Alcoholic Gasoline

Alcoholic Gasoline

According to the pseudo-scientists in the Greenie-Weenie camp, adding ethanol to real gasoline reduces carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. They are wrong again and as usual. It doesn’t and here’s why. (Details of the calculations will be provided on request.)

When ethanol burns it produces less CO2 and water (H2O) than the components of real gasoline because it contains oxygen in its structure. The components of real gasoline have no oxygen in their structures. And because ethanol contains oxygen it yields only 64% of the energy that the other components yield when burned. And this is why engines burning alcoholic gasoline get lower mileage.

One gallon of real gasoline yields 116,230 Btu’s of net energy (some of the energy is needed to evaporate the water that is evolved in the reaction) and 19.5 lbs of CO2.

One gallon of alcoholic gasoline containing 10% ethanol yields 112,450 Btu’s net and 18.835 lbs of CO2. But 3.36% more of this must be burned to yield the same net energy as real gasoline and then 19.47 lbs of CO2 are created. This is a decrease of 0.15%.

One gallon of alcoholic gasoline containing 25% ethanol yields 106,703 Btu’s net and 17.83 lbs of CO2. But 8.93% more of this must be burned to yield the same net energy as real gasoline and then 19.42 lbs of CO2 are created. This is a whopping decrease of 0.4%.

Now consider that more energy is required to produce a lb of ethanol than it yields (estimates that include everything from planting seeds to distilling the ethanol put the number at 6 times more) and alcoholic gasoline actually produces more CO2 than real gasoline.