Lester Brown: The Sobering Facts on Global Resource Scarcity

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We really should have a different thread for the side topic of fuels.
Ethanol burns differently to gasoline, and a mixture burns differently again. Each engine is designed to burn a specific fuel, generally given as an octane rating, this is set in the compression ratio of the engine. You can design an engine to burn only one of the three, modern engines such as in a prius will have a knock switch that will change the injection to suit the type of fuel and reduce the issues but the simple truth is run the fuel your manufacturer suggests. You will always get better mileage on the recommended fuel.

Doug your decision is entirely rational and I tend to agree with it.

Older engines will have issues mainly with rubber gaskets / fuel line and so on. You will also reduce the life span of older engines in particular valve seats and stems.

My experience is entirely practical on the subject. When I learnt about peak oil I pulled apart the engine on a Massey Ferguson 35 gasonline tractor and rebuilt it specifically to run on ethanol. I changed the fuel lines, filters, tank, put in hardened valve seats and stems and increased the compression ratio. Corn is a big local crop, and whilst I'm an amateur farmer having a tractor that the real farmers could use in a crunch seemed like a very good idea. Aside from doing a test run or 3 and dusting the tractor off to show off, it has just sat in the barn for a while now. I've since focused my attention on Bio-Diesel from nut trees instead. Diesel is a much better bio fuel (crop wise) to produce. You can broad acre or orchard grow it, eg canola or pecans and so on. The post processing of ethanol via a still is also much more energy and labor intensive than doing SVO (straight vegetable oil) or even full bio-diesel.

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A ternary phase diagram for gasoline-ethanol-water will tell you how when phase separation starts.
See page 2-34 in this pdf.

http://www-erd.llnl.gov/ethanol/etohdoc/vol4/chap02.pdf

 

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Thanks for the discussion.  It is illuminating, but (perhaps reflecting my own density) one thing I don't understand is where the water comes from.  Is ethanol in our gasoline already mixed with water?
Doug

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atmosphere

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http://thecontraryfarmer.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/wendell-berry-on-bill-moyers/
 

very good,a must watch. robie

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This was a sobering podcast, and many good responses. I find it ironic that there seems to be acceleration of the environmental  problems in Saudi Arabia and Texas. I don’t wish any harm on either of its citizens, but it is interesting that the two oil “hot spots” are fraught with depleting resources of a third kind.
 

Coincidently I picked up Paul Tillich’s “The Shaking of the Foundations” and reread the 9th chapter titled “Nature, Also Mourns For A Lost Good.”  The book was published in 1948, and after 65 years I find it also sobering that the same issues are being grappled with, the same questions are being asked. He was one of our greatest theologians and I’m always in awe of the insight he had. Here are some of the quotes that really moved me:

So let us ask today: What does nature mean to us? What does it mean to itself? What does it mean in the great drama of creation and salvation?

Are we able to perceive the hidden voice of nature? Does nature speak to us? Does it speak to you? Or has nature become silent to us, silent to the men of our period? Some of you may say, “Never before in any period has nature been so open to man as it is today. The mysteries of the past have become the knowledge of children. Through every scientific book, through every laboratory, through every machine, nature speaks to us. The technical use of nature has been heard by the scientific mind, and its answer is the conquest of nature. But is this all that nature says to us?

Is nature not completely subjected to the will and willfulness of man? This technical civilization, the pride of mankind, has brought about a tremendous devastation of original nature, of the land, of animals, of plants. It has kept the genuine nature in small reservations and has occupied everything for domination and ruthless exploitation. And worse: many of us have lost the ability to live with nature. We fill it with the noise of empty talk, instead of listening to its many voices, and, through them to the voiceless music of the universe. Separated from the soil by a machine, we speed through nature, catching glimpses of it, but never comprehending its greatness or feeling its power.

Who is still able to penetrate, meditating and contemplating, the creative ground of nature?

The glory of nature is not shallow beauty. Nature is not only glorious; it is also tragic. It is subjected to the laws of finitude and destruction. It is suffering and sighing with us. No one who has ever listened to the sounds of nature with sympathy can forget their tragic melodies. The melancholy of the leaves falling in autumn, the end of the jubilant life of spring and summer, the quiet death of innumerable beings in the cold air of the approaching winter – all this has grasped and always will grasp the hearts, not only of poets, but of every feeling man and woman. Nature mourns for a lost good.

Therefore, commune with nature! Become reconciled with nature after your estrangement from it. Listen to nature in quietness, and you will find its heart. It will sound forth the glory of its divine ground. It will sigh with us in the bondage of tragedy. It will speak of the indestructible hope of salvation!

The music of the universe plays in every moment. If we can just listen!

Peace