P38A E85 (85% bioethanol)

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Datatek said:
Question, corrosion is I presume related to Ethanol being hygroscopic? In which case it would not affect modern plastic fuel lines and tanks.
I'm more interested on the possible effects of Ethanol on some types of plastic.
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Ethanol is corrosive to various components in and around the engine.
Plastics which aren't suitably protected against Ethanol start to go brittle, rubber fuel lines go hard, metals like magnesium, aluminium and brass are all effected by Ethanol to one degree or another, so injectors, throttle bodies, pistons, cylinder heads can all be affected.
Fuel pumps are lubricated and cooled by the fuel flowing through them, however Ethanol provides no lubrication, so pump bearings, brushes and commutator all wear quickly. Fuel filters with unsuitable paper elements disintegrate as Ethanol passes though them, this paper ends up in the injectors, causing wear, blocking and failure.
Ethanol isn't so restraint to knock, as it's easily ignited by hot spots in the combustion chamber, doing damage to pistons and bearings.
It's pretty nasty stuff for an engine that wasn't designed for it, which is basically anything made before 2008, as Ethanol wasn't going mainstream at the time, so manufacturers didn't harden the engine or components against its use.
 
Datatek said:
Fair enough. I use solar for battery charging and in the past on my boat, too expensive since Chinese imports were stopped to put it on the house. I have room for about 9Kw.
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Shame. Out of interest, why are Chinese imports stopped?
Is that just in France, or in the UK as well?
 
Turboman said:
A lot of renewably generated electricity doesn't actually go into the UHT network, because the power sources tend to be smaller and more widely distributed geographically, the power can be distributed direct to the charging points on the 11Kva three phase lines.

Lithium can be mined as well as extracted from sea water, and there is actually quite a bit in Devon and Cornwall.
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Be better finding a way to power vehicles on Pasties.;):rolleyes:
 
Datatek said:
Question, corrosion is I presume related to Ethanol being hygroscopic? In which case it would not affect modern plastic fuel lines and tanks.
I'm more interested on the possible effects of Ethanol on some types of plastic.
Click to expand...
The stuff I have read about it indicates that Ethanol is more of a problem to metals, and natural base rubber, than to plastics.
I don't know how accurate any of that is.
With the 1964 Series, we have decided to play it cautious, and use E5 unleaded for a while, until we see if E10 does the reported damage to Solex carburettors.
On my 51 plate Mondeo I use E10, but with the odd tank of Super (E5).
I would be pretty wary of using E85 at all in anything other than vehicles a few years old.
 
Datatek said:
Nissan Leaf and I have seen some stuff on Tesla batteries. Like all batteries, type of use, charge discharge profile and manufacturing quality will affect battery life.
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Leaf is well known about, but it's a 12 year old design, which used bad battery management, and no form of environmental control for the battery, so they degraded. However a 12 year old leaf will still have 50 - 70% of it's original capacity, even at 200k miles, which shows the battery can be horrendously mistreated, and it still works.

Tesla batteries do fail, but again they are massively mistreated by the owners, who use the acceleration the vehicle is capable of giving, dispite Tesla telling owners that using excessive acceleration will shorten the battery and power units life.
Super charging is another battery killer, as it heats the pack up, causing cell degradation.

It's standard practice to maximise battery life by limiting maximum charge to 80%, and maximum discharge to 20%, or 10% at a pinch.
Most newer EVs have this already calculated into the battery, so you buy a vehicle with a usable capacity of say 70 kWhr, but the battery is in reality closer to 80 kWhr in total capacity.
 
Datatek said:
Are you telling me that North Sea wind farms do not feed into the national grid?
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Yes it does, but the electricity isn't sent down to Cornwall from there. The electricity goes to the nearest point of use, that's how an electricity grid works. The power generated in an area, is used in that area, which is all very carefully calculated to minimise transmission losses. Yes the power from the North sea turbines could be sent to Cornwall if needed, but its not, simply because it's so wasteful.
Home solar works the exact same way, only on a micro scale. The power from a houses panels is sent from the home inverter at the exact same frequency as the mains electricity, only at a fraction higher voltage, which effectively pushes the electricity back to the grid, which is then used by homes and business in the local area.
 
Nodge68 said:
Yes it does, but the electricity isn't sent down to Cornwall from there. The electricity goes to the nearest point of use, that's how an electricity grid works. The power generated in an area, is used in that area, which is all very carefully calculated to minimise transmission losses. Yes the power from the North sea turbines could be sent to Cornwall if needed, but its not, simply because it's so wasteful.
Home solar works the exact same way, only on a micro scale. The power from a houses panels is sent from the home inverter at the exact same frequency as the mains electricity, only at a fraction higher voltage, which effectively pushes the electricity back to the grid, which is then used by homes and business in the local area.
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Also, there is massive demand much closer to the North Sea, so the power will go there. It is like water in a pipe, if you turn on a tap close to where the supply is coming from, it will take the pressure.
 
Turboman said:
There are, and it does. But not to nearly such a great extent as with the old style centralised generation.

I don't need to look at it on the internet. I know what happens because it is my work.
I am a renewable generator, both to earn money(wind), and for my own use on the boat(solar).
In addition, at least 3 of my close friends work for the DNO.
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Wind was always considered net carbon neutral, even considering the (non-green) steel and concrete used in the turbine construction but With solar it used to be estimated that the total carbon equivalent footprint of the solar panels made in China was bigger than the amount of electricity they were expected to produce over their lifetime. Is that still the case?
 
Grrrrrr said:
Wind was always considered net carbon neutral, even considering the (non-green) steel and concrete used in the turbine construction but With solar it used to be estimated that the total carbon equivalent footprint of the solar panels made in China was bigger than the amount of electricity they were expected to produce over their lifetime. Is that still the case?
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Don't know. I do know the Chinese panels are very cheap, and generate well.
Panels seem to be lasting a lot longer than was predicted as well.
The ones on my boat are about 10 years old, and still generate plenty, although on one of the panels a few cells have gone monocrystalline, which must knock a few watts off.
 
Grrrrrr said:
With solar it used to be estimated that the total carbon equivalent footprint of the solar panels made in China was bigger than the amount of electricity they were expected to produce over their lifetime. Is that still the case?
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It was never the case, with the exception of developing the panel initially.

The figures of panel manufacturing today are much more reasonable.
Solar panels now take about 200 kW of energy to make 100 Watts of panel.

I'll use a 100 Watt panel as an example, larger panels are simply multiples of that 100 Watts.
100 Watts X 5 hours of sunlight is 0.5 Kw per day. At this rate, it doesn't take very long to offset it's initial carbon footprint, often under 1 years generation, even in the UK climate.
As a panel has a 25 + year life, it's clearly obvious that a solar panel will produce hundreds of times it's manufacturing energy requirements, during its lifetime.
 
Nodge68 said:
It was never the case, with the exception of developing the panel initially.

The figures of panel manufacturing today are much more reasonable.
Solar panels now take about 200 kW of energy to make 100 Watts of panel.

I'll use a 100 Watt panel as an example, larger panels are simply multiples of that 100 Watts.
100 Watts X 5 hours of sunlight is 0.5 Kw per day. At this rate, it doesn't take very long to offset it's initial carbon footprint, often under 1 years generation, even in the UK climate.
As a panel has a 25 + year life, it's clearly obvious that a solar panel will produce hundreds of times it's manufacturing energy requirements, during its lifetime.
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That includes the mining, purification and transport of materials, as well as the final act in the manufacturing plant?
 
Grrrrrr said:
That includes the mining, purification and transport of materials, as well as the final act in the manufacturing plant?
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Yes. The whole manufacturing process is included in the 200 kW of energy per 100 Watts of panel, from raw materials to final shipping to the destination. ;)
 
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