While researching Ethanol and Methanol as a blend for used oil in my Listeroid, I came across
some data suggesting that diesels converted to run on methanol or ethanol make very little waste in the form of pollution.
Some European diesel engine builders are experimenting with such a fuel.
Food for thought, does an engine fueled by methanol automatically meet North American pollution requirements
because it burns so clean. The indians would happily stamp "ETHANOL ENGINE" instead of diesel on the name tag.
Below is a exert from the article....
Methanol in Diesel Engines
There has been interest in finding ways to use methanol for compression ignition (CI) (diesel) engines.
Methanol's high-octane number is an indication of its very low cetane number, the measure of a fuel's auto
ignitibility.70 For methanol the number is so low that it cannot be measured directly. But it could be used in
conjunction with another fuel that is more auto ignitable or an ignition improver.
In the 1980s, the Detroit Diesel Company (DDC) and MAN produced modified versions of their CI engines
which ran on “ignition improved” methanol fuel (the ignition improver constituted about 5% by volume of the
fuel). The MAN engine was a four-stroke engine using spark-assisted ignition whilst the DDC engines operated
on the two-stroke cycle, controlling the scavenge ratio to assist ignition. More recently, VTT has tested MD95, a
mix of 95% methanol and 5% ignition improver. This was done using a Scania ED95 engine, which is an engine
modified to enable compression ignition operation on a mix of 95% ethanol and 5% ignition improver through
the adoption of an increased compression ratio (28:1, to increase end-of-compression temperature for easier
ignition of the low cetane fuel), and a suitable fuel injection system.
A methanol-diesel dual-fuel approach, where each is injected directly in the combustion chambers, is a
common approach that is being used commercially today. MAN uses it for low-speed two-stroke engines and
Wärtsilä uses it for medium-speed four-stroke engines. There are other approaches as well. For example, glow
plug ignition enables the compression ignition engine to run solely on methanol, without the requirement of a
pilot fuel to serve as the ignition source.71 Another solution, particularly when looking at retrofit options is
introducing methanol into the engine’s intake ports, which requires adding a low pressure methanol fueling
system and port fuel injectors. Finally, very recently research engines have been run on methanol in
homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) mode and partially premixed combustion mode (PPC). Both
concepts rely on delaying the autoignition until after the fuel injection event has been completed to allow for
enough mixing time so that fuel-rich zones are reduced or eliminated, to decrease soot formation and speed up
combustion for higher efficiency.