The two primary objections to ethanol seem to be corrosion/degradatiion of fuel system components and its tendency to absorb water. As you've pointed out, the corrosion can be dealt with at design stage quite readily - just specify appropriate materials.
The water issue doesn't seem so straightforward. While an engine may run fine on ethanol with a known quantity of water added, when an aircraft sits idle for weeks at a time, how can you know how much water is in the fuel? How much water can ethanol absorb? How do you know how much it's absorbed? Is it evenly distributed (e.g. in solution with the ethanol) or does it accumulate at the bottom of the tank. Getting a known and consistent amount seems like a challenge to me. An then there's the question of where to get 100% ethanol. Is it as readily available to the average joe as 100LL or unleaded? I look forward to hearing of your progress from time to time. Cheers, Tony On 6 June 2016 at 13:06, andrew via KRnet <krnet at list.krnet.org> wrote: > Here goes the spoon feed ?Don?t use it?. > > As I?m working on blue prints for the KRSuper1, and getting my outside > research done. I am settled on one huge taboo of the aviation community. > This bad boy is going to be tuned and built to run primarily on ethanol. > > ?But Cessna and the big aviation companies says it?s horrible.? Hold on > and let me get some hand on acknowledge your way. > > Dr. Maxwell Schauck has been flying on ethanol since the 1980?s, and flew > across the Atlantic in his Velocity back in 1989. While I was attending his > program at Baylor University I got to participate in his research for 4 > years. In that four years I came to find out a few things. > > 1. Ethanol is a superior fuel to 100LL. > 2. Oil companies will do everything to keep it out of mainstream use > 3. Ethanol has a natural octane of 113 > 4. Ethanol burns cooler, and will run smooth at 50 degrees past peak EGT > 5. If you add water, you get a horsepower boost, AND you don?t have to > worry about it damaging your engine > 6. Ethanol reduces engine vibrations by 50%. > 7. Ethanol doesn?t react with oil in the same manor as 100ll or mogas > 8. Ethanol will eat aluminum and natural rubber. Easily combated by > anodizing and using Teflon > 9. If an engine is tuned to ethanol vs. 100LL, you get a significant > horsepower boost with minimal GPH increase. > > This is all based on my personal experience working on our departments > Pitts S2B, Cessna 152, Cessna 172, Velocity, Piper Aztec, and Max > Performance Research aircraft prototype. We averaged a horsepower increase > of roughly 30-35% increase with ethanol vs. avgas, with no changes to the > mechanical tuning on the engine. To the point we had to order custom props > for all our aircraft, due to engine overspeed with the standard propellers. > (The Pitts S2B ran 300HP on 100LL and 350HP on ethanol). > > We also did water in fuel testing for the FAA while getting our Cessna?s > STCs updated (yes, Dr. Schauck owns the STCs for 152s and 172s to be flown > on 100% ethanol in utility category). We were able to add 10% water to the > fuel tanks before reaching peak EGTs. Had we tuned the engine this > percentage would have gone up. > > So why am I sharing; I plan on building the first KR that is designed to > fly on ethanol. And foreseeing the usual arguments I figured I would head > off most prior to having to repeat. > > So a Corvair with 100HP should obtain 130HP simply by tuning to run on the > 113 Octane ethanol. But we shall see when we get to that part of my build. > > What are your thoughts on the matter? > > Sent from Mail for Windows 10 > > _______________________________________________ > Search the KRnet Archives at http://tugantek.com/archmailv2-kr/search. > To UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to KRnet-leave at list.krnet.org > please see other KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html > see http://list.krnet.org/mailman/listinfo/krnet_list.krnet.org to change > options >
