Liquid fuels and net zero

[Ian]

As burning dino fuel in our planes becomes less viable, what are the alternatives?

There's an old article on certifying ethanol by Waco University where power increased significantly over AVGAS. They are using an engine with 9.7:1 compression which appeared to be available at the time from Lycoming.

[Ian]

So the biofuels, ethanol and bio-diesel both give you green brownie points.

But ethanol impacts on range. https://www.flightglobal.com/corn-to-run-can-ethanol-be-used-as-a-clean-alternative/71449.article

Are there any other manufactured fuels which are carbon neutral. Lots of hype around hydrogen but its difficult to store and refuelling would dangerous.

[turboplanner]

19 minutes ago, Ian said:

So the biofuels, ethanol and bio-diesel both give you green brownie points.

But ethanol impacts on range. https://www.flightglobal.com/corn-to-run-can-ethanol-be-used-as-a-clean-alternative/71449.article

Are there any other manufactured fuels which are carbon neutral. Lots of hype around hydrogen but its difficult to store and refuelling would dangerous.

All of that is in the past or being used but static for one reason or another. I was in a group at one stage that was asked to look 50 years ahead and consider re-purposing our roadsides to grow crops for ethanol.

 

Petrol is working fine, pulling ahead of diesel in the newer vehicles.

 

HICEV is nudging in but has to handle volume and Hindenberg factors.

[Old Koreelah]

2 hours ago, turboplanner said:

I was in a group at one stage that was asked to look 50 years ahead and consider re-purposing our roadsides to grow crops for ethanol…

Interesting. My Croatian brother-in-law expressed amazement at the width of Australia’s road corridors. Too much wasted land for him. Most of our local airport environs are less than 50m wide, but are cropped by Farming for Kids, a group of local farmers and contractors. Not a huge amount of land, but they sure help local schools.

 

Back in the Old World, many roads are too narrow. 

I believe our pioneering road builders allowed enough width for a vehicle pulled by a team of horses to do a U-turn.

There’s lots of room for road-widening, but most roadsides are a mess of weeds, shredded tyre retreads and coke cans. 

 

I have wasted some effort trying to get the authorities to streamline the process of permitting grazing of the long paddock to reduce fire risk. I suspect the well-funded fire organisations are not as interested in prevention as they are in shiny new tools to fight fires.

[Ian]

2 hours ago, turboplanner said:

Petrol is working fine, pulling ahead of diesel in the newer vehicles.

 

HICEV is nudging in but has to handle volume and Hindenberg factors.

But if mandates appear that require net zero what fuels are available. Obviously the petrol and diesel don't fit this requirement.

 

There are a lot of clever people hoping that hydrogen works however it's such a difficult fuel and expensive to boot.

 

[facthunter]

With very high  temperatures available from concentrated solar, synthesis is possible. Hydrogen doesn't need to be at atmosheric pressure but it leaks and causes brittleness in steel.. Synthetic oils are made from GAS. like Propane.  Nev

[onetrack]

HICEV is gathering pace, the only real restriction now is adequate hydrogen production, and a hydrogen refuelling network. New lightweight tank materials seem to have taken care of the storage problem.

Hydrogen is lighter than air, so any leakage dissipates quickly, it doesn't collect at ground level as with natural gas or with LPG.

 

Both Cummins and JCB are heading towards HICEV as a satisfactory, modest cost energy alternative. Toyota has a HICEV. The Japs are intent on developing a hydrogen economy.

Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest is investing heavily in solar hydrogen production, and JCB is signed up with him for a hydrogen offtake agreement. 

 

https://www.cummins.com/news/releases/2022/05/09/cummins-inc-debuts-15-liter-hydrogen-engine-act-expo

 

https://www.constructiontechnology.media/news/jcb-unveils-mobile-hydrogen-refueller/8024207.article#

 

https://www.jcb.com/en-au/campaigns/hydrogen

 

 

[facthunter]

Ammonia is part of this subject at the moment.  Nev

[tillmanr]

@Old Koreelah, the local fire brigades in the country may have shiny toys but the volunteers don’t have the time or energy to be maintaining roadside reserves.

[turboplanner]

2 hours ago, Old Koreelah said:

Interesting. My Croatian brother-in-law expressed amazement at the width of Australia’s road corridors. Too much wasted land for him. Most of our local airport environs are less than 50m wide, but are cropped by Farming for Kids, a group of local farmers and contractors. Not a huge amount of land, but they sure help local schools.

 

Back in the Old World, many roads are too narrow. 

I believe our pioneering road builders allowed enough width for a vehicle pulled by a team of horses to do a U-turn.

There’s lots of room for road-widening, but most roadsides are a mess of weeds, shredded tyre retreads and coke cans. 

 

I have wasted some effort trying to get the authorities to streamline the process of permitting grazing of the long paddock to reduce fire risk. I suspect the well-funded fire organisations are not as interested in prevention as they are in shiny new tools to fight fires.

Grazing is a liability issue because no matter how careful you are one of the flock will find a way out of anything except a boundary fence, and bulls won't even stop there. however quiet a few councils allow hay baling, and this not only saves the council slashing costs, but the farmers, cleaning up the sticks, tyres, and other motorist presents in the early autumn then in season cutting with mowers, raking, and removing the baled hay leave the roadsides looking like manicured parks. It's not unusual to see this for hundreds of kilometres out in western Queensland.

[Old Koreelah]

37 minutes ago, tillmanr said:

@Old Koreelah, the local fire brigades in the country may have shiny toys but the volunteers don’t have the time or energy to be maintaining roadside reserves.

I totally realise that, which is why I tried to make it easier for local graziers to do it for them.

[Old Koreelah]

12 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

Grazing is a liability issue because no matter how careful you are one of the flock will find a way out of anything except a boundary fence, and bulls won't even stop there. however quiet a few councils allow hay baling, and this not only saves the council slashing costs, but the farmers, cleaning up the sticks, tyres, and other motorist presents in the early autumn then in season cutting with mowers, raking, and removing the baled hay leave the roadsides looking like manicured parks. It's not unusual to see this for hundreds of kilometres out in western Queensland.

All true Turbs, which is why I suggested making it easier to graze low-traffic rural roadsides. Most local motorists will slow down for cattle. A short 60 zone for a day shouldn’t be much of an inconvenience.

If insurance companies crunched the numbers they might find it more attractive to cover the low risk of a car bumping a cow than pay for a firestorm.

[turboplanner]

3 minutes ago, Old Koreelah said:

I totally realise that, which is why I tried to make it easier for local graziers to do it for them.

 

2 minutes ago, Old Koreelah said:

All true Turbs, which is why I suggested making it easier to graze low-traffic rural roadsides. Most local motorists will slow down for cattle. A short 60 zone for a day shouldn’t be much of an inconvenience.

If insurance companies crunched the numbers they might find it more attractive to cover the low risk of a car bumping a cow than pay for a firestorm.

It would centre around what the insurance companies want. I've never had a problem even with a car and caravan threading through a drover's mob of cattle, stopping if the cow did etc; it's never more than a couple of minutes delay but a couple of years ago heard a frantic beeping of a car horn as a car load of young tourists came through at around 80.

 

On the Hamilton Highway in Corangamite Shire it goes the opposite way when all the land owners, who are the ones that stand to lose their property show up to a burn like hell day along the highway, no doubt followed by a BBQ and party and that works well. 

 

One year we were travelling west of Cunnamulla and for 30 or 40 km the grass had been neatly burnt each side of the road, then there was a black trail out into a  1,000 Ha paddock and it looked like it had burnt out an area half the side of Ireland!

[Thruster88]

One problem with ethanol, made from wheat or corn etc or bio jet fuel, made from canola or soybeans etc is the fuel versus food debate.

 

A 200ha or 500 acre Australian broad acre crop paddock will yield about 2 tons per ha with canola. A ton of canola seed will yield about 400 litres of oil, the other 60% is a useful high protein animal feed, nothing is wasted. So our 200ha paddock will produce 160,000 litre of jet fuel per year plus the animal feed.

 

160,000 l is enough fuel for a 17 hour flight in a 777. Do we have enough paddocks?

 

[turboplanner]

17 minutes ago, Thruster88 said:

One problem with ethanol, made from wheat or corn etc or bio jet fuel, made from canola or soybeans etc is the fuel versus food debate.

 

A 200ha or 500 acre Australian broad acre crop paddock will yield about 2 tons per ha with canola. A ton of canola seed will yield about 400 litres of oil, the other 60% is a useful high protein animal feed, nothing is wasted. So our 200ha paddock will produce 160,000 litre of jet fuel per year plus the animal feed.

 

160,000 l is enough fuel for a 17 hour flight in a 777. Do we have enough paddocks?

 

The answer lies, I think, in Brazil.

[Thruster88]

I see what you did there

[turboplanner]

4 minutes ago, Thruster88 said:

I see what you did there

They were the first by decades; they started as a result of the 1979 fuel crisis when the world was going to run out of fuel. GM brought the Commodore to Australia, Ford missed the boat and had to stick with the Falcon etc.

 

I'm not sure how it all worked out , but just checking they are currently the world's second biggest ethanol fuel producer behind the USA.

 

[Ian]

3 hours ago, onetrack said:

HICEV is gathering pace, the only real restriction now is adequate hydrogen production, and a hydrogen refuelling network. New lightweight tank materials seem to have taken care of the storage problem.

Hydrogen is lighter than air, so any leakage dissipates quickly, it doesn't collect at ground level as with natural gas or with LPG.

 

Both Cummins and JCB are heading towards HICEV as a satisfactory, modest cost energy alternative. Toyota has a HICEV. The Japs are intent on developing a hydrogen economy.

Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest is investing heavily in solar hydrogen production, and JCB is signed up with him for a hydrogen offtake agreement. 

The "lightweight tanks" haven't taken care of the storage problem. The tanks are still huge for their energy capacity, hydrogen is leaks easily and  incredibly explosive and flamable. It ignites with air with only a 4% mixture. It possesses the highest NFPA rating of 4 which compares to 3 for Gasoline and 2 for Jet fuel and diesel.  Imagine the difference between gasoline and diesel, then think of the next level up and you have hydrogen. Read the following and you start to understand why hydrogen is unlikely to be handled by service stations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_safety

The Japanese are keen on the hydrogen economy however I suspect that it is largely dead before is has begun it is both expensive and difficult. The rest of the world has gone battery electrical for vehicles leaving Toyota's position increasingly exposed and at odds with the rest of the industry.

https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/15/toyotas-team-japan-aims-to-save-internal-combustion-engine-from-extinction/

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4514310-toyota-stock-complacent-as-electrification-of-transport-picks-up

 

There isn't a ship in the world that can ship liquid hydrogen so people have proposed to convert it to ammonia. CSIRO producted the following graphic in relation to the efficiency of ammonia as a fuel (and it was a pro ammonia paper). Note that the graphs indicate "best case" scenarios. Where the bar changes colour is the probable operating efficiencies.

 

From the link about the paper which is a pro ammonia site.

At the outset, we must acknowledge the paper’s title: “Ammonia as a Renewable Energy Transportation Media.” The authors are quite clear that, relative to making ammonia, using renewable electricity directly “would clearly be far more efficient” given the distribution losses of only “less than 10%” in most electrical grids.

https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/articles/round-trip-efficiency-of-ammonia-as-a-renewable-energy-transportation-media/

 

 

Hydrogen for steel might make sense however you'd need to use if where you made it for it to be economical as Hydrogen is too difficult to ship. Also you need a good supply of de-mineralised water and I think that osmotic separation can't provide the necessary purity so you need to spend more energy on a flash vaporisation process. Hydrogen for steel makes the most sense when you make enough hydrogen during the day and consume it as night on site.

 

There will be huge efforts to make electrolytic steel win the day, it's about 30% more energy efficient and allows the use of cheaper ores and is far more space efficient. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-industry/green-steel-without-green-hydrogen-can-it-work

Places like Korea which have a significant nuclear capability want a direct electrical process for ore refining. Nuclear provides a high capacity factor power source which can meet electrolytic production constant power requirements allowing them to keep importing iron ore.

[Ian]

Ethanol works pretty well in Brazil for a variety of purposes. The question is can you planes run on it?

 

[Old Koreelah]

58 minutes ago, Ian said:

Ethanol works pretty well in Brazil for a variety of purposes. The question is can you planes run on it?

 

They have done for decades. 

[Bruce Tuncks]

Ethanol is incompatible with some rubbers/chemicals used in Jabirus for example. It also absorbs water very easily.

One test for if there is ethanol in whatever you are about to put into your plane is to add about 10% water and shake. If the water appears to disappear, then it has been absorbed by the ethanol present.

Don't use ethanol-mixture petrols without knowing lots of stuff.

[facthunter]

Crop Dusting aircraft (Piston engined) have run on straight ethanol for many years, in Brazil.. Nev.