Butanol as the nex gen fuel

[alexander]

So this has sparked my interest, and will perhaps spark yours too :eek_big:

 

My interest in butanol requires a mention of a device that someone came up with that utilizes cobalt feride and lots of mirrors to convert and in the atmosphere into .

(discussed here : http://hypography.com/forums/enginee...l-project.html )

 

CO is one of the building blocks of a hydrocarbon, in a saturated form,, which are the building blocks of butanol , which seems to be a better alcohol fit for replacing gasoline, because it can be use instead of gas without any modifications of the engine, and there is no need to add other fossil fuels to the mix, like in E85 fuel...

 

Because its longer hydrocarbon chain causes it to be fairly non-polar, it is more similar to gasoline than is ethanol. Butanol has been demonstrated to work in some vehicles designed for use with gasoline without any modification.[1] It can be produced from biomass (as "biobutanol") as well as fossil fuels (as "petrobutanol"); both biobutanol and petrobutanol have the same chemical properties.

 

hence my interest in butanol.

 

Now, if anyone can post what the process involving the separation of CO out of (i'd imagine it would be the heavier gas), conversion of CO to a form and finally conversion of that to (yeah not a chemist here) , i would greatly appreciate it...

 

and hopefully it would start an interesting discussion on alcohols and their properties here

[Mercedes Benzene]

Oh fun, fun, fun!

 

Well to respond to your first query, a good way to seperate gases is fractional distillation. Basically, the mixture of gases is condensed to a liquid, and they are evaporated in a controlled manner. Since the gases have different boiling points, it can be determined which gas is currenlty being evaporated, and so they may be collected seperately.

 

[ce]CO[/ce] has a boiling point of 81 K.

[ce]O2[/ce] has a boiling point of 90 K.

[ce]H2[/ce] has a boiling point of 20 K.

 

If you were distilling these, hydrogen would be evaporated and collected first, followed by carbon monoxide, and finally, oxygen.

 

As for the production of butanol, there are multiple ways to go about alcohol synthesis. The only method that I'm familiar with (for this particular instance), which involves [ce]CO[/ce] and [ce]H2[/ce] is with the alkene propylene. Propylene ([ce]C3H6[/ce]) is reacted with hydrogen and carbon monoxide gases in the presence of a catalyst. This would produce an aldehyde, which is further reacted with hydrogen to get butanol. The only problem (?) is that there are 4 isomers of butanol. I don't know if the use of butanol in engines requires certain isomers over others, but if that is indeed the case, further refinement would be needed.

[Mercedes Benzene]

Here. I drew up a quick visualization for the process I described above.

See attached:

[alexander]

Ok, so if we take the mass of gas, that is released and cooled it to say 75k, we would effectively liquify CO and O2, and the one gas that will be left a gas, would be h2, which can and will be further used, pumping that out, and heating up to 85K, we'd get CO and the remainder is liquid O2.

 

All forms of butanol can be used in fuel, here's the problem the higher n number you go in n-butanol (i should add, i know that after 2-butanol, you get 2-methyl-1-propanol and 2-methyl-2-propanol, but you know what i mean here), the higher the melting point of the material is, and the higher the octane rating is:

n-butanol - has a RON of 96 and a MON of 78

t-butanol - has a RON of 105 and a MON of 89, but the melting point of 25.5 degrees C... and that is somewhat of a problem

 

Though here are some good news, butanol mixes extremely well with other fuels, it is less corrosive then ethanol and thus is safer. Infact most ethanol plants can be retrofitted to produce butanol, very economically. You would get a better bio diesel if you mixed t-butanol into degluteined oil, then you currently do with an 80-20 mix of oil to diesel...

 

and this also means that you will use 2 alcohols to produce the fluid now too, methanol, to scrub the oil after the lye was added, and butanol to make the fuel more potent :shrug:

 

i dunno just some thoughts

[Moontanman]

If indeed butanol can be used in autos with no or little modification then someone will make lots of dough (if it can be made at a reasonable cost) is this really being looked into or is another pie in the sky idea?

[alexander]

there are a few companies looking into it, including DuPont, ButylFuel LLC and BP

 

BP is working on first getting production of it as a solvent and then marketing it as fuel... in some way

 

but yea, it thought it would be a really cool addition to the solar to oxygen and fuel project...

 

Oh another thing, there are no cars that are officially marketed as able to run on butanol, however it is speculated that any car that is designed to run on a 10% or more ethanol mix, can run on butanol. Also any mix with butanol vs ethanol, you can put in 60% more butanol into the mix, without any reprocautions...

 

that to me means that vehicles that run on e85 could be running on b94 if my math serves me correctly, without any modification probably even t-butanol, for higher performance cars...

[Mercedes Benzene]

If indeed butanol can be used in autos with no or little modification then someone will make lots of dough (if it can be made at a reasonable cost) is this really being looked into or is another pie in the sky idea?

 

Well from what I understand, the majority of butanol is produced as a byproduct of fossil fuel processing. It's the same for Hydrogen, which is one of the factors that has prevented us from utilizing hydrogen fuel cells.

Browsing through google pages though, there is some research into the natural production of butanol using bacteria or yeast.

[alexander]

It can be produced from biomass (as "biobutanol") as well as fossil fuels (as "petrobutanol"); both biobutanol and petrobutanol have the same chemical properties.

...

Biobutanol can be made entirely with solar energy, from algae (called Solalgal Fuel) or diatoms.

...

Centia is based on a three-step thermal, catalytic, and reforming process that has the potential to turn virtually any lipidic compound—e.g., vegetable oils, oils from animal fat and oils from algae—into 1-for-1 replacements for petroleum jet fuel, diesel, and gasoline. The three steps are:

 

* Hydrolytic conversion.

* Decarboxylation.

* Reforming long-chain alkanes.

 

...

Since the 1950s, most butanol in the United States is produced commercially from fossil fuels. The most common process starts with propene, which is run through an hydroformylation reaction to form butanal, which is then reduced with hydrogen to butanol. Butanol can also be produced by fermentation of biomass by bacteria. Prior to the 1950s, Clostridium acetobutylicum was used in industrial fermentation processes producing butanol. Research in the past few decades showed results of other microorganisms that can produce butanol through fermentation.

 

quick info on ways to make it...

 

infact i have seen this in Beyond Tomorrow, when they showed an rc car running on fuel made from algae... methinks they were referring to biobutanol...

[Moontanman]

Well from what I understand, the majority of butanol is produced as a byproduct of fossil fuel processing. It's the same for Hydrogen, which is one of the factors that has prevented us from utilizing hydrogen fuel cells.

Browsing through google pages though, there is some research into the natural production of butanol using bacteria or yeast.

 

When I was a kid there were many gas wells in my area, they had tanks of a liquid that was collected as waste. At one time it was allowed to just run out on the ground. We used to go to gas wells and siphon it out of the tanks and use it in cars and motorcycles. Was this butanol?

[alexander]

according to this, it may have been, but its unlikely:

[img=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/NatGasProcessing.png]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/NatGasProcessing.png[/img]

 

you can see that one of the products produced by the plant are butanes, though it is more likely that what you were getting was the condensate, because it is refined out at the well, the condensate that is sent to the oil refineries is actually natural gasoline:

Natural gasoline is a natural gas liquid with a vapor pressure intermediate between natural gas condensate and liquefied petroleum gas and has a boiling point within the range of gasoline. The typical gravity of natural gasoline is around 80 API.

[Moontanman]

according to this, it may have been, but its unlikely:

[img=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/NatGasProcessing.png]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/NatGasProcessing.png[/img]

 

you can see that one of the products produced by the plant are butanes, though it is more likely that what you were getting was the condensate, because it is refined out at the well, the condensate that is sent to the oil refineries is actually natural gasoline:

 

It wasn't all that great as gasoline, it caused the valves to rattle and damaged engines that ran it for very long. I saw motorcycles (two stroke) with holes burned in the top of the pistons from it. It also had a distinctive odor, you could always tell when some one was running it from the smell of the exhaust. Some people mixed it with real gasoline and had a better out come from it.

[alexander]

yeah that sounds like the unrefined natural gasoline...

 

Butanol has a very sistinct and strong alcohol odor, if you can't remember that it was alcohol, it's likely to be the condensate...