HOME GROWN GLOW FUEL

Does anyone here produce their own glow fuel?

if so how difficult is it to make?

what is edl.2 oil?

and where can i get the stuff?

Regards Mossie

Years ago, a mate used to brew his own, but obtaining the raw products in small quantities became too expensive.
You'd need to be making batches of 100 gallons to break even, I think.
You want methanol, a caster equivalent oil, (everyone is using synthetic now, of course), and nitromethane, in the appropriate quantities.

In today's political climate you will find neat Nitromethane very, very hard to get - it is much too like an explosive, which of course it is!
I believe it is obtainable diluted 50% with methanol (it will no longer detonate at that sort of concentration) but then you might just as well buy glow fuel.

Quorneng wrote: In today's political climate you will find neat Nitromethane very, very hard to get - it is much too like an explosive, which of course it is!
I believe it is obtainable diluted 50% with methanol (it will no longer detonate at that sort of concentration) but then you might just as well buy glow fuel.

It doesn't detonate, it burns, there's a difference. Gun powder burns, but at a very high speed & is known as a low explosive.... Plastic or C4 is a high explosive. ... this is not a question of how big a bang it produces .. but how fast it decomposes into gases.
A high explosive simply uses the shock wave through it to instantly destabilise itself & start every chemical reaction required to start the transformation of the solids or liquids into gaseous form. . .... no burning, no fire.
Complicated stuff eh?

An explosion with no fire ..... just a transformation of solid or liquid into gas ....... terrorists please consult Garry's arse for a weapon of mass destruction. :woohoo:

When I was modding for another forum a question about fuel came up ..... the chap in question wanted to know why fuel couldn't burn in its container when it had "Nitro" in its mix.
He was under the impression that nitromethane was an oxidizing agent so therefore the fuel would have its own oxygen supply.
The answer is this ..... nitromethane is not the same as the nitrous oxide gas that they use for boosting the power of drag racers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrous_oxide_engine
Nitromethane itself needs oxygen to burn. It just gives a bit more Oomph! to the power output when burned.
This gets into complex chemical thermodynamics, but I'll try to give you a starting point.
Let's say you burn a certain quantity of hydrogen with oxygen .... you'll get a lovely fire & a lot of heat energy & water ..... scientists measure this energy in Joules.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule
To turn that water back into hydrogen & oxygen takes exactly the same amount of Joules ..... It's called "The conservation of energy" & is one of the fundamental laws of thermodynamics.

Adding nitro to fuel just enables it to give off more energy per litre ... but the engine has to be able to cope with this burst of energy. It also alters the speed at which the fuel burns & the ignition timing of the engine...... you can wreck a perfect engine by asking it to do something it wasn't designed to.
The basic fuel that most model engines are designed to run on is Methanol & an oil ... maybe a little nitro.
Methanol is not Methylated Spirits that you buy from a DIY shop ..... that stuff is Ethanol (the stuff we drink) with a little bit of methanol thrown in to make the wino's blind. .... hence the name .... it's spirits (ethanol) that have been "Methylated"

Pol.

Just another point I've just remembered .... the oil that we add to our fuel isn't just to lubricate... it's a coolant.
Metal parts get hot, oil runs over them, burnt oil is then expelled out of the exhaust & takes the heat energy with it. ... this is why the choice of oil is so important.
Remember when we had to run our cars on thick oil? .... this was because we didn't have the technology to machine parts so accurately, the oil had to be thick to fill the gap, but it made engines run as if they where whipping treacle.
Modern engines can be made to much closer tolerances so can run on thinner oil ..... get the thing to the right temperature & it's easy for the engine parts to whip this cocktail.

Gotta spoil Mossie's thread & confess to distilling my own glow fuel when I was about 12 years old.
Me & my mates at school were all messing about with the Cox 049 control line models & I was starting to get into chemistry.
I had a Liebig condenser because my uncle had liberated loads of glassware for me from the lab's at the gas works.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condenser_%28laboratory%29
We (a friend made me do it your honour) ... decided to distill my dads bottle of whiskey ... well we had a bit of castor oil so we thought it would do the job
The still worked fine & the Cox 049 ran on the resultant brew ...... Only later in my studies did I find out that you don't distill alcohol over a naked flame .... I learned very early in my studies that you don't turn dad's whiskey into glow fuel .... Ouch! .... somewhere along the line is where I found out we were running the engine on ethanol. ....... Chemistry teacher liked it though. [badass]

Distilling alcohol over a naked flame - did you singe your eyebrows, Pol? [badass]

Mossie wrote: what is edl.2 oil?

E.D.L.2 - A synthetic oil developed by Model Technics in 1980 and is still under continuous development. Considered to be at the front of synthetic oil technology.
Chances of getting it are about as high as me ever taking control of my forum again .... out of curiosity, why do you want to make your own fuel & can you share the PM you sent me with the rest of the forum?
I won't share it because it was private, You can share it & it would be appreciated.

Pol.

POL
May I draw your attention to a Wikipedia entry concerning Nitromethane.

"Nitromethane was not known to be a high explosive until a railroad tanker car loaded with it exploded on June 1, 1958.[5] After much testing it was realized that nitromethane was a more energetic high explosive than TNT, although TNT has a higher velocity of detonation and brisance. Both of these explosives are oxygen poor and some benefits are gained from mixing with an oxidizer, such as ammonium nitrate. Pure nitromethane is an insensitive explosive with a VoD of approximately 6,400 m/s (21,000 ft/s), but even so inhibitors may be used to reduce the hazards."

Quorneng wrote: POL
May I draw your attention to a Wikipedia entry concerning Nitromethane.

"Nitromethane was not known to be a high explosive until a railroad tanker car loaded with it exploded on June 1, 1958.[5] After much testing it was realized that nitromethane was a more energetic high explosive than TNT, although TNT has a higher velocity of detonation and brisance. Both of these explosives are oxygen poor and some benefits are gained from mixing with an oxidizer, such as ammonium nitrate. Pure nitromethane is an insensitive explosive with a VoD of approximately 6,400 m/s (21,000 ft/s), but even so inhibitors may be used to reduce the hazards."

Yeh, it's not particularly nasty stuff unless it's mixed with an oxidizing agent .... the energy comes from the breaking down of the molecules.
We used to have a table that gave us a list of the energy between atomic bonds & how much energy was needed to separate them. It was like using log tables back in the old Grammar school.
Carbon/ hydrogen, X Joules.... carbon/ nitrogen, Y Joules, Priest/choirboy, ABCDFGHIJ Joules + a crow bar.
Comes under Enthalpy & Entropy. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthalpy but I'd rather eat burgers than go back to all that,..... it was bloody hard work. :(

A common mistake a lot of peeps make when they think of oxidizing agents is that they need oxygen ... in chemistry, Oxidation simply means "Loss of electrons" the opposite is reduction and is "gaining electrons" .... often remembered by the saying "Oil Rig" ... Oxidation Is Loss, Reduction Is Gain."

Hi Pol, I dont want to make any, I was having a chat at work whilst having a lecture on Acetylene and one guy mentioned how easy it was to make it. So me been me I went on Youtube to find out more.

Regards Mossie

Mossie wrote: Hi Pol, I dont want to make any, I was having a chat at work whilst having a lecture on Acetylene and one guy mentioned how easy it was to make it. So me been me I went on Youtube to find out more.

Regards Mossie

If you don't mind my asking Anthony, what work do you do that entails a lecture on acetylene? .... welder by any chance? ..... please don't say chemistry professor because I'll feel a right numpty! :lol:
I do know how to make acetylene .... calcium carbide & water ...... see, I'm not completely thick. [badass]

Pol.

Q, how much alcohol of any type is one allowed to distil without the appropriate licencing?

I think that oil content has been found to have a lot less effect due to heat dissipation than seems to be the "general knowledge". Same with the belief in the use of Castor oil as a must have for engine longevity.

Not very practical or useful really, to "home mix" our model engine fuel.