicans.
Mixing hyperbole and convoluted logic to what end ... you want
to get Democrats to vote for Fred Thompson because he is less
Republican that the Clintons? I'll have to think about that
Greg! ;-)
The other thing is why are the Republicans on the media constantly saying there is no quid pro quo with them and their contributors, but contantly inferring there is with the Democrats? This is typical Republican strategy, think of who's listening and sling the mud "proftably" never mind the facts or being consistant.
And Ron pretending to be a Democrat and attacking Clinton like she was a Republican ... arf arf.
> lots to plug in block heaters in cold weather, so providing
> power stations for hybrids is doable on a large scale.
That does not necessarily follow or make sense. The power required
to heat and engine block enough so that it does not freeze is
considerably less than it takes to charge a car to run for a
significant number of miles. I worked this out something ....
here
My gas costs per mile is like $0.20, for the same amount of power applied to transporation, assuming a car to be about 30% efficient I think the electrical cost is $0.08 ... about half as expensive.
1 gallon of gas contains 60kWH total chemical energy,
and gas cars being about 30% efficient use 1/3 of the energy
in gas the rest is waste heat, that means I use about 20kWH of
energy from my 1 gallon of gas in the energy of motion in my car.
So to fill up my car with the equivalent of 1 gallon of gas is
20kWh ... at 120V that is ... 166 amp-hours ... on a 20 amp
circuit going full out that is 8 hours.
It reduces to 4 hours if I have a 240 circuit.
So the reality of putting all this usage on the grid is
interesting, but if you have a parking lot where there
are 100 cars parks how to supply them all with
20 amps of 120 or 240 volts ... I don't know if that
is really practical right now.
Pointing out that Hillary Clinton spent eight years on the board of Wal-mart is neither hyperbole nor "convoluted logic" it is a fact that you are willing to say anything to refute.
Have you forgotten:
- Ms. Clinton's association with Tyson Foods?
- The electrical system of Pakistan being run out of the Rose Law Firm's offices (and subsequent coup when they failed to pay their bill)
- Hillary's association with The Hedge Funds.
- The long, long, long list of felonies associated with the Clinton administration.
- The long, long, long list of felons pardoned in the last days of the Clinton Administration
Uh Bruce,
We used to boost octane with lead. Please explain how much "energy" lead produces. Gasoline with Ethanol produces more energy, more work, than gasoline without the additive.
The "mileage loss" due to the lower energy level of ethanol does not kick in until somewhere over an E33 blend. Below that, the ethanol induces a more powerful and efficient gasoline combustion.
Please read up on the subject rather than shooting from the hip. See EPA: Fuels and Fuel Additives
> the board of Wal-mart is neither hyperbole nor
> "convoluted logic"
So, as a Republican ... I assume, are you telling me it is
a bad thing that Hillary has some actual corporate
experience? I assume you do not mind Cheney, Rumseld,
Schultz, etc ... on boards of companies, and Walmart is
kind of a model corporation as the biggest in the world?
So you are arguing from the other side's point of view,
and that is what I meant by convoluted.
with energy? Maybe, nothing.
A gallon on any gasoline fuel blend has less energy than a
gallon of pure gas, unqualified, all the time, and I'd like to
see you find anything to refute than anywhere ... that at
least has some credibility.
Hydrocarbons just have so many more of those nice
powerful little carbon-hyrodogen bonds that we love
to make CO2 with than alchohol.
automotive fuel (in automobile: Fuel)
Ethanol (ethyl alcohol) is often blended with gasoline (15 parts to 85 parts) to raise its octane rating, which results in a smoother-running engine. Ethanol, however, has a lower energy density than gasoline, which results in decreased range per tankful.
My point exactly, JUST like she was/is.
Internal combustion engines are extremely inefficient. The typical engine utilizes under half of the energy in gasoline.
The question is not energy density, it is how efficiently an engine uses the energy available - burning gasoline is much more inefficient than burning ethanol.
Again, we used to mix lead with gasoline to adjust for this inefficiency - lead has an energy density of zero.
When gasoline is mixed with an E10 blend, the engine runs smoother and burns gasoline more efficiently due to oxygenation. Even though Ethanol contains a lower energy density, a properly tuned engine burning E10 will not lose mileage.
To actually increase mileage with E85, a standard engine can be further modified.
See: DOE: Efficiency Improvements Associated with Ethanol-Fueled Spark-Ignition Engines
In other words when Republicans act like Republicans - that is a bad thing. When Hillary acts more Republican than Republicans - that is a good thing.
I like my Republicans - Republican and my Democrats - Democrat.
We need the tension, we do not need Democrats forgiving Hillary everything they howled about against the Republicans for eight years.
Thank you for pointing out the flaw in my logic. Gee, I had no idea it would take more electricity to power a whole vehicle, rather than just warming the engine. You know me, silly girl, who has no idea about such manly things.
All I was saying, is that SHOULD a company design an economical, all electric auto, powering them would not be inconceivable on a large scale.
Alternate fuels, including natural gas and hydrogen, are available but it is not as easy to use as petroleum. Electric technology has been severely impaired because the best battery technology (NiMH) is currently under patent by Chevron/Texaco and they only allow the technology to be used in standard hybrids of Toyota. That technology will go out of patent in 2010. Meanwhile other technology may allow you to recharge your cars long distance capacitor battery in the same amount of time it takes to fill the gas tank of an SUV.
Deep curtsy, and deepest apologies. That was for bruce k.
Not being irritated by what each party finds irritating about the other party is the easy part.
As my reward, when the compromise comes about, I will have been right all along.
(pat, pat, pat)
> forgiving Hillary everything they howled about
> against the Republicans for eight years.
A specious argument if ever I heard one, but you
are entitled to your opinion. The Democrats have
been pretty consistant, though wavering in
effectiveness of communication. The Republicans
do not bother to communicate anymore, they
just lie and character assassinate.
As far as the ethanol argument, you are basically
saying that you can water down your whiskey
and have more kick too.
Somewhere you are not posting this article
explains where it limits its discussion to some
subset of vehicles, ie. it's simplifying assumptions
and I will post it for you.
The point in ethanol is not that it is a better fuel, but
that it increases the sources of fuel to provide more
fuel supply and thus some kind of competition to the
OPEC monopoly and price extortion. Another side
benefit of ethanol is that it is not as toxic or persistant
in the environment like say and oil spill.
I wonder how President Bush is doing on getting
the Saudis to lower prices as a personal favor to
him?
And Donna, stick to speaking for yourself, you seem
to have enough challenges there.
to cars on operation or on the market right now.
Second is that it is talking about efficiency and the
difference it is measuring is .4 miles per gallon out
of about 20 miles .... .4/20 ... about 2%.
If you want to juggle the numbers on a production
1993 vehicle I'm sure you could do better than that
on just the gas vehicle.
This is theoretical and unrealistic as well. It runs on 85%
ethanol with a completely modified engine that I doubt could
use regular gasoline from the pumps so it is impractical as well.
Also, though it might work well in Brazil where they have a
huge supply of ethanol here in the US it is unlikely.
The thing this study does show is the inefficiency of our
current automobiles, not the superiority of ethanol, or
that ethanol has as much of more energy density.
they can tweak a car to get about the same mileage as a
gas car using some ethanol gas mix. It does not say
anything about the availability long-term or large-scale of
this mixture. It does not talk about performance. It does
not talk about long-term engine effects or wear. It does
not address the availability of possible production of this
fuel. It does not address improvements in the gasoline
engine. Finally, I don't know that this true, there's lots
of claims that someone can make a car that gets 200
miles per gallon on water too.
All this proves is that you can tweak a car to get good
ethanol performance, it does not prove that ethanol is
a better fuel, has more energy density or basically what
you posted it prove. It is interesting I'll grant you that,
but it says that in order to use the most abundant
cheapest fuel on Earth in the easiest cheapest way
car manufacturers compromises were made with
efficiency, which most people already understand.
to have enough challenges there."
Hmmm, personal attacks on others' comments is so very endearing, Bruce. Mine may have been sarcastic, but it wasn't caustic.
I stand by my original comment to the thread, that an electric powered vehicle, should one be made available, would be a viable alternative to and oil powered one.
> Hmmm, personal attacks on others' comments is so very endearing,
Endearing? In what way? I think it would be endearing to add
something useful to the discussion, try that, deary.
I enjoyed the new perspective in the article, and the discussion that followed. I hope the author of the article comes back to respond to the comments.
Corn ethanol doesn't set up the infrastructure for cellulosic ethanol, it just weds us to unending subsidies for an uneconomic and net unhelpfull fuel source.
Me too.
I don't think that is going to happen. I just looked at his other articles and didn't find one response from him on those threads. Apparently, he is here to sell books, not to discuss his topic.
Too bad. His credentials looked good.
Corn ethanol isn't competitive with gasoline without subsidies. If the government was really interested in reducing our oil consumption with biofuels, there wouldn't be a tax on cane ethanol. I'm rather conflicted on agricultural subsidies because they are somewhat important for our food security, but at the same time they destroy actual poor people in other countries who can't compete with subsidized american farmers.
One way we could actually significantly reduce our oil consumption while improving our economy would be to give loan guarentees to legacy airlines to buy fuel efficient planes. One of the reasons legacy airlines are going bankrupt all the time is because fuel prices are high and they have aging, inefficent planes, but can't get the financing to buy efficient planes. That would have a return on investment of a few years, preserve good paying jobs, and at the same time help reduce the need for bailouts every decade or so.
There is a reference to that article
"Corn ethanol isn't competitive with gasoline without subsidies."
What happens if you remove the subsidies from gasoline? They are substantial.
The point is, in the future ethanol will be able to compete with fossil fuels because the supply of fossil fuels for vehicle fuel is dwindling, we can conceivably continue to produce ethanol by using coal as the energy to create it.
There is plenty of oil, the supply is dwindling because the Saudis,
who have 4 times more oil than the next 4 OPEC members put
together, control the supply and thus the price of oil.
The Saudis spend roughly $1.50 including all costs to pull a
barrel of oil out of the ground. That barrel of oil now sells
for about $100.
The Saudis do nothing to earn their money but sit on
their asses. The do very little productive with the
money they extort this way other than think up new
luxury items to make out of gold, and fund worldwide
Wahabi terrorism.
Corn ethanol is competitive with gasoline at a certain
price and whether it is a good idea of not is the question.
If we decided to mandate that ever car be able to use
gasoline or alchohol or any mixture of the two, then
alchohol could be added simply to our existing fuel
distribution system.
Cars can be so modified by inserting a refractometer
in the fuel line that can sense the gas/alchohol
ratio and adjust fuel carbeuration accordingly ... for
about $100.
Hybrids cost on average $5000 more right now than
a regular verson of the car, and pluggables with
expensive batteries cost way more. Average workers
cannot afford either one right now.
The quickest easiest way to increase fuel supply would
be to allow all kinds of alchohols to be used in fuel.
Whether corn ethanol can compete or not with
everything else is a market decisions. But in the
south we could start growing sugar cane, and we can
help underdeveloped countries in South America on
their way to development by importing their
fuels.
The argument over methanol, ethanol, butanol, and others
is not the same as whether corn is econmical or not, it
is a worldwide production thing and putting companies
to work worldwide adding to fuel production would be
a positive thing for everyone.
The whole reason why we're consuming corn ethanol is because the government designed the ethanol market NOT to work. What it was designed to do was to subsidize farmers and agribuisness. The government would never eliminate sugar ethanol subsidies because corn ethanol isn't competitive with sugar ethanol. Corn ethanol also isn't cometitive with gasoline without large subsidies. Also, building flex-fuel cars isn't terribly helpful because less than 1% of gas stations have E85.
Dan E:
In the future, corn ethanol should be overtaken by cellulosic ethanol, which will be cheaper. Also, only a small percentage of the fuel used to create corn ethanol is in the ethanol plant, for example, you can't use coal to run tractors, and it's cheaper to use natural gas than coal to produce fertilizer.
You begin by critiquing my statement as "specious" then blythfully launch into your own specious arguments. This is precisely the double-standard that I was speaking of.
A statement that does not account for the subsidies given to the oil industry.
Inquiring minds want to know.
1) What is the average subsidy for a gallon of Ethanol?
2) What is the average subsidy for a gallon of gasoline?
Forget about direct subsidies of oil consumption through preferential treatment in tax codes. Forget about the multitude of federal corporate income tax credits and deductions results in an effective income tax rate of 11% for the oil industry, compared to the non-oil industry average of 18%
Let's just count what we spend in the middle-east as a subsidy for oil.
Now, how does Ethanol compare?
> then blythfully launch into your own specious
> arguments. This is precisely the double-standard
> that I was speaking of.
My argument was not specious, Republicans operate
on an "ends justifies the means" strategy that is
killing American democracy.
You also were not making an argument about any
double-standard, but if you want double-standards
you've only to look at any issue through the Republican
eyes anymore.
If you want to make a statement about what you think
about gas and oil subsidies, go ahead and say it.
It is as good as mine, and I'll tell you I don't know, and
I think no one else knows either. I'll listen to what you
say and accept for the sake of argument if it makes any
sense and move the dicsussion on from there, so just
say what you want to say.
But some of the numbers and articles you have pointed
to have some problems, like the energy company that
says because it can get ethanol to burn slower they
can get the same mileage from ethanol, which has half
the energy content per volume, as the mileage they can
get from gasoline. If you think about that even for a
minute or two it does not make any sense, so don't
ask me to accept this kind of thing.
Bruce, you are thinking rhetorically, not scientifically.
Here is a clue. Typically when you go to the gas pump you see three grades. Regular (87 octane) Midgrade (90) and Premium (92). The number: 87, 90, 92 is the octane rating. The more octane, the higher the grade, the more you pay.
Ethanol has an octane rating of 113.
Now are you getting the picture?
The purpose of octane additives is to "slow down" detonation. The octane rating is a measure of how resistant gasoline is to the abnormal combustion phenomenon known as detonation (also known as knocking, pinging, spark knock, and other names).
As for your "energy density" argument. Are you aware that Nitro-glycerin has a substantially higher "energy density" than gasoline?
The reason we do not use Nitro-glycerin in internal combustion engines, other than the obvious storage problems, is that Nitro "combusts" too fast for efficient use in a piston driven engine. In such engine you want the combustion to be timed to the mechanical action of the piston.
High energy density is meaningless, if you cannot efficiently use it.
Gasoline is a poor fuel for internal combustion engines. The only reason we use it is because it was once relatively cheap. The reason that race cars, like the Indianapolis 500 cars use Ethanol is that their engines are tuned to Ethanol ----- and do not have to fill up as often as if they used gasoline.
In short, race cars use Ethanol because Ethanol get better mileage than gasoline in a properly tuned engine.
> the higher the grade, the more you pay.
Greg, that's irrelevant, the more octane you buy, you do not
get better or more mileage, which is what you and your
article were claiming.
I know what octane does, and octane rating does not
add anything to the energy content of a fuel. Octane
rating of a fuel affects how you design an engine to
burn the fuel, and how much energy you get out of
that burning is due to how much inherent energy is
in the fuel to begin with..
Yes, nitroglycerin combustion cannot be controlled,
but then no one is recommending its use for a fuel
either.