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  1. #1
    Saab Enthusiast mattlach's Avatar
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    BioPower on E85?

    Has anyone done this with the BioPower engine in the new 9-5 yet?

    In the 150hp 9-3 BioPowers they sold in Europe, there was a 20% bhp increase and 16% torque increase when switching to E85 over regular gas.

    Can we expect to see similar gains from the 2.0T engine in the new 9-5?

  2. #2
    Mike
    Moderator Shazam's Avatar
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    I'm confused to how you can (not you, but the people that came up with this stuff) get an actual power boost with E85, as most other cars that use it get worse performance. Even with car testings such as one on a Koenigsegg I was reading a while back, they said something like "it produces 1xxx hp, and that's on ethanol! On gasoline it's somewhere around 1xxx+." E85 has significantly less energy per-gallon/liter than normal gasoline, so it would make sense (just off that fact alone, there may be more to it than just that), that performance would decrease on E85.

    The few people that I know that have used it (Chevy Suburban, and a Ford F150), reported the car feeling significantly slower--"felt like a real dog", and that their fuel economy was bad enough that the price advantage over gasoline became virtually zero if not actually in gasoline's favor.
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  3. #3
    Saab Enthusiast mattlach's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Shazam View Post
    I'm confused to how you can (not you, but the people that came up with this stuff) get an actual power boost with E85, as most other cars that use it get worse performance. Even with car testings such as one on a Koenigsegg I was reading a while back, they said something like "it produces 1xxx hp, and that's on ethanol! On gasoline it's somewhere around 1xxx+." E85 has significantly less energy per-gallon/liter than normal gasoline, so it would make sense (just off that fact alone, there may be more to it than just that), that performance would decrease on E85.

    The few people that I know that have used it (Chevy Suburban, and a Ford F150), reported the car feeling significantly slower--"felt like a real dog", and that their fuel economy was bad enough that the price advantage over gasoline became virtually zero if not actually in gasoline's favor.
    Each gallon of E85 has less energy than a traditional gallon of fuel.

    A car designed for E85 has fuel
    Injectors and a fuel pump able to deliver more fuel to compensate, but milage is worse.

    The more power comes from the fact that ethanol burns slower and thus has a higher knock resistance. Because of this, a turbo car designed to check the fuel quality can adjust the boost and timing and produce more power.

  4. #4
    Saab Enthusiast mattlach's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dave T View Post
    This is true. The Mercedes Benz C300 Luxury Sedan in the U.S. can use E85 but not the C300 Sports Sedan. The C300's gas mileage is 18 mpg (city), 21 (combined), and 26 highway. With E85, it is 13 mpg (city), 15 (combined), 19 (highway).
    Ahh, but the C300 doesn't have a turbo that can increase boost when there is higher octane fuel :p

    The ethanol also is better for
    A heat perspective. The conbustion chamber winds up being cooler with ethanol, and as such you can do even more boost.

  5. #5
    Mike
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    Quote Originally Posted by mattlach View Post
    The conbustion chamber winds up being cooler with ethanol, and as such you can do even more boost.
    But doesn't a cooler chamber mean a less efficient car; just from a basic thermodynamic point of view?

    Would you happen to have a link (or mind explaining yourself in a bit more depth) how it gets better performance and such on ethanol than gasoline? I trust you, I just want to understand why, better.
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  6. #6
    Saab Enthusiast mattlach's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Shazam View Post
    But doesn't a cooler chamber mean a less efficient car; just from a basic thermodynamic point of view?

    Would you happen to have a link (or mind explaining yourself in a bit more depth) how it gets better performance and such on ethanol than gasoline? I trust you, I just want to understand why, better.
    I don't fully understand it either, hence this thread :p

    My sources for power/torque increases (20%/16% respectively) are from the UK Saab Biopower site.. I understand they were calculated for the 150hp 2.0t model, so I don't know what that means for the 220hp 2.0T model.

    Then I read the wikipedia page on E85.

    The commonly stated Octane rating for E85 of 105 octane, is apparently incorrect. E85 does show an octane increase over premium 93 Octane traditional fuel, but it is more modest 94-96 octane rating (MON+RON)/2, the U.S. octane measuring method.

    My thoughts were that while an octane increase CAN result in an increase in power and torque due to more boost, and more advanced timings, the benefit from anywhere from 1 to 6 octane seems like it might be pretty limited, so I scoured the page for more reasons for this effect, and this is where I came up with the heat concept.

    My understanding (though I could be wrong, as I am just reading up on this stuff) is that the ethanol content - once injected into the chamber - pressurizes more easily without becoming hot, leading to a lower temperature in the chamber before ignition, and allowing more air/fuel mixture to be compressed into the chamber. Sort of the same thing an inter cooler helps with by physically cooling the charge air. the ethanol also burns more efficiently due to - among other things - smaller atomization - resulting in a more complete combustion.

    While it is more efficiently combusted in the chamber - that is, more of the available stored chemical energy is released into usable kinetic energy - than traditional fuels, it also has less stored chemical energy per gallon in liquid form, which is why you get less range per gallon than with traditional fuels.

    So, the efficiency is higher, there's just less energy there to begin with.

    This is the best I can come up with. I think I might need some sort of thermodynamics expert to take this to the next level, as it is not my area of expertise.

  7. #7
    Mike
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    What you are saying makes sense, I'll take that as a good answer.
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  8. #8
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    I bought a new 9-5 Turbo4 BioPower in October 2011, a couple of months after the last post on this thread. Just today (1/22/2012) I filled my tank with E85. I can already tell a difference in performance (for the better) but will have to wait and see just how much poorer the MPG will be. Stay tuned.

  9. #9
    Saab Enthusiast mattlach's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by 900EMS View Post
    I bought a new 9-5 Turbo4 BioPower in October 2011, a couple of months after the last post on this thread. Just today (1/22/2012) I filled my tank with E85. I can already tell a difference in performance (for the better) but will have to wait and see just how much poorer the MPG will be. Stay tuned.
    I'm curious. What fuel do you normally run it on?

    I've been running my 2011 9-5 Turbo4 BioPower mostly on E85 (~80% of my fillups) and I don't notice a significant difference in driveability or power between E85 and gas, but I only fill mine up with 93 octane when I buy normal gas. There may be more of a difference if you fill it up with regular or midgrade.

    There is a difference in milage, but it is less pronounced than I have read that owners of other flex fuel vehicles see. This is probably due to how the turbo reacts with it. I typically see an about 15% drop in MPG with E85 over 93 oct. Since E85 is cheaper than 93 oct, it usually winds up being about a wash financially.

    My philosophy is, if they cost the same, I might as well do the more environmentally responsible thing and stick with E85.

    One benefit I have noticed with E85 is that it doesn't smell bad on cold starts. That typical unspent fuel/exhaust mix smell you get from cars on really cold days on cold starts is replaced by a slight alcohol smell which smells sortof like wiper fluid. Much more pleasant. :p

  10. #10
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    Here in Colorado octane ratings are a bit lower. Regular is typically 85 octane, mid-grade 87 and premium 91. The difference between premium and E85 might be a little more pronounced here than at basically sea level. I've only run 91 octane in the car until this tank. There's probably about 40% gasoline present. We'll see what it's like once I burn through a bit more of the gasoline and get to a purer mixture of E85.

 

 

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