Can airplanes run on ethanol fuel?

Question

can they run on any other environmentally friendly fuels?

Answer 1

While jet and/or gas turbine engines can run on ethanol, it freezes at way to high a temperature to be a viable fuel for todays commercial aircraft.

Answer 2

NO it burns too hot and will produce a lot of NO2 ,or photo chemical smog.

Answer 3

Of course they can, but jet engines are designed to run on Kerosene so re-tooling for an ethanol economy would cost billions and the industry has no interest in something that costs money to switch over to.

Alcohol is a fine fuel, they use it in model engines, dragsters, V-2 rockets, fuel cells, automobiles, etc...

Answer 4

Ethanol environmentally friendly??????

Who are you kidding?

Let's produce some ethanol:  Clear some land (wildlife be damned), plow it, spray it with herbicides, spray it with insecticides, fertilize it, divert water to irrigate it and process the harvest.

Answer 5

They could. But generally, ethanol and some other fuels have shorter hydrocarbon chains than fuels derived from oil, so there is less energy available per gallon. That means we have to burn more to go the same distance. That could lead to more pollution.

There truly are practical reasons why there isn't a mad rush to alternative sources of energy yet. We will have to find widespread alternatives someday, though.

If you take the link below, you can see the length of the hydrocarbon chains in different fuels. It may be visually clearer why we use petroleum based fuels (look at heptane vs ethanol). Jet fuel is a mixture of both gasoline and kerosene. Gas has anywhere between 3 and 12 carbons. Kerosene has 11 carbons.

Longer hydrocarbon chain = more energy.

Also, it takes energy to make fuels. The energy it takes to make ethanol is so great that for some it is impractical. As effeciency in making it gets better, more will be made.

This is a simplistic explanation.

Answer 6

NO IT CAUSES HARM TO THE INVORNMENT . BUT IT MAY BE USED .

Answer 7

ethanol isnt enviromentally friendly.  It is terrible and must be stopped...do some research...

Answer 8

Airplanes could run on Ethanol, but why? Ethanol has always been a bad idea. However airplanes have successfully ran on Hydrogen.

Answer 9

The airplane industry has some very high standards for its fuel. There have been several problems with many of the "bio-fuel" additives. These problems are not desirable when cruising at 30,000 feet.

Answer 10

soon they will be.