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Gas Mileage and Alternative Fuels

How to calculate it?!?
Use this simple formula below:

• Miles traveled divided by gallons used
• Cost per mile – miles traveled divided by (insurance, maintenance, gasoline, tires)

How to get it the most gas mileage for your vehicle:

• Tires – check pressure
• Thermostat
• Alignment
• Filters

Alternate Fuels

Renewable Sources

Ethanol is one form of renewable energy that is becoming widely used. Ethanol is a form of alcohol that can be burned in engines just like gasoline. But unlike gasoline, which is made by distilling crude oil, ethanol is made from the starchy parts of plants. Most ethanol in this country is created through fermentation of corn. Microscopic yeast cells break down the starch and water, creating ethanol and carbon dioxide gas.

In addition to being a renewable fuel, ethanol helps to reduce air pollution. When anything burns in air, molecules of that substance combine with oxygen. Gasoline is a substance made of carbon and hydrogen. When it burns, some, but not all, of the carbon atoms combine with oxygen to make carbon dioxide(CO2). Hydrogen in the gasoline combines with more of the air's oxygen to make water (H2O). There isn't enough oxygen left to combine with the remaining carbon atoms. Deadly carbon monoxide gas (CO) is the result. Like gasoline, ethanol is made of carbon and hydrogen, but in addition it contains its own supply of oxygen. When ethanol burns with gasoline, its "extra" oxygen atoms combine with the "extra" carbon atoms to reduce or even eliminate CO in the exhaust gases.

In some parts of the U.S., ethanol is mixed with gasoline at 1 part ethanol to 9 parts gasoline to help reduce air pollution. No adjustment is needed for a car's engine to burn this mixture. Some new cars are designed to burn fuel blends of up to 80 percent ethanol.

Currently, ethanol costs more to make than gasoline. New production technologies are being explored that may bring the price of ethanol down in the coming years. Another disadvantage to ethanol, a gallon of ethanol doesn't hold as much chemical energy as a gallon of gasoline. So even though ethanol burns more cleanly than gasoline, a car won't go as many miles per gallon.

San Diego Tribute:

According to U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates, you can get about 21/2 gallons of it from a bushel of corn. And an increasing number of states are working to make an 85 percent ethanol fuel called E85 available at gas stations at prices significantly below that of regular gasoline ... even when you account for the fact that ethanol provides only 62 percent of the mileage of gasoline.

Here's just one catch: According to scientists in New York and California, it takes more energy to make ethanol than you get back in fuel savings. More precisely, says David Pimentel of Cornell University, it takes the equivalent of 1.29 gallons of gasoline to produce enough ethanol to replace one gallon of gasoline at the pump. Instead of making the nation more energy self-sufficient, ethanol production actually increases our need for oil and gas imports, Pimentel says.

More energy is needed to turn the corn into fuel. Ethanol is produced by grinding corn, mixing it with water, and fermenting it in a process similar to that used to make beer or wine. The unprocessed product, in fact, is a lot like beer: 8 percent alcohol and 92 percent water. Not something that's going to burn in a car engine.

To make a usable fuel, all but 0.5 percent of the water must be removed. This is done by a series of distillation and chemical extractions that, according to Pimentel's calculations, use even more energy than was used to grow the corn. And that doesn't count the diesel fuel needed to ship corn to the ethanol plant or ethanol to the pump. In theory, all of these energy costs should make ethanol uneconomical to produce.