Text 9083, 76 rader
Skriven 2007-12-30 08:23:00 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
   Kommentar till text 9005 av Björn Felten (2:203/2)
Ärende: Ethanol
===============
Björn Felten wrote to Robert Bashe on Saturday December 29 2007 at 12:27:

BF>>>> Yes they can but gasoline contains more energy compared to ethanol.

RB>> Which is true.

BF> Only if you listen to the scientists sponsored by the oil companies.

Scientific fact doesn't change with the speaker, Bjorn. Such things are
measurable.

And you're terribly biased, hardly a source of a neutral opinion.

BF>>> Is that why dragsters and speedway bikes run on methanol?

RB>> Which is not. They run on mixtures of hydrocarbons and methanol,

BF> Yes and...? Did I say the ran on pure methanol?

That was the implication, yes. And incidently, the really hot dragsters run on
nitromethane.

At any rate, your attempt to dispute the lower energy content of methanol by
citing its use in racing was a failure, since as I mentioned, the purpose of
the alcohol is to add oxygen for better combustion.

RB>> You're confusing methanol with ethanol. Methanol is mainly produced
RB>> by catalytic oxygenation of petroleum hydrocarbons. It's ethanol you
RB>> get from fermentation of starch.

BF> No I am not. Jeezzz...

You're the one who brought up wheat in connection with methanol, not I. And you
don't produce methanol from wheat.

BF> Methanol can be made from "surplus" products from the paper industry,
BF> primarily "black lye" that previously was pumped right out in the sea,
BF> polluting everything, but nowadays processed at a very high cost.

A good number of chemicals "can" be made from all kinds of things if you want
to spend the money to do it. The big question is always whether it's
economically viable to do so. In this case the answer is obviuously "no", since
as I indicated above, most methanol is petroleum derived, and that is still by
far the cheapest way of making it. The main use for methanol, incidently, is
still as a raw material in the chemical industry and not in fuel.

What you're talking about would be a political decision, not an economic one,
and would involve either subsidies for methanol produced for use as fuel, or a
correspondingly higher price for fuel made with such high-cost methanol.

The Germans are going this way, although not specifically for methanol. They
mandate a certain percentage of "renewable fuels" in gasoling and diesel, and
leave it to the fuel companies to select engine-compatible blends. Naturally
that means still higher prices at the pumps, but since the motorized public is
taken for every penny possible in the form of various taxes anyway (the pump
price for gas here is around 60-70% taxes), the difference doesn't really
amount to much.

BF> As a side note: methanol is even called 'träsprit' in Swedish. 'Trä'
BF> means wood and 'sprit' means spirit, alcohol.

They call it "wood alcohol" in English.

BF> Switching from E to M would mean that much less sugar canes from
BF> Brazil (where EU get most of it's fuel ethanol from) would be wasted
BF> and much less transportation half across the globe would be needed.

Which might please the environmentalists, but wouldn't make much of a dent in
the economic picture. All of these "renewable" fuels are a good deal more
expensive than plain, old-fashioned gasoline or diesel. Naturally I mean
without taxes.

Cheers, Bob

--- GoldED+/W32 1.1.5-0613
 * Origin: Jabberwocky System - 02363-56073 ISDN/V34 (2:2448/44)