Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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.
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