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When Alcohol And Airplanes Make A Good Mix
gilgsn writes "Both for the economy and the environment, as suggested in this Iwon Money article. The Brazilians use sugar cane alcohol to fuel their modification of a single engine crop duster called the "Ipanema." The company projects a 25 percent increase in revenue from the new alcohol planes and increased income to convert existing gasoline-fueled Ipanemas to alcohol. With the threat of war for the U.S. and a subsequent raise in oil prices, this might be of some interest for our general aviation."
The reason why the use alcohol as a fuel in Brazil is of course the large sugar cane production in the country.
Use Google.
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
Unfortunately, it is illegal for me to run anything other than 100LL fuel in my certified airplane without doing a bunch of paperwork, testing, and obtaining a STC (Supplemental Type Certificate) or paying someone else who has done all of that work. If I owned an experimental/homebuilt aircraft, that would be different. But those are not allowed to be used for any sort of commercial operation.
Diesel cars used to be hot in the early 80's because diesel was so much cheaper than unleaded or regular. Economics screwed that up because diesel cars got to be big enough that regular gas stations (not just truck stops) started to carry diesel. That increased the gas stations cost, and thus raised the price of diesel to the same or higher levels compared to unleaded.
Or in the case of the UK (where we are taxed 80% on our gasoline), our government made a big deal about getting people to switch to diesel as it was taxed considerably less than regular gasoline, and was cleaner for the environment. Then, as soon as a significant quantity of people had realised the money they could save by switching over, the government inflated the tax so that it now costs MORE per gallon than regular.
I love this country!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
In the 80's a large percent of the car run with alcohol, but then the oil prices fell and the program became economically less interesting. But there are still cars running with alcohol in Brazil, and the technology of burning alcohol instead of gasoline is perfectly mastered in the country. Alcohol is also mixed in the gasoline (at 30%) used by regular gasoline cars.
is this news ???
As far as i know methanol is a very popular "gasoline" in Brazil. All those beetles run on it!
Using bio-mass, be it seeds, manure or plant rests, is nothing new.
We even had a robot using bio mass as a source for electricity yesterday !!
So fly a plane with it, wow!! just like those little remote controlled airoplanes.
Post a new story when it runs on water.......
Why are other peoples sig's always more witty ???
Brazil uses Ethanol as fuel ( the same alcohol used at homes, and found in drinks ).
;-)
Race cars use Methanol, a poisonous alcohol that should not be drunk.
Having said that, when there was an alcohol crisis in Brazil, we imported methanol as a replacement to ethanol and our cars ( and planes ) will run the same.
Of course there were some guys who were puting fuel on beverages illegally ( because it is cheaper ) and had their clients killed
Both methanol and ethanol have higher octane than standard gasoline, so the same engine will have more HP, and that is why it is used in race cars.
it says that using sugar cane alcohol as a source of fuel also fights the greenhouse effect, because it doesn't produce C02 like regular fuel.
It's not quite that simple, buring ethanol does produce carbon dioxide.
But the important point is that the carbon released isn't "fossil carbon" which has been locked up in mineral deposits for a long time. Only a short time ago this carbon was previously in carbon dioxide which a sugar cane plant took in for photosynthesis.
The next result of using biomass fuels is that the crabon dioxide content of the atmosphere stays much the same. On average for every carbon dioxide you put in from burning the fuel one will be taken out bu the next batch of your crop.
The only problem with running an engine on alcohol is that you need to refine that alcohol first, that is something that takes a huge amount of energy and unless you have a "green" way of doing that you are just as screwed as when you use petrol
:-)
If you're using energy that would otherwise be wasted then it becomes quite practical (and economic).
For example, I believe that in New Zealand they're producing ethanol from dairy whey (a byproduct of some milk products).
At least some of the energy used in this production is also a byproduct of processes such as the production of milk-powder or something.
One man's waste energy is another's treasure
Even without using wate energy, I don't see why it wouldn't be practical to use a solar still to perform the fractional distilation required to perform the essential separation of ethanol and water needed to get a 100+% proof fluid for fuel use.
Don't forget sugar beet which can grow in the US and Europe. I know that Poland for example produces too much sugar and world market prices for sugar are lowest ever. There are huge reserves in sugar production. And what is more important: it is not just sugar you can use to produce alcohol. Most of ethanol is produced from grain or potatoes and it is cheap.
The only problem is taxation: consumable ethanol everywhere is subject to huge taxation (that's why vodka is expensive even though its production is cheap) so you need double taxation, one for consumable ethanol, the other for fuel. But this means you need control so people don't produce fuel ethanol and sell it on black market.
Anyway, ethanol prices are not a problem. Taxation and petrol lobbies are a problem.
Raf
Apparently modern internal combustion engines are only about 3-5% efficient. Ie they only extract about 3-5% of the potential power of each unit of fuel consumed.
On the other hand, steam engines were developed so much over the last century that the most modern steam engines could haul 1 ton approximately 3 miles, on a teaspoon of coal. Thats right, 1 teaspoon!
Seems to me the best way forward is to work out more efficient uses of petrol for powering engines, so we use less fuel, rather than investigating different energy sources.
a ^= b; b ^= a; a ^= b;
That's so stupid I can't even believe it. I guess if you have to fly and there is no other fuel... The reason alcohol is so popular in Brazil is because the big producers of sugar cane "own" the freaking government and came up with this idea to power the national fleet with alcohol.
The energy you get from alcohol is a lot less than that you get from gasoline. You need a greater volume of alcohol to produce the same energy output. That is, alcohol engines consume a greater volume of alcohol than gasoline in order to generate the same power.
It takes more energy to produce alcohol then the energy obtained by it. They manage it in that third world shit hole because they run the mills on cane waste. That is, they burn the cane waste in order to fuel the mill. That creates a really bad pollution. The process is really messy and the byproducts are very toxic, which is promptly dumped on nearby rivers and streams. Compared to that an oil refinery looks like the green party general quarters.
Alcohol is not the answer. It's simple physics. The energy input is greater than the energy output. Stop wasting time and come up with a decent, non polluting alternative to fossil fuels, not something that only exists to make those corrupt politicos even richer while the other 99% of the population eat shit.
One of the most important products is steam (reactions are both exothermic (giving out heat) and endothermic (requiring heat). One plant may produce sufficient steam to provide heating for a number of other plants. There may be a net energy requirement for the site, but it is minimal compared with that of the endothermic plants taken individually.
As a final point, remember that ethanol has a lower boiling point than water so you are not going to lose a lot of water there. In fact liquid water is one of the waste products.
Growing sugar cane is not so good for the environment.
Lots of land has become all salty here in Queensland Australia because of sugar cane. However if crops are rotated this effect is reduced, although not all farmers do this.
Also they burn down the cane in order to make harvesting it easier. This too is not good.
Then there are the fertalizers which they use. The water run off from the fields goes into rivers then into the sea, stuffing it up.
There is a big push here at the moment to make ethanol from the cane, in order to save the dying sugar cane industry. I just hope the farmers start to use better practices.
I think in general sugar cane/alcahol would be better than petrol as far as environmental impact is concerned, however it is not clean.
HAHHAAHAHAHAHAH OK?!?!?!?!
There have been airplanes in the U.S. running on corn ethanol since at least the 70s. Max Shauck, a math professor at Baylor, was flying airshows in an ethanol-powered Pitts in the 80s and flew across the Atlantic in a Velocity powered by 100% ethanol.
Ethanol could be a big win. It would stabilize the market for corn, generate lots of cheap protein from the corn byproduct, and is cleaner. Alcohol has much less energy in it than gasoline, so aircraft range would be significantly reduced.
But, it just doesn't seem economically viable to put this into production, especially through the FAA's lengthy (=pricey) certification process.
Aero diesels are starting to hit the market finally. Biodiesel is probably a better idea in the short run.
Ecce potestas casei!
Ethanol burns cleaner than gasoline or diesel, that's why its flame is almost invisible. The yellow color of a gasoline flame comes from unburned carbon particles (i.e. soot) heated by the flame. Also, the growing of sugar cane removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If the tractors and trucks used in the farm run on alcohol, and the leftover straw and tusks are burned in the refinery, ethanol can be a 100% renewable fuel.
Pure ethanol was widely used as a car fuel in Brazil in the 1980's, until lower oil prices made it economically unatractive. At one time, over 90% of the cars built and running in Brazil were alcohol powered.
Actually, that would make no sense at all and would clearly be the wrong thing.
The Brazilians don't cultivate sugar cane to make alcohol from it. They cultivate it to make sugar. It's a very profitable product, so much that Brazil ends up importing other products that could easily be cultivated on its lands, only because everyone plants sugar canes.
Of course, apart from extracting the sugar, they've done their best to make full use of the plant, so there are a few byproducts. The most important of them is alcohol; there results to be so much of it that they ended up finding new uses for it (alcohol-powered cars, now planes). But it's still a byproduct, very unimportant compared to the sugar produced. So destroying the sugar production (and the other byproducts) only to produce biodiesel instead of alcohol would simply be absurd.
Vasilis Vasaitis
Late readers: please moderate at Newest First, with a low threshold, to promote late writers.
Hemp for Fuel
Google
googled this:
PYROLYSIS is the technique of applying high heat to organic matter (ligno-cellulosic materials) in the absence of air or in reduced air.
The process can produce charcoal, condensable organic liquids (pyrolytic fuel oil), non-condensable gasses, acetic acid, acetone, and methanol. The process can be adjusted to favor charcoal, pyrolytic oil, gas, or methanol production with a 95.5% fuel-to-feed efficiency.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
Needless to say, DuPont and ShellOil are quick to point out that a hemp farm turns all widdle children within a 100 mi radius into raging, deliquent, homocidal maniacs.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
There are lots of other possible fuels. There was a bit of a stink recently (in both senses) about people who were running diesel vehicles on a mixture of cooking oil and methanol. Apparently it works very well, far too well for the fuel tax people to be happy about 8)
[For those thinking fuel tax ? - the uk puts most of the cost of roads onto the fuel in taxes since not everyone has a car and the people who drive more do more of the wearing out]
There are a couple of issues. For example, alcohol is more dense than gasolene and has less thermal energy per unit volume. Simply put, cars and especially aircraft won't be able to go as far or carry as much fuel. On the other hand, the "octane" rating for alcohol is pretty good as compared to gasolene (which is particularly good for aircraft). A few years back, during the gas crisis, some of us were tinkering with this. Now, this was before the days of computer controlled damn-near-everything in cars so it's probably a little dated. Basically, the mod was relatively simple. Adjust the timing, re-jet and shorten the float arm on the carb to adjust for the density of the alcohol, and plan on at least replacing the piston rings when the alcohol cleaned all the built up carbon off the engine cylinders.
Alcohol does burn pretty clean and you can get good power from it, but it's not a totally free ride. It's not pollution free either. I believe formaldahyde is a by-product of methanol combustion. Maybe some of you chemist out there can confirm. However, production of methanol fuel can be more environmentally friendly. For cars, I think I would be more in favor of a methanol fuel cell, but even that is not pollution free.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Actually methanol is used as a stabilizing agent because nitro is so explosive. Currently, they use 90% nitro and 10% something else. Just so happens that methanol is still a fairly good fuel yet much more stable than nitro. It helps reprevent catastrophic predetonation.
In the past, before 90/10 was required, huge and very nasty engine explosions were not uncommon. By adding 10% methanol, the number of catastrophic engine explosions were greatly reduced. Didn't take too long for this to become the standard fuel mix.
The saltiness comes from years of irrigation. River water has a few mineral salts in it, picked up from the land it ran across before it got to the river. You put that water on your fields, it evaporates and leaves behind the minerals. Repeat for 50-100 years and you get heavy mineral salt buildups in your soil. Now you can't grow anything there.
It has little to do with the sugar cane. In south-east Texas and southern Louisiana, they get 60+ inches of rainfall a year, and thus don't need to irrigate. They've been growing sugarcane there for over 150-200 years.
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
AND it could compete in a truly-free market with either petrochemicals or ethanol, were it not for the tax-and-spend war on (some) drugs.
:-)
It's perfectly legal to grow hemp engineered without THC. It's just not as fun.
The Brazilians should make biodiesel fuel from sugar cane instead
No, they shouldn't.
Biodiesel is a lipid. A lipid is a glycerol with three fatty acid chains attached. We've all heard of such lipids as Soybean oil, Corn oil, Canola oil, and Peanut oil. But has anyone ever heard of "Sugar Cane oil?" No, because it isn't efficient to turn sugar cane into a lipid.
Sugar cane produces sugar (CnH2nOn). It is efficient to turn this into alcohol, which will power a gasoline based engine.
Just as you don't put diesel in a gas engine, you don't put gas in a diesel engine.
The Brizilians have it right, and should not be making biodiesel from their sugar cane.
I used to own an alcohol-fuelled car myself, here in Brazil. In fact, any attempt to start such car on cold mornings (consider 15 Celsius as cold for Brazilian standards) was enough to make you feel frustrated. Therefore, Brazilian cars used to have this small gasoline tank which stored about 1 1/2 litres of gas which was used during engine startup. Every time you start up your alcohol car, the ignition pumps a small amount of gas, enough to make it run and no more gas is pushed into the engine until you have to go into the ignition cycle again.
Octane is used as the standard by which the relative tendency of a fuel to explode (i.e. burn in an uncontrolled fashion) is measured.
There are several different ways to calculate it -- the U.S. used to use one, while Europe used a different one. I may be wrong, but I believe they use the same standard now. But, some people may remember back in the 70's and 80's when fuel (in the U.S.) had octane ratings of 102, 104 and so forth, whereas now, it's more like 87,89,92. Well, the fuel didn't change much, just the measuring technique.
Anyway, back to the question: alcohol burns cooler and slower than octane (or gasoline in general), and it is harder to make it explode, so it is given a higher relative octane number.
When fuel explodes in the engine, as opposed to burning, the energy is expended in too short of an interval for power to be extracted efficiently. We call that "knocking", observed when an engine is run on a low-octane fuel.
Knocking robs power, as there is essentially little pressure on the piston downstroke; it was all expended when the piston was at the top of its travel.
However, it is a common misconception that higher octane increases engine power. It does not. The most efficient fuel for a given engine is one that is just barely not causing knocking. After that point, the fuel burns more and more slowly, and not all of the expanding, burning gases are applied during the optimum part of the piston downstroke.
The reason more powerful engines require higher octane fuel (giving people the idea that high octane fuel is more powerful) is that things such as compression and burn temperature can be increased, turbo/supercharging can be added, etc. increasing overall efficiency. Note that the high octane fuel simply allows for a more efficient engine design, in itself it does NOT increase power!
A witty saying is worth nothing - Voltaire
This top fuel link should explain all your questions and more.
Please do note that I am not talking about nitroglycerin. That's an extremly unstable high explosive. That would be a death wish as it's sensitive to shock, vibration and heat which is exactly what you're going to see on race cars. What I'm talking about is nitromethane which is often simply referred to as nitro. Even still, nitromethane is highly volatile which is why they "cut" by 10%. One laste note, this is distinct "stuff" and should not be confused with NO2 either, even though NO2 does have racing applications as well.