i was considering seting up an engine that could be run on ethyl alcohol. i can buy it locally pretty cheap. what exactly would I have to do to take advantage of this. Ethanol has an octane rating of about 104 so how much compression could i run with that. 13:1 14:1 ? ethanol has really good cooling affects too. so how would drastically increased compression ratios affect my choice of cams and target dynamic compression ratio.

I was reading on a web site that alcohol can be made from just about every live plant,and just think about all the food that gets destoyed every year to keep the prices up.The web site said that alcohol mass produced would cost about $.85 cents a gallon tells me something is wrong somewhere!It will give cleaner emisions fuel economy would be about the same,I sure someone runs it that can give more info than me.

help any one. Ethanol could be the fuel of the future.

sure could, we just have to get a farmer to run in the election as opposed to the oil men :D

Originally posted by Umass:
i was considering seting up an engine that could be run on ethyl alcohol. i can buy it locally pretty cheap. what exactly would I have to do to take advantage of this. Ethanol has an octane rating of about 104 so how much compression could i run with that. 13:1 14:1 ? ethanol has really good cooling affects too. so how would drastically increased compression ratios affect my choice of cams and target dynamic compression ratio. =
Don't know much about Ethanol but here's a little about Methanol
Alcohol likes compression.
Alcohol is also happy at a ratio of about 6.0-6.5 to 1 instead of 12.5-13.0 like gas so,,,,,
You need sewer pipes to feed the engine :D typical carb jets sizes are in the 100's
Cams are not that much different from an engine on gas under the same conditions.
It tends to like a little larger head because of the volume of fuel in the mix.
It will make more power & likes to be run rich.
If you lean it which is very easy you will not be happy.
As noted above, the volume is double so the price / mile is not as it appears & obviously you ain't going quite as far on a tankfull ;)
It is corrosive to a lot of aluminum among other things so you should flush your system if you are going to park your ride for any length of time.
It has an affinity to water which means it will pull water out of the air so storing it properly needs to be addressed.
Best way to clear it out of your fuel system is to put gas in the tank & run the engine til it is on gas which you will know the first time you do it.
It is a very good race fuel but not the most practical for street use unless you are very attentive to a few of these details.
And are not planning on traveling very far without a tanker behind you :D

thanks for the reply mike. I do know that the stoich ratio for ethanol is about 9:1 so you dont need to run as much of it as oposed to running methanol where you need to basically double the fuel flow. likes compression huh how much compression can i run on 104 octane.

Originally posted by TriplblackL78:
sure could, we just have to get a farmer to run in the election as opposed to the oil men :D per haps we do need farmers in office. if farmers switched to producing products that are used to produce ethanol like corn and grains they probably wouldnt need to be government subsidized anymore. this would only work if a majority of the country switched to ethanol fuel. could you imagine how much of a burden would be lifted from this country if we no longer relied on those S**T bag middle eastern countries for oil.

There's several Ethanol manufacturers in my rural area. None of 'em can stay in business without government subsidies.

Sure, it clean burning, does a nice job of eliminating moisture in the gasoline in the winter, and can be made from "waste" plant material.

No one wants to talk about emissions from the factories that make ethanol, though. And making ethanol in large quantity generally means using food grade plant material for at least part of the production. Result: Oil is used to make fertilizer, oil is burned to plow, sow, harvest, dry the crop, oil is burned to transport "food" as well as "waste" to an ethanol making facility, which uses oil in the manufacture of ethanol, and then the ethanol is supposed to reduce the amount of oil we use.

I used ethanol blended gasoline more for it's cleaning effect on the fuel system, as well as the moderate boost in octane rating. Just don't think everything is happy in alcohol land...

I read that the energy required to manufacture ethanol is less than half of the potential energy provided when you burn it. that would include all the tractors processing plants and the energy to run them. I dont know how much energy it actually takes to completly process crude oil into gasoline. which would have to take into acount the fuel that massive ships burn as they transport the stuff overseas. plus all the energy that is used if refining the raw oil versus how much energy is produced by burning gasoline.

E85 is available in the central and northern parts of the country. Seems I've heard that it provides "about" the same power with a 15% hit on mileage. I know, its only 85% Ethanol, but its a start. I think Brazil runs straight alky on LOTS of cars. They are special made for the market.