Virgin bio-butanol

[unixronin]

Virgin (yeah, that Virgin), not content with buying into spaceflight, is buying into biofuels now — specifically, buying into Gevo, a CalTech spinoff founded to commercialize bio-butanol.  Unlike ethanol, butanol is not hygroscopic (it does not absorb water from the environment), which means that unlike ethanol, it can be shipped via pipelines that may be contaminated with water.¹

Butanol has 91% of the energy density of gasoline, comparing very favorably with ethanol at 61%, and most engines designed for gasoline or gasohol will run on straight butanol without modification.  Gevo plans to later produce butanol-based fuels for trucks and jet engines.

[1]  Though personally, I don't really see the problem with pumping ethanol through wet pipes.  You'll probably be discarding the first few kilolitres through the pipe anyway, because it's going to be contaminated with all kinds of stuff, and after the ethanol goes through, that pipe will be DRY.  Water in the pipes is almost more of a problem with gasoline than with ethanol, since it doesn't mix with the gasoline, which means any water the gas does pick up is going to settle out into the bottom of ... say, your gas tank.  Ethanol, meanwhile, will just dissolve it and carry it harmlessly through your engine.

Comments

[novel-tharkun.livejournal.com]

Not certain, but I think the problem has more to do with water pipes (and oil pipes?) being iron or carbon-steel based, which is chemically incompatible with fairly purified ethanol. Feel free to run the google search to prove me wrong. I didn't.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I'm unaware of any interaction between ethanol and iron or carbon-steel pipes. The usual argument raised against piping ethanol is that many of the oil pipes have water in them that can't be cost-effectively cleaned out, and ethanol will absorb the water, and This Is Bad.

(Funny ... it sounds to me as though the ethanol has just cleaned your pipe for you. If you really want the water out of the ethanol afterwards, you could always distill the first few megalitres through the pipe; after that, there won't be enough water left to matter worth a damn, unless someone's accidentally plumbed a water main into your oil pipe. In which case you have bigger problems anyway.)

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

The problem in oil pipes is Hydrogen Sulfide (replace the Oxygen in water with Sulfur) it tends to be more corrosive than water, and harder to get out of the pipe.