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I noticed there's one or two threads about using veggie oil instead of diesel. Then it occured to me that you never see people suggesting using something else other than petrol. Meths ? Vodka ? Stella Artois ? :-)
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[juvenile drivel deleted. M. ]
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If this is going to be a silly thread, then I'm going to delete it. If its going to be a serious discussion about alternative fuels, then it can remain.
Your choice.
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This is a silly thread - close it down!
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[more juvenile drivel deleted. M. ]
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Methanol is used by drag racers et al. As far as I know, its main problem is that it only holds around 2/3 the energy of petrol, so you have a bigger tank or smaller range. This clearly doesn't matter to a drag racer, but would make it a problem for the road.
Also, don't the Brazilians use wood alcohol mixed with Petrol to make it go further? Anyone know more about this? (I'd look, but I'm about to go out to feed ducks with the kids)
V
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Didn't know ducks liked children...
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Brazil pioneered the use of ethanol made from sugar cane. Much of Brazilian transport runs on it. Also, Canada makes extensive use of petrol/ethanol blends.
A petrol engined car will run very well on ethanol or a mixture of ethanol/petrol provided the carb is jetted and set up properly. There's plenty of info on the web.
From a home fuel point of view, there are problems - manufacturing it on an economic scale and obtaining the right purity. Ethanol can be produced by home distillation but at best it can only be up to 96% pure, the rest is water. To remove the water, one would have to pass through some kind of anhydrous non-reactive mixture, eg anhydrous salt. A 96% ethanol mix will run OK as long as there's no petrol present. Any petrol present will cause the water to separate out with associated running problems, hence only 100% pure ethanol can be mixed with petrol.
It's a fascinating subject but not really practical on domestic scale due to above plus of course the energy input required to distil the ethanol in the first place.
Baz
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There are already many LPG converted cars, and there were some converted to natural gas (CNG) but as methane doesn't liquify under pressure, you need to have some recourse to a dedicated filling point, or have a very large tank, supplementing the petrol tank. Quite possible to manage if you are Transco or another gas supplier or transporter, but home filling from the gas mains is a little frowned on! At the moment. Other point is that current engines (to the public at least) are not optimised for LPG or CNG, so lose a little power.
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Methanol though, not methane - methanol and ethanol are alcohols which are liquid in their natural state. As well as being used to make biodiesel out of vegetable oil, both can be burned as fuel in their own right - but in petrol engines, not diesels. I haven't really looked into the area as much because of my main area of interest being biodiesel, but the biodiesel discussion forum should have a few links under the "Other Fuels" section - biodiesel.infopop.cc
You could also have a look at running_on_alcohol.tripod.com/ethanolfuel/id28.html
and, *so long as you're not about to eat!!, www.bio-petrol.com/
andymc
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PS I seem to remember reading somewhere recently that 96% ethanol purity was better for the engine than the (more difficult to produce) anhydrous ethanol. Can't remember why, though! This applied to burning it as fuel, not using it to produce biodiesel. Haven't looked, but the reason might be in one of those links.
andymc
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In the south of USA, some southern 'rebels' who hate the government make alcohol in their yards from shredded newspaper and the middles of corn on the cobs! Yes, they all it moonshine too, there are lots of websites showing the apparatus which is frementation vats, copper boilers and distillery tubes etc...
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