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142 comments on DrumBeat: June 20, 2006

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Nick Rouse on June 20, 2006 - 1:11pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I had not heard of it before but there is a good explanation here. The claims for it are that:-

It runs on present gasoline vehicles unmodified at equal or greater mileage.
It is much less prone to absorption of water removing the need for special storage tanks and pipelines.
Can be made from the same feedstocks as ethanol at greater yield.
Produces useful amounts of hydrogen as a by-product.
Is cheaper to produce than ethanol.

All these claims are from a company promoting its patented process to make the stuff and extrapolating from a pilot plant  so due caution is needed in accepting these claims.

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jokuhl on June 20, 2006 - 1:34pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
This Link References RR's numbers on lines 13 and 22

Pure Energy Systems
http://peswiki.com/index.php?title=Directory:Butanol&curid=3716&diff=20327&oldid=20318
"Butanol as a biofuel (http://www.lightparty.com/Energy/Butanol.html) - Butanol solves the safety problems associated with the infrastructure of the hydrogen supply. Reformed butanol has four more hydrogen atoms than ethanol, resulting in a higher energy output and is used as a fuel cell fuel."

I suspect this might be a familiar site to some of you here, is it responsibly run?

Bob Fiske

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Robert Rapier on June 20, 2006 - 2:21pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Butanol is potentially a better motor fuel than ethanol. I did write an essay on bio-butanol a couple of months ago:

Bio-butanol

Butanol has some significant advantages over ethanol, and probably has a better EROI because it is a less polar molecule than ethanol. Of course, we still won't be able to produce enough to make much of a dent in our oil consumption.

RR

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142 comments on DrumBeat: June 20, 2006

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