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La Nacion has an article stating that RECOPE will start selling gasoline with 7.5% of ethanol by October this year. They will need by 2010, 16,000 hectares of sugar cane for full implementation. Raising the 7.5 to 10% ethanol by that year.
Also, NO tax on Flex-Fuel vehicle’s.
Interesting concept but what is going to happen to those cars’ pre-1980 that are not capable of the Flex-Fuel concept.
Warren
Hi there, Terry from Texas….Are you saying that one can bring in a flex-fuel car to C.R. and not have to pay import taxes.
If that is the case, it would be worth the cost to convert any vehicle to flex fuel. This would be huge if it is true.
Would somebody knowledgeable please define the term “flex fuel”, please?
It’s my understanding that the current meaning of “flex fuel” is that, without further modification, a “flex fuel” vehicle will run on either the “gasoline” sold in the U.S. (which may have some ethanol content) OR on straight (100%) ethanol.
“Gasoline-powered” vehicles in common use today in the U.S. and elsewhere will run on the gasoline-ethanol blend. That doesn’t meet the definition of “flex fuel” as I understand it.
If my understanding is correct, then this discussion is pointless as it regards the situation in Costa Rica unless and until pure ethanol is available here rather than a “mostly-gasoline-but-a-little-bit-of-ethanol” blend. Until pure ethanol is available in Costa Rica, who cares of a vehicle meets the definition of “flex fuel” since there is no pure ethanol to run it on, and why would the government waive the import duty?
Anything built after 1999 in the USA car wise is capable of Flex-fuel or more, it will accept up to 90% gasoline with 10% of ethanol, so you have 90 gas + 10 ethanol and yes any vehicle that meets this definition will be tax exempt by CR laws.
This is not a concept idea but a proven fact. Here in the US we have ALL gas stations selling flex-fuel, it has 10% ethanol and 90% gas.
BTY gas will reach $4.00 a gallon by July 2008 even with ethanol in the USA. RECOPE is just doing what other countries are adoptig.
Well, just to help confuse this discussion, General Motors’ website defines a “flex fuel” vehicle as one that will run on a mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. That’s a very different mix from what La Nacion reported.
You are right up to 85% of ethanol and 15% gas. So 50-50 is OK and 80-20 too. What is interesting is that the goverment is considering a NO tax on flex-fuel vehicles, this is the important issue.
warren
Beware of the road to ethanol. Pure ethanol is what funny cars @ the drag strip run off of and burns extremely hot, much hotter than gasoline. This leads to a shorter engine life. It does burn cleaner, but it uses many food crops to make. Brazil is self-sufficient on sugar cane, but cane takes lots of land, which is not available on that scale in CR. Any grain can be used, but there is a rice shortage already. Palm oil can be used for bio-diesel, but do you want the enitre coast to look like between Quepos and Jaco or Manuel Antonio to Dominical? The only non-impactive material to use would be biowaste – all the peels, rinds and shells from all the fruit and vegetabes consumed. Make a fuel out if it, keep it out of the landfill. There is a power plant in Spokane, Washington than runs off biowaste.
Flex fuel is 85/15, but it will become a more genenric term. VW’s and older Mercedes diesels will run on straight vegetable oil ($600 pre-heat kit). The original Diesel engine was designed to run on peanut oil so farmers could be self sufficient and independent of kerosene or petroleum.I totally agree with grb1063. Any land used to produce bio-fuel is food stolen from the poor. If they are going to use ethanol then bio-waste is the only way to go.
I believe you’ll find ethanol runs MUCH cooler than gasoline,has much higher octane value.
We need to spend whatever it takes to develop fuelstocks from Any type of cellulose,there have been major strides already made.Here are some facts about ethanol… These are all commonly discussed topics on recent news programs here in Canada.
1. It takes 3 – 4 gallons of gas and/or diesel to produce 1 gallon of Ethanol
2. It does NOT burn cleaner than gas… it produces MORE CO2 than gas
3. If your vehicle has a “plastic” fuel tank… Ethanol will dissolve it!
4. Corn grown to produce Ethanol is “B” grade and only good for animal feed and ethanol production. (Loss of food for human comsumption land)
5. It costs 30 -40% more to produce a gallon of Ethanol than a gallon of Gas
6. Ethanol has no lubricating factor that Gas has… therefore wear and tear on Engines is moreDoes this make sense to anyone…
Just for thought…
OPEC recently (may 2008) stated that oil wells capped 20 years ago due to being empty were now full again. Oil IS a renewable resource!
Recent geological studies show 3 trillion barrels of Oil in NE Colorado. Shell is said to be going to build wells and a refinery in the area to recover it.
The US gets most of it’s oil from Canada. Mexico #2 and Saudi Arabia is #3
Just some food for thought
Oh and by the way… Funny cars run on Methyl Alcohol or methanol… not Ethanol
Edited on Aug 01, 2008 00:20
Edited on Aug 01, 2008 00:23
I think you need to do more research on ethanol,since these figures disagree with ANYTHING ever published on production (and I’ve been studying this since 70’s)
P.S. Google “ethanol saab” ,read ’05 article for starter.
Edited on Aug 01, 2008 22:58
Ok lets look at just the first point I made…
“1. It takes 3 – 4 gallons of gas and/or diesel to produce 1 gallon of Ethanol”How can this be??
Most Ethanol in North America is derived from corn. This is grown the traditional way … in fields (*). The Farmers plant, grow, fertilize, insceticide and harvest the corn in the tradtional manner using farm equipment powered by gas/ diesel engines. The corn is then transported by trucks (using diesel) to a processing plant where is is turned in to ethanol. This is then transported by diesel truck to delivery points around the country. All these factors are taken into consideration when pricing Ethanol at the pump, so why shouldn’t the use of fossil fuel be factored in when looking at the “cleaness” of the product.
(*) Fields used for ethanol use corn are fields NOT producing food for local comsumption. This has an adverse effect on food prices world wide.
The final product of ethanol does burn cleaner than gas… I’ll give you that, but what about all the emmissions from the production of the corn…
points 4 and 5 are explained above… ALL factors have to be taken into account when looking at costs of production.
Point 6 – Because of the lack of lubricants in the fuel, more exotic metals are used for internal parts of the engine, thus increasing the cost of production and therefore the final cost to the consumer.
You mentioned Saab… Built in Scandanvia and a long time “well built, well respected car” I personally have owned one many years ago… no problem there… However, Scandanavia is a very small area compared to the North American continent, and distribution costs will be phenominal, or have more processing plants…at more cost!!!
Now, don’t get me wrong I’m all for finding alternatives… but fuel from corn (or sugar cane as in Brazil)where it takes away from our food supply is not necassarily the best option… IF it were from bio waste ONLY then it would make more sense as that is recycling to produce energy from waste, which, I believe was the original concept.
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