Ethanol in fuel

[dizzyblonde]

As we are planning to go up to the scottishlands at the end of May, its nice to know Murco is ethanol free.....as there's lots of them up there!

[snapdragon]

Feeling the need to re-read this thread, am so glad I've tried to avoid Tesco fuel - don't want my Rappy to suffer

[Spyke]

Here in WA the fuel seems mostly pretty good, but the United chain of fuel stations seem to have stopped serving 95RON and now have horrid E10 and other E-prefixed stuff as well, so I never fill up there, I'd advise others to do the same!

[Bear of Little Brain]

ONLY FOR THE SERIOUSLY NERDY/BORED/FANATICAL

Just to muddy my own water, so to speak, I was googling the history of ethanol as a fuel. Much of it seems to be political (so, no change there). I knew that the Model T was multi-fuel,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T
but didn't appreciate just how much of an issue this all was. I'll get to my point soon, but here's a timeline for ethanol. Apparently, it has an almost 1000-year history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_alcohol_fuel
Anyway, I came across this; it is from a site promoting E85, but I think the points made are worth considering, although the language gets a bit slippery in places. The accompanying video seems to "tell it as it is".
http://www.change2e85.com/servlet/Page?template=Myths

As an aside (as if this isn't off-Raptor enough), it seems that the ethanol comes from the starches in the corn and these are about 17% of the mass. What is left is still available as animal feed and claimed to be better for the animals, somewhere here:
http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=11362

Having said all this, I'm still BP-garage hopping and using Ultimate, even if I've been too alarmist in the past.

(Blame this rambling on the dull, wet weather today and not doing what I should be doing. )

[Spyke]

It's definitely not too obscure for this forum, some of us prefer to get sidetracked than look for work, so keep it up! Yeah I don't really think ethanol is evil - but it's potential downsides mean (IMHO) it's definitely not good for old dears like ours, that were not designed for it. But whether we should be using valuable farm land to grow biofuels, when half the planet is starving, is probably one for the pub!