considering pilots are known (stereotypically yet somewhat true) to be alcoholics this may not be the best idea

b2theory: Sure. Do it. Jet engines can burn virtually any liquid fuel. However, like all alternatives it won't scale.

Yeah,

Maybe they can use the alcohol they produce to make all the alcohol fuel we would ever need.. Think about how clean it would all be!

Seriously, this is how most people think bio-fuels work.

How long would it take to fuel a commercial jet with alcohol,
and what the hell do they do with all of those little empty bottles?

One for you, one for me. One for you, one for me.

Alcohol for jet engines? Sure you can do it, but why?

It's easier to make vegetable oil and that is much closer to traditional jet fuel. It also has an energy content per gallon about 30% greater than ethanol.

Alcohol is for spark-ignition engines where you can run wicked compression ratios.

Just like E85 is going to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. Wake me when I can buy it at 90% of the pumps across the US and it's made from something besides corn or imported sugar.

The reason why these bio liquid fuel companies go the route of jet fuel is because the DoD is willing to vastly over pay the cost of equivalent JP. On the open market they simply can't compete until oil gets much more expensive or the cost of production decreases drastically.

Right now, biomass fuel is about 10 times the cost of JP-8, the current military aviation jet fuel in use...

A little sloppy, but as a pilot, Im proud of this being greenlight #100.

/turbocharging would be parallel to hotboxing

beer4breakfast: The reason why these bio liquid fuel companies go the route of jet fuel is because the DoD is willing to vastly over pay the cost of equivalent JP. On the open market they simply can't compete until oil gets much more expensive or the cost of production decreases drastically.

Right now, biomass fuel is about 10 times the cost of JP-8, the current military aviation jet fuel in use...

And the military is willing to spend the inflated price for alternate fuel sources: they recognize that relying on foreign sources for fuel is a strategic error. Providing seed investment in domestically produced alternatives is in the long term national interest.

beer4breakfast: The reason why these bio liquid fuel companies go the route of jet fuel is because the DoD is willing to vastly over pay the cost of equivalent JP. On the open market they simply can't compete until oil gets much more expensive or the cost of production decreases drastically.

Right now, biomass fuel is about 10 times the cost of JP-8, the current military aviation jet fuel in use...

As someone who's interning at a biofuels company that got just such a DoD grant, I'm getting a kick out of this thread.

/the company also got DoE funding and a bigass Coke grant to figure out how to make biodegradable plastic bottles from biofuel byproducts
// http://www.virent.com/ if anyone is interested

Cthulhu_is_my_homeboy: Alcohol is for spark-ignition engines where you can run wicked compression ratios

That's what I was thinking, use ethanol in lieu of the LEADED GAS they still use in small prop jobs. Except that ethanol sucks up water.

Someone shop a bottle for a throttle. The more you pour the faster you go.

wildcardjack: Cthulhu_is_my_homeboy: Alcohol is for spark-ignition engines where you can run wicked compression ratios

That's what I was thinking, use ethanol in lieu of the LEADED GAS they still use in small prop jobs. Except that ethanol sucks up water.

Other than the need for rustproofing of the engine components, though, the water isn't that bad. It stays mixed with the ethanol so it's not going to hydrolock the engine (when was the last time you saw a bottle of whiskey separate into water and booze?), and it slightly increases charge density and cooling of the fuel-air mixture before combustion. Main thing is you're going to have to overhaul the engine to take advantage of it, and there's a certain breakeven point where 100LL has to cost enough to justify the cost of the modifications and the switch to E95.