The Future of Cars

[serialk11r]

Okay completely hijacking my own thread, but I kinda want to see what effect charge cooling has. Okay on the compression stroke assuming 12:1 compression would be, about 1atm*V(12^-0.3-1)/-0.3=1.75 atm * V or actually in terms of temperature is better so 1.75 nRT. So for each mole air (let's just say, 20% O2 molecule 80% N2, they have similar atomic weights so this approximation should be fine), we are adding 1.75*8.31J/molK * 300K (let's say it's a nice day out) = 4.36kJ. This is probably way too low since heat ratio drops at higher pressure. I wouldn't be surprised if it were more like 10kJ.

Okay we need 2/3 of 20% of methanol, which I'll just call 1/8. 1/8 mol methanol takes 35/8 or about 4.3 kJ to vaporize Okay obviously there's a huge problem since towards the end of the compression stroke the pressure is very high and the temperature shoots up a lot more than that. But we can see that methanol provides extremely significant charge cooling. Theoretically methanol could cut the compression stroke power loss by a huge percentage.

Yea one day I am going to definitely have to try tweaking a car to run on methanol. Hippies be damned about toxicity.

[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.

[Allch Chcar]

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.

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.

[Streetice]

I am up for advancement in cars 100% and that gose for all ends.

If you building a car for the future make it for the future, im so sick of this retro fad and the over done eco class, and what drives me up te wall the most is the in betweener car. No good for looks, power, tech, usage all of it. The no try fail from top to rock bottom just gets me.

Lines are a must when building a car, if you design a car that looks like the smart car and expect it to take the world over then crawl in a cave wrap your head in tin foil and hope the aliens dont find because your freeking nuts!

Were as fuel sets its very hard for me to give up that godly sound gas puts out but I will take an electric if it can do 0 to 60 in 5.0 and gose 700+ miles before needing a charge. If they build there battery like my cell phone ill be lucky to get home from work!

With all that said if they can make something as good as E85 but with less power loss from pump gas ill take it because gas prices and my lead foot are not making nice anytime soon my fellow speed demons.

[Allch Chcar]

Originally Posted by Streetice

I am up for advancement in cars 100% and that gose for all ends.

If you building a car for the future make it for the future, im so sick of this retro fad and the over done eco class, and what drives me up te wall the most is the in betweener car. No good for looks, power, tech, usage all of it. The no try fail from top to rock bottom just gets me.

Lines are a must when building a car, if you design a car that looks like the smart car and expect it to take the world over then crawl in a cave wrap your head in tin foil and hope the aliens dont find because your freeking nuts!

Were as fuel sets its very hard for me to give up that godly sound gas puts out but I will take an electric if it can do 0 to 60 in 5.0 and gose 700+ miles before needing a charge. If they build there battery like my cell phone ill be lucky to get home from work!

With all that said if they can make something as good as E85 but with less power loss from pump gas ill take it because gas prices and my lead foot are not making nice anytime soon my fellow speed demons.

Unrealistic, you can't get that from a single Gasser now.

And there is no "power loss", it has less BTU per gallon which is heat energy, you mean MPG right?

[Type[R]+]

I truely believe E85 and Ethanol is the future. Just look at the bio-ethanol reactor technology, not to mention renewable energy from sugar cane.

I'm all for electric cars, but both batteries and hybrids put me off lol! Not to mention costs. I think we can expect more and more small turbo engines, the Europeans are there, the Japanese are starting to catch on.

[The4kBeast]

Variable timing -> Gasoline Direct Injection -> Smaller displacement engines -> Turbos -> Even smaller displacement engines -> Variable compression -> acticellary electric assists powered by regenerative braking, using very small and light batteries -> hydrogen -> Flinstone-mobile

I think I'm going to plan on hanging onto my pre-2016 hot rods... Govt regulations are going to ruin it for us all.