Green cars - All Comments

re: Methanol: round two

JJBoxster — Wed, 14 May 2008 01:11:09 GMT

Big deal! Tyrell F1 cars were producing 1,000bhp back in the 70's and Renaults F1 4 cyclinder turbocharged units were pumping out 800bhp 20 years ago. This racing bhp is a red herring frankly.

C'mon Richard let's have these figures please!!

re: Ken's CO2-charge will make London a laughing stock

JJBoxster — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:41:25 GMT

Boris has stated he is clearly against extending the Con-Zone to West London - residents don't want it - Red Ken did and after taking the survey he didn't listen and tried to weasel around public opinion and slide it in - Good Bye you deceptive, destructive, deaf pratt.

Labour got hammered in the Council Elections. One Labour croney after another came on saying "we've got to listen". David Dimbleby got so fed up after the 20th croney spewed out the 'on message' we'll listen more line he told them to shut up.

So now Labour are all ears will they continue to bribe Councils will central public money to roll out this miserable scam across the country? You're joking! And therein's the problem between deceipt and democracy.

So I hope Labour gets hammered come Election time because after 15yrs of deceipt about "Things Can Only Get Better" I hope the public kick these spivs really hard in the nuts.

re: Methanol: round two

NiallOswald — Sun, 11 May 2008 19:09:26 GMT

The Champ Car V8s were 2.65L, turbocharged and developing 800bhp (at unknown RPM) on Methanol.

Power and torque needn't be complicated. P=ωT is all there is to it.

How T varies with ω is where things get interesting...

re: Methanol: round two

JJBoxster — Sat, 10 May 2008 15:03:56 GMT

Sorry that should read:

Petrol - 120bhp - 95lb torque - 30mpg

Diesel - 105bhp - 130lb torque - 35mpg

Methanol - 140bhp ??? lb torque - ???mpg

NB. I'm still waiting for Richards figures on £cost per gallon, BTU energy consumption in production compared to its lowly 66,000BTU output etc. Where's he gone again?!!

re: Methanol: round two

JJBoxster — Sat, 10 May 2008 14:56:03 GMT

Thanks Guys, very helpful :-)

It took me nearly a year to get my head round the difference in output properties between bhp and torque. This may take me a few months to understand too!

Given Sammis post about air to fuel balance, is Methanol happy with forced induction of air (turbos and superchargers)?

The studies I've seen show methanol is a slower route to improved power and economy than either petrol or deisel. Given a 1.4 ltr engine say

Petrol - 120bhp - 95lb torque

Diesel - 105bhp - 130lb torque

Methanol - 140bhp ??? lb torque

So what torque figure does Meths' produce and can the engne performance we boosted in similar ways with Turbo and Super charging?

re: Methanol: round two

theoriginalshoe — Sat, 10 May 2008 11:24:20 GMT

Richard, well done for not crawling under a rock and having the guts to take on this lot. They're like dogs with bones and won't let you away with anything!!

re: Methanol: round two

Samiur Rahman SHAH — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:58:07 GMT

A "perfect" mixture in case of petrol and air is 14.7 parts of air to one part of petrol. A "perfect" mixture in the case of methanol and air is 6.4 parts of air to one part of fuel.

Thus for the same mass of air ingested, you have 2.3 times the fuel that can be burnt.

About 6 percent more power will be available in the mixture taking into account the lower heat value produced by methanol per kilogram.

This is not considering the higher boost pressure that can now be run due to increase in octane rating, increasing power further.

Just my 2 cents.

Cheers!

Sami

re: Methanol: round two

NiallOswald — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:22:24 GMT

"More power" is simple - when running on methanol, the car's engine develops more power. Therefore it accelerates more quickly. "More power" just means you can convert stored chemical energy to kinetic energy more rapidly. The amount of energy stored in the tank is niether here or there.

The chemical properties of methanol mean that despite lower stored energy per unit volume, the product of this figure and the rate of use of the fuel is larger than for gasoline.

Diesel is the opposite - it contains more energy per unit volume but (until recently) it was not possible to extract that energy at as a high a rate as with petrol.

re: Methanol: round two

edeath — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:33:36 GMT

Must point out those 2 BHP figures are purely arbitrary. I have no idea of the actual performance gain methanol gives.

re: Methanol: round two

edeath — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:32:06 GMT

Power and range are 2 very different things. Basically running a car on methanol is like running it on much higher octane petrol. This allows a vehicle to be tuned for more bhp. So on petrol a lotus exige is 240bhp, but on methanol it could be 280bhp. All this while having a lower range due to less BTU's per gallon.

re: Methanol: round two

JJBoxster — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:10:23 GMT

Not "Obtuse" I'm just no an engineer. Just explain "more power" to me?

Take a 1.2ltr Elise running on petrol versus a 1.2ltr Elise running on Synthetic Methanol. You go 250 miles for example on a tank of petrol or you go 125 miles on a tank of Syn Meths.

Even Lotus admit you get over 40% less oomph (energy) out of a tank of Methanol and have to fill up more often as a result of the lower energy value per gallon. How does that translate as "greater acceleration an more power" ?

re: Methanol: round two

NiallOswald — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:56:43 GMT

You're being deliberately obtuse here, JJ. Methanol's higher octane rating and greater latent heat of vaporisation allows an engine of a given capacity to be run at higher compression ratio or boost pressure than on gasoline, thus generating more power.

More power = greater acceleration and higher top speed, all other factors being equal. These are the figures by which a car's performance is usually measured whether it runs on petrol, diesel, methanol, ethanol, LOX+Kerosene, AvGas, Nitromethane or whatever else you choose to propel your wheeled vehicle with.

I don't know about you, but I don't measure the performance of my car in BTUs/gallon of the fuel it runs on. That's a different (but valid) matter altogether. Richard is simply saying that the methanol-powered Exige is faster than the petrol-powered version - a simple concept, no?

re: Methanol: round two

JJBoxster — Fri, 09 May 2008 01:45:11 GMT

Etanol

Energy output - 76,000 BTUs per gallon

Energy to make - 98,000 BTUs per gallon

Richard "..Ethanol.. gives better performance than gasoline"

I've tried LSD but still can't see how!!

re: Fighting the greenwash

JJBoxster — Fri, 09 May 2008 01:27:16 GMT

Loather, I'd say your figures for Nuclear versus Matts 1 sq meter of solar power are conservative. The only way to make electricity without a carbon footprint is Nuclear. Solar, wind and tidal combined wouldn't push a fleet of shopping trollys around sainsburys!

I'm not sure what planet some of the Autocar journalists are on and their maths and scientific research is quite appalling at times.

And then we come to the big question of why do we want to reduce our carbon footprint which Matt obviously hasn't appeared to analyse past the papp propoganda.

If our Matt did the maths and science on climate science he'd realise we'd be off our trollys quite frankly to bother because man cannot change climate altering a gas that's 0.0038% of which man has almost no effect on with all his industrial omissions combined. Changing to electric vehicles is an act of futility even Lemming would find laughable.

re: Methanol: round two

JJBoxster — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:47:54 GMT

So now to Round 2. Again it's a little short on data. There's 4 detail omissions in your 2nd article that need filling in ;

1. What is the cost per gallon of 'Synthetic Methanol' ?

2. What is Synthetic Methanol made from ?

3. What is the energy cost in making Methanol ?

NOTE. Petrol & Diesel gives 125,000 BTU of energy but only costs 22,000 BTU in energy to produce - namely a 6 fold Bang-Per-Buck. Methanol gives only 66,000 BTU so it would have to cost 12,000 BTU in energy consumed to provide a similar Bang-Per-Buck (ignoring it provides half the energy per gallon as petrol/diesel!).

You say "Here are some facts – rather than conjecture – from Lotus: methanol.. give better performance than gasoline". Yet you/Lotus also admit "..society may need to accept the more frequent refuelling of vehicles."

Petrol and Diesel both have twice the energy/power output of Methanol per gallon. So a car goes twice as far on fuel as methanol. It's one or the other so...

4. What DO you mean by "giving better performance" ?