Petrol alternatives?

[AdamW]

Right, so we all know you can run a diesel engine on veggie oil, and many know that you can run a petrol engine on ethanol.

But are there any other fuels that a petrol engine can easily run on?

And what happens if you try to run a petrol engine on diesel? Surely the compression ratio isn't high enough to cause diesel detonation, but will the spark be able to ignite the fuel/air mix?

 

[2scoops0406]

It would burn far too slowly for any kind of performance, and would thcreate horrible deposits all over the engine, the fuel filters would clog, the injectors likewise, all in all a bit of a mess I'd guess. Ethanol also doesn't produce a great deal of power, sure, it burns quick, but there isn't much power as compared a hexane / octane mix (petrol)

 

[petewood]

And what happens if you try to run a petrol engine on diesel?

The car breaks down after about 1/2 a mile, in the rain, with your sister and 3 kids in the car as my wife once demonstrated.

 

[Quick Fit]

LPG... Gas. Very cheap and quite comman now

 

[AdamW]

I'll be interested to see what the LPG prices do, IIRC the low tax was only for a finite period and as soon as there are enough users they will bump it up!

I suppose ethanol really wouldn't give as much oomph as petrol. But, if there are the resources (land) to produce enough of it, then we could start moving to larger engines, producing similar power to current (smaller) engines. In the last few years the trend has been towards larger engines, and the reduced mpg would be balanced by cheaper fuel price.

The only country I know of to use ethanol extensively was Brazil, but even they went back to using more oil once the political situation shifted.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

AFAICT any petrol car will run perfectly on a 10% ethanol, 90% gasoline mixture. Some will run on 85:15.

Which kinda implies that if you have a source of cheap ethanol (harder to come by than cooking oil is for our filthy-stinking-vile-muck driving folks), it might be worth trying different mixes to see what yours will do.

If this destroys your engine it is your fault, not mine.

Years ago, when compression ratios were low, and engine management systems consisted of a weight on a spring inside the distributor, you could run them on kerosene if you retarded the ignition a bit.

 

[AdamW]

Robby Coltraine's programme about engines showed this. He showed an old smallblock V8 that had been used to power klaxons during the war, paraffin-fuelled. Still started fine!

Just spoke with a Swedish colleague of mine, he's seen the crops they grow to make the ethanol and apparently they grow extremely tall, very quickly.

Swedish car-tax penalties for DERV burning make diesel uneconomical for anything except taxis and commercials. I thought the arctic winters + cold starts + the fact diesel gels at low temperatures would make it a nightmare to use, but he is adamant it isn't a problem.

Plus Swedish people are far too cool to drive diesels.