Using Ethanol in Your Plane

Ethanol isn't currently a solution to anything other than
Archer-Daniels-Midland. It's not a viable source of energy (current
production techniques use as much oil to grow and process the
ethanol than the oil it would replace in the market). Further,
the use of it as an oxygenate in reformulated fuels is suspect
as well.

While this is undoubtedly true, it's sadly irrelevant.

The politicians -- not the scientists, or even the economists -- have made
the decision to go ahead with ethanol, and we're going to be stuck with it.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

wrote in message
ups.com...
Most new cars sold today in Brazil are fuel flexible. This is made
posible with electronic fuel injection systems. Ethanol today is 1/2"
price of gasoline and 1/3 of Avgas in Brazil. Cars run on Ethanol have
consums more than cars run on gasoline.


Many new cars sold today in AMERICA are fuel flexible. Here is a list for
2006.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/cleanciti...fv/models.html

"Icebound" wrote in message
...


Many new cars sold today in AMERICA are fuel flexible. Here is a list for
2006.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/cleanciti...fv/models.html





Sorry... wrong link.. Here is the correct one:
http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/pdfs/my2006_afv_atv.pdf

On 6 Mar 2006 22:13:26 -0800, "M" wrote:

True. Not only the range will be less gallon for gallon, it'll be less
pound for pound as well, because ethanol has lower specific energy
content by weight as well compared with gasoline.

However, a spark ignited engine specifically designed for burning
ethanol can be lighter because the lower CHT, which reduces the need of
cylinder cooling, which in term allows a cowling design that has
smaller cooling drag. Cooling drag is one of the biggest drag
components in total drag. I don't know the answer, but it's possible
an airframe and engine combination specifically designed for ethanol
fuel might be just as just as good in terms of performance and range,
compared with today's gasoline powered piston planes.

The energy in a gallon of Ethanol is considerably less than a gallon
of gas.
E85 which is 85% Ethanol and 15% gas requires about 25 to 30% more
fuel flow to produce the same energy as straight gas. Straight Ethanol
contains only 66% the energy of gas which means you'd need to carry
54% more for the same energy output.

So, although it's lighter it takes a whole lot more.
Taken in perspective, to get the range I get with 100 gallons I'd need
154 gallons. That is 4 gallons more than both my mains hold.


Looking in to the long term future, the day will come when airline
industry sees the need to invest in alternative and renewable fuel for

Quite likely but part of that is going to be due to higher prices for
fuel. The break even point (which is an ever moving target) is around
$3.50 a gallon. Once we reach that point renewable fuels become
economically viable.

Just briefly Alcohol futures hit higher than crude last summer, but in
general Ethanol is more expensive than gas, particularly when the
subsidies are taken into consideration. Plus the generation of
Alcohol is not all that efficient. It depends on which study you
read, but the return is between 1.35 and 1.56 gallons energy wise
(give or take a few hundredths). That means you get back between 1.35
and 1.56 gallons for every gallon of fuel used to produce the stuff.
To produce that much Alcohol would take over 400,000,000 acres of
corn. We currently have about 80,000,000 in production nation wide.
However even 1.56 is not considered sufficient to make the fuel a
viable source long term. It really needs to be on the order of 2:1 or
two gallons out for every gallon in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol..._United_States

the sole reason of economy. When that happens we'll probably see
ethanol powered jet engines. Hopefully there will still be private

Peanut oil, or some other high energy (BTU) source. Alcohol just
doesn't have the BTUs

First, from the national security approach, or dependence on foreign
oil, we only need to increase the national average mileage by about 7
MPG to eliminate the need for importing crude to use as auto fuel.
It's currently very close to 21 MPG average. It hit about 22 MPG
about 8 or 10 years back before trucks started outselling cars.
It'd only take about 15% going to hybrid cars to do this.

piston flying in this country and we'll start to see clean sheet design
piston engine and airframe based on a new fuel. Maybe instead of
ethanol, we'll have diesel engine burning corn oil :-)

and Jet engines.

However we run the very serious risk of running into the same problems
as Brazil where they use sugar cane as an efficient source of Ethanol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol...l_implications
They diverted so much land into the production of sugar cane for fuel
that they lost a lot of biodiversity which led to sharply higher food
prices and crime due to unemployment.





Kyle Boatright wrote:


A couple of things about Ethanol: 1) It has higher octane than avgas. 2)
It has lower specific energy content.

That means you can raise the compression ratio, but gallon for gallon, your
range will be less.

My wife is currently driving a hybrid that uses 13:1 in the gas engine
which is probably made possible by the use of variable cam timing.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

KB

On Tue, 07 Mar 2006 19:17:45 -0500, Ron Natalie
wrote:

Jay Honeck wrote:


Jim Weir, you out there? Have you done any barn yard experimenting with
ethanol in your 182?

Ethanol isn't currently a solution to anything other than
Archer-Daniels-Midland. It's not a viable source of energy (current
production techniques use as much oil to grow and process the

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol...energy_balance
Latest studies show it to have improved a bit, but still not enough to
make it viable. One unit of oil used in the crude to gas process
yields one order of magnitude more fuel than it does Alcohol. The
current yields are supposedly some where between 1.35 and 1.56 gallons
out for each gallon in.

ethanol than the oil it would replace in the market). Further,
the use of it as an oxygenate in reformulated fuels is suspect
as well.

Designing a gasoline vehicle to be fuel-flexible isn't hard.
Retrofitting one isn't impossible (but may be more trouble
than it's worth).

I still think the interim fix is the hybrid with economically viable
renewable fuels a ways down the road. Of course the economically
viable also depends on the price of gas hitting as staying around
$3.50 a gallon. We also have to remember that the current price of
Alcohol is as low as it is due to some pretty large subsidies.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

On 7 Mar 2006 17:43:06 -0800, wrote:

Most new cars sold today in Brazil are fuel flexible. This is made
posible with electronic fuel injection systems. Ethanol today is 1/2"
price of gasoline and 1/3 of Avgas in Brazil. Cars run on Ethanol have
consums more than cars run on gasoline.

And the cost according to studies is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol...l_implications

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

On Wed, 08 Mar 2006 15:06:33 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

Ethanol isn't currently a solution to anything other than
Archer-Daniels-Midland. It's not a viable source of energy (current
production techniques use as much oil to grow and process the
ethanol than the oil it would replace in the market). Further,
the use of it as an oxygenate in reformulated fuels is suspect
as well.

While this is undoubtedly true, it's sadly irrelevant.

The politicians -- not the scientists, or even the economists -- have made
the decision to go ahead with ethanol, and we're going to be stuck with it.

The thing is, at present yields we can not come near producing enough
to make it competitive. We'd need about 5 to 6 times the acreage in
corn than we have at present just to feed our cars. If you do the
math that doesn't leave much of anything for growing food.
Here the true cost of Alcohol is about $3.50 a gallon, but with the
massive subsidies throughout the chain the consumer can only see about
$2.50 to $3.00 a gallon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol...l_implications

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

"Roger" wrote in message
...
The thing is, at present yields we can not come near producing enough
to make it competitive. We'd need about 5 to 6 times the acreage in
corn than we have at present just to feed our cars. If you do the
math that doesn't leave much of anything for growing food.
Here the true cost of Alcohol is about $3.50 a gallon, but with the
massive subsidies throughout the chain the consumer can only see about
$2.50 to $3.00 a gallon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol...l_implications


Wikipedia is an interesting concept, but that very concept leads to
politicization of science: ....the answer with the most votes wins,
whether it is scientifically supportable or not.

I am not disputing, nor acknowledging, the accuracy of this particular
article....

But Wikipedia has already had to acknowledge political interference to its
articles in 2005
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...513833,00.html

Being written only by the readers, wikipedia articles reflect the political
bias and scientific ignorance of those readers. The idea is that other
readers will eventually correct them, sure.... but in a relatively new topic
of discussion such as this one, hard facts are difficult to come by. It is
a case of "first one in, wins", at least until the emergence of study and
documentation that further supports (or disputes).

I urge care in using wikipedia as your information source.

"Jay Honeck" writes:

Ethanol isn't currently a solution to anything other than
Archer-Daniels-Midland. It's not a viable source of energy (current
production techniques use as much oil to grow and process the
ethanol than the oil it would replace in the market). Further,
the use of it as an oxygenate in reformulated fuels is suspect
as well.

While this is undoubtedly true, it's sadly irrelevant.

Undoubtedly? Only for someone with a closed mind.

The politicians -- not the scientists, or even the economists -- have made
the decision to go ahead with ethanol, and we're going to be stuck with it.

You make it sound like all scientists agree with Ron's assertion.
T'aint so.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006..._word_on_e.php

--kyler

This is true.

Fundamentally however high compression engines are more efficient
because of the higher combustion temperature, and the availability of
reasonably priced engine component materials limits the combustion
temperature we could have in the engine.

Doug wrote:
Alcohol also has extremely high octane so you can burn it in a very,
very high compression engine. High compression engines are more
efficient than lower compression engines. This would makeup for the at
least SOME of the lower energy content.