Fuel comparison- road legal formula vs f1 formula

[g-force_addict]

Hi !

Currently, I'm doing my homework. Unfortunately, it's Sunday afternoon and all libraries are closed and I failed to find vital informations on the Inernet concerning my project, so I think that this forum is my last resort Hopefuly, you will be able to help me out with this

Internet resources available in my native language are quite poor. I've read few artictles on this website but it's still not enough. I'm looking mainly for very precise data concerning fuel composition, preferably with comparison of normal fuel and one's used in Formula 1 nowadays.

http://www.f1technical.net/articles/19 Already found this, but it's too snippy for me.

I aware that among all users there are bunch of real geeks who are in possesion of some interesting data which would be very helpful for me.

If anybody has any sort of materials concerning this "case", please just share it with me.

I'm looking mainly for informations concerning fuel composition and production proccess.
I would like to now, what it's really made off

Cheers mr bean

You should include etanol. Being renewable is as Green as it can be.
Of course more volumen and weight is required to get the same results so a road legal formula rules must allow for it.
http://www.raceone85.com/

[flynfrog]

Ethanol is about as non green as you can be. It has a negative oil replacement it takes more oil to make it than it replaces. It drives up food prices and destroys the water table.

[autogyro]

Ethanol is about as non green as you can be. It has a negative oil replacement it takes more oil to make it than it replaces. It drives up food prices and destroys the water table.

[g-force_addict]

Ethanol is about as non green as you can be. It has a negative oil replacement it takes more oil to make it than it replaces. It drives up food prices and destroys the water table.

Everything takes more energy to produce it than the useable energy from burning it, including oil.
This lesser efficieny is actually good for the environment as most of the energy corn plants take from the sun ends up in the ground as plant residues thus settling carbon dioxide.

As for food costs most of the harvested corn is used to feed livestock which is extremely energy inefficient.
As for wáter who knows, as there is more demand for agricultural grounds, more formerly arid lands will be recovered.

[Jersey Tom]

Ethanol is about as non green as you can be. It has a negative oil replacement it takes more oil to make it than it replaces. It drives up food prices and destroys the water table.

Everything takes more energy to produce it than the useable energy from burning it, including oil.
This lesser efficieny is actually good for the environment as most of the energy corn plants take from the sun ends up in the ground as plant residues thus settling carbon dioxide.

As for food costs most of the harvested corn is used to feed livestock which is extremely energy inefficient.
As for wáter who knows, as there is more demand for agricultural grounds, more formerly arid lands will be recovered.

Not gonna lie you've completely lost me on this one.

[hardingfv32]

70 Percent More Energy Required to Make Ethanol than Actually is in Ethanol: Cornell CU scientist terms corn-based ethanol 'subsidized food ...

Brian

[la stradale]

Excuse reviving a dead thread but there are noteworthy developments on the fuel front this season.

Regarding the ethanol question, ethanol begins as a comestible and ends as a combustible. Farmers can get fat on corn or sugar cane but can't very well subsist on crude oil, or petroleum distillates. And potable alcohol is too precious a commodity to be causing automobiles to drink drive.


F1 fuel not only is dramatically different from road car petrol, there is substantial difference between what the individual teams run, and sometimes what a given team runs can change markedly. According to AMuS, twice this season Total have raised the peak output of the Renault ICEs by 12 PS by changing fuel blend, once before Catalunya and again before Hockenheim. In each case, only Renault were provided the new fuel for the first race. That their present fuel allows 3% more bhp than what had been used at Melbourne speaks to how dissimilar it is.


The most substantive difference I am aware of this season is with Mercedes, for whom, according to Omnicorse.it, Petronas have blended a petrol of such high specific gravity that the volume of their allowed 100kg is as much as 20 litres (~15%) smaller than any other team's. Which might not connote any horsepower advantage but certainly lends an added measure of flexibility to car's layout. Not to mention a slightly smaller/lighter fuel cell. And indicates a tremendous difference in fuel composition from the other teams.

That development seems to me a bit ironic as one of the motivations behind 2014's change to regulating petrol by mass rather than by volume was that during the previous turbo era, once fuel cell size was restricted and refueling eliminated (in an effort to reign in skyrocketing boost pressures), the teams took to chilling their fuel, causing it to contract a bit so a greater mass could be fit into a standard sized tank. Limiting allowable fuel by mass negates that tactic, yet Mercedes/Petronas still saw fit to invest the R&D funds to "shrink" their fuel anyway, if only for the benefit of fitting their cars with a smaller container.

That same article states that the teams employ between 15 and 30 petrol boffins to develop their race fuel (but I have read elsewhere that the number at Maranello is closer to 40), which hints at just how fiddly the final formulation is. IIRC the TR stipulate the formulation of 97% of the fuel, which leaves each boffin responsible for no more than 0.2% of the final blend (yes I am aware that amounts to very fuzzy maths).

[gruntguru]

I am seeing a lot of reasons to go to a spec fuel. Racing chemistry sets doesn't appeal much to me. Out in the real world fuel development is subject to distinct pricing considerations for a start. Sure F1 is miles from the real world but isn't "real world technology relevance" the official line?

[Tommy Cookers]

@ la stradale
have you tried searching this forum ?
eg P356 of the Formula 1 engine thread
and pages around this page number

IMO we have made progress in identifying a far better biofuel ingredient than Ethanol
and identified super-dense fuel (as used in cruise missiles, though there the mass-specific energy is not outstanding)
and there has been much opinion regarding the scope/freedom of the fuel rules

[wuzak]

20l for 100kg. That's a specific density of 5000kg/m³! Aluminium is ~2700kg/m³ and steel is ~7800kg/m³.

With what is allowed and what is not, I doubt there is that much scope for changing density (which appears not to be regulated).

[aussiegman]

20l for 100kg. That's a specific density of 5000kg/m³! Aluminium is ~2700kg/m³ and steel is ~7800kg/m³.

With what is allowed and what is not, I doubt there is that much scope for changing density (which appears not to be regulated).

I think you may have mis-read the post.

What I "think" (with caveats attached that I might be wrong) it that Petronas has a fuel that requires 20Lt's less volume to reach the maximum of 100kgs weight. Not that they have a fuel that is 100kgs weight at 20Lt's volume.

So if cars were carrying an average of 150Lts of fuel which weighs 100kgs (purely just example numbers), then Petronas has allows Merc to run 130Lts that weighs 100kgs with the advantages for fuel load in the chassis as relative to COG etc.

If it is in the order of 20Lts less volume for the same weight, that's a big change.

[wuzak]

Oh, I did misread that. Oops.