Fuel comparison charts

- E
- Existential Angst
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 5:16 AM

Perty inneresting.

formatting link

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:

formatting link

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:

formatting link

Fwiw.

- H
- harryagain
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 7:09 AM

formatting link

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.

- R
- Rodwell
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 8:18 AM

formatting link

Why misleading? You may use more fuel per kilometer/mile but (where I live at least) the ethanol added fuel is cheaper to purchase.

- R
- RBM
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 11:39 AM

formatting link

As far as diesel vehicles go, I think at this point they have effectively removed every reason a person would buy one. You use to pay a boat load more for a diesel engine vehicle because the fuel mileage was considerably better than gasoline, they had plenty of power, and they lasted forever, not to mention that diesel was cheap. I have a 2010 "clean diesel" van which gets 17 MPG compared to 22 MPG on my "pre emissions" 2006 version of the same truck. This truck has a tank of urea, which gets injected into the exhaust system, as well as a catalytic converter, and a particulate filter, attached to a pile of chips and sensors and exposed wires all over the engine and exhaust system. Anything associated with the exhaust/emission system that malfunctions and allows pollutants out the tail pipe, invokes a check engine light and a dash board message," 20 starts rem ", which means you have to stop what you're doing and get it to the dealer now, which in my case the nearest dealer is in a hell hole called Yonkers (just kiddin) All the new "clean diesels" have a 100,000 mile warranty on the emissions systems, so at least these huge expenses don't come out of pocket, but I sure don't want to own this thing one minute after the warranty is up.

- E
- Existential Angst
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 12:16 PM

formatting link

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.

- T
- Terry Coombs
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 12:44 PM

formatting link

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 .

- E
- Existential Angst
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 1:23 PM

formatting link

That's VERY inneresting, speaks volumes.

- E
- Ed Huntress
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 1:27 PM

formatting link

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.

formatting link

- E
- Existential Angst
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 1:34 PM

formatting link

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!!

What's inneresting about Snag's observation is how it *disproportionately* costs us!! Figgers.

- E
- Ed Huntress
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 2:06 PM

formatting link

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%.

Well, his truck is unusual. On the average, the cost of running one fuel versus the other is an exact wash.

- E
- Existential Angst
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 3:02 PM

formatting link

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

- E
- Ed Huntress
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 3:11 PM

formatting link

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.

- R
- richard
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 4:08 PM

formatting link

Just to set you straight on the prices, diesel had always been 10 cents cheaper than regular gas. When fuel prices surged up to around the $2.50 mark for the first time, people put up a big fuss over it. The prices dropped back down a little. Then went right back, up and over $3.00 a gallon. But the future markets brokers didn't want to lose their cash cow so they made diesel more expensive. Why? Because truckers get a tax break on the fuel. Unfortunately, that action ultimately practically killed off the nation's MUST have trucking industry to the point where only those that can afford the fuel, are still in business.
The next step, which probably won't happen for another decade or two, is to go to distilled alcohol fuel. Tests have shown that used cooking oil will run just fine in diesel engines with no conversions.

- H
- harryagain
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 4:28 PM

formatting link

Diesel engines are over 50% of cars in the UK. Some diesel engines will run on used cooking oil but not all. The new technology ones won't.
The latest diesel engine cars over here have ceramic exhaust gas filters as well as catalysers. They rely on a high speed run to burn the carbon out of the filters every now and then. If you don't do this, the filter gets f***d and a new one costs a fortune.
And fuel is getting on for $11/gallon. Our gallons are a bit bigger than yours.

- R
- Richard
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 6:20 PM

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.

- E
- Ed Huntress
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 6:27 PM

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

- G
- Gunner Asch
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 7:32 PM

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?

formatting link

- K
- Kevin Bottorff
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 7:41 PM

richard wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@40tude.net:

in the US this is incorrect. the trucking industry never got any tax breaks on diesel. off road doesn`t pay the road tax, but trucking is deff not off road.

most are now charging a fuel surcharge based on the price of fuel. what hurt the trucking industry is the economy slow down that killed the load demand, and the "dramatic" increase in DOT regulations and officers writting ticket for every little piss ant thing to raise revenue. Gee thanks for more "its not a tax" taxes, because it sure as heck is not about the safety. KB

- T
- Tom Gardner
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 7:49 PM

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.

- R
- Richard
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
9 years ago

Thu, Jun 27, 2013 7:56 PM

*disproportionately*

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.