Since ethanol seems to be a popular subject these days, I decided to do a little research in order to find out some of the more problematic issues involving in it’s use as a fuel substitute. While people argue quite a bit over one point or another, the general consensus seems to be that cars built after the early 90’s can use gas with 10% ethanol without problem. Previous to this, the seals and gaskets in automobiles were made of rubber, which deteriorated when in contact with ethenol based fuels. So while I wouldn’t want to use 100% ethanol for fuel any time soon, it’s perfectly safe to use a mixture on your modern car. More problematic, is the fact that ethanol is not as energy efficient as regular gas. Essencially, it has the affect of reducing the gas mileage of your automobile, which means you need to buy gas more often, which means you polute more, but ethenol is cleaner burning, so there are less emmissions. Basically, that doesn’t mean a whole lot without quantified statistics, but looking around, most people in the know seem to agree that ethanol is a good alternative fuel. The way I figure it, if you ran the alt fuel with the hybrids, you’d have a kick ass car. If you got that crazy guy from california to install the plug into that thing, you’re car would be the most eco friendly thing on the road…of course the economics of that are pretty outlandish, so I suspect that most people will stick with their Toyota Corollas and Honda Civics for the time being…at least until someone makes it easy on the pocketbook for all of us to switch. Of course, if we ever did switch to ethanol as a major sourse of fuel, the next challenge problem we’d face is replacing all our lawn-mowers, gas generators, and outboard motors so that they would even run on the stuff, since they still use all the rubber seals that the car industry got rid of. Now you have the problem of creating a whole new infrastructure for your home gardening, midnight block parties, and nautical activities…of course it’s still cheaper than hydrogen, and Arnold Shwartzenegger already has a Hum-Vee that runs on the stuff.

The Bad Side of Ethanol