Classifications

• • C—CHEMISTRY; METALLURGY
  • C10—PETROLEUM, GAS OR COKE INDUSTRIES; TECHNICAL GASES CONTAINING CARBON MONOXIDE; FUELS; LUBRICANTS; PEAT
  • C10L—FUELS NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; NATURAL GAS; SYNTHETIC NATURAL GAS OBTAINED BY PROCESSES NOT COVERED BY SUBCLASSES C10G OR C10K; LIQUIFIED PETROLEUM GAS; USE OF ADDITIVES TO FUELS OR FIRES; FIRE-LIGHTERS
  • C10L1/00—Liquid carbonaceous fuels
  • C10L1/10—Liquid carbonaceous fuels containing additives
• • C—CHEMISTRY; METALLURGY
  • C10—PETROLEUM, GAS OR COKE INDUSTRIES; TECHNICAL GASES CONTAINING CARBON MONOXIDE; FUELS; LUBRICANTS; PEAT
  • C10L—FUELS NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; NATURAL GAS; SYNTHETIC NATURAL GAS OBTAINED BY PROCESSES NOT COVERED BY SUBCLASSES C10G OR C10K; LIQUIFIED PETROLEUM GAS; USE OF ADDITIVES TO FUELS OR FIRES; FIRE-LIGHTERS
  • C10L1/00—Liquid carbonaceous fuels
  • C10L1/02—Liquid carbonaceous fuels essentially based on components consisting of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen only
• • C—CHEMISTRY; METALLURGY
  • C10—PETROLEUM, GAS OR COKE INDUSTRIES; TECHNICAL GASES CONTAINING CARBON MONOXIDE; FUELS; LUBRICANTS; PEAT
  • C10L—FUELS NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; NATURAL GAS; SYNTHETIC NATURAL GAS OBTAINED BY PROCESSES NOT COVERED BY SUBCLASSES C10G OR C10K; LIQUIFIED PETROLEUM GAS; USE OF ADDITIVES TO FUELS OR FIRES; FIRE-LIGHTERS
  • C10L1/00—Liquid carbonaceous fuels
  • C10L1/10—Liquid carbonaceous fuels containing additives
  • C10L1/14—Organic compounds
  • C10L1/18—Organic compounds containing oxygen
  • C10L1/1802—Organic compounds containing oxygen natural products, e.g. waxes, extracts, fatty oils
• • C—CHEMISTRY; METALLURGY
  • C10—PETROLEUM, GAS OR COKE INDUSTRIES; TECHNICAL GASES CONTAINING CARBON MONOXIDE; FUELS; LUBRICANTS; PEAT
  • C10L—FUELS NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; NATURAL GAS; SYNTHETIC NATURAL GAS OBTAINED BY PROCESSES NOT COVERED BY SUBCLASSES C10G OR C10K; LIQUIFIED PETROLEUM GAS; USE OF ADDITIVES TO FUELS OR FIRES; FIRE-LIGHTERS
  • C10L1/00—Liquid carbonaceous fuels
  • C10L1/10—Liquid carbonaceous fuels containing additives
  • C10L1/12—Inorganic compounds
  • C10L1/1233—Inorganic compounds oxygen containing compounds, e.g. oxides, hydroxides, acids and salts thereof
  • C10L1/125—Inorganic compounds oxygen containing compounds, e.g. oxides, hydroxides, acids and salts thereof water

Definitions

• the present invention relates to additives useful for improving the drawbacks of alcohol fuels, and to a method of manufacturing such additives. More particularly, the present invention pertains to additives for alcohol fuel which contain, as their ingredients, extracts of certain herbs; to a method of manufactur- i n g such additives; and to fuels containing them.
• alcohol means such lower alkanols as methanol, ethanol, propanol and butanol. They may be obtainable through fermentation or chemical processes from botanical sources such as starch and cellulose which, in turn, can be produced through cultivation of herbs.
• alcohol While petroleum and coal which are fossil fuels are comprised mainly of hydrocarbon, alcohol has an O H group. Therefore, the calorific value of alcohol is smaller than that of hydrocarbon.
• This fundamental difference of alcohol over hydrocarbon gives rise to inconveniences and drawbacks, in various aspects, when alcohol is used as a fuel, especially for internal combustion engines.
• alcohol when alcohol alone is used as a fuel for an automobile engine, the driver cannot achieve a quick acceleration of speed, or there may arise local corrosion of metal portions of the engine which will become apparent in about three months of use of alcohol fuel.
• alcohol tends to cause a swelling of rubber packing when the latter is contacted by alcohol. Owing to the small calorific value of alcohol, the distance covered per unit amount of alcohol fuel is small as compared with gasoline.
• an additive for alcohol fuel comprising an effective component consisting of an aqueous extract containing an essential oil ingredient and obtained from at least one kind of herb containing said essential oil ingredient.
• the invention provides a method for preparing the additive, and a fuel containing it.
• the fuel is based on alcohol, e.g. methanol, ethanol, or a mixture thereof, or methanol- butanol.
• the present invention seeks to ameliorate at least some of the drawbacks mentioned above, and to achieve at least some of the following objects:
• the herbs from which are obtained the required extracts constituting the additive are limited to those containing an essential oil component.
• what effective ingredients the hot water extracts of the herbs contain, and also the theoretical elucidation of the relationship between the effective substances of the extracts of herbs and the elimination of the drawbacks of conventional alcohol fuel, have not been made clear yet.
• the_results of many experiments conducted by the present inventor are sufficient to demonstrate the abovesaid remarkable effect, and discovery indeed assures an outstanding improvement in the field of art to which the present invention belongs. Therefore, the present invention provides very advantageous new additives for alcohol fuel.
• the additives for alcohol fuel according to the present invention are each comprised of one or more effective components which are provided in the form of an aqueous solution of extracts obtained from one or more kinds of herbs containing essential oil components.
• Such component-containing aqueous solution can be easily manufactured by immersing small chips of one or more kinds of essential oil-containing herbs in hot water of 70 - 90°C for about 30 minutes for the purpose of extraction or exudation of effective ingredients from the chips into the hot water.
• the preferred herbs containing the effective components which constitute the additive ingredients of the present invention for alcohol fuel are those herbs belonging to the families listed in Table 1. They include: Umbelliferae, Compositae, Araceae, Santalaceae, Lauraceae, Rutaceae, Magnoliaceae, Nymphaeaceae, Labiatae, Zingibera-.. ceae, Piperaceae, Liliaceae, Polygalaceae, Cyperaceae, Valerianaceae, Pinaceae and Gramineae.
• the effective ingredients are contained in the root, stem and leaves of these herbs. Although the amount of the effective components which are contained in these herbs varies with the kind of herb, any of the effective ingredients extracted from these specific herbs can be used for the purpose of the present invention.
• the additives according to the present .. invention are extracts from herbs, they themselves are provided in the form of an aqueous solution. When such an additive is to be added to alcohol fuel, it can be added together with the solvent water.
• the alcohol does not require to be absolute alcohol. Alcohol which contains water in an amount up to about 25% by volume, and to which has been added an additive of the present invention which also contains water can be used satisfactorily as a fuel for internal combustion engines. Therefore, the additives which are prepared according to the present invention can contribute greatly industrially.
• the additives for alcohol fuel according to the present invention may be manufactured as described below. At least one selected herb is, preferably, cut into small chips or pieces, and they are immersed in hot water of 70 to 90°C in an amount of about 10 times the weight of the herb chips. That is, if the weight of the herb chips or pieces is 10kg, the amount of hot water in which the chips are immersed is about 10 liters. Ingredients may be extracted in one step or two or rmre, as required. After filtering the chips- containing water, there remains about 8 liters of aqueous solution of extracted ingredients. The resulting aqueous solution per se may be used as an additive to alcohol fuel.
• the 8 liters of extracts In general, it is preferred to concentrate the 8 liters of extracts to about 1/4 to 1/3 thereof, preferably under a reduced pressure, to preserve or store in the form of a concentrated liquid. There is a risk that such solutions may putrefy or decompose with time. Therefore, an amount of alcohol which is to be used as a fuel is added , and thus putrefaction of the raw liquid can be prevented.
• the aqueous extract solution generally dissolves completely in alcohol to form a transparent liquid. The amount of water contained in the extract solution may affect the water content of the alcohol fuel per se to which the solution is added.
• the extract ingredients exuded in hot water which is the non-concentrated raw extract aqueous solution, may be directly added to alcohol at a proportion of 1.2 - 4.0% by volume relative to the volume of alcohol, and if the solution is of a 1/4 concentration, it may be added to alcohol at a proportion of 0.3 - 1.0% by volume.
• an additive By using the alcohol fuel containing an additive according to the present invention, there is not noted any corrosion of the metal portions of the engine.
• the inclusion of an additive has an immediate effect. After storage for an extended period of time, there has been noted substantially no change in the effect of the additive. Such preserved additive has been noted to be useful also in enabling satisfactory acceleration of automobile engines.
• each of 6 kinds of herbs No. 1, No. 3, No. 4, No. 6, No. 9 and No. 14 in Table l
• the starting chips of herbs containing essential oil components i.e. a total of 600g
• the water was heated to 80°C, and the contents were left therein for about 30 minutes to extract the effective ingredients in the hot water.
• After cooling the resulting water it was filtered to collect the liquid.
• the filtered chips were again immersed in the same way in 2 liters of water with heating.
• the filtered liquid obtained from this second batch was added to the first batch of filtered liquid, and thus about 4.8 liters of extract-containing liquid was obtained.
• This filtered liquid containing effective ingredients was concentrated to 1/4 in volume by evaporation at a reduced atmospheric pressure such as in vacuum, and thus 1.2 liters of concentrated aqueous solution was obtained.
• This concentrated liquid as it is, can be used as an additive of the present invention for alcohol fuel.
• Ethanol fuel was replaced by methanol fuel, and the latter was added with the additive obtained in Example 1, excepting that the additive was the original liquid not concentrated.
• the relationship between the water content of fuel and the additive content was compared under the same condition as that for Example 2. The result is shown in Table 3.
• the measurement of methanol efficiency was conducted in the same manner as for ethanol efficiency.
• a total of 1000g of herb chips comprising 100g each of 10 different kinds of herbs containing essential oil components and selected from 10 different families (Nos. 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 15, 16 and 21 mentioned in Table l)was used as the starting material.
• This material was immersed in 6 liters of water, and was heated to 80°C, and the contents were left therein to stand for about 30 minutes, and thus about 8 liters of extract-containing liquid were obtained in a manner similar to Example 1.
• This liquid was added to ethanol and methanol alcohol fuels, respectively, with or without concentration up to 1/4.
• the resultant respective batches of alcohol fuels were tested in such manners as described in Examples 1, 2 and 3. The result was found to be well comparable to those of these examples.
• Extract-containing liquids (not concentrated) were. prepared in a manner similar to that of Example 1 from various kinds of essential oil-containing herbs. These additive liquids were blended to ethanol and methanol in the following manner.
• the extract liquids obtained from the respective herbs are effective in improving theigniting ability, speed accelerating ability and running ability of each of the alcohol groups as compared with controls. These evaluations are not necessarily good when compared with gasoline. However, in the experiment wherein all kinds of extract liquids were mixed in equal amounts, their evaluations were invariably comparable to gasoline. Such result is considered to be due to the multiplied effect exerted by the ingredients of the respective extract liquids. It has been found also that the evaluation of the abilities of additives differ from each other depending on the largeness of the essential oil contents of the respective herbs.
• the additives of the present invention for alcohol fuels can be very easily extracted from the specific herbs, and they can be applied to water-containing alcohol fuels, and that engines intended for gasoline can be used for this invention, only slightly modifying the compression ratio, mixing ratio and ignition time.
• the distance covered per unit volume of additive-containing alcohol fuel is smaller than that of gasoline, it is remarkable to note that the fuel has a distance coverage which is 1.5 times that of absolute alcohol.

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• Chemical & Material Sciences (AREA)
• Oil, Petroleum & Natural Gas (AREA)
• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Chemical Kinetics & Catalysis (AREA)
• General Chemical & Material Sciences (AREA)
• Organic Chemistry (AREA)
• Health & Medical Sciences (AREA)
• Emergency Medicine (AREA)
• Liquid Carbonaceous Fuels (AREA)

Applications Claiming Priority (2)

Publications (1)

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Cited By (6)

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Citations (4)

• 1982
  • 1982-05-31 JP JP57091407A patent/JPS58208387A/ja active Granted
  • 1982-09-02 BR BR8205153A patent/BR8205153A/pt unknown
• 1983
  • 1983-01-24 EP EP83300341A patent/EP0095823A1/en not_active Withdrawn

Patent Citations (4)

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