Tow cars and trailers

Bill Daniels wrote:
If you want to look at alternative liguid fuels for the existing fleet
consider Butanol (Butyl alcohol). It has about the same energy content as
gasolene, burns at the same air-fuel mixture and has an octane rating of 94.
It can be made from biomass at better net energy yeld than ethanol. Since
you can mix it with gasolene at any ratio with no changes needed in the
engines, it looks better to me than ethanol.

Butanol sounds like a good idea. I've seen puffs for methanol and
ethanol but no mention of butanol. I wonder why.

I mentioned solar or nuke driven industrial sources for any such fuel
(and quoted ethyl as an example) because I think that biofuel is too
limited by the availability of both arable land and water to replace
oil-based fuels.

Possibly irrelevant, but I remember seeing a Scientific American article
back in the late 60s/early 70s on this topic. I forget what triggered it
(possibly a comment on a back to nature movement) but it pointed out
that even then it would be impossible to replace America's oil-powered
transport systems with horses because there wasn't the farm land in the
USA to feed the horses, let alone produce anything else. OK, horses are
not exactly efficient energy sources. Replace them with something more
efficient (biodiesel powered engines?) and factor in the increased
energy consumption after 40 years of economic growth and I think the
argument still holds.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
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