methanol as an automotive fuel a must read

I raced an injected bbc on alcohol I used twice the fuel ran cooler and faster than I did on racing fuel the pill's and nozzels were twice the size as the ones used for fuel.
the prep work we did after racing to keep everything from corroding after draining the left over alcohol spraying oil and runnind racing fuel to wash out the fuel system so it wont corrode.
I work on fire department vehicles we have e85 fueled cars and light trucks we had to stop putting the e85 due to too many break downs with fuel system failures mostly fuel pumps and injectors and regulators, just my 2 cents..

 

True. Good substitute for soybean meal.

 

What's all the fuss, lets just switch to Natural gas or propane. Burns cleaner, hotter, cheaper and we have the most in the world. Then we can sell the corn to the Middle east for cereal and they can put their oil on it and eat it.

 

In reply to Ned. Huh?

 

Always a problem trying to put things in too few words!

People are mistaken in believing a system will work when things in it are efficient. In fact systems can work very well with highly inefficient parts, e.g. water buffalo in some kinds of traditional agriculture. Conversely some systems work very badly despite having a lot of efficiency going on, e.g. manufacturing in south-east Asia. Recently people have begun to confuse efficiency and sustainability. This is wrong.

Geeks love efficiency as a mental abstraction. They love to do the math and go "wow!" at the results they get. That's cool; geeks will be geeks, and I generally like the geeks I know. But when the debate is about sustainability geeks will invariably but inadvertently tend to lend credence to the idea that efficiency leads to sustainability.

In a system that works badly efficiencies are always insufficient. If you have a great need for mobility and not many options for dealing with it you're going to want efficiency in a car. Something is keeping you on a treadmill, so you want to be able to do all that as cheaply as you can. This doesn't prove that efficiency makes things work, it just tells us the system is working badly.

On the other hand, if the system works well, you have a bit of surplus freedom. You don't have a very great need for mobility but you're free to go where you want. Then you take the level of efficiency you want, i.e. you have the sort of car that you want, and adjust your use of it to how much you want to spend. The relative inefficiency doesn't cause anything to come crashing down in flames.

But relatively inefficient components can make an overall system work better, just as extremely efficient components can cause runaway systemic collapse. It's not in the math, it's in how well a thing fits. Ethanol fits with a whole bunch of other good things; EVs, for instance, don't.

 

I think that it must be that time of the year. We have cussed and discussed this subject at length; at least once a year once I have been here.

Let me say this we are going to have alcohol in our fuel and that is a fact. What it is made from is always going to be an issue. That is also a fact.

I would like to say that although methanol is a better choice from a performance point of view that it is extremely caustic. It is not a good choice for street driven vehicles. If we went to methanol for a fuel substitute my wife wouldn't be able to leave the house or any other people with asthma or other respiritory ailments. For a dailey fuel ethanol is a better choice keeping the health of the public in mind.

OK I'm out of here. Have a good discussion.

 

Ned,....WHUT!

 

WHAT WAS THAT?! IT'S A CHUNK OF THE SKY!!!
THE SKY IS FALLING... RUN!!!

We've had this in our gas for years now. 'Course, they also put MTBE in our gas as well at one point, nice of them. The biggest thing that sucks with the ethonol is that the boiling point is so low that running a carburated car at basic thermostat temps has a tendency to boil the float bowls dry after shut off. Lots of fun in the summer when the out door temps get up there.

 

You just need more louvers.

On a side note:
So when I get my hood done for the Stude I'm sending it to you right? Hood and trunk lid?

 

Too Late!!

 

I didn't read every word in this post, so if this has been already been covered just ignor me.
Why does the price of E85 follow the price of gasoline? Looks like to me that only 15% of the price should follow gasoline! If gas goes up $.25 so does E85. Seems like it is always right on the edge of being able to run cheaper.

 

Ethanol is transported by tanker not in pipelines like gas and diesel. So part of it is transportation costs.

 

As has been said in this thread and the other, follow the money, those of us that can think rationally would surmise that this mix of corn whiskey and gas which all the greenies claim is good because it lowers our carbon foot print and is a lower btu rating than gas that it would be by default a cheaper product, guess what you now see that its not so we know burn more "fuel" per mile and it now costs us more, the efficency just went out the door, remember these are the folks that brought us mtbe and told us how good it was going to be.
Corn is for eating and whiskey.

 

I think The rest is about profit

 

If we relied on the market and not the government for solutions we would be a lot better off. In other words no more subsidy and government incentives, then we we might actually get viable solutions that make economic sense.

 

At least the majority of the money goes back into the US economy instead of the Iranian or middle east economy. I would rather pay higher prices knowing that the money is going into my countries economy. I think there will be many types of fuels tried in the next few years. This is definitely not the end of the brewed fuel its just the beginning!!!! We better either adapt to the new fuels or get ready to ride your bike very very long distances!!!

 

Ok everyone !! my intent with this thread was not to start a debate but to bring information about methanol as a motor fuel that we all will sooner or later have to adjust to. Having sead that I find myself caught up in the debate over the subject also. I know it's O/T somewhat but it's going to effect the hobby and we need to be prepaired as it may come sooner than we think. Anyway thank you all for your comments on the subject. maybe we better get back to building our favorite cars now

 

I think you still need realize the difference between ethanol and methanol. The words are not interchangeable. What we have in our gas right now is ethanol and not methanol.

 

Glad I live in a state where you can get non-ethanol fuel if you want. I don't have a problem with ethanol laced fuels for modern cars. In my T I will be running straight high octane gas. I actually have a still for making fuel ethanol. Haven't fired it up in 30 some years now. Back in the late 70's they encouraged people to make their own fuel alcohol. You could legally make it for your own use as long as you denatured it.

 

You are rite zman. I do understand the differences. ethanol and methanol are chemicaly different and Im not debating the difference. my point in this thread was to bring light to the subject of methanol as a motor fuel and the MIT study on that subject. Now that the subject as to the differences between ethanol and methanol have come into the subject. the fact remains that they both are contraversal. They are different yet very close to the same in that they are corrosive products and both are subject to use in or as motor fuels for the internal combustion engine as we know them. new engines and fuel systems will be coming in the future and the traditional engines we love so much are going to be effected reguardless as to the differences in those two products..Anyway thank you for your interest in this subject. its going to effect us all sooner than we think. ....JMO

 

I see a couple of large flaws in this fella's arguments.

First:
"It's important that South Dakota has created just as much feed as we had before, but the difference is we have lots of ethanol and a huge amount of liquid fuel. In the life cycle analysis, critics say the corn is gone, feed is gone ... everything is gone. They pay no attention to the fact that we have just as much feed as we had before. This is a fight, a battle that we will eventually win I believe," he said.

Hmm ... so all that alky came out of thin air? No, I don't think so. It came from the sugars that you took out of the feed. So you may have a similar volume of feed, but now it's less nutritious. That means the animals will eat more or grow slower. One or the other.

Additionally, all of the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in corn that is taken off the field and goes to the ethanol plant, by using the distillers grain, all of that comes back to the farm and becomes part of the livestock feed and a "large percentage is excreted by the livestock and put right back on the land," Carlson said.

"On the land" /= "In the land". Runoff -> nitrogen pollution -> algal blooms -> aquatic anaerobic dead zones.

A pretty important principle of farming is that you don't plant more than you need ... because once you deplete your topsoil, it's "game over". There are also some aquifers in this country that are being badly depleted. Yeah, 12 million acre-feet sounds like a lot, but there's a lot of thirsty corn out there! And other crops as well. And a lot of thirsty people.

Using ethanol has its advantages. Yes, it's theoretically renewable, but bad farming practices can make it "unsustainable" too.

 

Hay zman, What is? IT Infrastructure Engineer... BTW I love your buick. My Dad had one the same color....

 

Wow, someone actually read the links! Good job

 

Unfortunately he knows very little about the principles of organic farming.

 

That changed to Senior Data Center Engineer last month, but suffice to say I build the computer infrastructure that big companies run on. I put the shop on hiatus as I redo one of the barns on my property to house it.

 

way cool, computer engineer ....Thanks

 

The US ag business is based on just the opposite of organics. Having a little experience I think the sweet spot is somewhere between modern agronomy and organic. But then again, we feed the fucking world so if you get rid of Monsanto that kid in Ethiopia will choke on a grain of rice.

 

Enlighten him.