Reducing the world's fuel use - my idea

[Alpinestarhero]

I was watching the very excellent aussie V8 supercar championship this morning, and I thought to myself how boring things will be when theres no motor racing because we've run out of fuel.

Then I thought that maybe we can keep motor-racing by using ethanol fuels for the cars. And I then thought (very linear train of through I have, builds itself up and up) why not start using ethanol fuels, or very high content ethanol fuels, right now (ok, not for 2010 seasons, but you get the idea), so that the petrol that would be used in racing, can be used instead for people who need it to get to work.

I don't know what racing teams would think of this, but I thought it was a good idea. There must be so much perol used up just for going round and round in circles for fun, when it could be saved for use in road vehicles

Thoughts?

Matt

[the_lone_wolf]

There must be so much perol used up just for going round and round in circles for fun, when it could be saved for use in road vehicles

Must there?

[thedonal]

Do ve-hickles need modification to run ethanol fuels? I guess it could be one way of getting dodgy old cars off the road (well kept classics aside).

Also- what would be the source of ethanol? I think the world's established now that bio-ethanol from foodstuffs would erode the food availability (wasn't that a contributing factor to food costs a few years ago?). I guess if there was an ethanol source that could be grown and processed without taking valuable crop-space up, it would be a consideration.

I'm sure that on top of the above, there are very pressing commercial and political reasons why the fuel companies would not allow this (and be careful with your ideas in public, Matt- don't people with practical, radical new fuel ideas tend to 'disappear' from the world at large and get hidden in a basement lab at an oil company for the rest of their natural? :o)

[Alpinestarhero]

Thedonal, this is what I was thinking - there isnt enough land space to grow enough crops to provide enough fuel without diminishing the worlds food supply if all cars in the whole world ran on bioethanol, but for motor-racing, there could be enough land

I'm just thinking that we need to reduce our fuel consumption, and motor-racing could be the place to start. Maybe ethanol isnt a good diea, but maybe other fuels could be

TLW - well, I assume alot of fuel is used! A motogp bike uses what, 22 litres of fuel per race and covers maybe 100 miles or so - a typical road bike could do 200 miles on a similar amount of fuel right?

[johnnyrod]

Total oil use for the world is measured on a scale of grillions of somethings per second, the amount used for racing is not so much miniscule as invisible in there. The problem with biofuels of any sort is that they are also small by comparison, simply because of the vastness of mineral oil. To increase the capacity to grow and make these probably isn't possible to replace petrol or diesel. The problem with the food/fuel debate is that you really have to grow crops on land that is capable of yielding something, so whether you grow food and burn it or grow a non-food crop, either way you're taking land use away from food. There are "miracle" crops like jatropha (makes oil for biodiesel) that will grow in the desert. Er, not exactly, it will grow in poor soil but it doens't produce any fruit because the soil is poor, it needs growing in reasonable land just like any other crops. It's a knotty one, no diggity

[Alpinestarhero]

JR - i see...its very hard to think about how much fuel is used all over the world.

There is a growing interest in fuels obtained form algae, and there is also Syngas, but i dont know how good that is and I think it only produces fuels similar to diesal?

[the_lone_wolf]

TLW - well, I assume alot of fuel is used! A motogp bike uses what, 22 litres of fuel per race and covers maybe 100 miles or so - a typical road bike could do 200 miles on a similar amount of fuel right?

In absolute terms it sounds like a fair bit, but as JR pointed out as a percentage I'd wager you'll find it's statistically insignificant:smt009

[Alpinestarhero]

damn, so my idea isnt a great idea :(

[johnnyrod]

Algae are capable of making veg oil, but getting it out and making it clean enough are major challenges, right now they are research-level projects. Okay a quick run down on biofuels...

Biodiesel - made from veg oil, but where to get the oil? Ordinary veg oil i sgreat but too expensive to compete with mineral diesel (80% of the cost of biodiesel is the feedstock oil) unless mandates are brought in or tax breaks given. Waste oil and animal fat can be used, though are a problem in winter, but there isn't much of them around, cooking oil ends up your stomach after all. Non-food crops like jatropha compete for land space anyway, and the world is getting hungrier, look up some population stats to see how much it has grown since you were born, it's scary, I think it's twice in my 37 years. All the world's veg oil would replace about 5% or something like that of mineral diesel, I don't have the figures to hand.

Ethanol or butanol an be fermented from anything that you can get sugar out of - sugar crops, starch, and hopefully cellulose soon. It's not a drop-in fuel though, you need to alter carburetion, and to get the most out you'd want higher compression (ethanol RON is 120) which would rule out giong back to petrol (95ish). Again where to get the feedstock?

There are other possibilities like gasification of organic stuff, but these are also in early days, but promising. A lot of landfill organic waste can be turned into a gas mixture then made into a liquid, but at the moment this consumes more energy than the liquid contains, the processes need developing. Yes you'd probably get more diesel-like fuels out of it.

Brazil has been very successful with biofuesl but then has been at it since the 70s. They have a lot of space and relatively few people though. There's also a mountain of political and grenhouse gas saving stuff behind it all, it's a minefield!

[Alpinestarhero]

thanks for that jonnyrod, nice run-down :)

[the_lone_wolf]

damn, so my idea isnt a great idea :(
It's a good idea, just not on the scale that's needed to rid us of our oil dependency:cool:

[Alpinestarhero]

Maybe motorracing would be a good place to start developing alternate fuels and new technology. 2-stroke direct injection engines for example

[johnnyrod]

Maybe so but the aims are differnet, you're looking for maximum power at the expense of almost any kind of reliability and economy. To my mind the motor manufacturers are far too slack. Notice how the fuel price shot up, and all of a sudden a whole new range of engines appeared that are much more efficient? I'm not one for consipracy theories but it wouldn't be the first time the motor industry has held back development till later to further their own ends. They need to embrace modern ideas more, how long have we had turbos? How many small-engined turbo cars are there? Not many. For example.

[Alpinestarhero]

Maybe so but the aims are differnet, you're looking for maximum power at the expense of almost any kind of reliability and economy. To my mind the motor manufacturers are far too slack. Notice how the fuel price shot up, and all of a sudden a whole new range of engines appeared that are much more efficient? I'm not one for consipracy theories but it wouldn't be the first time the motor industry has held back development till later to further their own ends. They need to embrace modern ideas more, how long have we had turbos? How many small-engined turbo cars are there? Not many. For example.

this is true, they'll only provide things when there is demand. Else, I suppose they worry people wont buy their economical engines, since people can afford to run higher performance engines.

[yorkie_chris]

Alcohol is a great fuel, you just need massive injectors or carb jets big enough to stick a knitting needle through. But it's got a massive charge-cooling effect and a very high octane rating. But you burn twice as much. A mate of mine had a jawa 500 a while back and we dropped the CR and jetted it for normal petrol, I think we went from a 240 main jet to about a 110.

[punyXpress]

A couple of years ago, one of the comics ( Ride ? ) ran a Daytona on alcohol they had made from apples with the help of a local school. It needed some petrol to fire it up & then ran well with very few alterations.
Think the biggest problem was stopping the kids pouring the stuff down their necks during the brewing & distilling processes.
Kids will be kids ( wont we )

[Alpinestarhero]

Alcohol is a great fuel, you just need massive injectors or carb jets big enough to stick a knitting needle through. But it's got a massive charge-cooling effect and a very high octane rating. But you burn twice as much. A mate of mine had a jawa 500 a while back and we dropped the CR and jetted it for normal petrol, I think we went from a 240 main jet to about a 110.

Can you explain what charge cooling is?

[yorkie_chris]

Latent heat of evaporation basically.

Even with isentropic compression the compression stroke heats the charge, evaporating the fuel. Alcohol is good at absorbing this heat, reducing the temperature. Which aids resistance to detonation.

During the wowwer they used water-methanol injection into the interstage cooler and aftercooler on the merlin engines to avoid detonation and allow them to increase the boost and give harry hun a bloody nose and all that. tallyho.

[Alpinestarhero]

Gotcha.

[Biker Biggles]

Gotcha.

No that was the Falklands War,not the one with jonny hun.;)

[Steve_God]

Before motor vehicles, there was horse racing...
After fuel, there will still be racing...
(albeit with bio-fuel, hydrogen, methane, alcohol, electric, or whichever future fuel source takes off in the future)

[MattCollins]

ASH,

Noble idea, but is it really workable? The Brazil experience would say yes, but the worlds largest consumer of energy (US) is burning up its grain reserves in automobiles which may ultimately lead to a crisis in both energy and basic food stuffs.
It is a path that I am opposed to. I view bio-fuels not as a long term solution but as a short term stop gap and like fossil fuels, usable land and water is a finite resource. In this hungry and ever more crowded world it makes zero long term sense to tie up even a single hectare of land where tens of thousands of kilowatt hours will fall every day to produce a few tonnes of fuel annually that will be burnt inefficiently.
For that reason and a few others I will not touch the E85 which is available locally.

[Spiderman]

There must be so much petrol used up just for going round and round in circles for fun, when it could be saved for use in road vehicles

Thoughts?

Matt

Matt old buddy, old friend.... i think you got the wording a little back to front here.

Surely you meant ... we are wasting so much good petrol in road vehicles when it should be saved for track days and racing events and not the boring drudgery of the daily commute to to work and back!

[BanannaMan]

There are thousands of vehicles on the road.
The traffic in London 1 day probably burns more petrol than all types of racing in the UK for an entire year, so nothing saved there.

And we already have ethynol mixed with petrol in the US (for road use)now. Mostly 10% but they are working towards 85%, but even the cars designed for it run like **** on E/85.

Going to all ethynol in most countries would take out a major food source not to mention ethynol is a terribly inefficient fuel.
You'll burn lots more gallons and make much less power than with petrol.
Racing is pretty much out. It's just not a performance fuel in internal combustion engines.
It also kills small engines and older carbed vehicles.

Ethynol is an oil company scam.
If you get 15 to 20 % less fuel economy on 10% Ethynol. That means you are using MORE petrol not less.
And it costs more too.

But if you want it... PLEASE come invade the US and take all the ethynol away.
Every consumer in America will thank you, and only the big oil companies will be mad.

[Bri w]

Electrickery is the way forward. The new Batt powered cars and bikes are phenomenally quick, efficient and are starting to have a good range.

It maybe a contentious subject but I feel nuclear power stations are the Best option.

[MattCollins]

Electrickery is the way forward. The new Batt powered cars and bikes are phenomenally quick, efficient and are starting to have a good range.

It maybe a contentious subject but I feel nuclear power stations are the Best option.


I agree.

Something for people to keep in mind is that electric vehicles are only as clean as the power source that charges them. If it is charged by a stinking coal fired power station then that is about as clean as an electric vehicle will ever be.
To that end, I am a keen supporter of grid tied domestic wind and solar as a primary energy source supplemented by nuclear (which don't exist in Oz) which I see as being the lesser of the many evils.

[ophic]

Nevertheless a coal fired power station is a lot more efficient than a load of individual cars - so electricity is still a way forward. But I agree, nuclear power stations could be providing enough clean energy for the next 1000 years. Apparently.

[EssexDave]

As far as I'm aware most race fuels arn't the same as what you'd get on the road.

I believe they use a lot of ethanol as it is. (I'm not sure about normal petrol but ethanol burns with the colourless flame) hence the odd scenes in the pits of some races.

[sinbad]

As far as I'm aware most race fuels arn't the same as what you'd get on the road.

I believe they use a lot of ethanol as it is. (I'm not sure about normal petrol but ethanol burns with the colourless flame) hence the odd scenes in the pits of some races.

That's right. When the Indy Racing League switched to "100%" Ethanol for the 2007 season and following seasons they actually still added 2% petrol to the mix so that it would burn with a visible flame. I think the US government also had some demand that it be unfit for human consumption too, which apparently adding a miniscule amount of petrol also ensures. :)

[yorkie_chris]

You'll burn lots more gallons and make much less power than with petrol.

Only less power if it is not designed for it.

[MattCollins]

Nevertheless a coal fired power station is a lot more efficient than a load of individual cars - so electricity is still a way forward. But I agree, nuclear power stations could be providing enough clean energy for the next 1000 years. Apparently.

Not if it is Chinese :)

It's ironic that the worlds largest supplier of Lithium cells also has the worlds worst pollution problems.

[yorkie_chris]

Nevertheless a coal fired power station is a lot more efficient than a load of individual cars - so electricity is still a way forward. But I agree, nuclear power stations could be providing enough clean energy for the next 1000 years. Apparently.

Even after you take into account the losses of transmitting power, charging batteries, discharging batteries, manufacturing and disposing of batteries, losses in the cars motors and drivetrain?

[boot]

A couple of things to fuel your quest.

Browns Gas.

Crower Six Stroke Engine - (maybe not for motorsport though).