https://www.s2ki.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=392140

After seeing RR have a productive techical discussion on Ethanol as a fuel source. I figured I'd try to start a discussion on something I just found. Butanol. Looks very interesting as a fuel for both the environmental factors and the high octane/high energy content.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Butanol

Some of the benefits...

1) 25% more octane that gasoline
2) 105,000-110,000 BTU per gallon compared to ~115,000 for gasoline (~77,000 for ethanol)
3) Non corrosive(unlike ethanol) so that it can be used in unmodifed vehicles
4) Inital expectations are that it will burn at least as cleanly as ethanol

Negatives

Currently manufactured from petroleum stocks at around $6.75 a gallon. But new methods of fermention allow it to be produced the same as ethanol from corn(at similar prices) or from generic biomass.

Not currently available in mass quanties, however there is a push by oil and chemical companies to to produce butanol commerically. BP and Dupont are already cooperating to develop it as a viable fuel.

http://www2.dupont.com/Biofuels/en_US/FAQ.html

The obvious benefits to the s2000 are it's octane rating, that combined with only a small loss in energy content(i.e ~5-10%), could make it very interesting as a fuel source. Afterall it has been demonstrated that if you use 100OCT gas in the s2000 you will generate more power through advanced timing than if you were to used 91 OCT gas.

An interesting experiment to run would be.

Reset ECU....run 91 OCT gas and dyno.
Drain leftover fuel....reset ECU and run 100 OCT gas.
Drain leftover fuel....reset ECU and run Butanol

Since the energy content is ~90-95% of regular gas and it has more octane, I would expect that the Butanol would generate similar to greater power than 91 OCT. With full ECU management to advance timing/lean fuel, I wonder if Butanol could exceed the power output of 100OCT gas.

At any rate it sound like a more interesting alternative to Ethanol for those of us who have to run an oxygenate gas. Could also be of real benefit to the FI guys with the extra octane and minimal power loss.

Any comments, and hopefully we can keep this technical so it won't go where good threads go to die(s2000talk)

Personally not a big proponent of the whole biofuel craze(since I think too much of the 'science' is bunk), but this one actually intrigues me. But I still ask the question....so with all the good things....what's the bad?

 

With alcohol fuels, I think it's the economics that is bunk. Interesting, though.

 

Butanol for food use might be economical to produce by fermentation because it has labeling advantages (natural product) over petroleum-derived and therefore brings a higher price, but for fuel use I don't think so, yet.

The economics of producing butanol in large quantities for fuel or chemical feedstock, by fermentation are limited by its toxicity to the microorganisms that produce it. The viability of the fermentation and rate of production go South at butanol concentrations that are far too low to recover economically from the culture medium. Methods to continuously remove butanol from the living fermentation to keep product concentration below the toxic level are being developed, but they're not viable yet in large scale. Work to develop microbial strains having higher butanol tolerance is also required.

Commercial strains of ethanol producing microbes have much higher product tolerance and that's why it works.

Steve