Posted by Don in Missouri [97.64.167.2] on Monday, January 12, 2015 at 17:03:27 :
In Reply to: Re: I wouldn't be afraid to use it posted by gmharris [71.105.34.147] on Monday, January 12, 2015 at 13:41:47 :
I'm a biodiesel guy by profession, in case everybody didn't already know that. Biodiesel is different than ethanol, but a lot of these myths resonate with all biofuel. So, here is why turning field corn into fuel does make sense, and it is not going to make your food cost more.
Nature has already figured out how to store solar energy for transportation uses. You can think of a seed as a tiny fuel tank. Plants evolved to store solar energy in a seed to propagate a new plant in the next season, perhaps in a new location. Oil is the best storage device, but sugar and starch also store energy and can be readily converted into alcohol that burns reasonably well in an internal combustion engine. The stored energy in a seed powers the genetic material to grow a new plant. The genetic material is protein. We already grow a bunch of these seeds to feed livestock. However the ratio of protein to energy needed by livestock is greater than the ratio of protein to energy in a plant seed. For this reason, every time we grow a seed to feed an animal, we end up with left over energy in the form of starch and oil. The ratios vary slightly by crop and livestock type, but in general biofuels use starch and oil that we don’t; have a use for in our food system. More importantly, using these leftover byproducts for renewable fuels decreases the cost of producing protein.
Regarding warranties. Autoblog is reporting what people said, but they are not an authority on the law. EPA approves what is a legal fuel. Only flex fuel vehicle are approved to burn E85. E15 use is not as restrictive, because it not that much different than E10.
Auto manufacturers recommend what fuels you should use in their vehicles. You should listen to them. Read your owners’ manual. Do not take your dealers word for it. In my experience, car salesmen know very little about cars, and dealerships have a stake in denying warranty claims.
The car manufacture or car dealership cannot void your warranty for failure to follow the owners’ manual. They can’t tell you what brand of oil or gas to use. If you put the wrong fuel in and that fuel damages the vehicle, the warranty does not cover that. If the vehicle malfunctions because of a manufacturer’s defect, they have to fix that defect under warranty no matter what kind of fuel you used. This may seem like splitting hairs, but dealers have used confusion over this point to illegally deny warranty claims that they should have paid.
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