Fuel comparison charts

Perty inneresting. http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/fuel_comparison_chart.pdf
Apropos of some recent diesel discussions, diesel fuel all by itself should give 13% more mpgs, just from the higher btu's per gallon alone. And, funnily enough, diesel appears to be about 13% more expensive at the pump!!?? Conspiratorial coincidence?? lol
It also becomes clear how gasahol shoves it in the motorist a little deeper, as well -- radically lower btu's per gallon.
Unbeknownst to most people, regular gas has more btu's/gal than high test -- by dint of the higher stability of the tertiary carbocation intermediate, in the combustion process.... no foolin. Texaco was successfully sued over this li'l factoid, in their false advertising of their premium fuels. Someone at Texaco didn't pay attention in Organic Chem I.
#6 fuel oil has markedly higher energy per gal: http://www.hrt.msu.edu/energy/pdf/heating%20value%20of%20common%20fuels.pdf
The thing about #6 fuel oil is that it may need little to no fractionating at all, radically lowering its delivered cost. Yeah, the sulfur.... But mebbe by adding another mere 500 lbs to each vehicle, they could fuck us for a de-sulfuization unit in each car.....
Some other useful charts: http://www.chestnuthillchimney.com/Comparison%20of%20Oil,%20Wood,%20Pellet,%20Gas%20and%20Electricity%20Costs.htm http://www.energykinetics.com/savingsHeatingFuelComparisons.shtml
Fwiw.

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http://www.chestnuthillchimney.com/Comparison%20of%20Oil,%20Wood,%20Pellet,%20Gas%20and%20Electricity%20Costs.htm
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Interesting but misleading charts some of them. Intentionally so probably. Deliberate misinformation. Not very useful to the average home owner.
The most useful information of all is concealed.

On 27/06/2013 1:16 PM, Existential Angst wrote:
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http://www.chestnuthillchimney.com/Comparison%20of%20Oil,%20Wood,%20Pellet,%20Gas%20and%20Electricity%20Costs.htm
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Why misleading? You may use more fuel per kilometer/mile but (where I live at least) the ethanol added fuel is cheaper to purchase.

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Ultimately the bottom line, from an immediate wallet pov, is the dollars per mile req'd to operate a vehicle, or dollars per degree to heat a house.. Some of those factors are the cost to actually produce the fuel/bring it to market, and as was alluded to by RBM, the expense of utilizing it, such as complex diesels. Along these lines, Consumer Reports evaluates "the lowest cost to own over 5 years", of which fuel is just one component.
Paying big bucks up front for the privilege of burning a cheap fuel -- to wit, electricity -- most often yields a payback that's waaay too long -- ie, the Volt, Leaf over much less expensive traditional cars.
Recently discussed were the methane stores lying at the bottom of oceans, 3,000 years worth, they're saying. Dudn't really matter what the energy density of a fuel is, if you can pretty much just suck it up with a straw.
Hydrogen would appear to be the, uh, Bomb, since every kitchen with a solar cell on the window sill can produce it. Altho usefully packaging it would be a bit, uh, volatile.
Just fuel for thought.

On 6/27/2013 8:16 AM, Existential Angst wrote:
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If Hydrogen could be easily and cheaply produced and stored at home from rain water, you would get a tax bill every time it rained.

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Up here in rural Arkansas we have a couple of stations that sell no-eth gas . I pay about 3% more for it , but my truck gets about 8-9% better m ileage ... you do the math .

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That's VERY inneresting, speaks volumes.

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FWIW, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory ran extensive tests with a variety of cars and trucks built during the last decade (and lawnmowers, pressure washers -- you name it) and found the same results that labs have been getting for a couple of decades now. The loss in fuel economy is virtually a straight line related to percentage of ethanol.
For E10, it's within a fraction of 3.5% across the board. With E20, it's 7.7%. And so on. Most of the blends sold in the US are E10 or E15.
http://feerc.ornl.gov/pdfs/pub_int_blends_rpt1_updated.pdf

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Which is sort of like studying whether adding more rocks to a bucket makes it heavier or not.... That "result" is virtually by definition of heat content of fuel!!
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What's inneresting about Snag's observation is how it *disproportionately* costs us!! Figgers.

On Thu, 27 Jun 2013 09:34:27 -0400, "Existential Angst"
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There's much more to it than that. It also measures the ability of the adaptive spark control to adjust advance appropriately, and the effectiveness of the fuel injection system's atomization with the mixed fuel, etc.
There are enough variables that it was worth running real-world tests, to settle some arguments and empty theorizing. They were mostly interested in emissions and economy performance with higher percentages of ethanol, but they tested it down to 10%.
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Well, his truck is unusual. On the average, the cost of running one fuel versus the other is an exact wash.

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Mebbe all them above variables impacted his truck negatively. Mebbe that's not too uncommon?

On Thu, 27 Jun 2013 11:02:18 -0400, "Existential Angst"
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The research report I linked to above includes multiple vehicles and has the statistics in it -- standard deviation and so on. It wasn't a lot of vehicles, but anything losing more than 4% on E10 is an outlier.

On 6/27/2013 10:11 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:
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I reported my experience a while back.
E10 cost me 8 to 10% drop in MPG.
But that's my experience. Obviously not what the report states.

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I don't remember your example. What year? Carb or FI?

On 6/27/2013 1:27 PM, Ed Huntress wrote:
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2000 Chevy Blazer. I've been driving it for 10 years now.
4.3 V6 (FI) - 4 speed automatic It has 178k on the odometer now. 150k of that is mine. :)
On straight gasoline I get 22 mpg average city. With E10 it's 19.5 to 20.
Highway is 24 now, was 26+?
Those are my 10 year averages. Regardless of what some government report says.

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My various Ford Rangers, 3.0 v6 engines get about 19 MPG on regular gas. Ive been getting 16.569 on California fuel with 10% ethanol
Btw...you guys seen this?
http://pure-gas.org/index.jsp

On 6/27/2013 2:32 PM, Gunner Asch wrote:
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Sure. Long time ago.
I only checked Texas, so you guys check around your own areas?
I don't see a single station listed in ANY large city.
Gee. I wonder why...

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I was surprised as hell to find (7) only ....in California
But then..we only allow 4 cycle outboards on boats in most waters these days

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The truck in question is an '86 GMC w/305 V8/700R4 trans and 2.72 rear axle ratio . No adaptive anything , it's got a quadrajet carb and a distibutor . That axle ratio might be just fine for flatland high speed runnin' , but I need something lower up here in the woods . Got feelers out for a 3.42 , which should have me near the torque peak in high/OD at around 55-60 MPH .

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That carb and distributor probably are the reasons you're getting such bad mileage with E10. There's a lot of research on this, and I haven't tried to round it up, but overall, E10 wants about 3 degrees more spark advance at full throttle. And atomization with a carburetor and E10 probably is not as good as it is with straight gasoline. I do remember some higher figures for loss of economy with carbs and E10 some decades ago, but I can't find it right now.
There could be other issues, but those *probably* explain it.