Ethanol is not a fad, nor a flash in the pan fuel that some Johnny-come-lately
scientist dreamed up to save humanity from the oil companies. Distillers all
over the world have been making this go-juice for a long time. In Canada, GreenField Ethanol produces 100% ethyl alcohol using corn, the same organic material that Kentucky
moonshiners have been mashing for over one hundred and fifty years. Ethyl
alcohol is a colourless, pleasant smelling substance that has been lighting
lamps all over America
since the 1850s, and the infant automobile industry suckled on this vegetable
matter in the early 1900’s before it grew into the petroleum fed monster it has
since become.
Would it surprise you to know that pure ethyl alcohol was in
fact mankind’s first liquid rocket fuel? It’s true – Nazi Germany refined
ethanol from sugar beets and used its energy to propel their dreaded V2 rockets
towards England
in the darkest days of World War II.
Rockets move forward by expelling mass backwards (Newton's Third Law ). The early visionaries, Robert Goddard in the United States, and
Werner Von Braun in Germany both identified pure hydrogen as the best possible fuel
for their first hobby rockets. But hydrogen gas was really expensive in 1937, and the Hindenburg Disaster scared everyone away from using this volatile element. German
scientists working on their ‘vengeance weapon’ on the Isle of Peenemunde chose ethanol as its primary fuel source because it was good, fast and cheap.
Remember the Germans had a
fuel shortage in the 1940s. The Allies blockaded German ports and cut off all crude oil imports to restrict Hitler’s ability to conduct mobile
warfare. It might have worked except that two decades earlier, Franz Fischer
and Hans Tropsch pioneered a method for making diesel fuel from coal gas, and
the Ruhr valley had lots of coal.
The Fischer Tropsch process still gets a lot of attention
today - some people think it’s a viable solution to America’s
emerging energy crises. It isn’t. The hydrogenation of coal is neither
efficient nor environmentally friendly. This was something the Germans had to
do, and hopefully something North Americans can avoid.
Propelled by a mixture of ethanol and liquid oxygen, the V-2
rocket was the fastest weapon in the Nazi arsenal and could carry a thousand
kilogram warhead over three hundred kilometers. The turbo fuel pumps inside the
fuselage were driven by hydrogen peroxide. The ethanol was kept in an aluminum tank
to save weight. Making that tank further drained the German war economy as this
exotic metal was both rare and valuable.
An ingenious design, ethanol was pumped through the walls of
the main burner to simultaneously preheat the fuel and cool the combustion
apparatus. The propellant was then pumped down into the main reaction chamber
through several nozzles which assured the correct mixture of alcohol and liquid
oxygen at all times.
At the end of World War II, the most valuable treasure taken from Germany was the rocket scientists themselves. These men gave the USA
a real advantage over the Soviet Union in the Cold War
that followed. It’s therefore not surprising that America’s
first Redstone rockets also used ethanol combined with liquid oxygen as fuel.
In fact it wasn’t until 1956 that other more exotic propellants were developed.
Today the US Space Shuttle’s liquid fueled rocket engines burn hydrogen – just as
Robert Goddard and Werner von Braun had anticipated. But at the dawn of rocketry, ethanol was the
fuel of choice - just as it was at the beginning of the Automobile Age.
I laugh at those critics that claim ethanol is
weaker than gasoline, and I challenge those who believe their cars will have less power on the road. Try ethanol and you will discover it’s
just not true. Yes, mileage per liter is slightly reduced, but alcohol burns
cleaner and hotter than gasoline, and delivers just as much power. Heck, ethanol
is rocket fuel!
energy/volume in ethanol is less than that in gasoline. you can build an engine that gives the same power per ethanol energy as our gas engines give per gas energy, but they will still consume about 30% more volume of fuel, and ethanol is more expensive than gasoline. As for the rocket aspect, the oxidizer is just as important as the fuel. liquid oxygen is quite a different oxidizer than compressed air. with a little potassium nitrate, a snickers bar makes decent rocket fuel.
Posted by: casual net surfer | February 13, 2008 at 02:01 PM
indy cars run on methanol
Posted by: : | February 13, 2008 at 02:02 PM
Can Anhydrous Ethanol be used as fuel for Gas turbines to drive an electric generator? What preparations are needed to fire to the gas turbines? Can we use Ethanol to drive an engine for power generation? what is the Kw- hr to liter ratio? Thanks
Posted by: Nathaniel E. Acha | October 28, 2008 at 09:08 PM
I would suspect switching to plant derived fuels would have an effect on food prices and the availability of fresh water. Also the plants need fertilizer which I belive is largely an oil derived product. However, domestic energy production resulting in energy independance means our nation would stop leaking about 700 billion dollars per year to foriegn countries and recycle those funds within our own economy. This would solve our nations deficit. Pretty good reason to develop alternative energies including ethanol!
Posted by: Jim Ransom | April 03, 2010 at 01:53 AM