Discussion
In keeping with the petrol price themes I was wondering if anyone on pistonheads has contemplated the idea of brewing their own fuel; i.e. ethanol.
Upsides:
- you make it from waste organic substances, e.g. sawdust.
- high octane rating (have heard variously between 102 upto 117 (!)).
- clean burning, no nasty anti-knock additives, so you can hoon around with a clear conscience.
- Its not poisonous (unlike methanol). Mix it with a bit of coke and you can drink it. heck, you could have it neat if you wanted to (yeeeeehaaar, etc..)
Downsides:
- needs to be distilled, which I believe is illegal. But then again so is speeding...
- lower calorific value, i.e. your fuel consumption goes up. not a major issue if it costs you 10p a litre to make tho...
- you gotta convert your car/bike to run on it.
Any thoughts?? Anyone got further than just thoughts and actually tried it??
Apparantly you can manufacture methanol quite easily from natural gas, but the process is a bit dangerous for the kitchen... and methanol is not nice stuff.
Upsides:
- you make it from waste organic substances, e.g. sawdust.
- high octane rating (have heard variously between 102 upto 117 (!)).
- clean burning, no nasty anti-knock additives, so you can hoon around with a clear conscience.
- Its not poisonous (unlike methanol). Mix it with a bit of coke and you can drink it. heck, you could have it neat if you wanted to (yeeeeehaaar, etc..)
Downsides:
- needs to be distilled, which I believe is illegal. But then again so is speeding...
- lower calorific value, i.e. your fuel consumption goes up. not a major issue if it costs you 10p a litre to make tho...
- you gotta convert your car/bike to run on it.
Any thoughts?? Anyone got further than just thoughts and actually tried it??
Apparantly you can manufacture methanol quite easily from natural gas, but the process is a bit dangerous for the kitchen... and methanol is not nice stuff.
Another downside: jail (if you're caught).
Alternatively ... register as a licensed distiller and pay petrol duty (or spirits duty!) on it.
I had a similar thought about making diesel from some by-products of my company's processes. But we'd have had to pay the same amount of duty per litre as on petro-diesel. Added to the production costs, total would have been well over £1/litre. So much for encouraging the environment through beneficial taxes. Anyway I'd expect the same principle to apply to ethanol distillation.
In some countries they do this on a large scale as a matter of course, and blend the ethanol with petrol. I believe that for run of th emill cars it works fine without adjustment, but on temperamental sports cars ... guess.
Alternatively ... register as a licensed distiller and pay petrol duty (or spirits duty!) on it.
I had a similar thought about making diesel from some by-products of my company's processes. But we'd have had to pay the same amount of duty per litre as on petro-diesel. Added to the production costs, total would have been well over £1/litre. So much for encouraging the environment through beneficial taxes. Anyway I'd expect the same principle to apply to ethanol distillation.
In some countries they do this on a large scale as a matter of course, and blend the ethanol with petrol. I believe that for run of th emill cars it works fine without adjustment, but on temperamental sports cars ... guess.
Well ... might have to be a repeat offence for jail, but you're not just speeding, you're attempting to defraud HM Customs & Excise, which is a criminal offence.
And illicit distilling of spirit alcohol (that's what you'd be doing, whatever you intended to do with it) is taken pretty seriously.
But I agree, as with the bio-diesel I was looking into it'd be a good way to save the planet. You might well get some info and support from Friends of the Earth (sorry ...), they were quite helpful when I was researching bio-diesel.
>> Edited by JohnLow on Wednesday 15th May 22:31
And illicit distilling of spirit alcohol (that's what you'd be doing, whatever you intended to do with it) is taken pretty seriously.
But I agree, as with the bio-diesel I was looking into it'd be a good way to save the planet. You might well get some info and support from Friends of the Earth (sorry ...), they were quite helpful when I was researching bio-diesel.
>> Edited by JohnLow on Wednesday 15th May 22:31
quote:
Can you imagine the view from the space station? Oopps there goes another PH house.
had crossed my mind actually, having said that petrol is highly explosive stuff too and we chuck it around without a care. well I do anyway.
I remember seeing a programme on telly where they made a simple mortar tube to fire an empty beer can. first shot was with a teaspoon of gunpowder; then can sort of plopped gently out of the end of the tube when it was fired. then they hooked up a spark plug and coil and put a teaspoon of petrol in. BANG! they found the beer can a quarter of a mile away...
quote:
I had a similar thought about making diesel from some by-products of my company's processes.
I run my Land-Rover 2¼ Diesel occasionally on vegetable oil. Serious.
The most critical difference to diesel is, that viscosity is too tough, but with a small heat exchanger it could heated up to 75°C by cooling water.
(If you have a tough distributor pump, you don't need to heat at ambient temperatures 20°up)
You'll need two tanks: one for vegetable oil, and one for diesel. The diesel should be used to flow the system before switching the engine off, because the engine needs instantly diesel for a cold start.
You're asking for the advantage?
Vegetable oil is not based on mineral oil, therefore normally taxed.
Go to the next LIDL and check the price: on my last visit it's been 38p for a 1l-bottle!
It is legal, at least in Germany!
just neat vegetable oil?? not bad - I bet you could get it for a lot cheaper than 38p/L if you bought in bulk direct from the supplier. Or is this a wind-up!!
Probably not a great idea in a modern diesel but it could be very cheap motoring in an old DI montego.
might experiment with this one sometime this summer.
how does it affect performance/emissions (ie does it chuck out loads of smoke)
Probably not a great idea in a modern diesel but it could be very cheap motoring in an old DI montego.
might experiment with this one sometime this summer.
how does it affect performance/emissions (ie does it chuck out loads of smoke)
Slightly off topic but - But I was in Zamiba a number of moons ago and the entire country had run out of Diesel. We couldn't buy any and didn't have enough range to get across the nearest border.
Advice was to use Paraffin with a dash of engine oil. We queued up with the biddies wanting fuel for their stoves and went about 50/50 with the spare diesel we were carrying. It worked fine and we escaped !
Hospital we visited was running 98% Paraffin in all their vehicles
Advice was to use Paraffin with a dash of engine oil. We queued up with the biddies wanting fuel for their stoves and went about 50/50 with the spare diesel we were carrying. It worked fine and we escaped !
Hospital we visited was running 98% Paraffin in all their vehicles
quote:
just neat vegetable oil?? not bad - I bet you could get it for a lot cheaper than 38p/L if you bought in bulk direct from the supplier. Or is this a wind-up!!
Probably not a great idea in a modern diesel but it could be very cheap motoring in an old DI montego.
might experiment with this one sometime this summer.
how does it affect performance/emissions (ie does it chuck out loads of smoke)
Performance will be kept, as the upper heating value is slightly better on veg.oil. It won't smoke more than diesel, but when cold, it smells like French fries, but that smell disappears after 5...10min.
According to tests at my university, consumption goes down up to 7%.
Burning veg.oil only produces the same amount of carbon dioxide, which has been used by plants when growing up!
Prices for 1000l direct from the oil mill are under 33p/l (in Hessen).
Bodo
Read something about running on vegetable oil in one of the car mags recently. Apparently there are about 8 people doing it in the country! You DO have to pay tax though, you are supposed to record consumption and divvy up equivalent tax. All self regulated, so I guess you could claim to eat a lot of chips!
It's ridiculous, but true, that you have to pay the same tax on vegetable oil (or other bio diesels, from rapeseed, algae, flax, you name it) as on mineral oil diesel. The bio diesel is much, much better for the environment than any other available internal combustion engine fuel.
Lower tax on LPG but that still comes from dead dinosaur, for eg.
You can even use secondhand vegetable oil from your local chippy, just run it through a filter first.
IIRC with veg oil you don't have to convert the car engine, but you do need to warm everything, including the veg oil, up first - viscosity is the issue there, as mentioned above. If you process it into bio diesel then you can put straight into the normal tank.
Lower tax on LPG but that still comes from dead dinosaur, for eg.
You can even use secondhand vegetable oil from your local chippy, just run it through a filter first.
IIRC with veg oil you don't have to convert the car engine, but you do need to warm everything, including the veg oil, up first - viscosity is the issue there, as mentioned above. If you process it into bio diesel then you can put straight into the normal tank.
Just to add my ten cents worth.
Some countries like Brazil do run cars on ethanol mixed with petrol and it does work. Apparently they've got something like 5 million vehicles running on the stuff...
The Good Ol US of A also encourages poeple to run on this stuff (ethanol) but in the states it is a mix of 85% ethanol and 15% petrol. They call it E85 and is available from many filling stations in certain states. The only down side is that vehicles need to be retuned to run on E85. The US government is trying to get vehicle makers to run on both E85 and petrol (with a switch a'la TVR's 95/97 RON switch).
Interestingly as a bynote in California to try and help the air quality the petrol actually has 10% ethanol in it to make it burn cleaner. This also means you can avoid putting in other nasty chemicals. It doesn't change the characteristics of the fuel but vehicle makers have to test all vehicles to ensure no strange side effects. (eg, the ethanol attacking rubber seals etc etc.)
If TVR wanted to sell cars in the States then this is one of the strange little compliance rules they would have to play by.
The reason the states are so keen on the stuff is cos Iowa farmers can make it from corn (which is apparently undervalued just now, corn that is, not the farmers
). It also means that they look like they actually care about the environment.
If you wanted to run your car on ethanol then the best route to go down is E85 as this still retains some of the additives in petrol that help your engine. It is also safer than just pure ethanol. However because of the difference in fuel you would need to get your car set up on a rolling road. Then it wouldn't run on petrol anymore which would make getting to Le Mans a bit tricky.....
Not sure if you could get it to be a duel fuel vehicle with a switch or something.
It would be an interesting project to carry out on an old hack. Anyone know where you can buy ethanol and how much it would be (assuming I'm not planning on paying fuel tax on it
)
Cheers
Andy
Some countries like Brazil do run cars on ethanol mixed with petrol and it does work. Apparently they've got something like 5 million vehicles running on the stuff...
The Good Ol US of A also encourages poeple to run on this stuff (ethanol) but in the states it is a mix of 85% ethanol and 15% petrol. They call it E85 and is available from many filling stations in certain states. The only down side is that vehicles need to be retuned to run on E85. The US government is trying to get vehicle makers to run on both E85 and petrol (with a switch a'la TVR's 95/97 RON switch).
Interestingly as a bynote in California to try and help the air quality the petrol actually has 10% ethanol in it to make it burn cleaner. This also means you can avoid putting in other nasty chemicals. It doesn't change the characteristics of the fuel but vehicle makers have to test all vehicles to ensure no strange side effects. (eg, the ethanol attacking rubber seals etc etc.)
If TVR wanted to sell cars in the States then this is one of the strange little compliance rules they would have to play by.
The reason the states are so keen on the stuff is cos Iowa farmers can make it from corn (which is apparently undervalued just now, corn that is, not the farmers
). It also means that they look like they actually care about the environment. If you wanted to run your car on ethanol then the best route to go down is E85 as this still retains some of the additives in petrol that help your engine. It is also safer than just pure ethanol. However because of the difference in fuel you would need to get your car set up on a rolling road. Then it wouldn't run on petrol anymore which would make getting to Le Mans a bit tricky.....
Not sure if you could get it to be a duel fuel vehicle with a switch or something.
It would be an interesting project to carry out on an old hack. Anyone know where you can buy ethanol and how much it would be (assuming I'm not planning on paying fuel tax on it
) Cheers
Andy
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