Butanol production breakthrough at University of California

[Gandalf]

I've noticed before that Skippy has a habit of commenting on subjects he knows nothing about.

I have a backpacking stove that runs on all sorts of fuels and it doesn't include a computer, but it also doesn't include any moving parts. The FACT of the matter is, that modern gasoline engines cannot burn ethanol without huge modifications, which is why there are special engines developed for ethanol. Since butanol has a higher energy density than ethanol, one expects the modifications would be more limited, but you cannot just dump butanol into a gasoline engine any more than you can dump 2-3 gallons of water into your fuel tank and expect the engine to run properly.

If you don't believe me--and you should since I started working in an auto shop 41 years ago--go dump some water into your car and tell us what the computer makes of it.

I've driven many thousands of miles while injecting water directly into the intake manifold of an old Chevy straight six. The carburetor was also injecting gasoline, and any computer in this vehicle was being transported in the cab. However, I made few if any changes to the stock engine parameters. It ran great and had a measurably improved efficiency. Not measurable by much, and a royal pain to keep in tune, but it did work. Some WWII aircraft also used water injection. It's a very old technology that serves specific purposes very well, but it's not so great for everyday automotive use.

I've also put significant miles, probably over 100k, on vehicles that were converted from gasoline to propane. Some vehicles that were simply converted ran acceptably, the few that were rebuilt with higher compression and different ignition timing profiles ran much, much better than their gasoline counterparts.

As for butanol, I've never operated an engine with the stuff, but I have met a GA pilot who operated his experimental aircraft (an RV-6) on butanol with no measurable detrimental effects, and with identical engine performance according to his extensive engine monitors.

Also, after studying biofuels in general, including butanol, and operating a Dodge Cummins diesel vehicle exclusively on biodiesel for nearly 6 months or roughly 10k miles, I am inclined to lend credibility to the claims that butanol can directly replace gasoline with little or no changes to both vehicles and infrastructure. The differences between refined diesel fuel and biodiesel are not so different from the difference between refined gasoline and butanol. If anything, biodiesel is more difficult to deal with because it is corrosive to older rubber hoses and seals.

[GIThruster]

Skippy, you don't know what you're talking about and this is not a red herring.

Modern computer controlled ignition and mixture systems are not made to be flexible in any way, as to what sort of fuel runs through them. You need to understand, there are a host of combustion science issues that come to bear once you look at alternate fuels. It is NOT true that you can put regular gas into a high compression engine, because higher compression requires higher octane. Varying the air to fuel mixture or the timing does not change this. The higher the compression in an engine, meaning in general the higher the performance; the higher the octane needed for the fuel to burn. The computer cannot change the compression ratio of an engine.

Now I don't know the specifics of flash and wave as concerns all alcohol fuels, but I can tell you that as a matter of FACT, ethanol requires very specific modifications to gasoline engines for it to be useful. Gasoline engines do not run properly on ethanol. Adding any ethanol to gasoline seems to degrade performance of gasoline engines. If you search the web you'll see hundreds of arguments to the point that ethanol should never be included in gasoline engines because the evidence is ethanol does damage to them, and certainly it should never be used as a fuel replacement for gasoline without altering the engine (probably including reducing the compression considerably).

I have a supercharged, computer-controlled, super high performance engine in my XKR and I can tell you, I'd be a fool to put regular gas in it, nor even fuel it up anywhere I didn't have reason to believe they hadn't watered the gas.

The difference between butanol and gasoline is at face value, at least 10% in energy content which is much more than the difference between regular and high octane gasoline. I have no idea how the flash and wave mechanics compare, but one thing is certain--you'd have to be a fool to put butanol in an engine designed for gasoline.

[GIThruster]

From 1975-77, when I was the fleet service manager for a large taxi-cab and limousine company; we did a test of several proposed technologies to increase fuel economy, including the nutty water vaporizer Gandalf is probably referring to. Note this was back in the days before computer controlled mixing or timing. I can tell you from more than anecdotal evidence the $200 gimmicks were just that and made no improvement in the performance of the engine, when you could get it to run properly with them at all. Also note, these gimmicks added water to the air, not the gas; and in far less volume than what we're here talking about when we consider the difference in energy density between butanol and gasoline.

People who make unsubstantiated claims about how they improved what the auto manufacturers have done should be treated with extreme skepticism. If there were simple ways to improve automobiles, then you can bet they would have been so improved. Automotive evolution is probably the most extravagant example of free market capitalism at its best--with competition driving innovation.

People who claim to know someone who knows someone who put something into their car it wasn't intended for and claim the car runs better, are generally kidding themselves and you.

And obviously to the claim above, Gandalf; how could your friend's engine run just as well on a fuel with measurably less the energy in it than gasoline? That's absurd. All it means is your friend can't tell when his engine is running badly.

[Skipjack]

GT, people here do it all the time. You need more gasoline when using regular fuel, so you usually dont gain anything, but sometimes the high octane fuel is so much more expensive that it pays off.
Gasoline is _very_ expensive here.
Either way, I have done it and pretty much everyone else here has done it. It does NOT matter.

[GIThruster]

It does matter. Your testimony on this merely indicates these people whom you say exist (I've never met one) can't tell when their engines aren't running right. Generally, when the octane is too low for all the fuel to burn, your carb might inject more fuel, but what you'll get is very high hydrocarbons (unburnt fuel) out the tailpipe that ruin your emissions and can ignite in the exhaust system, on occasion with whimsical results.

To know if an engine is running properly, you really need to analyze the exhaust and put it on a dynamometer. When someone tells you their engine runs just as well on fuel with 10% less energy, tell him to dyno the engine.

[GIThruster]

http://www.google.com/search?client=saf ... 8&oe=UTF-8

[D Tibbets]

Engines are tuned to burn only one fuel mixture? That is mostly nonsense. Haven't you heard of E85 engines that rely on basically flipping a switch for optimal performance? The issue of energy per gallon is also somewhat of a red hearing. What is important is the cost of fuel per mile traveled, not per unit volume. Last I heard ethanol cost ~ $1.80 per gallon, which might be comparable to ~ $2.50/ gallon for gasoline. If butanol can be produced at similar costs as ethanol on a volume basis, it would have an additional value.


And, I doubt few envision a pure ethanol or butanol fuel. At least in the near term, they would be blended with gasoline.

What I would worry about is the toxicity of butanol compared to ethanol. Anyone remember the ethanol substitute used to increase the oxygenation in gasoline for air pollution reasons? I don't know why the oil industry chose this compound over ethanol, but they had to backtrack when it was appreciated how bad this compound was when it leaked into the water supplies.

PS: if fuel mixture was so critical, either regular or premium gasoline should be available at the gasoline pump, not both.

Dan Tibbets

[Gandalf]

From 1975-77, when I was the fleet service manager for a large taxi-cab and limousine company; we did a test of several proposed technologies to increase fuel economy, including the nutty water vaporizer Gandalf is probably referring to. Note this was back in the days before computer controlled mixing or timing. I can tell you from more than anecdotal evidence the $200 gimmicks were just that and made no improvement in the performance of the engine, when you could get it to run properly with them at all.

People who make unsubstantiated claims about how they improved what the auto manufacturers have done should be treated with extreme skepticism. If there were simple ways to improve automobiles, then you can bet they would have been so improved. Automotive evolution is probably the most extravagant example of free market capitalism at its best--with competition driving innovation.

People who claim to know someone who knows someone who put something into their car it wasn't intended for and claim the car runs better, are generally kidding themselves and you.

And obviously to the claim above, Gandalf; how could your friend's engine run just as well on a fuel with 2/3 the energy in it than gasoline? That's absurd.

I made my water injection system myself. While it did raise engine efficiency somewhat, sometimes, in a few conditions, it was more of a pain than it was worth. This seems to somewhat parallel your experiences while you were a cabby. These things were all the rage in those days, so I thought I'd put my engineering talent to see what I could learn while tinkering with an old junk truck. Injecting propane directly into the intake of a diesel tractor was much more interesting, and provides great entertainment when done in a diesel truck while racing small displacement turbo'd cars up I-70. I wouldn't know anything about that, however, especially since these diesel trucks tend to have computer controlled ignition systems that couldn't possibly work right at all when things like propane are fed into the intake. Such absurdities!

Also, I learned about the 'nutty' engineering behind water injection while I was obtaining a degree in mechanical engineering. I do believe the rather sound principles of thermodynamics and combustion that water injection and intercoolers rely on still apply today, but I could be mistaken. I do believe I have a text around here somewhere that discusses why water injection isn't so hot on small piston engines. However, since I'm not going to bother looking for this text nor will I tell you the title, you should treat this claim with equal skepticism. And please, don't look at Wikipedia's page on water injection, since the unreferenced content is just absurd!

You are the one that said to dump water in an engine and see what happens....

There are also some unsubstantiated claims for the performance of engines converted to propane by those who compete in the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. As I've not been on the top of Pike's Peak to witness one of these vehicles reaching the top, like you, I'm highly skeptical that these race engines can even power themselves, much less win races against gasoline-powered counterparts.

I sat in the front seat of the RV-6 that was claimed to run on butanol. I made machine gun noises and thought of snoopy. Not far way from the hangar I was in at that time is a business called Gevo Inc. I've never been in the building myself, but I've driven by Gevo's office every day for years, but still, their claims of being able to produce butanol from biological processes should be treated with great skepticism. Feel free to google them. I'm not sure I'd even believe that this business had any hand in providing said butanol to power the airplane.

All the comments about propane are to illustrate how different fuels can be made to work in a stock engine, although D. Tibbet's comment above does so more succinctly.

Somehow we've gone from a 10% penalty with butanol (references widely available, google to your heart's content) to your stated claim of "2/3 the energy of gasoline". I am starting to agree with you that something around here is very absurd.

[GIThruster]

Somehow we've gone from a 10% penalty with butanol (references widely available, google to your heart's content) to your stated claim of "2/3 the energy of gasoline". I am starting to agree with you that something around here is very absurd.

You'll note I made the mistake of writing "2/3" which is the energy of ethanol as compared to gasoline, and corrected this to "measurably less" which is the energy content of butanol as compared to gasoline, before your post.

Sure. You can shove all sorts of alternative fuels into all sorts of vehicles for kicks, but this is nothing like taking responsibility for a transportation infrastructure. I've been all through the details of things from fleet conversion to methane, to personal nitro injection, and just saying, shoving butanol into an unmodified gasoline engine is silly. Anyone who takes the time to look at the wealth of information about things like this on the web will realize this.

Also, I can tell you, if we had seen a single MPG improvement with water injection, we wold have converted the entire fleet.

And just reminding, water injection is a red herring. Water injectors do NOT inject so much water that they are like diluting gasoline to the energy density of butanol, which was our topic.

Cool for you, that you put propane into an engine not designed for it. I used to fill garbage bags with propane and set them on fire. Great fun. You would not though, recommend others convert to propane their family car, would you? What's wrong with running cars they way they were designed for?

[GIThruster]

Engines are tuned to burn only one fuel mixture? That is mostly nonsense.. .The issue of energy per gallon is also somewhat of a red hearing. What is important is the cost of fuel per mile traveled

Ethanol costs more than gasoline and butanol costs more than ethanol. (You can't compare current cost. You need to look at the cost to produce the fuel. Gasoline is taxed very highly as compared to ethanol which is subsidized. If an alcohol fuel were to become the current fuel of choice, you can bet the subsidies would evaporate (no pun intended) and the real cost would come to the fore.

No one said anything about engines designed for one mixture. (Mixture often changes with engine temperature.) Engines are designed for one FUEL and you cannot put butanol into a gasoline engine without altering the engine for that fuel. In general, gasoline engines have too high a compression ratio for alcohol fuels. Altering the engine to lower compression so the alcohol can burn properly is going to reduce the power of the engine.

To sum up--modern IC engines are indeed extremely highly precised around their fuels. In the last few decades that we've seen significant advances in fuel economy and energy efficiency of IC engines, this efficiency gain comes at a cost--the engines are much more fuel specific than ever they were in the past. Even current generation diesels suffer this side-effect of their refinements.

[Skipjack]

GT, you are wrong, wrong, wrong.
A modern engine will run at optimal efficiency with a certain type of fuel, but it will still run smoothly with a different fuel. That is what computerized fuel injection and ignition systems were developed for.

Here it is straight from the horses mouth:

Thomas Plucinsky, BMW Product and Technology Communications Manager told us all BMW engines are designed to run on 91 octane. All performance testing, including EPA emissions and fuel mileage, is done with 91 octane. However, though BMW is all about performance, their motors will run on 89 or 87 octane without damage. The knock sensors pull the ignition timing back and eliminate detonation. There will be a loss of power and a decrease in fuel mileage, but the size of the horsepower loss and the increase in fuel consumption depends upon many factors, such as ambient temperature, exact formulation of the fuel and driving technique, so BMW does not offer any estimates for operation on lower grade fuels.

http://forum.roadfly.com/threads/126158 ... e-gasoline

[GIThruster]

Skip, that's all irrelevant.

If you want to get to the core of the issue about putting alternate fuels in gasoline engines, I suggest you do some research as to the use of ethanol in gas engines in places like Brazil. What they found was, they needed to re-engineer the IC engines intended for gasoline use in order to adapt them to ethanol use.

That, or just do as I said and search "ethanol engine damage". You'll get several thousand hits you can then try to absorb.

--------

And to put this into the larger context that we had before you decided to object, let me re-emphisize--burning hydrocarbons will always produce carbon particulates that are unhealthy to breathe. We have SMOG and will have unhealthy air in all cities and areas with local temperature inversions, so long as we burn hydrocarbons for local transport. Alcohol is NOT a solution to this problem and will never be.

[KitemanSA]

It's been almost 20 years since I looked at this issue in detail. If memory serves, while its true almost any biomass could be used, it is specifically sugars that are converted to alcohols (methanol, ethanol, butanol) so you need a biomass with high sugar content--algae, sweetgrass, corn, etc.

As I stated earlier, Coskata has developed a bug that will eat SYNGAS and produce ethanol. No sugar, SYNGAS. If they could do the same to produce butanol vice ethanol, this would be good!

[KitemanSA]

No one said anything about engines designed for one mixture. (Mixture often changes with engine temperature.) Engines are designed for one FUEL and you cannot put butanol into a gasoline engine without altering the engine for that fuel.

Past experiments show that you are in general incorrect. MOST engines will take pure butanol without change. Butanol is NOT ethanol. Ethanol has MANY problems when put alone into a typical gasoline engine. But butanol doesn't have the same problems. Ethanol is polar, butanol it not. Ethanol is therefore corrosive, butanol is not. Ethanol substantially lower energy density. Butanol has slightly lower, but becasue it tends to combust more fully, there is little (measureable, but not significant) difference in milage. Ethanol disolves many forms of rubber used in gasoline engine hoses. Butanol does not.

The problem is that SO FAR, butanol has been difficult to produce biofuel-wise. The ABE bug doesn't make much of it and the stuff that is made is hard to separate from the rest of the AE and H20.

This MAY be the start of something big.

[KitemanSA]

If you want to get to the core of the issue about putting alternate fuels in gasoline engines, I suggest you do some research as to the use of ethanol in gas engines in places like Brazil. What they found was, they needed to re-engineer the IC engines intended for gasoline use in order to adapt them to ethanol use.

That, or just do as I said and search "ethanol engine damage". You'll get several thousand hits you can then try to absorb.

Again, can you say STRAWMAN???

The topic here is BUTANOL, not ETHANOL. They are TOTALLY different fuels. Any lesson you "learned" with ethanol is an impediment to you understanding butanol.