The Nazis used ethanol in WWII
Ethanol is not a fad, nor a flash in the pan fuel that some Johnny-come-lately scientist dreamed up to save humanity from the oil companies. Distillers all over the world have been making this go-juice for a long time. The colorless, pleasant smelling substance has been lighting lamps for two hundred years, and the infant Automobile Industry suckled on this vegetable matter before it grew into the petroleum fed monster it has since become. Would it surprise you to know this strategic solution was also mankind’s first liquid rocket fuel? Well it’s true - the Nazis refined ethanol from sugar beets and used its energy to propel their dreaded V2 rockets towards England in the darkest days of World War II.
Rockets move forward by expelling mass backwards (see Newton's Third Law ).The early visionaries, Robert Goddard in the United States, and Werner Von Braun in Germany both identified pure hydrogen as the best possible fuel for their first hobby rockets. But hydrogen was really expensive in 1936 and the Hindenburg disaster soured the High Command’s taste for the gas. German scientists working on their ‘vengeance weapon’ on the Isle of Peenemunde in 1942 chose ethanol as the principle propellant because it was good, fast and cheap.
Remember Nazi Germany had a fuel shortage in 1940. The Allies had blockaded Germany as Chamberlain and the British Parliament hoped to restrict Hitler’s ability to conduct mobile warfare. The German drive toward Stalingrad and the Caucasus in 1942 reflects a thirsty Third Reich’s desperation to secure three Russian oil fields.
Two decades earlier however at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute German researchers Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch pioneered a method for making diesel fuel from coal gas. The Fischer-Tropsch process still gets a lot of attention today - some people think it’s a viable solution to America’s emerging energy crises. It isn’t. The hydrogenation of coal is neither efficient nor environmentally friendly. This was something the Germans had to do, and hopefully something North Americans can avoid.
Ethanol was easy to make and sugar beets were plentiful in Nazi Germany. Propelled by a mixture of ethanol and liquid oxygen, the V-2 rocket was the fastest weapon in the Nazi arsenal and could carry a thousand kilogram warhead over three hundred kilometers. The turbo fuel pumps inside the fuselage were driven by hydrogen peroxide. The ethanol was kept in an aluminum tank to save weight. Making that tank further drained the German war economy as the exotic metal was both rare and valuable.
An ingenious design, ethanol was pumped through the walls of the main burner to simultaneously preheat the fuel and cool the combustion apparatus. The propellant was then pumped down into the main reaction chamber through several nozzles which assured the correct mixture of alcohol and liquid oxygen at all times.
At the end of the World War II the most valuable treasure that the conquering American forces plundered from Germany was the rocket scientists themselves. These men gave the USA an advantage over the Soviet Union in the Cold War that followed. It’s therefore not surprising that America’s first Redstone rockets also used ethanol combined with liquid oxygen as fuel. In fact it wasn’t until 1956 that other more exotic propellants were developed. Today the space shuttle’s liquid fueled rocket engines burn hydrogen – just as Robert Goddard and Werner von Braun had anticipated. But now again fifty years later the tables have turned and North America has a fuel shortage – an energy crises that could perhaps be cured by ethanol.
Greenfield Ethanol is the largest and most efficient ethanol producer in Canada. Their product is mixed into conventional gasoline and exported all over the world. Who knows, perhaps somebody somewhere is using GreenField’s 100% pure ethyl alcohol as fuel for their own homegrown rocket program. Most North Americans are content to burn it in their cars - it makes automobiles perform like rockets!
