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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."
Why not cars?
This article is from Rio de Janeiro, 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.
Isn't sugar cane somewhat less-than-plentiful in the US? I'd imagine that that would make it a poor option for fuel up here. On the other hand, corn or other grain alcohol might be the ticket.
How much gas is required to grow and harvest sugar cane --- if gas prices shoot up, wouldn't cane prices (and virtually everything else) as well? I thought that the reason alcohol is not viable as a power source is that it takes more gas to farm to crops than you save by not putting it in the car. (The only reason alcohol would be cheap in the US is that it is government-subsidized). If that's the case, then sugar cane doesn't solve to no-oil problem.
Interesting to note what was NOT said:
There was quite a bit of comment in the article about "saving reais"... but regardless of the price comparison, notice how no explicit numbers were given for fuel economy...
The average farmer, given the information on the site, uses 70l of gasoline an hour (@ 245Reais / hour).
The alchohol plane uses 83.3- l of fuel / hour.
Meaning that the gas engine is more fuel efficient, and when dealing with jet engines, it isn't even possible to aquire enough fuel to make up for the lack of range without losing so much of the passenger / cargo space that all profit is lost.
So, while General aviation might like it, commercial aviation will not adopt it until you can give sufficient return on range to make the choice palatable.
I don't think that the savings is going to make up for the cost of switching for quite awhile, at least not in US GenAv.
My $0.25.
There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don't.
As a pilot and former aircraft owner, I can assure you the FAA will create an insurmountable obstacle for aircraft owners wishing to convert. All aircraft in the US are certified to run on certain fuel. Deviation from this certification must be made on a case-by-case basis, backed up by engineering data for each aircraft to be modified. Obviously, this can be cost-prohibitive for individual aircraft owners.
Usually what happens is a company will spring for the engineering studies, then sell an STC (supplemental type certificate) to aircraft owners wishing to modify their aircraft. (The company still controls the STC, and each aircraft must have its own STC). For instance, owners of certain aircraft wanting to burn auto fuel can buy STCs from two different companies.
At any rate, the bottom line is that the conversion to alternative fuels in production aircraft (at least in the US) is extremely prohibitive, thanks to the FAA. You can read more about the hoops that have to be jumped through here.
oil lobby .. as long as it is stront it will oppose alcohol, fuel cell etc.,
There is a oily extract from a tree which can be used to make a diesel like fuel with better properties than diesel. But no widespread use coz this will hit the oil lobby. Brazil had no option. they couldnt afford gas.. so they embarked on alco. and this really helped the balance of trade. Unless legistlators insist on regulations that make use of alco. compulsary.. this wont take off.
btw in india the govt has directed that by 2003 all gasoline will have to have a 5% alco mix, then engine modifications will be done and this increased to 25%, this way dependance on OPEC will be lessened. When this happens in US, the exessive middle east meddling will thankfully reduce coz then the govt wont have much interest in that area. Rather that stupid lobbying with OPEC and giving them concessions govt should make all alternate fuels tax free and cars and vehicals using alternate fuels and electricity totally tax free, this will ensure self sufficency in energy
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Sugar cane processing produces this distilled alcohol. That's great that is is cheaper than gasoline NOW, but what happens when the demand increases? Let's say someone builds a distilled alcohol passenger plane. Demand increases for distilled alcohol. All of a sudden, demand for distilled alcohol creates a demand for more sugar and thus more sugar cane. Sugar cane growth is limited by the land and regions it can be grown. And growing it takes some time, so there is an increase in demand and supply stays the same.
The reason the Brazilians use sugar cane is that it grows well in Brazil. Another plant used for commercial production of sugar is sugar beet which grows in temperate climates. Anyway plenty of plants can be used for production of alcohol, quite probably where the part being fermented is otherwise waste.
Distilled alcohol prices rise above gasoline quickly and all of a sudden the whole distilled alcohol plane is starting to cost you MORE than the gasoline did.
Typically passenger planess use jet A which is less volatile than the gasoline type fuels used in cars and light aircraft. Anyway if the Rusians can build a jet fighter which will run on just about anything the same technology will work with any other plane. Most likely the issue is with certification.
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.
In many parts of the world a major part of the cost of the fuel is taxation. Anyway the oil companies will use any excuse to raise profits.
I think using sugar cane to make alcohol fuel is the wrong fuel to make.
The Brazilians should make biodiesel fuel from sugar cane instead; that means the entire sugar cane plant can be use to make the fuel. Unlike regular diesel fuel, biodiesel fuel has no particulate emissions, no sulfur-compound problems, and with the right engine design burns very cleanly. Biodiesel fuel mixed with JP4 jet fuel actually burns much cleaner than straight JP4 on jet engines, with almost no soot in the exhaust.
It's not the actual decrease in oil production or shipping from Iraq... it's the perception of supply and demand that allows Big Oil to raise oil prices whenever there's a disturbance in any Middle Eastern country. Few consumers question this, since the perception of a disrupted supply makes Joe Sixpack believe the inflated price is understandable and even reasonable.
Ever since the oil crisis of the 1970s based on Middle Eastern problems, people believe all our oil supply comes from there. In reality, the US stockpiles barrels of oil that can be released at at any time. We also have deep wells in the US that are not currently in production mode. It's political lobbies from Big Oil that control and/or allow for a lot of the fluctuations in oil prices, not actual supply-and-demand economics.
Supply-and-demand economics really kinda went out the window during the 90s.
Moderation totals that amuse me for one of my posts: Flamebait=1, Insightful=2, Funny=2, Overrated=1, Underrated=1
This is one of those comments that counts as "funny" until you think about it harder, and then it moves towards "insightful." God, why don't I EVER have mod-points when I really want 'em?? Anyway, hemp-derived methanol not only gets rid of CO2, it provides a way of processing human sewage profitably and cleanly 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.
me
In the US, it takes a LONG time for an engine to be type-certified.
As a result, except for jet engines, most engines in use in aircraft today are designs that are decades old. (Lycoming, Continental, etc.)
It's already bad enough that the FAA requires you to get your aircraft recertified on a plane-by-plane basis to use automotive gasoline, which doesn't necessarily require engine modifications.
Using alcohol in an aircraft *will* require engine modifications because alcohol is highly corrosive. (Take a look at automotive FFVs like the Dodge Spirit FFV - Anything that comes in contact with fuel in these vehicles is insanely expensive because it must be unusually corrosion-resistant to survive when alcohol is used as a fuel.)
Ethanol might be less of a problem than methanol, but considering that even simply using *unleaded gasoline* is a major certification hassle, alcohol is a LONG way away from being a fuel source for aviation in the USA.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I have a BS in environmental science and I wrote a paper on Brazil's use of alternative energy. They really got slammed by the the oil embargos of the 70s so they turned to Ethanol to fuel a lot of their cars, since they are by far the largest producers of sugar cane which is used to produce ethanol.
"According to the Renewable Fuels Association, about 40% of the cars in Brazil operate on 100% ethanol. The remaining cars run on a blend of 22% ethanol (78% gasoline). Brazil consumes nearly 4 billion gallons of fuel ethanol per year."
Which is pretty significant because Brazil is the 3rd of 4th largest economy of this side of the planet.
Harvesting a field of sugar cane is quite messy. I'm not sure of all the steps required but one thing they do is torch the fields to burn off the leaves leaving just the cane. This produces a hell of a lot of ash and smoke. Living in South Florida where some sugar cane is grown I've experienced the effects. The upside is the smell of caramel as the crops burn (which always made me crave apple pie). The downside is having to wash your car more often and the sneezing if smoke irritates you. For me the aroma offset everything else but the ash residue sucked if you had a dark colored car.
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