Friday, September 16, 2005
Biofuels fearmongering
On first read, you think that the holy grail has been revealed to be a plastic cup:
- With gasoline prices ticking higher all this year and the impact of Hurricane Katrina driving them ever higher, a growing number of Americans are turning to alternative fuels to power their vehicles. But experts warn that simply filling up with these unconventional fuels could end up costing you down the road if you're not careful.
Frustrated with pumping gasoline that costs well over $3 a gallon, some U.S. drivers are turning to a collection of biofuels including E85, a mixture of 85 percent corn-based ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, and biodiesel, an alternative to petroleum-based diesel made from renewable sources such as vegetable oils or animal fats, into their cars.
- “It all comes down to lubrication, corrosiveness and viscosity,” said Stanley P. Miller of the Alternate Fuel Project Center. “You can get problems if you haven’t replaced parts of your vehicle that are not compatible with the new fuel you’re putting in your car.”
Millions of modern cars steer clear of these pitfalls, as they are so-called “flexible fuel” vehicles designed to run on biofuels like E85, ...
- “It all comes down to lubrication, corrosiveness and viscosity,” said Stanley P. Miller of the Alternate Fuel Project Center. “You can get problems if you haven’t replaced parts of your vehicle that are not compatible with the new fuel you’re putting in your car.”
Millions of modern cars steer clear of these pitfalls, as they are so-called “flexible fuel” vehicles designed to run on biofuels like E85,
<...>
Another potentially more destructive consequence of using ethanol-based fuel is permanent damage to a car’s gasoline tank, notes Dr. Timothy Maxwell, a professor of mechanical engineering at Texas Tech University’s Mechanical Engineering Department.
“Water is attracted to alcohol, and so with a metal fuel tank, especially one that’s made of steel, the ethanol in the fuel absorbs water from the atmosphere and water droplets form,” said Maxwell. “That can lead to rust and corrosion in the tank, and pin holes can form.”
Also potentially harmful for a car’s engine is the sediment that naturally builds up in a gasoline tank says Kahn.
“This is especially true of an older vehicle,” he said. “If you have a Ford pickup truck, for example, with about 50,000 miles on the clock, it’s going to have some stuff forming in the tank, and ethanol-based fuel, and more importantly biodiesel, has solvent properties that dissolve that stuff and ‘clean’ the gas tank, and it can get sucked into fuel lines and cause problem in engine — this is why important to keep changing your fuel filters.”
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