Home Ethanol Production

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Sat 21 Jun 2008 19:37
Home Ethanol Production - ToTheEndOfTheRoad
Considering how dangerous it is to make proper Bio-Diesal for modern cars to run on, which is also debatable, this is amazing

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmFwSogNAEc

Could this replace Bio-diesel? Henry Ford produced his model T to run on ethanol!
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Sat 21 Jun 2008 23:21
Home Ethanol Production - FotheringtonThomas
Absolutely no hope. What a thing.
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Sat 21 Jun 2008 23:46
Home Ethanol Production - Screwloose
Ethanol has been used in Brazil for decades as a substitute fuel. It's been found to corrode fuel components and really needs the car to be specially designed from scratch to use it.

Give what's left of our once world-beating engineers a clean sheet of paper and simply specify ethanol as the fuel - no other restrictions - and it could be spawn a revolutionary breakthrough. That octane rating alone makes all current engines inefficient at burning it.

If not; another LPG damp-squib.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel

Edited by Screwloose on 21/06/2008 at 23:47

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Sat 21 Jun 2008 23:58
Home Ethanol Production - Alby Back
I used to work in Brazil Screwloose. It was the late 80's. At that time you couldn't buy imported cars or if you could they were prohibitively expensive. The remaining choice was to buy a locally produced car or a "do 'er upper" which had been imported prior to 1974. We used to run around in a 1973 Ford Landau with some old multi cylinder Yank motor connected vaguely to a 3 speed auto. It ran on sugar cane alcohol. It wallowed and moaned but coped remarkably well with the dirt roads in the more rural areas.
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Sun 22 Jun 2008 00:37
Home Ethanol Production - Screwloose
Shoespy

A long time ago; but didn't they produce an ethanol-adapted Fiat of some sort over there - wasn't it a 127 or 128? "Motor" or "Autocar" had an article in the late 70s - the last time petrol substitutes were widely discussed.

Someone will be re-introducing the "Malpassi Manifold Modifier" if fuel gets any dearer.
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Sun 22 Jun 2008 00:46
Home Ethanol Production - Alby Back
Can't remember exactly what they were called but the local cars were mainly old Fiat patterns and VWs reworked in domestic plants. Inflation was rampant and all sorts of things were poured into fuel tanks. In the dodgier areas down on the Uraguayan border many of the locals had nitro bottles fitted to give them the edge if accosted by what would now be called carjackers. Kidnap and ransom was also quite common so you didn't hang about if in doubt.
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Sun 22 Jun 2008 00:59
Home Ethanol Production - Screwloose

I see; what they'd have given for a South African style sill-mounted flame-thrower kit.....
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Sun 22 Jun 2008 01:10
Home Ethanol Production - Alby Back
Joking aside, many people used to carry a gun in their cars. I never did, maybe through a lack of wits or a deep stupidity but I could never bring myself to do it. I just used to rely on looking too poor to bother with and somehow, albeit unintentionally, still manage to give that general impression. ;-)
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