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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!!"
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
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.
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.
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.
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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]
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.
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.