Pablo,
I'm pretty sure they still sell it at that "green" fuel center in San Diego.
Yeah, I should have said widely available in CA. Last I checked that green fuel center was the only place in the entire state open to the public!
GN Brett
E85 is 85% ethanol alcohol and 15% gas. During winter times from what I have read the mix can drop down to 70% ethanol and the rest gas because ethanol does not like cold starts.
It is leaps and bounds a better fuel than gasoline in that it has a higher octane (around 104) it has a much higher latent heat value (the amount of heat it absorbs in the process of turning into a vapor...put your finger in alcohol and hold it in the wind you'll see how it is cool afterwards)
and it has higher specific energy. Specific energy is a measurement of how much energy it releases when burned for best power. Its like the sum of both air and fuel when burned in an equivalent amount to something else. For example. Lets say you had 1 cubic foot of space to burn fuel and air in. If you filled that space with a best power AFR mix using gasoline for an NA application, you would have around 12.7:1 parts air to gasoline ratio in that 1 cubic foot of space.
For straight ethanol, in that one cubic foot, you would have much more ethanol and a lot less air. Something like 9:1 parts air to ethanol. So while its true that
per fluid gallon ethanol has less energy, In practice, using more of it per "cubic foot" you end up releasing more energy in combustion.
The reason you run more ethanol than gasoline is because ethanol carries its own oxygen. Its the same principal behind why Nitrous works. Nitrous itself doesn't burn, but it allows you to run a lot more fuel since the nitrous is providing the oxygen for that extra fuel that would otherwise not be there.
All these things add up to make a great fuel for forced induction. The latent heat property is important because this can make the fuel seem like it is actually a higher octane than it is because it is taking away the heat that contributes to detonation. IIRC Donnie Wang who runs his car on straight methanol I think figured his fuel was more equivalent to 130 octane gasoline despite methanol being more like 118 octane because of the latent heat value of methanol (which is higher than ethanol).
I also think that the talk of fuel systems not being able to handle ethanol are greatly exaggerated. There are plenty of people online running e85 in cars that were sold as Gas only without problems. For some reason I get the sense that some people think that E85 is like sulfuric acid. Our cars are already designed to handle fuel that is 10% ethanol. If you look at how the oem's design things, they never design them to just barely be compatible or just barely be adequate. The safety factor of things (or how much they are over designed for the purpose) can exceed 15 times the anticipated load or use. I think this is evident when you have plenty of people running e85 in vehicles with stock fuel systems without fuel system problems. Do a search online and you will see this. People have left rubber hoses sitting in it for months without any noticeable deterioration. Not the most scientific test, but it still illustrates nonetheless that it is not sulfuric acid.