Alternative fuels

[kilcoo316]

First of all, I'll preface this with the fact I am not an engine expert, nor do I pretend to be.


Now... we've probably all heard the self-indulgent asshole (that is R. Branson for those that haven't endured his interviews) talk about alternative fuels for F1 engines.

What forms will these fuels take - ethanol? Hydrogen?


Here is another worthy of consideration I feel.... diesel. As for why:

1. Engine minimum weight limit - so a block can be built for the added cylinder pressure without incurring the associated weight penalty.
2. Rev limit - traditionally a diesel's weak point... but since its artificially limited now, petrol engines cannot utlise some of their headroom.
3. Fuel consumption - with refuelling being banned from next season... not hard to see what carrying 50 kg less fuel at race start means.


Thoughts?

[xpensive]

Methanol, proven in CART and made from cellulose. There are also agro-diesels, made from God knows what crops.

Running on ethanol, booze, made from corn or Brazilian sugar is simply insane.

I think Branson is actually planning to run some of his "Green" 747s on stuff like the above. As usual, if somebody else can pay for it one way or the other.

[NormanBates]

* I think it would have been better if they had set for a greener engine, and no kers, but continuous changes are very bad for economics so I think the best now is to stick to the current engine/kers plan for at least a couple of years more

* I don't see kers as something that detracts anything from the show, and I think limiting the performance you can get out of the device (eg reducing kers time per lap) is exactly the opposite of what is needed

* having a faster card getting very close but not quite overtaking the slow car in front is fun to watch: if webber had passed piquet at his first attempt, you'd have had a 10 seconds show (and maybe another one after, say, 10 minutes); instead, you had a much longer one, with lots of fighting, yet no overtakings

(even more off-topic than the current off-topic debate: I don't understand that "non-food ethanol" rethoric: I can't see why using food sources to also produce fuel can be bad, unless in very unlikely circumstances in the very short run; I thought most people would think by now that eco-fuels played a very minor role in last year's food price increases)

[djos]

(even more off-topic than the current off-topic debate: I don't understand that "non-food ethanol" rethoric: I can't see why using food sources to also produce fuel can be bad, unless in very unlikely circumstances in the very short run; I thought most people would think by now that eco-fuels played a very minor role in last year's food price increases)

Right, so you think creating petroleum replacements instead of feeding people is the morally correct action?

With all the starving ppl on this planet, the less food being produced on the limited amount of farming land available = more staving ppl and higher food prices for those that can afford to eat!

[The FOZ]

Right, so you think creating petroleum replacements instead of feeding people is the morally correct action?

With all the starving ppl on this planet, the less food being produced on the limited amount of farming land available = more staving ppl and higher food prices for those that can afford to eat!

Producing fuel from "food" sources will not cure hunger, that's granted. But not producing fuel from food sources will not cure hunger, either.

If you look closely a the world's hunger problems, you see a multitude of social and political problems that have resulted in too many people for the amount of food we can produce. Truly, we (humanity) are the cause of this problem that we now suffer from. Making more food will not fix the underlying problems.

As brutal as it may sound, here's why.

Take your average starving country. The mortality rate amongst children is tremendous, due to malnutrition and disease. To compensate, people have LOTS of kids. Otherwise, there'd be no next generation, right? Now imagine of ALL of those kids, rather than starving, get all the food they need to survive into adulthood.

They're gonna go and do exactly what their parents did - have lots more kids. So you now have a geometric increase in population in a country that was only able to feed the people that it already had. And it would take a few generations before people stopped having LOTS of kids - change doesn't happen overnight.

And as callous at it may appear, food aid is half the problem in the first place - it creates an artificial, unsustainable food economy that can never be ended and must continue to grow with the population.

[djos]

@ FOZ: Dude, food needs to provided as does education and access to basic health care - as any country matures towards western levels of infrastructure, technology, education, health care and life style the average # of children per family drops off dramatically. poor ppl dont have lots of children cause they want too!

[ISLAMATRON]

Right, so you think creating petroleum replacements instead of feeding people is the morally correct action?

With all the starving ppl on this planet, the less food being produced on the limited amount of farming land available = more staving ppl and higher food prices for those that can afford to eat!

Producing fuel from "food" sources will not cure hunger, that's granted. But not producing fuel from food sources will not cure hunger, either.

If you look closely a the world's hunger problems, you see a multitude of social and political problems that have resulted in too many people for the amount of food we can produce. Truly, we (humanity) are the cause of this problem that we now suffer from. Making more food will not fix the underlying problems.

As brutal as it may sound, here's why.

Take your average starving country. The mortality rate amongst children is tremendous, due to malnutrition and disease. To compensate, people have LOTS of kids. Otherwise, there'd be no next generation, right? Now imagine of ALL of those kids, rather than starving, get all the food they need to survive into adulthood.

They're gonna go and do exactly what their parents did - have lots more kids. So you now have a geometric increase in population in a country that was only able to feed the people that it already had. And it would take a few generations before people stopped having LOTS of kids - change doesn't happen overnight.

And as callous at it may appear, food aid is half the problem in the first place - it creates an artificial, unsustainable food economy that can never be ended and must continue to grow with the population.

You assume that these people and those countries would not be able to produce their own food as they did before colonialism and the raping of their resources by neo-colonialism. There are much more outside reasons why these countries cannot sustain their population's food needs.

When Zimbabwe was able to produce enough food for the entire continent of Africa, it is unreasonable to say that the earth cannot sustain the current population. We may be approaching a critical mass, but the production capacity increases at a much faster rate than the population, but there are many outside forces such as multi-nationals pushing genetically altered crops which do not produce sustainable seeds

Regardless it makes much more sense to make fuel from woodchips & grass clippings than food crops, and that is self evident. Burn waste or food? does the question even need to be asked?

[Ciro Pabón]

About ethanol, its production contributed more or less to 15% of price increase of food in U.S. http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=10057

You have to take in account a very important point:

The actual commodity (ie food) input in what we buy in the grocery store is a modest fraction. For example, wheat costs about 16c/lb, but bread is well over a dollar a pound. Hence bread prices have not increased nearly as much, percentage-wise, as wheat prices. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3387

It's another story altogether in the developing world where heavily processed food is a rarity.