Denatured Alcohol for fuel?

Flame color is totally irrelevant. ie meaningless.

That's not what I was taught in school. Yellow means it's not burning completely, leaving residue behind.

What you were taught in school is more or less correct about why a flame is yellow. The yellow flame is either due to tiny carbon particles heated to incandescent temperatures or due to tiny amounts of sodium in the fuel that is flourescing. This has absolutely nothing at all to do with the value of any given fuel in an engine. In fact many very high energy density fuels burn quite yellow under any other then near perfect conditions. Some will burn yellow under perfect conditions. While other totally miserable fuels will burn very blue or even colorless under a fairly wide range of conditions. Flame color is 100% meaningless with respect to how much power you are going to get out of an internal combustion engine from that fuel. If you want to know how much energy to expect from a fuel you either do the simple high school calculations or you live in a dream world. No one is going to beat the laws of thermodynamics. Engines run on heat not color.

I was not talking about power. I was saying alcohols other than methanol leave residue.

That makes sense but what I've found so far is that methanol and ethanol seem to be similar in price but ethanol is what they add to our gasoline. I haven't found a place listing prices of a drum or ethanol and a drum of methanol for comparison though.

On a side note, I found a store selling 4 packs of Heet gas line antifreeze (Methanol), just under $5 for 48 oz. Expensive but still cheaper than model fuel, if I can't find Methanol locally, I could stretch my heli fuel to car fuel that way. I'd like to go from my 22% oil synthetic to maybe 14% synthetic and add 2% castor, my engine recommends 16% oil.

RogerN

Bullshit

The question in my mind is: Which costs more in parts, a Heli or a buggy? I know the LHS owner makes money from both. Let us know. :) mk

If I understand correctly, buggy fuel should be from around 9% to 16% oil and the helicopter fuel has 22% oil. It is supposed to be because the buggy is speeding and slowing from corner to corner whereas heli's and planes engines are producing power more constantly. My original thought was to just burn heli fuel in the buggy since I have some gallons that are getting old. I mostly fly heli's around home these days and the small battery operated heli's get the most flying. If I could find some methanol I could remix my 30% nitro, 22% oil heli fuel to be more suitable for the buggy. The Heli has more $$$ in parts but heli and buggy engines are in a similar price range.

RogerN

Hold a glass over a methanol flame and then a denatured alcohol flame and see which one leaves soot.

But wouldn't a gasoline fire even be worse? In searching around on the internet, one reason they want to use methanol in race cars is in case there is a fire, it doesn't block the other drivers vision. On the other hand, with the right fuel to air ratio gasoline makes an acceptable motor fuel. Also on an oxygen acetylene torch, the acetylene sends a lot of soot into the air until you turn on the oxygen. This has me wondering if the ethanol burns with a yellow flame due to incorrect air/fuel ratio? No doubt that methanol is the alcohol of choice since ethanol is so widely available and possibly cheaper than methanol. But on the other hand ethanol plants were being built when gasoline was over $4 per gallon, it should be an acceptable motor fuel.

RogerN

Totally irrelevant bullshit by someone who has no clue. That soot has nothing at all to do with what happens in a properly running engine. Of course that assumes you get any soot from denatured ethanol in such a totally meaningless test. A miserable assumption to start with. It all depends on what it is denatured with.

If you did the same test with model fuel you would also get soot from the oil in the fuel. So I suppose that means we should all carefully run fuel that contains no oil?

The simple fact is ethanol is a perfectly good fuel in glo engines. It will not harm engine life a bit. A standard glo plug will work just fine. It has been used as engine fuel many times. It has no greater propensity to pick up water from the air then methanol has. It has a slightly higher flash point making it slightly safer to use. It is also less toxic so the fumes you breath are slightly less dangerous. Not that methanol is all that toxic in view of the fact that your own body makes a bit of methanol every day all by itself. You just do not get quite as much power from the engine running on ethanol as you get from methanol. That is the only reason model fuels are made from methanol.

Actually the lowest cost way to make ethanol is from crude oil. You crack the crude to ethylene and hydrate the ethylene. That is how industrial grade ethanol is made. Fermentation is mandated by law as the way ethanol must be produced for additive to gasoline. It is illegal to use the cheap stuff to produce as a gasoline additive. It only survives at all in the market place due to the huge government subsidies handed out to the fuel ethanol producers. So if you buy ethanol for anything other then adding to gasoline or drinking is more then likely is not made by fermentation.

I looked around and was able to locate a person selling methanol locally. I bought a drum of 99% methanol for $80. I'm planning to get some gallon jugs and mix methanol and oil, fill the jugs 3/4 full and add a quart of 40% nitro fuel to get a gallon of 10% fuel. Since I probably won't be running through a drum of methanol right away I'm thinking I need to make a desiccant air dryer to use for the drum vent. Since some clubs purchase bulk fuel, I thought someone might have some tips or recommendations for mixing, pumps, keeping fuel fresh, etc. Thanks

RogerN

You would be better off getting enough gallon jugs together to mix all the methanol with oil and nitro. Leave very little air in the top of the jugs, seal them, and store in a cool, dark place.

On Sun, 3 May 2009 20:15:26 -0500, "RogerN" wrote in :

A friend of mine who inherited a drum of methanol used nitrogen to pump the stuff out as needed.

He's an engineer who worked on oil pipelines, so he knew how to handle the plumbing and keep things safe.

I don't know what kind of fittings you'd need to do the same or what the relevant safety issues might be.

Good luck!

Marty

"Martin X. Moleski, SJ" wrote

Key would be the strength of the container. If it is in a steel barrel, not as big an issue than if it is in a plastic barrel. Steel would deal with the pressure much better. I don't trust plastic, since it could split at the seams where the two piece molds close.

After that, a quality pressure regulator to keep pressure in control.

Also, he said something in one of his early posts about a dessicant for the vent. A much better solution would be using dry gas like nitrogen for makeup air, at least, even if it was not being used for pressurizing the container for forcing the methanol out.

Did that make any sense?