Too bad you couldn’t make plastic a form of fuel. It last a long time in the landfills.
I don’t think nuclear cars would be a smart idea. Think what terrorist could do with something like that.
I have a solution that would use existing diesel-electric drivetrains for locomotives and would really be for ANY diesel engine with no mods.
Ever hear of biodiesel? No, thats because Big Oil wants to keep you in the dark.
Quite simply, take soybeans, ma***hem up, and the resulting liquid pour straight in to the tank.
Hmmmmm, so there is no fossel fuels depleated, no complicated refining steps, only slightly more polution from the stack (but remember no polution from a refinery, so net pollution is a lot less), and could easily be grown from EVERY AMERICAN FARMER and solve their financial problems forever.
That seems like the best solution with CHEAP tech that we have now. Why in the world are we not doing this? Wait, who is that shadowy character standing over there? Ohhhh, man im in trouble, its BIG OIL!
Tink about the BILLIONS of dollers of diesel that America burns every month. I would like to see that money not go to foregn terrorists, but AMERICAN FARMERS. Screw the middle east and OPEC, we could start FARMPEC. Instead of turbins, they would wear John Deere hats, and that is who i want to see in charge. Old rich farmers being driven around in the back seat of ultra lux crew cab pickups.
Anyone here have a problem with that? Ohh man i got to run, Big Oil is right behind me.
Adrianspee…
That is an excellent idea…ah!..I’m being shot at by ESSO hitmen…[(-D][2c][(-D]
Would not Biodeasal be essetulay polution free since the corn grown for the biodeasal would eat the carbon dioxide put out by the burning of the biodiasal in a closed loop and no new carbons are being added?
Would this mean that we would plant miles of corn along RR right of ways and n highway meadium strips?[8D]
Maybe we should exploit the sewers for the methane gas to power the trains.
That is certainly a renewable fuel. It’s also progress…hmmm…progress stinks.
[:D][:D]
There are working feul cell locomotives right now today. They are owned by the US Army. There was an article about them in a recent issue of Fuel Cell magazine, I don’t have it in front of me right now.
George
Re: Biodiesel. Never let the facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory! [:)]
There are already millions of tons/bushels of corn and soybeans grown in the US every year. If Soybean oil or corn oil could compete with regular diesel I am pretty sure ADM and Cargill would be selling it!
This is an idea put forward by people who aren’t aware of all the facts.
There are a few highly publicized cases of various diesel vehicles running on used cooking oil, but that isn’t even a drop compared to the daily usage of diesel fuel in the US. But that oil is more valuable as raw material for other uses.
Waste vegetable oil is worth less than a dollar a gallon but requires cleaning before it can be used for other purposes. “New” soybean oil costs approx. $10/ 1 gal. or $30/4 gal. but you may get a better price in tank car lots.
Besides, using vegatable oil does not eliminate the use of diesel in unmodified engines, unless the oil is specially treated which adds to the cost. Otherwise diesel must be blended with the vegetable oil or used for starting and stopping the engine.
If you want to buy 5 gals of veggie oil to try in your diesel VW checkout
http://highfuelsn.goemerchant7.com
It appears to me that either diesel has to get a lot more expensive or become completely unavailable before biodiesel can become economically viable.
Another point. If it was so easy, and cheap, to get soybean oil all the farmers that grow beans would be making their own rather than buying diesel. But they aren’t, and these are people that will spend 5 cents an acre to increase their yield by 6 cents!
There really isn’t that much processing required to make ‘biodiesel’ out of proper vegetable-oil stocks (or waste oil, either) – someone already has alluded to the steps needed to get the right ‘mix’ of fluidity and lubricosity for use, and filtration is not a difficult exercise.
The point is correct, however, in noting that the cost per gallon of “commercially marketable” biodiesel is still well above the cost per gallon of #2 diesel. It is simply impractical for railroads to arrange reliable supplies of hundreds of thousands of gallons of old French-fry oil… there are lots of McDonaldses out there hardening away at our arteries, but not THAT many. There will be an equilibrium oil price at which ‘virgin’ vegetable oil, properly treated, becomes competitive with fossil diesel – my guess is that this price, much as has been the case with ethanol, will involve political subsidy long before it’s expected to ‘pay its way’ purely on merit.
Farmers don’t have the time to tinker around brewing fuel when they can buy it… or to have to worry about whether the fuel in the tanks won’t work in a cold snap or might be too hygroscopic. If somebody comes up with simplified ‘kits’ to make biodiesel, this might change, particularly with fuel prices as they’ve been for the past few months, and with low-sulfur requirements pending for off-road as well as on-road diesel.
And yes, you can look to ADM to jump gleefully on the bandwagon as soon as the numbers line up…
There are three really fundamental differences between biodiesel and good ol’ #2, as I see it. First, biodiesel uses today’s sunshine to create today’s fuel; in principle, not a bad idea (practice is something else) whereas #2 uses historic (as in geologic historic) sunshine. Second, biodiesel requres a good bit of work to produce (inputs of energy for planting, fertilizing, harvesting, drying, processing, etc., plus inputs of energy or natural resources for fertilizer and the like) whereas #2 needs to be pumped and refined; the overall energy efficiency (energy source to ton-mile moved) is much worse for biodiesel and for #2. Third, biodiesel is currently politically correct, which will probably overwhelm the disadvantages… never fight politics!
Hybrids will become more and more important in uses which require wide variations in power over short periods of time: switching, mass transit, and the like. Under more or less constant load conditions (road hauls – say a unit coal train, or a double stack) they offer exactly no benefit at all – so why hassle with them? As I said recently in another post, rule 1 in railroading: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Plus, as somebody noted above, contact with a very large stored electric supply (either an unltracapacitor or a large battery bank) can ruin your whole day – even my Honda Hybrid has some pretty fancy warning labels on it to keep folks from poking their fingers into the high voltage supplies.
Fuel cells? Are coming. They will take time. Are they really better than a good high-efficiency (read: modern) diesel? Do they pollute less? Do they use less resources? Uh… not yet, friends. They do have other advantages, though.
Yes, there are some roadblocks for bio diesel. The infrastructure needs to be changed. You can be sure that “big oil” is spending a lot of money to keep it the way it is now. Bio prices are high now because bio is simply rare. If mass produced, it really shouldn’t cost more than dinodiesel.
An unmodified diesel requires a mix of bio and dino to operate perfectly. That is a step in the right direction. A “simple” injector swap could burn bio completely. There is also a problem with bio gelling in cold temps. Well, dino does that too, and simply adding an antigel or an intank heater (I already have one for my oil pan) would eliminate that disadvantage.
I can also guarantee that if a farmer or farm corp. had billions of dollars and an infrastructure available right in front of them, they could find time to “tinker”. I know a few farmers with a lot of time on their hands now and do quite a lot of tinkering. Personally, I sometimes run a 50/50 mix of bio and dino to make the local farmer’s time worth his while.
Bio diesel is a good thing; it just needs a little push. I just think big oil is pushing back.
Adrianspeeder
Why not let’s look at the use of such (soy) as an admixture to the current fuel?
why not use bird seed as a good source for fuel?
how about corn?
I am not a farmer, but i think soy is easier to grow.
Adrianspeeder
I find it interesting how attitudes change from time tot ime and place to place and forum to forum.
Some instances it is the robber barons of the railroad that are the bad guys. Then “Big oil” then “Big Ag” and the “highway lobby” and the auto lobby, ad nauseum.
There is no need to “tinker,” it is proven and common technologies and processes. France has a program blending 5% biodiesel into regular fuel and up to 30% in fleet usage. But, it is heavily supported through government funding and production as well as tax incentives.
The short answer is, biodiesel is not economically feasible. If you want biodiesel you have to pay for it, either at the pump, or with your 1040. (For those non-USA readers, the 1040 is our annual income tax form.)
Here is an interesting quote I found, concerning the manufacture of biodiesel.
“Remember that the chemicals needed to make biodiesel can be toxic and dangerous. Please be careful and take all safety precautions. We are not responsible for any injuries or damage to any vehicles from using biodiesel. Good luck.”
It doesn’t appear to be as simple as just straining out the old fries and onion rings and pouring it in your tank!
What particular thing about producing biodiesel needs to be scaled up? We are already growing corn and soybeans by the train loads, and producing corn and soybean oil by the hundred car loads. You can’t collect enough used fryer oil fast enough to keep anything like a “refinery” running so you will have to use virgin oils. Now at what point do you apply the principles of mass production to get the price down to the point that “it really shouldn#8217;t cost more than dinodiesel.”
dgw, they’re talking about evil old lye – alkali metal hydroxides.
Large-scale implementation requires a production and distribution infrastructure. Financing it requires a certain amount of channel commitment; the profit margin isn’t there for the big fuel companies to do it (as they’ve done with ethanol).
Rather than re-inventing the wheel I’d expect to see the government mandate a certain percentage of biodiesel once (a) the market price rises above the marginal cost of production plus pro rata debt service on infrastructure, or (b) low-sulfur mandates start to affect the usable supplies. I would expect that the rationale, methods, etc. would parallel those already demonstrated for ethanol, perhaps beginning by mandating a percentage of blended biodiesel content in fuel for certain uses… or perhaps by providing a cost or tax break for people or companies that use biodiesel.
I do NOT look for the ‘really shouldn’t cost more than dinodiesel’ any time in the near future. Nor do I really expect the cost to resemble the kind of numbers I’m used to seeing for diesel prices. Biodiesel IS one of the reasons I don’t expect the price of diesel fuel to skyrocket in the event of restricted petroleum supply…
Funny thing, I remember back in the late 70’s everybody where I was living was talking about using an alcohol mix with gasoline rather than straight gasoline. Talk about trouble, That made every moonshiner in the holler a public person (As if the attention of the ATF folks were’nt bad enough). Groover liked to tell me that he could’nt understand that something so good for drinkin (his words) would be used just to make a mowchine (his words) run. “Terrible waste of good corn.”[:D][;)][:-,][swg]