Growing Our Own Motor Fuel
Page 29
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UTOTOR fuel from alcohol and water; 1V1 that is the subject of a recent patent taken out by one of the big American oil Companies. Alcohol is obtained from vegetation, and is, therefore, inexhaustible. Three-quarters of the earth's surface is covered by water, and there should, therefore, be no shortage such as we now have with our coal fuel.
The object of this fuel is, obviously, the result of an American conviction that there is truth in Mr. Harold Ickes's warning, as Petroleum Controller of the U.S.A., that, in a dozen or so years, America will cease being a seller of petrol, and will become a buyer instead, This conviction can be seen by the specification of the new fuel, which is as follows:—Alcohol 60 per cent., water SO per cent. and hydrocarbons only 10 per cent. In other words, America plans that, if it must buy fuel instead of selling it, it will bay only 10 per cent. from overseas to take care of domestic needs, and that the necessary 60 per cent, of alcohol will be grown in the U.S.A. This is already being done for the manufacture of synthetic rubber. America may, of course, not have to buy the 10 per cent. hydrocarbon content, as its home supplies may not fall down to that extent.
Regarding the water content, there should be no difficulties arising there, in view of the great hydraulic enterprises of recent years, such as the Boulder and other dams.
It is well known that the mixing of petrol and alcohol is subject to severe limitations—that the least drop of water in the mixture causes the two constituents to separate out into layers. It would appear that the patentee has found a means for obviating this trouble. None of the various alcoholpetrol mixtures, used in various countries of the world for the elimination, so far as possible, of imported petrol, has any more than 25 per cent. of alcohol in its blend; it has been as law as 10 per cent. And yet this proposal asks for the unheard of quantity of 60 per cent! How has it been accomplished ? First, ethyl alcohol (common alcohol, of which most fuels have consisted) has not been used. That specified is iso-propyl alcohol. Again, petrol is not employed as the hydro
carbon content. Petrol consists of at least • 60 different hydrocarbon compounds, all with different physical properties. The specified hydrocarbon is normal pentane, which is one of the 50 constituents of which ordinary petrol is composed.
What has apparently happened is that there has been an elimination of unsuitable compounds from the point of view of the blending of the two main constituents, notwithstanding the .enormous (comparatively) quantity of water concerned.
If this fuel can be successfully made and used, there is no reason why we cannot "grow" the alcohol here. So far as hydrocarbon is concerned, we might even find the comparatively small requirements from our new home oil
fields, There • is, however, another hydrocarbon possibility in methane from the anrobic purification of sewage, which, dissolved in the alcoholwater mixture, would endow it with engine-starting properties which are otherwise missing.
As the patentee is the Standard Oil. Co., it can be no scatterbrain project.