Ogden Standard-Examiner | 1920-04-18 | Page 26 | Alcohol Used as Motor Fuel

I : JLCOHOLUSED I US MOTOR FUEL iiHl H 1 '"Kick" for Auto May Be j Survivor of the Kick Auto- , ists Once Got Hl I With the constant talk of rising prices for gasoline throughout the nation, and the accompanying di3cus-, di3cus-, slon of the "Wake of John Barley-H Barley-H 'corn," many of the engineers who have 1 j sought a way to utilize gasoline until ' rthey have almost despaired, as the gas H I "drops in quality, are turning to "King Hl 1 Alcohol" as a valuable motor fuel. Hl ) I Alcohol can be made from almost H anything under the sun and it is only Hl necessary to find a method of making Hl I ii do the same work as gasoline in or- fl 1 dcr to run motor cars with it. "Many of the croakers, years ago, :fA least ten years, predicted that H 'when the gasoline supply of the na- lion was exhausted there would be Hl ; nothing to run the millions of cars," Hj ' motor authority writes. Hl -"And yet the automobiles of the country arc still runing and I would i rhatc to take a bet that they will not ' "tSb running ten years from now. It has been the history of the nation, Thai as soon as one thing was ex-haustcd ex-haustcd there was another to replace "Any man who predicts that gaso-lino gaso-lino is the only fuel that will, run self-propelled self-propelled vehicles is in the, class with the man who laughed at wireless tclpg-raphy tclpg-raphy and the first 'horseless carriage', r.nd said 'It can't be done." "It seems remarkable, however, In Hl iew of the experimental work done by the American government, as well as many of the European goveru-ments, goveru-ments, that alcohol as fuel for motor Hl vehicle engines has been so neglected. Af. far back as 1907 the United States government went extensively into the tosting of alcohol as a fuel, and sover-al sover-al years before this various European countries had developed alcohol en-gines en-gines and other appartus to a high de-grce de-grce of perfection. "Alcohol has many advantages as a motor fuel over the unsatisfactory 1 grades of gasoline commercially ob- tainable at the present time. In a properly designed engine, with carbu-retor carbu-retor adapted to the use of alcohol, it Hj burns with remarkable cleanliness. leaving little or no obectionable car Hj bon residue, as happens with the low- grade petroleum fuels. Hl "Such motors are more easily start- ed in cold weather because alcohol va-porlzes va-porlzes more readily In its entirety Hj than present-day gasoline. In this con- Hl nection it should be remembered that the gasoline of today contains only a .small percentage of the volatile con- H) stituents that can be easily vaporized at low temperatures, the .remainder of the bulk of the gasoline requiring con-siderable con-siderable amount of heat for vaporiza-tion. vaporiza-tion. In other words present-day gaso-line gaso-line is a mixture of liquids with wide-Jy wide-Jy vaporization points. Alcohol is a homogeneous liquid, which can be va- H! iXprized in Its entirety at. given temper- 1 alures. "Alcohol is a far safer fuel than gas- 1 oline. It has a much less tendency to 1 give off inflammable vapors when stored and it will mix perfectly with water, even when burning, so that water is a perfect extinguisher for an alcohol fire. Fire risks, therefore, be-come be-come greatly diminished by the use of alcohol as a fuel, and this is a factor of 1 v.o small importance." IIHj oo