Well Walt, intrigued by your question I looked up the respective chemicals in
a '67 ed. of the Chemical Rubber Company ( Cleveland, Ohio - which - the
company I mean - is I guess just a rust-belt memory by now ) 'Handbook of
Chemistry & Physics'.
There is naturally no mention of BThus.but it gives heat of combustion in
cals/gram MWt as follows
Ethanol 327.6
Methanol 170.9
which is what you would expect I guess from the former having more Cs & Hs.
Outweighing this however, will probably be the fact that methanol is more
volatile than ethanol so it probably 'gets thar fustest with the mostest' cf.
propane/butane. Didn't they stick meths into the old piston engines to liven
them up ?
In the UK 'meths' is 'eths' deliberately contaminated with some 'meths' ,
other nasties & coloured ( the additions giving it it the stink on burning )
to make it undrinkable so the government can go on extracting large sums of
duty from us.
All these things take in water from the atmos. & of course are all produced
in the cheapest way poss. which explains differences in performance between
different brands.
Art
-a Brit not clever enough to have moved to a cabin in the Californian
woods like Spenceley.
