I just wondered if there are any fuels you can use in a petrol car as an alternative to petrol without requiring any modifications?
E.g. with Diesel you can run on oil.
I know that you can run on E10 without modifications but is that it? Are there no complete substitutes to petrol?
I also just wondered how many places in the UK sell E10 and whether it costs any less than regular unleaded? And if you wanted to run on pure ethanol, how much would it cost to modify your car to do that?
Cheers
John
You're talking about butanol:
I recall reading somewhere recently that someone was looking at setting up a UK manufacturing facility.
(the other) John
This'll be it:
half a tank of u/l and half of parafine?
No, you cant do it ................ the plugs oil up and the sump fills up with unburnt paraffin, diluting the engine oil and wrecking the bottom end. Petrol engines run fine on alcohol but the fuel consumption "suffers" due to the low calorific value of the fuel, with carbs you have to drill the jets out, but fuel injection will cope with it reasonably well . Problem is that alcohol wont disolve in petrol unless you mix it with Benzene ( I think) Al
Ethanol needs to be anhydrous if it's to have a chance of mixing with petrol and staying mixed instead of separating out. Normal commercially available ethanol has too much water content to mix with petrol.
E10 can help to keep a fuel tank dry because of ethanol's affinity for water. But too much water in a fuel tank will lead to separation of the ethanol.
John
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