ALCOHOL AS A MOTIVE POWER.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XV, Issue 894, 25 April 1907, Page 22

ALCOHOL AS A MOTIVE POWER.

Temperance advocates will be disinclined to adlmit that alcohol is likely to accelerate the speed of an object, except along the downward path that leads to destruction (says the Sydney “Morning Herald”); but in his presidential address to the Engineering Association of New South Wales last week, Mr Russell Sinclair warmly extolled the virtues of what is generally termed a thing accursed on the public platform. Mr Sinclair was talking about intense combustion engines, and mentioning that for years past Continental Europe had been using alcohol on a large scale for small power engines, especially agricultural motors. Although alcohol had a lower heat of combustion than oil, benzine, or petrol, its efficiency when used in a motor was more than twice as great, and if the first cost could be regulated to equal that of other agents, its use should greatly develop. Its advantages were that it was not so dangerous as oil, as it did not explode by radiated heat, and could be extinguished bv water, while benzine or petrol could not. Most important of all to Australia, an unlimited supply of alcohol could be manufactured within the Commonwealth, while other liquid fuels had to be imported. As Mr Sinclair paused he poured out a glass of water and moistened his lips. “Not many thermal units in that,” observed a member of the association, in a powerful Scottish accent.