You've Never Heard Of Butanol, Have You?

[ttogreh]

This is a site about butanol.

This is the wikipedia article on butanol fuel.

All right, why should you care what butanol is? Well, if you take the bus, or the train, and bike everywhere, butanol isn't much of anything. However, since the name of the game is DETROIT Gothic, I don't think there are all that many of you guys like that, out there.

Look. We are going to run out of oil. We just are. On top of that, burning petroleum produces smog and all other kinds of nasty things, like Carbon Monoxide. On top of THAT, chances are really, really, Really, REALLY good that burning petroleum is warming the earth.

How does butanol affect all of this? It's still fuel, after all. I mean, if it gets burnt, it has fumes too, right? Well, let me try to explain.

Any of you guys ever hear of GIGO? That stands for Garbage In, Garbage Out. It's an old computing term that means that if you start with incorrect data, you are going to get an incorrect result. More broadly, it means that if you start with crap, no matter what you do to it... it's still crap.

Petroleum is the end result of millions of years of organic matter being sequestered and subjected to the intense heat and pressure of the earth. Quite literally, petroleum is dead dinosaurs.

Butanol starts out as a sugar beet. That beet, while alive, eats Carbon Dioxide. When that beet is turned into butanol, it only contains the same amount of CO2 that the beet ate. No more, no less.

Butanol from a sugar beet, or corn (DON'T get me started on how bad of an idea using corn for fuel is...) or old newspapers or any other carbonaceous substance that can be made to ferment... is carbon neutral. Also, since it isn't made from dead dinosaurs, it burns a hell of a lot cleaner than gasoline.

Wait, you may ask. Why should I use butanol? Isn't there ethanol at my Meijer gas station?

Ethanol is crap. Wanna know why ethanol has to be made with 15 per cent gasoline? Ethanol has 19.2 Megajoules of energy per liter. Gasoline has 32 MJ/L. Butanol has 29.2 MJ/L.

What the hell does that mean? It means that your car, right now, can run on butanol. You don't need a flex-fuel vehicle. You just need to pour it into your "gas" tank and fiddle a bit with your air / fuel ratio.

Butanol is an almost one to one replacement fuel for gasoline. A liquid fuel that we will never run out of, because we can always grow more. Thanks for reading.

[Msterbeau]

Interesting. Particularly cool that the car doesn't need modifications to run it.

[Jadis]

Thank you for sharing this with us ttogreh. Very interesting read.

[Kit Kat P]

how much fiddling would be needed w/ air fuel ratio?

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

depends on the system the car has. A carberated engine your average joe can adjust to be at least drivable... but you get into anything with fuel injection and a computer... like most cars have and you need a mechanic and a computer.

[ttogreh]

That's exactly right, Gaf.

Butanol has its bumps, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than ethanol, especially since with modern techniques, you can get as much butanol as you can get ethanol with traditional techniques. It's all in the links.

[Msterbeau]

That's exactly right, Gaf.

Butanol has its bumps, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than ethanol, especially since with modern techniques, you can get as much butanol as you can get ethanol with traditional techniques. It's all in the links.

Actually it looked like the process yields far more of the Butanol then Ethanol for a given amount of biomass.

Mark, not many average Joes left who know carbs. Modern carbs rarely had the ability to be adjusted anyways. A set of Webers or a Holly would be easy enough. There may be enough capacity within a modern fuel delivery system and self-adjustment in the computer to render any physical adjustments unnecessary. The 5%-10% extra volume might be doable. I was surprised to see that there were no corrosive effects that would require changing all the fuel lines.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Butanol isn't as acidic as ethanol...

My question is more about the mpg you get from it. I saw in one of those links a claim that milage went up.. but butanol yields about 10-15% less power than gasoline... so milage should go down by about the same amount.. not up. Unless it has a greater cooling ability than gasoline and less of the power is lost as heat...

[Msterbeau]

Butanol isn't as acidic as ethanol...

My question is more about the mpg you get from it. I saw in one of those links a claim that milage went up.. but butanol yields about 10-15% less power than gasoline... so milage should go down by about the same amount.. not up. Unless it has a greater cooling ability than gasoline and less of the power is lost as heat...

Yeah... They seemed vague on the mileage claims. I would expect it to go down too, because you make up for the lower specific BTU's by injecting more into the cylinder. That does tend to cool things a bit more, though. Also, It mentioned that the knock resistance was better, so you could advance the timing a bit, producing more power.

Whatever... If it's close to gasoline without using up dinosaur juice and being much friendlier, emissions-wise... I'm all for it.

[ttogreh]

It just boggles my mind that we are wasting our time on low energy fuels like ethanol when the ethanol distilleries can be converted to butanol without any problem. Hell, I bet a flex-fuel vehicle's alcohol sensor can be replaced in about ten minutes or so to allow it to tell the difference between gas, butanol, and ethanol.

A Bu-85 mixture could probably be sold in regular gas pumps tomorrow. I doubt anyone would notice any kind of performance change...

Can anyone tell me, from what you guys have read, why we are wasting our time on ethanol? I know, the corn lobby... BUT BUTANOL CAN BE MADE FROM CORN! I don't understand it, at all...

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

it stinks. It stinks a great deal.

[ttogreh]

Butyric acid smells. Butanol doesn't smell like anything.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

The distillation process stinks like nothing else.

[Kit Kat P]

has anyone hear tried this? and what about sheer engine power, is there any loss?

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

I've never tired it.. but the math suggests a minor power loss.. like 7-15%. Which really translates to a small decrease in your miles per gallon.

[ttogreh]

No, Gaf... the distillation process stinks... like an oil refinery.

Hmm....

[freydis]

See...... this is something that would make sense, which is why it isnt happening too quickly.... :/

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

I grew up in Alma. My back yard shared a fence with the oil refinary. I know what a refinary smells like. I have also been in a distillery that was making Butanol for commercial use... I would rather smell the refinary.

Also, in the links you gave.. smell is one of the reasons people are adverse to it. The process to make it stinks to high heaven of rot and decay.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

btw, I wouldlike to add that I worked at said refinary for 2 years. My father worked there for 32 years. I worked for 3 years in the oil pipeline business. My whole family on my mothers side works the oil and natural gas fields.

My point being, I know every smell that petroleum products give off. None are really all that bad. (except the ones that kill you)

But rotting plant matter will make me puke every time.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Also, I did not say I would oppose using this at all, for any reason.

You asked why we think we are wasting time on ethanol from the things we had read.

Don't get pissy when all I did is answer your question.

[ttogreh]

I think you are the one getting a bit pissy, sir. I just said that butanol doesn't smell, that butyric acid smells. While petroleum products don't smell to you, I can tell you right now, ammonia makes me GAG.

Do you know how much ammonia is produced at the average oil refinery? Plenty. Moreover, the smell can be contained. Just like the smells of a refinery can be contained.

This is just text on a screen. I lack the ability to gesticulate, inflect my voice, or express my face. I wasn't getting pissy.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

um, Yes I do. 0.

Ammonia is neither a product or by-product of refining petroleum. It is added in the prep phase of crude oil to reduce corrosion so that it wont eat the pipes and boilers.

It's later extracted, carefully, from the waste water at the treatment plant.

Did you read everything I posted above? I know a lot about petroleum processing.

Dow over in Midland makes Ammonia... they do distill the ammonia from natural gas (methane), maybe this is why you think it comes from a refinary.

We get the natural gas from the gas wells that are all over the world.

Though a hydrocarbon, natural gas is not a petroleum product.

[ttogreh]

Well, you see? Just because the smell smells NOW, from butanol refinement, does not mean that it will ALWAYS smell. How long have people been refining oil? 140 years? 150?

How long have people been messing with biologic butanol? I'm going to answer my own question. Since 1916. Moreover, it hasn't come anywhere near price parity for the longest time, so it was just hobbyists and university students and the like.

I am quite sure the stinkiness is a minor issue.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

You are free to think that. I don't care either way. I never said that I personally oppose it because of the smell or for any other reason as I don't oppose it. You asked us to tell you why we thought people oppose it based on what we had read. The smell is bad enough that people don't want the distillery near them. It's the primary reason given for not having more distillery's for Butanol.