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SwiftFuel Alternative To Alternative Fuels
TheDawgLives writes "PBS has an article by Bob Cringely about the best route to end our dependence on oil and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Instead of replacing all our expensive cars with even more expensive hybrids or electric cars, his suggestion is to use a cheap drop-in replacement for gasoline called Swift Fuel. It is derived from Ethanol, but doesn't require any modification to older cars to prevent corrosion. It can be mixed with gasoline in any amount and can even be distributed using the same network as gasoline, including being pumped in the same pipes and shipped in the same trucks. It is truly a drop-in replacement for gas, and it is real. It is being tested by the FAA for certification in propeller aircraft. It also happens to be about $2 a gallon cheaper than gasoline."
Switchgrass
It's not the same land or farming resources, though. Switchgrass grows on a wider variety of soil and climate, meaning it can be grown in places where you couldn't grow food crops, and doesn't require much seeding or fertilizer.
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Corn based plastics are just the tip of the iceberg, we will be seeing dozens of new plant based plastics in the decade. Just because oil has been used for a 100 years doesn't mean that they will even need it in another 100.
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Hmmm, does Brazil have these same problems?
That is wrong. In a new diesel, it will run pure biodiesel with no modifications. In a used diesel, the biodiesel will clean out the fuel system, so the fuel filter will get plugged. That is the only change needed.
Ferment into what? It is running in a diesel engine, not a ethanol engine.
For vegetable oils, it needs to be warmed up before running in the diesel engine, but that is also the only thing needed to do when the vegetable oil is heated up before being sent to the engine.
One reference for running only straight vegetable engine in a car. There it did need modifications like different injectors and glow plugs, mostly to compensate for the increased viscosity.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Brazil grows sugar cane and started back in the 70's. It is only in the past 5 or 10 years that they became energy independent so it took them decades. I am sure they had all sorts of growing pains but they should be commended for doing it. We should be doing it for the same reasons. Better to use a renewable fuel where we can and save the oil for what we really need it for. Moms SUV is not really a need to me. She can have ethanol or swift fuel.
All points of time and space are connected.
Per the article (Cringely, so not exactly trustworthy, but I don't feel like verifying the numbers) wholesale ethanol costs $1.42 a gallon and SwitftFuel production costs are ~40 cents/gallon. 1 Barrel of oil (42 gallons) currently goes for $130. That's converted to 20 gallons of gasoline (plus 20 gallons of other useful stuff), so the raw cost of gasoline is ~3.09/gallon. That's reasonably consistent with these numbers from the California gov't. Refinery costs for gasoline are slightly less, but not too far out of line.
Therefore, IF the ethanol price and ethanol conversion costs are accurate, the end user cost could easily be $1.50-1.60/gallon less than gasoline.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Lead is currently added to avgas to retard premature detonation in the cylinders, and to increase the octane rating. One of the problems with unleaded fuels is that they produce higher compression than avgas. Today's unleaded gas would increase compression to the point where it would literally blow the seals out of the engines. They also have different chemical effects on materials that may cause deterioration in such parts as fuel lines and gaskets. Another difference is that the lead additives help protect the engine valve seats from eroding.
Airplane engines were designed to run on a very specific fuel, that had very specific properties. Avgas produces a precise amount of compression when it's burnt. The old engines were designed to be run at 100% of their potential power, so there is no tolerance for out-of-spec components, such as unleaded fuel.
In order for SwiftFuel to be an acceptable replacement, it will have to have very similar characteristics to today's avgas. Either that or it will have to be "close enough" so that older engines can at least be modified to burn it, and that would promise to be an unpopular, expensive decision (airplane repairs are never cheap.)
John
Unleaded fuels without other octane boosters are prone to predetonation. That might be what the guy was talking about - that "pinging" noise of a so-called knock condition is the sound of the piston vibrating in the cylinder as it tries to compress an expanding mixture. Hard to say.
As for eroding lines and such, this is true, especially of Ethanol. A lot of that aeronautic stuff is pretty damned antiquated. I wouldn't be surprised to find that replacement parts are still sold with leather seals and whatnot. It wasn't an airplane, but my 1960 Dodge Dart (2dr, "Phoenix", 318ci big block hemi) had a 650 CFM Carter carburetor which had a leather acceleration pump flap. When the switch from leaded occurred, a lot of these cars sort of fell apart. Not mine though. Must have gotten lucky. Also I used the expensive lead substitute, maybe it was good.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Peak Oil is _not_ "that stuff running out". It is the production of oil reaching a plateau and then going into decline. The peak of a mountain doesn't happen when you reach the valley, it happens when you've got to the top and can't go higher.
Consider this - since 2005 oil production has been on a bumpy plateau with a slight downward trend. There's tons of publicly available data you can research to confirm this. In the meantime worldwide demand continues to go up - where's your magical creation of new oil via supply and demand? Oh yes, Bakken. I'll believe that one when its up & running and producing a few million barrels a day.
You should also realise that the USA's oil production peaked in 1973 - its been all downhill ever since. Even opening up Alaska didn't reverse the decline for long. North Sea peaked in 2000 and its plummeting now. Mexico's Cantarell field is doing the same. Perhaps you should clear your head of the economic "demand will create supply" nonsense and wake up to the geological realities of living on a finite planet with finite resources. Have you checked out the EIA's reports on US inventory levels lately?
Yes it won't run out for ages, probably not in our lifetime. I wouldn't say the same for the chances of being able to fill up at your local service station though.
Nuclear is pretty much infinite resource if reprocessing takes place. The price of fuel is so small percentage in nuclear powerplant costs that you can increase the uranium extraction costs by 10x and still be profitable. Really, we do have enough uranium for producing entire worlds CURRENT electricity consumption for tens of thousands of years. Yes there is 10^5 times the current "estimate of economical mining" reserves, if we use
a) fuel reprocessing.
b) breeder reactors
And the fuel cycle improvements give another 10^3 increase over current model. So its 10^8 increase over what figure people talk about the current economic reserves just by one cent electricity price increase since last study. Or that much reductions in operating costs by making all parts of nuclear economy higher volume production.
©God
These guys are promising a biofuel that is exactly like fossil crude oil. It could be mixed in with the petro crude and refined into any currently available fuel.
Maybe
"Global warming cultists are *not* environmentalist. They're easily led rubes that have bought into a self flagellating religion born out of politics."
Thakyou for opening my eyes. I now see how the science I have been following for at least 25yrs is really a massive political conspiracy that has managed to infiltrate and control every national science body on the planet.
Thanks also for sharing your thoughts on 'self-flagellation', it was enough to convince this 'easily led rube' that a massive muti-decadal plot has been hiding right before his very eyes, matter of fact it's now so fucking obvious that I have been led by poitics that I will promptly find and burn my BSc.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
>Yes it won't run out for ages, probably not in our lifetime. I wouldn't say the same for the chances of being able to fill up at your local service station though.
My coworker did some research on this over the last week, using data from the Department of Energy website. The stuff he printed out says, pretty clearly, that if we continue using oil at the same rate we are currently using it -- that is, not increasing usage -- the United States would use up its entire domestic supply in three years, and the world would use up its entire available supply in 38 years. Note this is not the amount of proven crude oil: this is the amount of oil extractable from crude oil, oil shale, and currently-existing technology for oil extraction from coal. That's *everything*, all the oil there is, and it'll be gone in under 40 years.
I'm trying to find a mistake in the Department of Energy's numbers, but haven't yet.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.