[FiatDiesel]

Originally Posted by sachin_cs

I think we are not addressing the elephant in the room, we are shooting aimlessly.

No sir, they are not shooting aimlessly, they are shooting for your pocket, your bank account and they know you won’t be able to do anything.

[ads295]

I'm planning to do a test by running my car for a long distance without ethanol and with.

Ideally I want to purchase a full tank of fuel + 20%, separate the ethanol (very easy), and run it. On the return trip, I'll fill up standard fuel at any good pump.

This is a good way to quantify the exact differences in fuel economy.

The problem is that my car won't return more than 10kmpl even on the highway so FE differences between E20 and E0 fuel will be hard to tell! But let's see.

I'm definitely planning some activity like this the next time I need to go intercity.

[antz.bin]

I have been abstaining from posting here since the time I saw this thread.

This is what goes through my mind whenever I see it

https://youtu.be/31g0YE61PLQ?si=QlhA_UO76hdIg7y3

There is not one car, nay! Vehicle, that can accept this fuel, that is currently in India. So whom are they making it for? Diesel Blends were supposed to be Biodiesel, not Ethanol! We have cars and trucks compatible with B7! What is this monstrosity? Was the ethanol lobby not happy with ruining pre-E20 era vehicles and needed more victims?

Also, I have seen my old bike deteriorate with force fed E10 petrol. It literally lost 10% mileage the day E10 was made available to the local petrol pumps. It was like the 10% Ethanol was equivalent to air! Just that my tank capacity also went down 10% unlike what it would have been with air.

Someone has to put an end to this madness by the Hon. transport minister. The best way to do it is by exercising the power of their vote in states going into Assembly elections. If they lose, maybe they will get the message that they are messing up somewhere.

The govt themselves say that adding 15% Ethanol will cause fuel economy to drop by 10%. So, effectively:

Distance travelled in
900ml Diesel = 850ml Diesel + 150 ml Ethanol.

Subtracting 850ml Diesel from both sides

For it to be commercially viable to the govt trying to save costs, cost of procurement should at least be
50ml Diesel = 150ml Ethanol

Or
Price of
1 liter Diesel = 3 liters of Ethanol.

But as per this article, the procurement price of Ethanol is ₹56.xx/liter : https://www.business-standard.com/in...2900472_1.html

And price of Diesel when supplied to the retailer (which includes transportation) is also ₹56.xx/liter: https://www.hindustanpetroleum.com/PriceBuildup

Whom exactly are these guys trying to fool here?

Either voting to save your diesel vehicles OR a PIL. These are the only 2 things that can save us now. What will it be for you?

[Elevate2024]

As much as we lament on the ethanol blending, I don't see it going away as sugar mills in Maharashtra/UP is not a single politician monopoly, all political party leaders have mills with them. In addition the govt benefits from it in following ways:
1. Lesser crude oil imports
2. Please the sugarcane farmers (a big votebank for all parties) in UP and Maharashtra - 2 two biggest states of the country
3. Scoring points on the "ESG norms" dictated by the global push towards lowering emissions on paper (these norms do not have much relation with reality though)
4. Boost the economy and net taxation with more car sales

OEMs wont complain as point no 4 helps them too along with extra revenue coming their way due to issues arising from fuel blending in auto parts.

[xway]

Originally Posted by antz.bin

I have been abstaining from posting here since the time I saw this thread.

This is what goes through my mind whenever I see it

https://Youtu.be/31g0YE61PLQ?si=QlhA_UO76hdIg7y3

There is not one car, nay! Vehicle, that can accept this fuel, that is currently in India. So whom are they making it for? Diesel Blends were supposed to be Biodiesel, not Ethanol! We have cars and trucks compatible with B7! What is this monstrosity? Was the ethanol lobby not happy with ruining pre-E20 era vehicles and needed more victims?

The govt themselves say that adding 15% Ethanol will cause fuel economy to drop by 10%. So, effectively:

Distance travelled in
900ml Diesel = 850ml Diesel + 150 ml Ethanol.

Subtracting 850ml Diesel from both sides

For it to be commercially viable to the govt trying to save costs, cost of procurement should at least be
50ml Diesel = 150ml Ethanol

Or
Price of
1 liter Diesel = 3 liters of Ethanol.


Whom exactly are these guys trying to fool here?

Either voting to save your diesel vehicles OR a PIL. These are the only 2 things that can save us now. What will it be for you?

Great data and facts shared. Some more points to add -

Do you know that Ethanol is taxed at 5% GST where we all know how much tax and cess are on Petrol/Diesel so Rs 40/litre petrol ends up costing close to Rs. 100, including states and center shares. So, ethanol blended in Fuel also ends up being taxed at these astronomical rates, a double whammy.

This does not end here, there is Rs. 10 inflation buffer charge added to Petrol/Fuel cost before charging the taxes, and later this too undergoes the tax mix so another cost charged with huge taxes.

If one looks into all its nothing short of legal robbery.

[Lalvaz]

Sad that all these drastic changes in our fuel can be done without any detailed test reports being made public showing the impact of the fuel change on our vehicle engines. Sadder still that one man seemingly can take these ad hoc decisions and impose it on the entire country, and we're still calling ourselves a democracy.

Nitin Gadkari, you need to stop this nonsense.

[Chisels121]

Honestly folks nothing would change from our cribbing about less reliability and less fuel efficiency from our cars. The Government would do whatever they want as they know there are hardly any car owners in their votebank. Hence no point in blaming the government and let's just hope our car's don't break down.
Also as my above post is now highlighted I should add that Bihar supplies sugarcane to every eligible refinery in India for very cheap as we don't have our own refineries.
Note to mods:Please prevent this discussion from getting too much political as we all know it's of no use

[SideView]

Question is , What can we as “mango people” do about this ad-hoc blending issue, rather than taking it laying down?

Petition/ RTI/ legal recourse? What options do we have to push back?

[DivyanshuDiv]

Originally Posted by SideView

Question is , What can we as “mango people” do about this ad-hoc blending issue, rather than taking it laying down?

Petition/ RTI/ legal recourse? What options do we have to push back?

Everything including removing such people who are making living different for "common people".

[satyamkolhe]

Originally Posted by xway

Very poor idea, so the math goes something like this -

Mix 20% ethanol in diesel petrol
The mileage reduces by 20%
Cost reduces 0%
One may rather just put 0.8 litre fuel instead of that 20% good for nothing Ethanol

I doubt the cost reduces by 0%. It should actually increase considering the fuel cost per litre stayed the same when the blending started.
They are selling the ethanol at the price of petrol and selling the less-blended fuel at a premium.
So we end up paying for 0.8L petrol and 200mL ethanol and we are paying the petrol prices and taxes on the ethanol content as well.

Basically some powerful Sugar mill owners have turned what was a byproduct/waste of sugar production into something more lucrative then the main product(sugar) itself.

[SmartCat]

I don't think these claims of such low fuel economy are real. We at Team-BHP should not spread rumors & hearsay like that. Please back it up with science/data/logic. I will go first to prove otherwise:

1) We are still at 12% ethanol mix, not 20%. If we are getting 15% to 20% lower fuel economy now, are you suggesting we will get 25% to 35% lower fuel economy when we start getting E20 fuel?

2) Why is my fuel economy not noticeably different from the past?

3) Ethanol is proper fuel! It is not like Ramar Pillai's herbal petrol. With some modifications, all cars can be made to run on pure ethanol.

4) This video says ethanol has 2/3 rd the energy density of petrol. That is, theoretically but not exactly, one litre of ethanol equals 0.66 litres petrol. Extending that theory, when you fill 10 litres E20 fuel, it is equivalent to 9.3 litres of petrol. So the negative effect on fuel economy will be there, but more likely 6% to 8% on older vehicles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_DQPLihXfo

Further, on E20 compliant engines, there will probably be no change in FE, since ethanol produces more power despite lower energy density.

[BabaYaga1210]

As a young enthusiast this is heart breaking to say the least. It was always a dream of mine to buy a big diesel SUV. It has been only a couple of years that I have started earning and I have been saving up so much to fulfil this dream. Sadly it seems that the government is hell bent on destroying the car industry, diesels especially.

I would like to point out that ethanol blending is not something new in petrols, many countries do it at a much higher ratio as well. E85 for example is recommended for a lot of high performance vehicles to extract their peak power. But the car must be flex fuel compatible.

I have never heard of ethanol blending in deisels though, don’t know where that idea came from. I am still hopeful that this guy will U-turn at the last moment just as he did with the airbags rule. The transport lobby just needs to be strong enough, he is a business man after all, will do what he finds more profitable for himself.

[N4Nikunj]

Great insights.

I would beg to differ here. While the fuel efficiency part might not bothersome for some users, the effects of ethanol blending in the long run would be a major point of concern.

I can see my 2015 Grand i10 petrol engine sound more gruff even after timely oil changes after the ethanol dispensing started.

We've seen threads where the Fuel pumps needed to be replaced for certain cars.

We can't blindly believe that all the BS-6-equipped Diesel cars are compatible with flex fuel. The current crop of cars are very sensitive when it comes to fuel quality.

In the end, I will only say one thing diesel is their biggest enemy when they want the consumers to buy cars every 5-10 years.

Like many said they killed diesel engines to satisfy their greed of Taxes.

[satyamkolhe]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

This video says ethanol has 2/3 rd the energy density of petrol. That is, theoretically but not exactly, one litre of ethanol equals 0.66 litres petrol. Extending that theory, when you fill 10 litres E20 fuel, it is equivalent to 9.3 litres of petrol. So the negative effect on fuel economy will be there, but more likely 6% to 8% on older vehicles.

https://www.Youtube.com/watch?v=6_DQPLihXfo

Further, on E20 compliant engines, there will probably be no change in FE, since ethanol produces more power despite lower energy density.

While this is true that theoretically, ethanol has a 2/3rd of energy density of petrol. But I don't think we can extrapolate fuel efficiency numbers based on that information alone.

Many other factors come into play here since the Octane number is higher than that of petrol. The compression ratio of the engine will also matter in this case and also how the engine is tuned by the manufacturers.
While manufacturers say that their engines are "E20 compliant", that does not mean they are tuned for that fuel. E20 compliance just means that the engine will not seize on that fuel blend.

In India, fuel efficiency matters a lot and everyone wants to show higher kmpl numbers for their cars. I tried to do some research on the type of fuel ARAI test cycles are done on, but couldn't really find any information on that.(If someone knows, it will be helpful). Since the fuel pump, injectors, ECU etc remains same for a E20 compliant engine, it will be tuned for a particular blend , and efficiency figures can not be extrapolated based on the energy density here.

So if the engine is tuned for better fuel efficiency on 100% gasoline, it will not give the same efficiency for E20 fuel and then the lower energy density will reduce the efficiency figures from that.

That is the reason different engines show different reduction in efficiency after switching to blended fuels and some of our fellow BHPians are reporting a bigger drop than expected.

PS- This is based on my experience of working on multi-fuel marine engines of 40,000 KWs and above and I might have missed somethings which are only applicable to smaller engines that I am not aware of. In that case, corrections are welcome.

[SmartCat]

Originally Posted by satyamkolhe

While manufacturers say that their engines are "E20 compliant", that does not mean they are tuned for that fuel. E20 compliance just means that the engine will not seize on that fuel blend.Since the fuel pump, injectors, ECU etc remains same for a E20 compliant engine, it will be tuned for a particular blend , and efficiency figures can not be extrapolated based on the energy density here.

This article says E20 compliance involves upgrade of a large number of components -> from fuel tank to the engine. Even the ECU is tweaked. https://www.tvsmotor.com/media/blog/...u-need-to-know

So E20 engines will have none of the disadvantages of ethanol and all the advantages:

The octane rating of ethanol is higher than that of gasoline. Better engine efficiency, performance, and combustion characteristics may result from this. Compression ratios and thermal efficiency can be increased in engines tuned for greater ethanol blends.

Since ethanol has a higher-octane rating than gasoline, it lowers the possibility of engine knock, enabling more aggressive engine tuning and leading to a potential increase in power output in engines meant to run on E20.

However admittedly, the fact that E20 compliance means upgrades to lots of components implies corrossion will indeed be a problem for older cars. So we can expect higher maintenance costs and eventually low resale values for 10+ year old cars.