[extropy-chat] cheap alcohol

Mike Lorrey mlorrey at yahoo.com
Wed Sep 21 21:04:48 UTC 2005



--- Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:

> Does it make any difference to the celebration of rising oil and gas 
> prices that it take a large amount of incompressible time and $$ to  
> re-tool for alternate energy sources?  

Actually, wrt ethanol, there isn't a real retooling problem. All cars
sold in the US since 1980 are built to handle up to 10% ethanol mixes.
Boosting existing vehicles to 25% mix tolerance would require merely an
adjustment of carbeuretion, perhaps a change in fuel injectors, as well
as a programming update to engine control computers. Thats it. This is
a trained mechanic telling you this. If the car companies claim
otherwise, they are blowing smoke up your backside to justify screwing
you for more money.

The oil refinery system does not need changing. Ethanol can be simply
poured into gas tanker truck tanks when they are being filled at the
refinery or the distributor. By the time it gets to the gas station it
is fully mixed. You can even buy ethanol and mix it into your tank
yourself at the station. Many people in cold states do this already to
deal with occurences of water condensation in their tanks. "Dry gas" is
essentially annhydrous alcohol. Once they offer pure alcohol pumps, all
you do is pump twice: depending on your engine tolerance, you mix
either 10% (2 of 20 gallons) or 25% alcohol (5 of 20 gallons, doh).
Stand on the corner of your bumper and shake your car good several
times. Sit for five minutes and you are fully mixed.

> Are we happy with perhaps  
> major economic suckage while the readjustment occurs?   I'm not.    
> Waiting for the crunch to get bad enough is waiting much too long in 
> terms of the amount of suffering and opportunity for attendant
> mischief.

Suffering? Mischief? What are you saying?

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
Founder, Constitution Park Foundation:
http://constitutionpark.blogspot.com
Personal/political blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

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