@humy said
I am making a prediction; It won't be ethanol that will be the biofuel of the future but 2-octanol
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-Octanol )
and this is because it will be perfect for future fuel cells and fuel cells will replace the combustion engines.
Why 2-octanol and not, say, ethanol etc?
1, it is one of the least toxic alcohols, even less toxic than 1-octanol and ...[text shortened]... above.
A good fuel cell for 2-octanol has yet to be invented but its just a matter of when, not if.
Then the question is how is 2 oct made? Is it made from ethanol? I know next to nothing about organic chemistry. The specs you put in clearly show it's superiority but the main point is can it be made in industrial levels and can the technology of the ethanol catalyst just invented work for 2 oct? That is a question we cannot answer ATT because their technology is so new they haven't optimized it yet, and have yet to even make a real product, it is still a lab result but very promising.
Their point was even as little energy density ethanol has compared to others, it is still a lot higher than Lithium ion batteries which is the best we can do for drones ATT, a 20 minute flight time is all they can do with that technology so anything that can improve on that is gravy.
Another issue is any kind of fuel cell used with electric vehicles are going to be more efficient than petrol engines because of the heat losses and friction of piston engines. Electric motors just take electrical energy and convert it to motion at 90% efficiency and of course you lose some of that in the drive train unless you put the motors in the tires themselves but the bottom line is electric vehicles are much more efficient in the use of energy available so even if a vehicle uses pure ethanol with this new tech the range will be better than any battery system and can only get a lot better if we can manage to do the same with 2 oct stuff.
This catalyst is a great step along the path to get us off oil for transportation.
I see vehicles in the future with that kind of tech combined with solar cells on the cars and there was one report about work being done on solar cell paint where the whole car is generating power, parked on a sunny day and 8 hours later the car has a full charge just from that.
Of course 100 years from now the culture of transport may be totally transformed to some kind of universal public transport or some such where cars are not even legal any more but time will tell.