bio gas for 2-stroke

C

Chris Crew

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I've wondered about methanol as a fuel for the HT, and today I read a simple explanation of why one should not.

Methanol, the green-hope fuel made from almost any plant with some starch, is alcohol, and thus water-based. Lubricating oil won't mix with it, so it ends up in atomized droplets upon intake (probably in irregular blobs) and can't do its job. The result might be a burned up intake port, messed up piston and ruined cylinder.

Rats. I had green dreams of running on our old friend corn likker mixed with peanut oil.
 
Castor oil will mix with methanol based fuels. My model planes and cars run on methanol, nitromethane and a castor oil blend.

But gasoline is much cheaper!
 
Cheaper in the short run---depending on which camp you believe, we've got either until 12/21/12 (in which case, let's eat, drink and be merry) or we're approaching the kick-off to "a thousand years of perfect peace" in which case, I guess we should continue to care about conservation, pollution, oil slavery, climate change, foot odor, dandruff and all of those other pesky problems.

Does the castor oil truly mix with the fuel, or is their something about it that makes a very fine emulsion possible---if that's the case, how would you keep the oil in uniform suspension?
 
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