Removing Ethanol from Gas?

Roger wrote:
snip

The Jet A prices will be right up there too.
We might get regulated out of existence, but I doubt the price of gas
will do it as that is the cheapest part of flying.

Most small turbines will burn diesel fuel okay, ag operators do it all
the time. The debut of ULSD will help a lot: most ULSD will be pretty
close to JP-8. K-1 Kero is fine too as long as a little oil is put in
it for the fuel controller.


I do think we'll see a lot of Diesel conversions once they get the HP
up in the 250 to 350 range. I'd even spring for one in the Deb as
it's getting close to major time any way.

How about a turbo charged diesel in the G-III? 350 HP would be just
about right if they/I could shoehorn it in. Problem is that damn turbo
take sup a *lot* of room.

eventaully, or buy a turboprop if they have the money.

Unless you fly in the flight levels you are looking a minimum of 30
gallons per hour. More like 40 or 50. That'd be about $200 an hour
for fuel to run a 4 or 6 place single engine at 10,000 or under where
most of us like to fly.



You need to shop for fuel more carefully. Jet fuel should be a lot
cheaper than avgas and if you look at the ads in TAP you will see
places selling it reasonable.

Dave Stadt wrote:
snip

I stopped in the Lycoming tent at OSH and noticed they had a diesel on
display. In talking to one of the reps he stated the engine is nearly
developed but no one is interested in it so they pretty much put it on the
shelf waiting for a customer. Have also heard that there are prop problems
due to the power pulses developed by diesel engines.

Lycoming couldn't find their ass with both hands. They have proven
that for fifty years. They are a senile company and will quietly fold
in a few years as their foreign markets vanish and the clone vendors,
like Superior, cut into their domestic market.

Richard Riley wrote:

Back in the days when unleaded premium was new, there was some folk
wisdom that you could mix leaded 92 and unleaded 92 and get about 94
octane out of it - that the efficacy of the TEL as a booster decreased
exponentially as the percentage went up.

It's news to me. However, there are many misconceptions about what the
octane rating really is, which can lead to many theories about power from
engines. That almost sounds like one of those urban legends.

Many people think that premium fuel has more energy than lower grades,
when actually it is about the same. What the higher octane rating
represents is the anti-knock properties of the fuel, and a high rating
typically means that the fuel burns more slowly than fuel with a lower
rating, and is less inclined to preignition. There is no extra energy in
the fuel.

Therefore, if a car engine designed for lower octane fuel is run on
higher octane fuel with no modification, then the mileage will be exactly
the same, ignoring the energy effect of any additives. The only way to
get better mileage is to increase the compression ratio and advance the
timing, which increases overall engine efficiency. You need high octane
fuel to do that.

A jump from 92 to 94 octane is huge. It implies that the TEL is boosting
the no-lead portion of the fuel by 4 points of octane, which is more than
the effect it has on base gasoline. I don't know enough about the effect
of lead to say it's impossible, but it certainly seems a stretch.

On 15 Aug 2006 06:42:06 -0700, "Bret Ludwig"
wrote:


Roger wrote:
snip

The Jet A prices will be right up there too.
We might get regulated out of existence, but I doubt the price of gas
will do it as that is the cheapest part of flying.

Most small turbines will burn diesel fuel okay, ag operators do it all
the time. The debut of ULSD will help a lot: most ULSD will be pretty
close to JP-8. K-1 Kero is fine too as long as a little oil is put in
it for the fuel controller.


I do think we'll see a lot of Diesel conversions once they get the HP
up in the 250 to 350 range. I'd even spring for one in the Deb as
it's getting close to major time any way.

How about a turbo charged diesel in the G-III? 350 HP would be just
about right if they/I could shoehorn it in. Problem is that damn turbo
take sup a *lot* of room.

eventaully, or buy a turboprop if they have the money.

Unless you fly in the flight levels you are looking a minimum of 30
gallons per hour. More like 40 or 50. That'd be about $200 an hour
for fuel to run a 4 or 6 place single engine at 10,000 or under where
most of us like to fly.



You need to shop for fuel more carefully. Jet fuel should be a lot
cheaper than avgas and if you look at the ads in TAP you will see
places selling it reasonable.

Last night I put over $100 worth of LL in the Deb at $3.79. With full
tanks I can play around (running 75% and about 190 MPH) for nearly 5
hours before I have to start looking for a gas station and that sill
leaves me with VFR reserves plus the unusable. If I fill the tip
tanks I can stay out there ALL afternoon, plus an hour before looking
for more gas.

With a PT-6 up front and down low I'm looking at *maybe* two hours.
With tip tanks I wouldn't even add another hour.

For the Jet A to come close to being an economically viable
alternative it'd have to sell for around $1.50 and I'd still be stuck
with short duration and range unless I went to altitude.

Shoving the torque to 100% with all that HP and a light plane could be
a real rush, but even with what I have now I can not just jam the
throttle in on a balked landing, go around, or stall recovery. Unlike
a 150 or 172 I have to ease the power in if I don't want to see the
world from a new attitude. Imagine if I had three times the power
instantly available in the same plane.

Unfortunately for just playing, the PT-6 and Jet A would about triple
or quadruple my cost.

Now if I had a 300 to 350 HP diesel up front... :-))

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

Roger wrote:
On 15 Aug 2006 06:42:06 -0700, "Bret Ludwig"
wrote:
snip


I do think we'll see a lot of Diesel conversions once they get the HP
up in the 250 to 350 range. I'd even spring for one in the Deb as
it's getting close to major time any way.

How about a turbo charged diesel in the G-III? 350 HP would be just
about right if they/I could shoehorn it in. Problem is that damn turbo
take sup a *lot* of room.

eventaully, or buy a turboprop if they have the money.

Unless you fly in the flight levels you are looking a minimum of 30
gallons per hour. More like 40 or 50. That'd be about $200 an hour
for fuel to run a 4 or 6 place single engine at 10,000 or under where
most of us like to fly.



You need to shop for fuel more carefully. Jet fuel should be a lot
cheaper than avgas and if you look at the ads in TAP you will see
places selling it reasonable.

Last night I put over $100 worth of LL in the Deb at $3.79. With full
tanks I can play around (running 75% and about 190 MPH) for nearly 5
hours before I have to start looking for a gas station and that sill
leaves me with VFR reserves plus the unusable. If I fill the tip
tanks I can stay out there ALL afternoon, plus an hour before looking
for more gas.

With a PT-6 up front and down low I'm looking at *maybe* two hours.
With tip tanks I wouldn't even add another hour.


We are comparing a 800-1200 hp engine to a 300 hp engine,
unfortunately. A turbine really designed for a 300 hp output would have
a fuel burn higher, not drastically so, than your air cooled WWII era
recip.

I bought one gallon (yes) of 100LL for my cheaply built lawnmower (I
use avgas in it before winter storage: it's built of cheap plastics and
seals, not like it should be, because most people dumpster them before
rebuild) and paid almost $5 out here. Car gas is over $3 here. And I'm
in a "cheap" gas market.

We used to use avgas as a octane booster, 8:1 with the best grade
unleaded (or 16:1 with green when we could get it...) for motorcycles.
Today I'd replace all the rubber, slosh the tank with alcoholproof
sealer, and run E85.

Grumman-581 wrote:
On 9 Aug 2006 11:27:58 -0700, "M" wrote:
I don't think there's nearly enough ethanol manufacturing capacity to
do a nation wide mix of E10. That's a huge amount of ethanol to be
made from corn or other plants, plus the cost and the energy in
distillation.

And more importantly, a waste of good corn liquor...

Ethanol made for burning is not much good for drinking....even before
being denatured.


An interesting point: the standard BATF denaturant (poison) is mostly
methanol with a couple of other things added for good measure. One of
which is...."Aviation Gasoline". If other denaturants are used the
alcohol is SD, specially denatured, if the standard denaturant is
chemically not OK for certain processes.

Jim Macklin wrote:
It's is like the guy who spent $25,000 on tools to build
furniture for his house, to save 25% on the furniture.
During WWII the Army published flight manuals for fighters
(and bombers) for different grades of fuel, 80/87, 91-96,
100/130 and 115/145 being refined. But some battlefields
did not have supplies of all grades. So you might have a 54
In Hg. MAP with 115/145 and only 40 inches with 100/130.

But what octane do you get from home refined mogas?


Not all grades could be used in all engines. 80/87 was not under any
circumstances allowed in many of the bigger engines. And use of
115/145, as was done after WWII (the Navy even ran its jets on the
stuff up through the middle of the Korean War, limiting range and
coating the tailpipes with a lethal (to ground handlers) gray gunk!)
was tough on the Lycomings and Continentals and the gas engines in ramp
equipment.

Now for a slight change of direction. If you're writing your
legislators, one thing to remind them of is that we got the TEL out of
gasoline, NOT because it was making us sick (although I was never keen
on eating the blackberries that grow right alongside the highways
everywhere in Oregon), but because it destroyes catalytic converters.
And whatever anybody's opinion about catalytic converters is, nobody
is proposing CCs for the tiny piston-powered general aviation fleet.
Therefore efforts to remove the TEL from aviation fuel for
"environmental" reasons are quixotic and contrary to good sense.

Catalytic converters only do in a short time what nature does in the
free air over a longer time anyway. They do not change the LONG TERM
effect of burning petroleum, which is to release carbon dioxide.

We could get rid of automobile emissions control in most of the cars
in the continental US with a tiny effect in air quality in most of our
landmass. Only six cities-LA, SFO, Denver, the greater NYC metro area,
and a couple others would be impacted. They would, however, be VERY
impacted if all the car fleet went back to 1963 standards. Los Angeles
in particular would be uninhabitable.

Where I live Mexicans buy certain 1980s-1990s trucks (primarily) and
cars and remove the EFI and factory ECM and backfit them with a carb,
vacuum distributor, and remove the cat con, AIR and EGR systems and
assorted stuff. Those vehicles are then taken back to Mexico and sold
at a profit, as the Mexican infrastructure can maintain them that way.
This is great for rural Mexicans, but a little tough in Mexico City.

In fact, a good case could be made for a mandate that TEL in avfuel be
REDUCED from the current ridiculous levels to something that wouldn'f
foul sparkplugs without drastic leaning.

THAT would make everybody happy.


That is called 80/87 aviation gas. All grades of aviation gasoline are
of essentially the same base stock with only the levels of TEL varying.


A better solution is the use of common car gas in aircraft with
thoroughly refurbished fuel systems, if auto fuels are of sufficient
octane rating to assure detonation is not a concern. Better yet was
what the Europeans started to do in the late 80s, before giving up
because of the perceived factory efforts: replacement of air cooled
cylinders with ones having modern combustion chamber designs and liquid
cooling jackets. Liquid cooled engines can safely operate on a given
fuel at up to two points higher compression ratio as opposed to air
cooled ones.