Blog: Ethanol Advantages Outweigh Btu
by Susanne Retka Schill (Ethanol Producer Magazine) In looking it up, E100 has 76,100 Btu per gallon, compared to 114,000 Btu per gallon of gasoline. For an E10 blend, with its 111,836 Btu per gallon, the difference in energy content is minor—it probably has less impact on mileage than whether the tires are properly inflated.
What I’ve been wondering, though, is just how helpful a Btu comparison is. … And, I’ve often heard how you can get more torque and horsepower from ethanol.
I gave Dan Schwartzkopf a call to help me understand better. He has long been an ethanol supporter, working for two decades or more in the racing world, helping to tune performance vehicles to optimize ethanol blends.
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So yes, ethanol has lower Btu, but it has other properties that compensate, Schwartzkopf said. “Oxygen content for one, which relates to all the benefits of emissions. You don’t have the hydrocarbons. You don’t have the aromatics like gasoline, which create toxic emissions. Ethanol is clean burning. That’s why oil companies really like adding ethanol. They can put their junk gas, with all these aromatic additives in there and they add ethanol and it reduces emissions, so it makes them look better.
“I’m a race guy. To put it simply the benefit of ethanol is the oxygen, the octane. Ethanol carries a way superior octane. It allows for that burning effect, even though you’re putting more fuel in the cylinder.”
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Another advantage to ethanol is that is burns cooler, he said. “It has a cooling effect when you burn that ethanol because it burns so rapidly, you don’t have a heat soak into the engine – you burn and it exhausts. You don’t have that time for saturation of the heat.”
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” … There’s less wear and tear on your engine, you’re reducing the carbon deposits. It’s more economical. When you start figuring: I don’t have the engine repairs I used to because I don’t have the carbon deposits; I pay less at the pump; I may give up a couple miles to the gallon but, you know, my overall savings is really probably better.” READ MORE
