I think Brazil has stolen a march on us all after the ARAB oil embargo of the late 70’s by doing away with oil to a extreme. They are the ones who must be laughing and rolling on the floor these days.
That kind of stuff would not work on a diesel engine it would just ruin it. But if your talking about alternate fuel sources than E85 is one. A diesel engine can be converted over to burn E85. E85 is corn alcohol, approximately 85 percent alcohol. If you haven’t heard there also converting cars and trucks over to burn E85. Even trucks with diesel engines are being converted.
Try this for a discussion. Do you think E85 is a good Idea for the next fuel? I have my vote on it.[;)]
James
E85 and ethanol in general is for gasoline burning engines. Bio-diesel can be made from just about anything…peanut oil, vegetable oil, old fryer grease, soy oil and so on and so on. Diesel engines are usually pretty forgiving on what you fuel them with.
and E85, be it noted, is for spark ignition (‘gasoline burning’) engines which are specifically designed for it, together with the rest of the fuel system in the vehicle. Do NOT try the stuff in systems not built for it; you will not be a happy camper…
Personally, I think it is a wonderful technology, that doesnt stand a prayer of succeeding
It works in Brazil because they are a comparatively primitive culture. Their demand for motor fuel is a fraction of ours, and their inventory of land suitable for agriculture is huge.
that same formula just doesn’t exist for the USA.
On top of that, setting up for an eventual conflict between motorfuels and food for peoples mouths doesn’t seem very smart to me.
And if the eventual contemplation becomes one of devoting an acre of corn to fueling a rich person’s Lexus, versus feed a schoolroom of impoverished children, somebody loses no matter what the outcome.
I think that the ethanol based solutions (on the scale of the USA’s needs for fuel) is more of a mind game we are playing with ourself, trying to convince ourselves that we are doing something constructive to reduce our oil dependance…
My gut hunch is that some variant of the fuel cell will ultimately become the solution we are seeking.
You’re most likely right. Ethanol is more than likely around just to bridge the gap if anything. Although I don’t see the US running short on corn anytime soon.
I’ve heard and read a few articles that some of the big factory pig farms in the Carolinas actually import soybeans from South America because it’s cheaper than buying domestically produced beans. Now tell me something isn’t wrong with that picture.
Wow hadn’t heard that, obviously there is something wrong with that picture.
With China’s buying power, if they were to actually have that long forewarned ‘crop panic’, they would drive the cost of grain up into the stratosphere just feeding their people, so I hear.
I’ll tell you a secret.
That Lexus is nothing more than a Gold Plated, Wood Grained and Overstuffed Toyota Corolla.
I rather raise the crops for children. However I suspect you can plant every availible acreage in the USA and STILL not meet our needs on that one fuel alone.
I’m waiting for one that runs on hops.
Ian
Has anyone heard much about the new rotary diesel that is being developed up in Vancouver? It’s supposed to produce in the area of 1 HP/LB which is astounding. 24 “cylinders” per revolution, 20 to 1 compression and will burn anything. Might be great for cars but I wonder if the lack of weight would make it a good fit in the railroad industry. Could it make a loco want to spin it’s wheels, necessitating added weight?
I said this elsewhere, why aren’t railroads electrifying? Why haul around a power plant with you(diesel,coal,natural gas,etc) when all you need is electricity to power your train.
To continue, then you would need a reliable supplier of electricity.(Enron anybody)
Rgds IGN
Is it similar in concept to the Mazda RX-7 engine?
Putting “rotary diesel” on the internet search engine yielded a description of a rotary diesel under Regtech.com. It has 24 “combustion events” per cycle and generates 1hp/.75lbs. It is much simpler than the Mazda RX-7 engine in that the rotor rotates rather than moving in an elipsoid pattern (similar to a hula-hoop). With this power to weight ratio, you could probably run Acela trains all over the country on internal power.