Quote:
Originally Posted by serialk11r
Crap I typed a bunch of calculations and lost it all somehow. :mad:
Okay so you need twice as much methanol as ethanol to get stoichiometric. Okay so after factoring in the fact that we burn gaseous fuel in engines, methanol comes out to make about 750kJ/mol, 1500kJ/2mol. Ethanol makes about 1370kJ/2mol. The greater cooling effect (32kJ/mol approximately) helps make more power by reducing the work on the compression stroke. At full throttle there's going to be waste pressure anyways, thus the cooling effect isn't actually taking much away from the amount of energy we can get. So methanol looks like it makes about 10% probably a little less more power than ethanol, which looks like it makes about the same power as gas.  Good stuff. |
Methanol takes twice the fuel volume of Gasoline not Ethanol. It's actually somewhere near 60-80% more fuel
but some people don't like to dice numbers. And when you're talking about power look at the rich mixture not just Stoich. Methanol and Ethanol run better a bit richer than Gasoline only looking at the numbers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bigbcraig
Good luck with methanol...
It's an awesome fuel but also an awesome oxidizer, and it's expensive to replace your fuel system every few months 
It's actually used pretty often in dragsters and the like, but there are huge problems with corrosion there and they basically purge the methanol fully out of the system after every raceday.
(Technically, methanol itself isn't very corrosive but the contaminants it loves to dissolve, for instance chloride ions, are essentially always in with your fuel and are extremely good at galvanic reactions)
It's also very hygroscopic which is inconvenient.
And, as you mentioned, toxic. |
Heh. Pretty much. Ethanol isn't as corrosive as Methanol and it's even less corrosive mixed with Gasoline. E85 at least, is more fuel system friendly and probably cheaper/easier to find compatible parts. Even if it means less power.
Although for racing you pretty much have to stick with DIY blending no matter what fuel you use.