The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1933-03-29
HOMEGROWN MOTOR FUEL"
r;.+;on Soieroa Monitor.

L
To The Christian Science Monitor:
! AS news item and again on your editorial
page, you gave serious consideration to the COM
pulsory blending of grain alcohol with gasoline as
motor fuel Similar proposals are repeatedly put
forward by Others in anxiety over the plight Of
the farmer, in an attempt to help him.
None of these proposals. however, is based on
any sound analysis of the idea, either from an
economic or an engineering point of view. 1t Is
time their fallaey was brought before the public
Let us first consider the proposition from an
economic point of view, Three years ago, Germany
and Hungary decreed. that all petrol should be
adulterated with 20 per cent potato spirit, and
more recently Brazil has followed suit. In none of
these countries is there native petroleum industry
of any great Importance In all of these, however,
there were national problems which overrode the
protests of the motorists But in this country there
is a great plenty of oil as well as an important
petroleum industry and a great body OF motorists
to protest.
Molasses is a by-product left behind after the
sugar crystals have been extracted from the sugar
cane or beet sugar juice. It's only big market is
the alcohol-producing industry. If alcohol prices
should be depressed by subsidized conversion u
surplus farm products, it would simply mean that
lasses Sugar beets and sugar cane are American
farm products.
There is another economic barrier. With farm
products more plentiful and cheaper than evec,
ethyl alcohol makers continue to use molasses in
fermentation operations. Even with cheaper mo-
asses, 95 per cent alcohol costs approximately 20
cents gallon to make. To make 2O-cent alcohol
from grain means a price for the grain of not ex-
- LII
plant. How much would the farmer receive?
The fermentation of molasses leaves only
liquefied waste readily disposed Of The fermenta-
ton of grain leaves solid residue of no CONNER
cial value and non-combustibe except at the ex-
penditure of prohibitive sum for fuel, and so
rnalodorous as to prohibit its dumping within any
reasonable distance of a civilized community.
As for the engineering disadvantages, the tests
quoted by you as made recently at Iowa State Col
lege purporting to extol the advantages of such
splendid fuel, erroneous and misleading, and
the adoption of such fuel would bring a storm
of protests from the organized motorists through
out the country.
In the first place. complete changes should be
made in the automobile carburetor to utilize this
new fuel. Also the greatest fault of alcohol used
in this blended fuel is its affinity for water. Al
cohol will absorb water Wherever IL can ma IT,
This property, while it makes alcohol a valuable
drying agent in the laboratory, makes it nuisance
in gasoline tank.
The result would invariably be that under GER
tain conditions of atmospheric humidity, car
might be impossible to start at all, or when on the
road might stall.
An internal combustion engine is primarily a
machine for extracting heat units from gasiied
LIQUID fuel in the form of power Alcohol itself IS
an inferior fuel from this point of view, as COM
pared with gasoline, and the automobile motor
cannot be made to extract much power from
gallon of this blended mixture as from gallon
of the gasoline alone.
The bootlegger however, will welcome the
scheme for blended motor fuel with wide open
arms. With 10 per cent mixture such as you
advocate all he would have to do is to buy ten
gallons of the new motor fuel mix it with suffi-
cient water to separate the alcohol from the gaso-
line. burn the nine gallons of gasoline in his auto
mobile motor, and convert the gallon of alcohol
into three gallons of a better bathtub brand than
ne is now peddling. ROBERT H. DUNBAR.
West harrington, R. I. ....