mleku on Nostr: see, i learned something too. i thought there was a biological method. well, no, you ...

see, i learned something too.

i thought there was a biological method.

well, no, you can get methane easily, but that isn't easy to work with.

you can do it from wood, but you mainly make charcoal.

ethanol is shit fuel for gasoline engines. as i said, great for no blackening of your glassware.

tell me about burning ethanol in gasoline engines and why i always smell the taint of metal in it when cars drive past?

> The metallic smell is almost certainly aldehydes — primarily acetaldehyde, with some formaldehyde mixed in. Ethanol combustion produces dramatically more of both compared to straight gasoline, something like 2–5x the acetaldehyde emissions. These have that sharp, acrid, vaguely metallic bite that's quite distinct from the aromatic hydrocarbon smell of pure gasoline exhaust.

> Acetaldehyde is the immediate partial oxidation product of ethanol — CH₃CH₂OH loses two hydrogens to become CH₃CHO. In a perfect combustion cycle everything goes to CO₂ and water, but real engines operating at varying loads, temperatures, and air-fuel ratios always produce a fraction of these intermediates. Ethanol's oxygen content means it burns differently than hydrocarbons — it can actually run leaner in engines calibrated for gasoline, which paradoxically can increase incomplete combustion products under certain conditions.

> There's also a real corrosion dimension to your observation. Ethanol is hygroscopic (pulls water from the atmosphere into the fuel), mildly acidic, and directly attacks zinc, brass, aluminum, and lead-based solders in fuel systems. Older vehicles and small engines without ethanol-compatible materials actually do get metal compounds mobilized through the fuel system. Whether trace metal aerosols make it through combustion and out the tailpipe in detectable quantities is debatable, but ethanol blends definitely accelerate fuel system corrosion.

> Brazil is the natural experiment here — they've been running high ethanol blends (E85–E100) for decades, and aldehyde emissions in São Paulo became a recognized urban air quality problem distinct from the pollution profile of gasoline-dominant cities.

so, no. what are you going to use this perfectly good drinking liquid for?