AZ455

What do you all think of this... as if E10 isn't bad enough.

http://www.ogj.com/index/article-dis...al_of_e15.html

AZ455

Has anyone ever tried this product?

Marine: http://www.goldeagle.com/products/product01A7.aspx

My local AutoZone has it, it says for marine applications though... but the regular STA-BIL doesn't specifically mention ethanol corrosion protection. Also the marine grade says year round protection, not just for storage.

Regular Stuff: http://www.goldeagle.com/products/Ga...0_gallons.aspx

coltsneckbob

No and no. But, the use of ethanol in gas has been discussed here previously. I think that the major objections were:
-a gallon of E15 uses more energy to produce then it can deliver
-E15 is harmful with older cars (most the rubber parts and gaskets) and almost all non-vehicle gas engines (this is true as I know a local retailer of garden and farm equipment that says it is a constant problem when users put it in their non-car engines)
-E15 is politically motivated. The farming industry is powerful and to the non-technical public it is advertised as politically correct thing to do

jaunty75

Among the "tax breaks" under discussion for repeal as part of the current negotiations about raising the national debt ceiling is the ethanol subsidy. I think this is long overdue. Everyone complains about "big oil." How about "big corn?"

Ethanol fuel, like anything else, ought to be economically viable on its own, not have its price artificially deflated. If it can't compete with other forms of energy, it can't. Someday the price of other fuels will rise enough to make it economically competitive without subsidies. THEN it will be successful in the market.

NorTown Olds

ALL TRUE and bad for us and our hobby cars! Now they're taking away our Light Bulbs -- George Orwell's "1984" is coming SOON to a Country near us. Drives me nuts. Ethanol is bad news; period. Avoid it as much as possible; they're making it harder everyday though!

jaunty75

I've read that this may not happen as quickly as originally thought both because of the objections by consumers and because of problems with the compact fluorescent (CF) bulbs that we're all supposed to start replacing them with.

The CF bulbs have always suffered from a disposal problem. They contain mercury, and if burned-out ones are just thrown in the trash, as most people will do, the mercury just ends up in the landfill and ultimately in the groundwater.

What's worse, bulbs are sometimes broken accidentally in the home. They get dropped. The worst that happens now with the old-style bulbs is shards of glass to be cleaned up. With the CFs, you have that PLUS the mercury spill in people's homes. That ain't good.

Second, the CF's were SUPPOSED to last 10 years or more, and that was supposed to offset the fact that they cost 10 times as much as the incandescent bulbs. But, in practice, they've been burning out much more quickly than that. I'll gladly pay $1 for an old-style bulb that lasts one year, and I can see paying $10 for a bulb that lasts 10 years. But I'm not going to pay $10 for a bulb that lasts two years.

I think we'll end up seeing the incandescent bulbs on store shelves for a while yet.

In a practical sense, though, and leaving sentiment aside, we really ought to try to find something to replace Edison's bulb. As nice and cheap as it is and as pleasurable as the light it puts out is, it really is inefficient, turning only about 20% of the energy it consumes into light. The rest is lost as heat, and that means, for example, in the summertime, heat that your home air-conditioning system has to work against to keep the house cool.

compedgemarine

I do a lot of work on boats and the marine industry is fighting the E15 issue in court. alchohol of any form is corrosive and destructive. most boats have either aluminum or fiberglass fuel tanks and there have been lots of failures already. when that happens in a boat it all sits in the bilge till it explodes, which has happened several times so far. as was said it is politically motivated as ethanol recieves lots of subsidies. politcos on the left argue that "big oil" subsidies need to stop if the ethanol one stop but oil companies get zero subsidies, they just take advantage of various tax breaks that every other type of company gets. at last report big oil pays on average $80 billion a day in taxes to the US Gov. they in turn take part of that to give to ethanol and then force us to buy it so it destroys our cars and equipment so we have to buy new stuff built by the unions that put the politicos in office in the first place. viscious cycle till we all get pissed off enough to stop it.

coltsneckbob

Most of these are relatively short reads.


http://ezinearticles.com/?Hidden-Dan...uel&id=1117584

http://www.cars.com/go/advice/Story....lAlt&story=e85

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/200...k-controversy/

http://www.howstuffworks.com/fuel-ef...fuel-works.htm


And here is the other side:
http://www.e85fuel.com/frequently-asked-questions/#52


http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/ethanol/e85.html

These articles state the E85 is priced lower then regular gasoline......but as previously mentioned they fail to note the farm subsidies that allow that to be.

2blu442

As a response to the light bulb comment:

· Bureau of Reclamation and Bonneville Power Administration installed energy efficient lights in more than 10,000 fixtures at the northern Washington dam on the Columbia River. The combined energy savings means the 6,809-megawatt dam – the largest power plant in the country– is delivering about one additional megawatt of renewable energy to the region. The nearly 9 million kilowatt hours of added electricity per year could power nearly all U.S. household televisions tuned into the Super Bowl. The Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 10 recognized the $1.2 million lighting retrofit with its 2010 Champions of Environmental Leadership and Green Government Award at the annual Federal Green Challenge Symposium in Portland.

For more details on how the US government is going green:

http://www.doi.gov/greening/prfm_matrix/index.html

I'm not commenting as that would put me into a political rant and lock the thread. Anybody interested or having questions about this is welcome to contact me through a PM.

Also I understand GE closed their last incandescent light bulb factory in the US this past spring. I already purchased a carton from Lowe's just in case...

Destructor

Just one more reason for me to drive 3 cars and start burning coal for heat, It's one way to get back at the left wing EPA pukes.

Indy_68_S

^ = me
I bought into the CFL myth. Sounded like a good idea, but turned out to be even worse than BS. First, I discovered that they don't last nearly as long as claimed. I've replaced numerous ones no more than 2 yrs old....many even younger. They seem to last just a bit longer than older, quality incandescents (I had some incan's in my previous house that I never replaced in 15 years). So now I had a bag of dead CFLs...waiting for Tox-A-Way day so I could properly dispose of them. Then the bag fell off the shelf in our mudroom and a few broke. I freaked & immediately closed all the doors to that room. Then, with a mask, carefully cleaned up the pieces and then mopped/scrubbed the area. What a PITA.
Stupid curly bulbs...
I've toyed with the idea of creating CFLsSuck.com.

Let's see what the real numbers are in 5 years...after they have to replace them all....twice. I'm old enough to have seen far too many gov't program claims that turned out to be total BS after time...
There are now NO incandescent factories left in the US. All the bulbs we get now are made off-shore. And these don't seem to last as long as older bulbs.
Damned if we do & ....

Add E-15 to the CFLs and...
...I'm there.

2blu442

Yes I purchased several of the curly bulbs when they came out too. I didn't pay attention to how long they lasted but I know it was less than 5 years.

If the BPA wanted to change the light bulbs at the biggest power plant in the nation I'd rather they just wait until one burns out to install a CFL. something over 10,000 fixtures costing $1,200,000 then you start crossing out zero's and come up with $100-120 per light fixture?

Indy_68_S

$25 per bulb w/ $95 labor.....

jaunty75

More on the subject.


Texas aglow with effort to save the incandescent bulb

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,4858840.story

gearheads78

One more dirtly little secrect about CFLs is the power factor. The power factor of a cheap CFL is apox 60%. Because of this is possible to not have enough wire capacity with a bunch of them in the same circuit.

http://cdonner.com/power-factor-and-...-bulbs-cfl.htm

stevengerard

Look how expensive E85 is here in corn country and its 30% less efficient. I have 45 cfls in my house the longest one has lasted is 3 years. My house is over 100 years old a few years back I took out the original bulb in the garage attic YES its a 1900 circa bulb that still works!!!!!

coltsneckbob

I spoke with 2 friends of mine. One has a Phd in physics the other a MS in electrical engineering. They both said this "apparent power" story is bunk.

Lady72nRob71

CFLs certainly have their place, but cannot replace the old incandecent.

The common cheap CFLs cannot be dimmed, or used in applications that are dimmed or remote controlled with a triac. That accounts for about 50% of the bulbs in my house.
I saw a couple CFL flood bulbs that claimed they could be dimmed, but have doubts on how well they work. Costly, too.

CFLs are generally ugly and cannot be used in bulb-exposed applications like chandeleirs or with glass shades. Those account for 25% of the bulbs in my house.

They are not good for outdoor use in cold climates as flourecents do not perform well in the cold. They do not even make ones that are bright enough for my outdoor flood fixtures (150W per bulb).

Bulb life is "typical". They do not account for lightning and power surges that take out the electronics before the bulb.

On the plus side, they do work well for about 10% of the bulbs in my house, including the trouble light I use for working on the car. Very durable I must say and good light with low heat output.
Power savings is about 75% on average - yes that is true.

The next thing are those stupid LED bulbs, which cost about 30-50 a bulb and still do not dim well (you might have 5-10 "steps" and have a life limit depending on power surges and build quality.
I do design work for a lot of the LED driver chips and the tiny sizes and delicacy of the circuitry is scary. They are only a little bit more efficent than the CFLs! I would never buy one.

Screw all that - give me the glass watt suckers any day...

Going "green" will really cost you the big bucks in the end. I prefer to just be smart with the older tried and true technology.

coltsneckbob

OK, so relentless as I am......I am continuing to investigate. I have sent the article to another friend who is a physics professor at a near by university. He also has degrees in EE. If I understand his explanation I will post it .............or I don't I will just say it is fact or it is fiction.

Destructor

ALL of my audio gear in my house is vacuum tube, both vintage and new. Very inefficient but they function well and sound beautiful. Some of my gear is over 40 years old and ony requires minor maintenace. Most of the original tubes are still working well. Luckily Tube gear is still under the radar of the vile EPA. I drive around in my carbureted Cutlass and unwind at home listening to music through my power hungry vacuum tubes.

gearheads78

Its very real and the reason I found out about it is I experienced it first hand. Its also well known in the lighting industy higher end ballasts in some light fixtures have a very high power factor or some call it the balast factor. You can't put a high end balast in a cfl without it costing a fortune.

I am an amature electrian at best but took my time and did my research to wire my own shop. I went with large CFLs for my main lighting and put a total of 16. I had 8 on each 15amp breaker. They where 105 watts each so I was no where near overloading the circuit. After firing it up I had a constant loud buzz from those two breakers. I was at a loss and posted about it on Garage Journal in the electrical section. Thats when I was told my circuit was near overloaded because of power factor. I had a guy even get one of the same bulbs I was useing and did a little testing himself and PMed my the results. Basicly my real usage was very close to the advertised 105watts but or just under .9 amps. This guy was way over my head but he said basicly he measured 2.5 amps at peak. I switched to 20 amp breakers and they have much less buzz. Before I did that I also unscrewed half of the lamps and the buzz went away completely.

coltsneckbob

Here is what my professor friend sent me. I am still trying to digest and understand it.

you can measure apparent power (V*A) by using a voltmeter & ammeter.
to measure real power, you have to use a power meter (also known as watt meter).
this whole issue is complicated and lots of work is going on to quantify the effect of large scale deployment of reactive elements like consumer CFLs in the network. However the issue is not new; large transformers, inductive motors, etc deployed in industry already has this problem (that is, apparent power is higher than true power). note that only true power is "consumed" (i.e., converted into light, heat, mechanical work, etc.); the excess (i.e., the difference between apparent and true powers) flows in and out of the network in each cycle. the real problem for the electric company is not the power consumption issue; it's the fact that they have to produce and deliver higher V*A to the consumer. this typically means that a higher max current flows in the transmission/distribution network causing "normal resistive components in the network" to waste energy and this causes the "loss" in the network to increase (currently a typical US transmission/distribution system has about 7% loss). you can compensate for that by adding reactive elements in the system (either in the network or at consumer load (e.g., your computer power supply has a reactive element, active or passive, built in) but that increases cost.
lastly, there is another issue. low power factor loads tends to increase harmonic distortion in the network which causes things like larger supply voltage fluctuations. this is probably not a problem in advanced networks like in US but in less-robust networks in developing countries this could be a big headache

BlackGold

Bob, what your professor friend says is true. Power factor has always been a big issue and has gotten bigger as more and more power supplies are switching (think: digital in nature).

It is not difficult to design power supplies or CFLs which have "nice" power factor -- but it costs money! And of course, cheap wins every time in the market.

Same is true for the short life-span observed with many CFLs. Many of them are designed with marginal heat dissipation ability and low quality components. To top it off, many are intended to be used rightside up, as in a table lamp. When you put them upside down in a ceiling fixture, the heat builds up and quickly wears out the electronics.

LEDs are the future, but again, there are many ways in which a manufacturer can cheap out and give you a crappy product.

Destructor

Can't get much more simple than two elements with a coil of tungsten between them.

A 60 watt bulb in a spring lamp is perfect for providing enough heat (and light) to use touch up paint on my car during cool weather. It warms the metal and provides heat for curing without the danger of overheating the paint. I've been using that method for years when I discover a chip or flaw on my cars during late fall, early spring or a not so cold winter day.

Lady72nRob71

Like improper heat sinking - easy place to cheap out. Once an LED overheats, it is gone. Whites often turn blue when that happens.

Yep - simplicity is often the most reliable and cheapest.
The heat is bad for us folks in the summer, but great for most of us in the winter.