From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Article from 'The Autocar' discussing the potential of alcohol as an alternative motor fuel to petrol.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 32\1\ Scan026 | |
| Date | 8th November 1913 | |
| THE AUTOCAR November 8th, 1913. The Possibilities of Alcohol Fuel. An Outline of the Significant Results of "The Autocar" Experiments. This article is an introduction to and a simplified abridgment of Dr. Ormandy's paper on Alcohol Mixtures for Motor Car Fuel, to be read before the Institution of Automobile Engineers on Wednesday next, 12th November. The paper is based on a series of experiments which have been made by Dr. Ormandy during the last six months for "The Autocar," these being preceded by many others during his long study of the subject of home-produced motor fuels. LARGE and important as are the interests of motoring, the interests depending upon a solution of what we have come to call the "fuel problem" are very much larger and very much more important. As motorists, as that section of the community to be earliest affected by the fuel problem, we are naturally prone to think that it is essentially our problem. It is nothing of the sort. It is a problem which underlies almost the whole of the world's industry, and which if not seriously tackled may yet dangerously undermine the world's industry. The vast bulk of our industrial activity depends upon the combustion of coal. Coal cannot last for ever. In the report of the Royal Commission on coal supplies there occurs this passage: "... the calculations of the last Coal Commission ... make us hesitate to prophesy how long coal resources are likely to last. The present annual output is in round numbers 230,000,000 tons, and the calculated available resources in the proved coalfields are in round numbers 100,000,000,000 tons, exclusive of the 40,000,000,000 in the unproved coalfields, which we have but to regard only as probable or speculative. For the last thirty years the average increase in the output has been 2½% per annum and that of the exports (including bunkers) 4½% per annum. It is the general opinion of the District Commissioners that, owing to physical considerations, it is highly improbable that the present rate of increase of the output of coal can long continue; indeed, they think that some districts have already attained their maximum output; but that on the other hand the development in the newer coalfields will possibly increase the total output for some years. In view of this opinion, and of the exhaustion of the shallower collieries, we look forward to a time, not far distant, when the rate of increase of output will be slower, to be followed by stationary output, and then a gradual decline." As an alternative fuel many industries—and not merely new ones, but old-established industries which have used coal time out of mind—have turned to petroleum oil. But petroleum also cannot last for ever. Already, before its sources of supply have been developed sufficiently to bring its price down to that of coal, there are signs that these sources, both tapped and untapped, are not enough to meet the demand for oil even at the now increasing price. In 1886, Professor Lesley said: "I am no geologist if it be true that the manufacture of oil in the laboratory of nature is still going on at one hundredth or even one thousandth part of the rate of its exhaustion ... There is a limited amount. Our children will merely and with difficulty drain the dregs." We cannot grow coal, from which our very useful home-produced motor spirit ultimately comes. We cannot grow mineral oil, from which our petrol comes. But we can grow alcohol—in grain, in potatoes, and so forth. We can grow it quickly, certainly, and cheaply. We can grow it in our own country, and we can grow it better still in some of our colonies. The Government of this country and the Governments of some of our Dominions have shown their recognition of this and all that it means. But having got alcohol, shall we also have an engine which can use it with results as good in every way as those that the petrol engine now gives? This is the central point of the whole alcohol question. What Many People Think. It is, of course, impossible to say definitely that such and such ideas are the average person's conception of alcohol as a fuel; one could not even say that of benzole, in the use of which motorists have much more experience. But to recommend the arguments which Dr. Ormandy adduces in favour of developing alcohol engines implies that there is, or has been, a general feeling that this is either not worth while attempting or is too difficult to be successfully done. And there has been, in fact, a very general misconception that the difficulty of designing an alcohol engine to run smokelessly, flexibly, very slowly and very quickly (as we understand these terms in automobile work), shows no signs of a commercial solution; and, secondly, there has been a belief, surprisingly general in spite of the protests of those well qualified to venture a prediction, that, even if such an engine were produced, it would give, as some of the alcohol engines of the past have given, very low power for the fuel used, or even for the cost of the fuel, low as this is when free of Excise duty; and consequently that the engine would be enormously heavy for the work it could do. One of the two concurrent themes of Dr. Ormandy's paper is the demonstration that these condemnatory views are not founded on any accepted scientific facts. But one must beware of supposing that it follows logically from the negation of a proposition that its converse is true; that, in fact, an alcohol engine designed in the light of the best present-day knowledge will equal a petrol engine in every respect. It will not; but the second of the two concurrent themes in the paper is the demonstration that research work towards an alcohol engine as good as the petrol engine is more likely to meet with moderately early success than with eventual failure. That is a formal way of putting it, but one inclines to formality in a subject that has been too much treated with extraordinary looseness. Put as colloquially as one may venture with due scrupulousness, it comes to this, that if we have not to-day alcohol engines as good as petrol engines it is not because of any difficulty recognised by scientists, but, on the contrary, because scientists have so far been very little concerned with the matter except in quite a sporadic way. Although that statement is an entirely abstract one, it is truly a most portentous enunciation for all motordom, if it can be supported. The importance of Dr. Ormandy's paper is that it does support this. Production and Distribution. But there are some other factors in the alcohol position as popularly understood, and we must state them briefly before taking up the argument where Dr. Ormandy takes it up. The conditions under which alcohol is made and sold in this and other countries, | ||