methanol

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methanol - 11/23/2007 12:48:54 AM

PLANE JIM

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From: pinehurst, TX, USA
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I was informed by a friend that methanol price is going to double in the short future due to ethanol use in vehicles-I guess rc fuel will also increase drastically as well

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Post #: 1

RE: methanol - 11/23/2007 11:01:28 AM

balsaeater

Posts: 122
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From: p, ANDORRA
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Most normal RC fuel worldwide is nearly alway made using methanol alcohol fuel but it not impossible to use Ethanol but I dont know of any modelers using it

Most full size cars will use Ethanol fuels sometimes low 5% mixxed with gasoline for anti knock qualities and it replaces lead anti knock additive and sometimes high 30% plus ratio mixxed with gasoline to 100% ethanol such as Brazill did in the late 1970's failed attempt with sugar cane ethanol production to replace gasoline

multi synthehic fuel addapted very moden cars can use 100% ethanol or 100% of gasoline or 100% of methanol or any combination of these fuels mixxed or even combinations of other types of lesser well known alcohols like very toxic methelbuthane MBTB but to keep fuel figures respectable typicaly 80% gasoline and 20% Ethanols are the norm

Methanol and Ethanol are different in lots of ways but similar in others and so allows the vendors to rip your face and every body else world wide
Alcohols like Methanol or Ethanol and other families of alcohols all work well in car motors but drastically reduced MPG and cause corrosion of rubber and plastic fitting and engines from extra water content production in combustion and so to make cars run on alcohols is costly compared to gasoline but alchohol fuels suppply 20% extra power average and cost twice the price per gallon than gasoline average making it often cost 4 times the price to go the same distance in a equivalent car using 100% ethanol or more rarely used Methanol

Methanol is nowadays sythetically made from natural gas and price of natural gas will affect it more and is very economic to make compared to Ethanol and natural gas is fairly abundant and spread nmore evenly around the world less affected by Unstable Arab oil issues

(Methanol is the history was made from fermintaion of wood or something like that so explains term wood alchool toxic posinious and was distilled to 100% purity and was very expensive and uneconomic to produce with that method )

Ethonal is mostly made from fermintation process using wheat corn barley grasses potates or most any Bio crop and later distilled to purity 100% there by increasing demand for cash crops and food prices will probably soar world wide
I dont know of any economicaly synthetic ways to make Ethanol like they can do Methanol but SASOIL in south africa might have solutions
The only half baked economic production methods for ethanol is still the energy intensive distilation process

To distill the ethanol alchol out requires a lot of energy often 1.8 gallons of oil to make 2 gallons of ethanoll (which returns half the MPG than gasoline ) so benifits are less than 20% ???? towards oil independence from arab oil????
(methanol and ethanol are oxegen rich fuels as half the molicule is oxegen and therefore need twice the fuel to do the same MPG but often give 20% more power where gasoline has little or no oxegen in the molicule and takes all its oxegen from the air giving twice the MPG .The 20% extra power from methanol or alcohol fuels comes from half the fuel is realy oxegen so the fuel acts like a turbo charger injecting extra oxegen into the cyclinder without the complexity of the turbo charger)

So all this process is making the oil companies even richer than if they sold us oil products alone without this Ethanol multi step process
And quess who made the decision to convert to Ethanol who also have lots of oil shares and suddly developed green creditials more like green back creditials
It would have made a lot more sense to convert Natural gas a lesser issue fossil fuel source as its more abundant and less prone to to outside interference like arab oil is into methonal and used that instead but there is less green backs in that

So will methanol go up you bet as they fool everybody its is distilled similar to Ethanol which is totaly untrue just as they fool you with multiple convertions of fuels and blurr the piture

Should RC methanol based glow fuels go up well probably a bit when the methonal content is typicaly 65% and 20% is often oil lubration made from oil and 15% is often nitro a super oxegen enriched fuel which probably uses one gallon of oil to convert natural gas into one gallon of nitro or at the very least a lot of energy is required to make nitro(nitro is nearly a form of liquid oxegen and not realy a fuel in the normal fuel as it requires 5 times the nitro to replace methonal fuel energy equivalent and it costs 10 times the price energy equivalent .Nitro being oxegen rich acts as a better turbo affect than alcohol fuels in low compression motors but can be easly totaly replaced with increasing the compresion of the motor but then ordinary joe soaps could never start or tune these tempermental powerful high compression glow motors

Also factor in it probably takes one gallon of oil to ship 10 gallons of model fuel to the shops or to your house and price rises of double are to be expected where realy less than 50% would be the more correct level for it to rise above todays value
but dont hold your breath more than quadruple isnt out of the question from todays prices
changing to higher compression glow motors with tuned pipes on low nitro motors will help reduce costs similar to european modelers do but then tuning is way way harder

its $99 a barrel of oil now and in 2000 it was something like $15 and 2006 it was $60
natural gas prices have only generaly doubled in the same time frame 2000 to 2007 and could even go down for the next 10 years if they dont chose to convert it to methanol which could more easly reduce dependence on unstable arab oil sources but when its a choice between green backs and loyalty to ones nation ??????

The logical process in USA to do methanol fuels instead of this illogical Ethanol was shot down with a red herring argument comparing the water table polution accident in California from methelbuthane MBTB spills a highly toxic form of methanol Alchool automible fuel additive where as in reality the methaol and Ethanol are nowhere near as toxic as methelbuthane MBTB and both are of equal risk to the water tables in that you need a consiberbly larger spill of these these poducts to create the same risks as methelbuthane MBTB and they wont taste the water with a foul taste like methelbuthane MBTB did
Also and in some ways Methanol spills will often disperse better from evaporation very quickly than Ethanol alchol spills except the advantage of ethanol spills is you could realy enjoy getting drunk drinking the poluted water supply

The better is ethanol should be found in your beer
methanol in your fuel tank
and gasoline in the ground under the camels never to be unexploted as everybody found better solutions than unstable arab oil

So get used to the sound of the message coming from on high methanol is ethanol ,ethanol is methanol when it come to putting in a fuel tank and food prices climb possibly 10 fold to produce Ethanol and driving to work cost quadruple costs and your glow model planes cost an arm and a leg as you dump out and change to Lipo

Balsaeater

< Message edited by blw -- 11/24/2007 3:42:16 PM >

(in reply to PLANE JIM)

Post #: 2

RE: methanol - 11/23/2007 4:04:36 PM

Jezmo

Posts: 644
Joined: 6/26/2006
From: Spring, TX, USA
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Wow dude, that was longwinded. I have been running E85 in an ST40 on a GP Super Sportster for about a month now. Even with Nitromethane in my mix it is slightly down on power. Not much but a little. I am in the process of testing it on gasoline with spark ignition.

You are so right about repeat it over and over and over and the sheeple er people will begin to believe it as the truth. I wish they would wake up and smell the coffee but alas it's not going to happen, at least not in my lifetime.

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(in reply to balsaeater)

Post #: 3

RE: methanol - 11/23/2007 11:36:14 PM

LouisB

Posts: 35
Joined: 2/3/2005
From: Heidelberg, SOUTH AFRICA
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Yep, ask me about Sasol. My tax money paid to erect these plants and there is no difference between the Sasol gas price and that of the multi-nationals. In fact the South African taxpayer has subsidised the Sasol rip-off during low oil prices. And they are a Fortune 100 company. Ethanol is a by-product of the Fisher-Tropsch process that Sasol is using. Some time ago there was an over-supply of ethanol in the global market. Guess what, Sasol just upped the ethanol content in the fuel and thus got rid of their extra production at sky high profits. When the ANC took over they made some serious noises about the way fuel prices are calculated here in South Africa. Good, I thought, let them investigate. Then suddenly it was announced that the fuel price calculation is honkey dorey - I smell a corruption and bribery rat. Never mind that one is able to buy fuel cheaper in our neighbouring countries - everything is anyway coming through the South African harbours since their infrastructure is decrepit due to constant mismanagement and corruption (thanks for your UN Aid - it all went through the throats and pockets of the reigning regimes).

I am getting to understand why there are rebelious people around. The consumer is at the mercy of the large corporates and their bottomlines. Ask yourself this: is slavery really dead?

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(in reply to Jezmo)

Post #: 4

RE: methanol - 11/24/2007 4:42:40 AM

balsaeater

Posts: 122
Joined: 5/20/2005
From: p, ANDORRA
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Re: Jezmo

Link for info on E85 fuels 73 to 82% Ethanoll the remainder is gasoline

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E85

I assume ST40 is a superTiger 40cc

On say any make of 40cc motor the glow version methanol will return 20% plus power compared to the spark plug gasoline version using 5% mix of Ethanol
The compression ratio for glow version will be typicaly 9:1 to work correctly for glow and 8:1 for spark plug gasoline version using 5% ethanol

I may be wrong but I dont know of any make of model plane motors made to run correctly on 85% ethanol 15% gasoline but there might be a special USA version to do E85 fuels not sure??

Are you using the correct fuels for your motor ???
If your expermenting then the incorrect compression ratios and the fact that glow plugs work more correctly for Methanol fuels and not ethanols or especialy ethanols with gasoline contamination would factor in on some power losses compared to methanol fuels (and Ethanols are slightly less power than methanol ) could contribute to power reductions over conventional RC glow fuels using methanol as the main ingredient .
However I dont think that using E85 on a standard glow motor will so good for the plastic parts as the gasoline will often attack the plastic parts that are usualy only resistant to methanols (and probably Etanol fuels) and extra heat from gasoline burn could eat glow plugs for breakfast

Realy logicaly to get E85 to sorta work in model motors of 40cc it requires the use of spark igniton to ignite the gasoline which will ignite the ethanol
Factor in fuel consumption will be up a lot expect double compared to gasoline version with 5% ethonal mix due to special affects that occor in micro motors of less than 1000cc but unless the motor is made to do E85 fuel the plastic parts and fitting will often be destroyed from any fuels that have more than 15% ethanoll or methanol contents
( most gasoline version motors be they Automibles or models will tolerate up to 10% plus (up to mayby 15%) ETHONAOL content mixxed in the fuel without having to convert the motor over to handle higher content Ethanol fuels )

Tecknically its not a problem to get any 40cc to run on e85 or RC glow or gasoline mixxes seperatly but to be able to be flexi fuel versions would cost a whole lot more than modelers would like to pay so generaly model motors are made to be mono fuel types eg gasoline or RC glow but not both at the same time

Balsa eater

< Message edited by blw -- 11/24/2007 3:45:45 PM >

(in reply to LouisB)

Post #: 5

RE: methanol - 11/24/2007 3:52:59 PM

blw

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Joined: 3/15/2004
From: Auburn, AL, USA
Status: offline

The comments about political issues and other countries are not appropriate for posting here. Let's keep it related to fuels.

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(in reply to balsaeater)

Post #: 6

RE: methanol - 11/24/2007 11:54:40 PM

Jezmo

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From: Spring, TX, USA
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Here in the US the ratio on E85 is supposed to be 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. The engine is a standard SuperTigre .40 ci. glow engine which makes it about 7 cc's. Lot's of folks had led me to believe that the glow plug was reacting with the methanol in glow fuel and wouldn't work with anything else. Platinum in fact reacts with most hydrocarbons and is the substance in catalytic converters on cars used to break down the unburned HC's left over in the exhaust after incomplete combustion. The platinum in the glow plug reacts very well with methanol and gasoline at a mix of approx. 25% methanol and 75% gasoline. That is what the guys over in the gas/glow thread are writing about. I tried that mix in the ST40 and it ran OK at mid and full throttle but was poor at idle. My next experiment was with the E85 and for that mix I was running 18% oil - 10% Nitromethane - and the remainder E85. It ran very smooth and without a tach you could not tell it wasn't running on regular glow fuel. It was down just about 2 hundred rpm's over glow fuel. It was just as easy to start and used considerably less fuel than standard glow fuel as well. I love experimenting with these types of things and decided to run it with spark ignition on regular pump gasoline and oil. I have a thread going on that over in engine conversions. It runs very good on gasoline and now it really burns less fuel. Less than half what it was using on regular store bought glow fuel. You wrote that spark ignition is required to run E85 in your last post and I would like to assure you I have run E85 on glow without problems. It runs extremely well at least in my engine. If you search you can find articles where OS has released a biofuel engine in Japan that runs on straight ethanol and oil as a glow engine. It is a .55 ci. It likely will not be sold in the US because of the restrictions on the fuel here. Trying new and different things is part of what makes the hobby so fun for me. I have been in the hobby now for 45 yrs and it's things like this that keep my interest up. Cheers.

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(in reply to balsaeater)

Post #: 7

RE: methanol - 11/25/2007 1:59:57 PM

balsaeater

Posts: 122
Joined: 5/20/2005
From: p, ANDORRA
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RE:Jezmo

7cc motor on e85 ewell done I am impressed your way ahead of the curve than me in practical model motor fuels use than I am
can you supply exact links to this type of info so I can study it further

Lots of modelers world wide are forced to experment with different fuels for RC cars boats planes and rocketry due to excessive charges from local and world cartels and for certian fuels import bans or severe ristrictions to acces without chemical industry licence and in USA E85 is a lot cheaper more easly availble fuel source than cartel controlled methonal

new very usefull info on glow plugs thanks which could advance my micro model rocketry projects no end as spark ignition is heavy

Love the rocket powered x15 demo model plane that gets dropped from B24 bomber at the shows

any body know the details on that rocket motor pm me

But solid fuel solutions are way way tooooo expensive and liquid fuel soultions might be more affordable

So I experment also and reasearch started into chase the chemical solutions for model rocketry and the story went political very fast when I tried to sorce the materials and the information

So I changed direction to use ready available model glow fuels ingredients instead and even that was very political with ATC restrictions on rocketry issues even attached to RC planes and local ordinances banning fire works without special licence which covers model rockets also

(examples exist every where but a simple one is more than one gallon of fuel storage of any type in a house often requires a licence or special insurance rates unless it happens to be fuel bought for the car and remans in the car fuel tank )
and not by chemicals requirementrs as we would all prefer it to be in nervana

So modelers probably cant even hoard methonal in advance of a price hike without breaking some law

The total fuel Questions for me started for a simple make a simplex liquid fueled 1kg to 4kg rocket motor to run for 15 seconds to boost speed of model plane to 200mph plus just for idle fun seeing as that is what modelers generaly do have idle fun

But that thread was classed as non rc and got scratched go figure it was a rocket to be attached to rc plane ???

Model planes are fun and super fast planes are enven more fun to some folk but pulse jets are not everybodys solution to high speed but are a welth of info on what fuels work as modelers been expermenting with fuels and that motor since 1950"s

And no I realy do not think global warming is a happing soon or even ever as when I was a kid it was the impending ice age that was going to ruin the planet so I am not a tree hugger otherwise I couldnt live with any internal compustion engines even model types

As I noted the first cars and planes and rockets computers etc were built by back yard expermenters often trying to outwit the then cartels that were trying to fleece them in that period so history will often repeat itself

Modelers are expermenting with Ethanol solution to circumvent the methonal cartels that are fleeceing them and other modelers are activly searching for ways to reduce the cost of methanol with bulk buying or consumer activities

I opt to use all methods to keep methanol costs down especialy if the evidence is there exists cartels making the price higher

sorry when its my money I am parting with and if there exists a hint of price fixxing cartel then its a real personal axe to grind

But as the model fraternity supply me with info I like to supply in return and understand why so many modelers get so annoyed when they see model fuel cost such outragous prices in the LHS or similar and tolerating the premium price if the facts were true is one thing
but allowing the system to take everybody for idiots and rip us stupid with mumbo jumbo untruths is another thing and being of the opinion that armed with facts consumers can fight back and get the greedy suppliers to drop there prices to real market prices and therefore allow us to lowwer prices for fuel if possible and ensure the LHS which cant control prices dosnt get it in the neck so much

So accidently while pursuing the model rocketry project I then tripped over the world wide scam of fuel mixxing to confuse all the joe soaps and hike fuel and methonal prices up a lot more than seems correct and found that in fact Methonal is a super cheap fuel in bulk often much cheaper than gasoline often less than $1 a gallon and as low as 60c a gallon in bulk and even at half the MPG is realitivly cheap and makes using of any other alcohols or oil based fuels a serious question of who gaining what from this whole scam and claims of toxity are lame compared to toxic gasoline
And the scam is world wide best I can tell and costing us joe soap modelers world wide a lot and while were at it and a lot of automible users a lot too and isnt reducing dependence on politicaly unstable Arab oil sources the so called reason we are having to pay these extra charges

Modelers especialy expermenters have been responsible over many years in influencing things like tuned pipes and other modern world features outside modeling and this can also apply to finding alternitive fuels use

knowlege is power

Vested interests are much bigger than the LHS which has no control from these issues and is as much a victim as the modelers or even the whole modelling industry a tiny minow within the mighty industrial interests in at the top where major decisions are made such as the country goverment and head office level oil companies etc and thier decisions often costs us joes soap modelers a lot of money when often it shouldnt except to line thier bulging pockets

The results of these protections of vested fuel interests is causing LARGE distortions in fuel markets and making methanol the logicaly cheaper fuel to use being replaced with Ethanol and E85 a MUCH more expensive fuel and is now actualy now cheaper at the pumps than methanol because of this nonsense
but they did get to burn 1.8 gallons of oil to make that gallon of E85 didnt they

Expermenting with fuels is excellent as it it gives local modelers with less access to exotic fuels like Methonal or Ethonal more options very similar to the early days 1950's 1960's era when everybody made thier own witchs brew which could include all sorts of strange additives up to and including shoe polish I kid you not and fuel varied a lot in formula around the world and was influenced buy local access to materials and millions of combination many which worked rather than the standard formula that exists today which seems to have gained voodoo qualities from maketing teams

So trying to awnswer the original question will Methonal go up in costs without to include the market distortions caused by mostly political interests protecting the fuel cartels is subjective probably requires a bit of RANTING to explain all the complexities of this case and is better than getting mad at the LHS for something they have no control over and are unlikly to ever have a say at the Mighty table of fuel price interests

Untimatly the price of fuel is often not decided buy real market forces and so in this case expect methonal prices to surge and expect a few more lucky modelers to convert to E85 but expect the rest of the worlds modelers who used to be able to make home brew solutions to be outmanovered with cartel solutions like police arms control import licence or HAZ MAT control tarrifs whatever to block access to useful ingredients like aml nitrate
( a fuel additive for Deisel motors which has a multi dual use reputed afro dissyiac long before Viagra and heart energy booster and potensial explosive for well trained chemists who would just use hair stylists Hydroxide chemicals anyway)

Us modelers may not succeed to stop all the rip of scams that the big brothers will try to impose on us but with facts as how they manover the fuel prices and facts on all the millions of fuel formulas that work we can cicumvent some of the excess and make
us less gulible to these nutty price hikes that they want to impose on us to use our models and drive our cars to go flying shopping work whatever and if eneogh modelers know the facts they might be able to keep the methanol prices lowwer and influence the modeling industry to fight even harder to cut the costs like the way they did with balsa often by buying up the balsa producing forests and cutting out the rip off balsa merchants but first they knew balsa shortage was a dirty big lie

Methonal is a very expensive fuel is a dirty big lie and until the modelers and model making industries combine forcess to show up this lie and join forces with other interested movements like motor car fuel consumer protection movemnts the modelers will risk to fleeced on methonal and will have to make time expensive and posibly money changes to E85 solutions or lipos or similar

needless to say as most all the planes I do are Lipo in this time and rocketry is still ground based expermenting higher methonal prices are not exactly an immeadiate threat to me but if fuel prices jumped 2 fold the membership of the club I use would be affected so one modelers problemtodayh could impact on me tommorow and one consumer getting ripped off could affect me tommmorow so I am obliged to input all the facts that might help reduce unnessary price hikes

balsaeater

< Message edited by blw -- 11/25/2007 3:38:21 PM >

(in reply to Jezmo)

Post #: 8

RE: methanol - 11/25/2007 4:53:07 PM

Jezmo

Posts: 644
Joined: 6/26/2006
From: Spring, TX, USA
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On my E85 experiments, I just took a known good ST40, mixed up some E85 and oil and tried running it. It ran good but was down on power and didn't idle as well as store bought glow fuel with Nitro at 10%. If I put the power back on the glow plug it would idle better so I tried a hotter glow plug. That made the idle much better. I then added 10% Nitromethane in order to try and get some of the power back. It helped the power and also improved the idle to the point that it now idles at least as good as it did on glow fuel. The top end power is off just a little but not enough to really be an issue. I really didn't consult anything online to do my experiment, I just used knowledge I have accumalated through the years. Experimenting like this is fun to me.

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Raptor 50 V2 OS 50 Hyper, T-Rex 450XL CDE, Spektrum DX7, SuperTigre OS FOX Saito Enya Jett TT

(in reply to balsaeater)

Post #: 9

RE: methanol - 11/25/2007 9:31:02 PM

Sport_Pilot

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From: Acworth, GA, USA
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quote:

I was informed by a friend that methanol price is going to double in the short future due to ethanol use in vehicles.

Ethanol is made from corn and other sugar laden crops. Methanol is made from natural gas. The price of corn doesn't affect the price of methanol, but the price of natural gas does.

(in reply to PLANE JIM)

Post #: 10

RE: methanol - 11/26/2007 12:43:19 AM

balsaeater

Posts: 122
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From: p, ANDORRA
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