Methanol fuel

Takeshi_Kovacs

where could a fella buy a few gallons of 99%+ methanol in either cork or limerick (preferably limerick) and at what price per gallon
The pure stuff is what i'm after but, ithink it is cut with nitromethane, to serve as fuel in model engines..
well info would be great thanks in advance

techguy

what do you want with it??
just curious..

hakko

coolwings

Takeshi_Kovacs wrote:

where could a fella buy a few gallons of 99%+ methanol in either cork or limerick (preferably limerick) and at what price per gallon
The pure stuff is what i'm after but, ithink it is cut with nitromethane, to serve as fuel in model engines..
well info would be great thanks in advance

Methanol as used in model fuel is of purity 99.9% to 99.999% depending on the quality. Model fuel should have 99.95% pure methanol.The impurity is mostly water.
If you buy model fuel of the common types available, the methanol will have nitromethane (% stated on label), and caster or synthetic oil (proprietary but usually 15-20%), and fuel dye (trace qty) added.

Pure methanol is available from the largest model suppliers only - mainly due to the fact that it costs money to hold stocks of such products and not every shop would have the speed of turnover to sell it before it degrades. It is usually about a tenner a gallon. Green Hobby in Dublin have it but are sold out until next week. Noel Barrettt in Cork might have some. I don't know anyone in Limerick that does it.

I use pure methanol for making up special blends of model fuel, thinning or slowing set time of epoxy glue, cleaning brushes of heavy glue before 2nd cleaning with acetone, removing stains, heating steam engines with no flame/smoke staining of the polished boiler with a 50:50 unleaded-methanol mix. also cleaning anything where it is handy to use a solvent that evaporates and "gets rid of itself" automatically.

It's very handy stuff, although poisonous, being able to penetrate skin, and evaporating at such a speed that the air is toxic where you are using it. The vapour is heavy so it sinks to the ground like propane, your shoes scraping the ground, or a static electricity spark from a nylon sock could cause an explosion.

What do you want it for?

Takeshi_Kovacs

i need the meth , to basically , make Biodiesel...
because with the price of diesel going up, it would be good to produce my own fuel, cheaper than i can buy dino diesel (and help environment)
But the price of the methanol is the number factor in the overall cost of the BD
so at a tenner a gallon, i would be looking at 2.20 a litre of meth , therefore that would arise to finished product cost of around 40 to 40 cent a litre, which i guess is not too bad

coolwings

Very interesting. I considered bio a while ago, and decided that I did not know enough about the difficulties mixing at the time to try it. The foaming and heat produced when the catalyst is added put me off.
So I forgot about it until your post appeared.
Thanks for the reminder :-)

What oil are you going to use?

Takeshi_Kovacs

i have my eye on a few sources for the oil, but i don't want to commit myself, to offering to take away the waste oil, until i have a good supply of reasonably priced meth...
btw thanks for info above

was also thinking about maybe experimenting to running a meth/oil mixture in my chainsaw, similar to what is used in model planes. Although this could be risky in the fact that it may burn out engine if carb isn't set right, and unburnt meth coming out the exhaust , would not be good for the health

coolwings

I can not speak about putting pure methanol into a petrol engine, as I haven't done that.
but I have added nitro to petrol - oil 2-stroke mix, and run my petrol lawnmower on it.
the engine was designed for 32:1 petrol : oil.
I ran it on doubled oil ie 16 : 1, with an added 5% nitro.
Horsepower raised substantially, rpm under load held up marvellously, and smoke was above normal as the extra oil did it's job, saving the engine.

On another occasion, I added synthetic model fuel with 5% nitro, to the otherwise normal petrol : oil mix in a 20% model fuel : 80% petrol - oil mix ratio. Power was up, smoke up a bit too, but the spark ignition changed to compression ignition, making it difficult to switch off, as turning the ignition off (and the sparkplug), would not stop the engine. I had pre-ignition with the accompanying rattle too warning me of potential trouble if I kept it up, and lots of power.

Interesting experiments that teach a lot, but they could be expensive lessons if you go over the invisible line and destroy piston-liners or break a conrod damaging the crankcase. I got away with it and learned a lot. :-)

About the bio diesel .... how much trouble is it to get the water residue in waste oil down to acceptable levels? I had always assumed new oil myself, but the cost of waste oil would be very attractive.

Takeshi_Kovacs

coolwings wrote:

I can not speak about putting pure methanol into a petrol engine, as I haven't done that.
but I have added nitro to petrol - oil 2-stroke mix, and run my petrol lawnmower on it.
the engine was designed for 32:1 petrol : oil.
I ran it on doubled oil ie 16 : 1, with an added 5% nitro.
Horsepower raised substantially, rpm under load held up marvellously, and smoke was above normal as the extra oil did it's job, saving the engine.

On another occasion, I added synthetic model fuel with 5% nitro, to the otherwise normal petrol : oil mix in a 20% model fuel : 80% petrol - oil mix ratio. Power was up, smoke up a bit too, but the spark ignition changed to compression ignition, making it difficult to switch off, as turning the ignition off (and the sparkplug), would not stop the engine. I had pre-ignition with the accompanying rattle too warning me of potential trouble if I kept it up, and lots of power.

Interesting experiments that teach a lot, but they could be expensive lessons if you go over the invisible line and destroy piston-liners or break a conrod damaging the crankcase. I got away with it and learned a lot. :-)

About the bio diesel .... how much trouble is it to get the water residue in waste oil down to acceptable levels? I had always assumed new oil myself, but the cost of waste oil would be very attractive.

well on running meth in a petrol engine, i know that you would have to increase the size of the jet of the carb, in order to prevent the engine from running lean, (meth has only around 1/2 the power as petrol per unit volume, therefore larger vol of meth needed).
Also i think it doesn't burn as quick as petrol, so the flamefront continues out the exhaust (as seen in top fuel dragsters e.t.c.), which would be kinda cool on a lawnmower e.t.c. , although i'd be wondering if there was any unburnt meth getting out as well (which would be very bad, for the health..)

well on the water/biodiesel, from what i have seen, most homebrewers heat the oil to dry it (although some go a bit further with vacuum drying and the like..) and then let it settle for a few days, check this about water removal http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html#water