3 ms·
The water absorption and phase separation problems are particularly bad with airplanes because airplanes operate in very cold conditions when they go up to high
by cameldrv 6y ago
The water absorption and phase separation problems are particularly bad with airplanes because airplanes operate in very cold conditions when they go up to higher altitudes. I think that these problems also would apply to pure ethanol.
The other kicker with ethanol is that its energy density is significantly lower, so it would significantly negatively impact the range/payload of every small airplane.
- Robotbeat 6y agoThe energy density issue is pretty small. You lose maybe 30%. This is tiny compared to the challenges of electric flight, for instance.
- colechristensen 6y ago30% is huge for an aircraft. Not only do you need more fuel for each trip, you need extra fuel to handle carrying around the extra fuel. (not necessarily intuitive starting out but aircraft deal with amplification factors, energy added ounce of fuel will require a greater than unity number of additional ounces of fuel for equivalent performance) Comparison to electric flight is a bad comparison as until very recently electric flight was basically considered to be impossible with present technology.
- Robotbeat 6y agoElectric flight in the history of flight has never been “impossible.” Anyone who told you it was impossible didn’t have the capacity/desire to think in terms of fundamentals beyond existing rules of thumb. (“Existing technology” is a nice weasel term, but we’ve had electric flight of various types demonstrated decades ago.) 30% is not high. It might convince you to do some drag reduction on your aircraft to compensate. Most small general aviation aircraft are terribly aerodynamically inefficient even compared to state of the art aircraft 50 years ago. 30% is barely relevant for the short intracity trips in this article.