Virtent's catalytic biofuel

[SacramentoE-85 0]

So is this stuff going to burn clean like ethanol?

 

Will it be less polluting of ground and sea water like ethanol?

 

Is it going to make engines last longer like ethanol?

[GT-Labs 2]

Butanol is harder to ignite and runs worse when cold. I think a blend is really the only way to get it to run well. It's not that butanol runs dirty, it just doesn't seem to burn completely. Ethanol smells like ethanol, but butanol smells like paint thinner and gives me a bad headache when tuned incorrectly. It has more atomization, burn speed, and ignition issues to overcome. Butanol is "thick" for lack of a better term, but I still believe it's just as useful as ethanol.  Among all the available alcohols that can be burned as fuel, I think ethanol is probably the most forgiving.

[SacramentoE-85 0]

Maybe an 85% ethanol/15% biobutanol blend would be better than today's E85?

[GT-Labs 2]

It would have to be the other way around functionally. In E85, the gas burns first acting like an ignitor. 15% ethanol and 85% butanol I think would be a better blend on that end of the spectrum. Ethanol burns slow and butanol burns slower. You want the faster burning and faster igniting fuel to go first. The paradox is that neither of them burns that quickly in the first place. I know you guys hate gasoline but its still useful as an ignitor in these blends. The problem is that unleaded gas is always the one misbehaving when the blend is pushed.

 

Ideally they should all ignite at once, but don't. Every fluid you blend burns at a different speed. Supposedly butanol can handle more water in the mix but I haven't tried it.

[1outlaw 10]

It would have to be the other way around functionally. In E85, the gas burns first acting like an ignitor. 15% ethanol and 85% butanol I think would be a better blend on that end of the spectrum. Ethanol burns slow and butanol burns slower. You want the faster burning and faster igniting fuel to go first. The paradox is that neither of them burns that quickly in the first place. I know you guys hate gasoline but its still useful as an ignitor in these blends. The problem is that unleaded gas is always the one misbehaving when the blend is pushed.

 

Ideally they should all ignite at once, but don't. Every fluid you blend burns at a different speed. Supposedly butanol can handle more water in the mix but I haven't tried it.

 

She is an easy test Gary- put each mix with gas in a graduated cylinder and add drops of water, shake, repeat,- until you see it come apart.

[SacramentoE-85 0]

Ahh, so that would be why foreign oil company BP would like to create an inexpensive process they can patent to create biobutantol...via the EBI at UC Berkeley and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  If 85% of the future fuel supply had to be created with their patented process (created by American researchers and students), then $500 million is a measly investment.

 

Who needs to import physical foreign oil, when we can grow the plants here but still send the money off shore to BP?  It would be like being a British colony again, to an extent.