I gather from a report in the “Daily Telegraph” (one of the mainstream British newspapers) that the US Air Force has experimentally converted one or more B52 bomber to run on coal dust. Anyone know how they’re getting on? Hopefully if the experiment is successful we might see wider application of the technology. I for one hope they do succeed.
It looks like “run on coal dust” is not quite an accurate description.
http://www.afmc.af.mil/news/story_print.asp?storyID=123025425
http://www.arnold.af.mil/aedc/testhighlights/aeropropulsion/aeropropulsion.htm
http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123025586
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060815/BREAKINGNEWS/60815008
Are they going to use mechanical stokers,or hand firing?
Eight eingines will they have to have an engineer and fireman for each one?
How big are the crew districts?
Will the crews change at fuel and water stops[ B-52’s used water injection in the engines at one time]?
Boy, Oh, Boy are the Unions going to love this one! [(-D][(-D][(-D][(-D]
Diesal Engines were oringaly made to run on coal dust.
The intresting thing here is this is talking place at Wright Paterson Air- Force base were supposly
Alians are on ICE in “Hanger 13”. Wright Paterson does have its own railroad so they can switch out the “Boxcars” with Shackles… As for the Coal Fired B52s they will be used to fly the meat to Alaska for futher processing.
I’m confused…where would you put the smokestack?[%-)]
I hope it’s a cab forward.[:D]
They were; unless they started flying them “sdrowkcab”!![:O][%-)]
[;)].tlaW ahctoG
Sort of like the nuclear reactor powered B-36, just where is this place these guys sit around and think this stuff up ???
That sonic boom sounded suspiciously like psssssssh!
It is possible to distill gas from coal. At one time in the early history of my home town, all the street lights in the downtown area were lit with coal gas. And the coal gassification plant where it was all coming from, was just north of where I live, and down by where our main post office now stands. Our local coal gassification plant blew up in about 1903 and was never rebuilt.
Coal dust in itself is extremely volatile. When the Lusitania sank off the coast of Ireland in 1917, her coal bunkers were nearly empty, and there is a British munitions expert who told Dr. Robert Ballard that a secondary explosion from a German torpedo would have touched off a masive explosion if the torpedo had hit one of the empty coal bunkers in the Lusitania. I have all this in a VHS tape about the sinking of the Lusitania which was produced by the National Geographic Society several years ago.
CANADIANPACIFIC2816
One of the problems of using coal gas in commercial and residential use is that it’s “stream” is comprised of hydrogen and carbon monoxide (C1), whereas natural gas is methane (C4). When you get the occassional leak at a natural gas meter or substation, it can be unhealthy if in large quantities, but usually won’t kill you. If coal gas leaked from a gas meter, the carbon monoxide emitted is much more dangerous.
That being said, it is possible to convert the coal gas to synthetic methane by forcing the coal gas over a catalyst such as nickel. So if someone enterprising decides to go into the residential coal gasification business to take advantage of those $6.00/mmBtu natural gas market prices, better make sure to methanize it first.
I wanna see the air-to-air refueling - that’s gonna be some coal chute!
M.A.N. in germany and Allis-Chalmers in the united states once made truly giant horizontal engines that ran on coal gas.
Running a diesel engine on coal dust was an early experiment by Rudolf Diesel that did not go into production.
Gas turbine engines run on coal dust is not a new technology - Union Pacific?, power plants too. I think the problem with U.P.'s locomotives (fly ash damaging the turbines) may have been caused by wide/rapid variations in loading.
I think it blew itself up.
Bert
The B-52s equipped with J57 turbojets (XB-52 through B-52G) used water injection. The B-52H was equipped with TF33 turbofans from the beginning, so it never used water injection.
Thanks for your contributions, guys. We used to have a lot of coal gas plants in Britain until we discovered North Sea gas (natural gas), then we went over to using that in the 1960’s. At the moment we generate most of our electricity from it.
I see also that the Governor of Montana wants to build a plant in his state to make diesel fuel from oil. He reckons they can do it for a cost of $30 a barrel, a lot cheaper than the current $75 a barrel. As well as reducing dependence on imported this well help reduce the US’s trade deficit and create jobs.
The article appeared in the August 21, 2006 issue of Newsweek. The synthtic fuel mixture include gas made from coal. It is not coal dust. With the proper refining technique, alternative fuels can be produced from almost any carbon based feedstock, whether it is corn, coal, or other organic matter.
The problem here is that these alternative sources have higher production costs then refining oil, making it uneconomical when oil was cheap. However, as long as gasoline continues to hover around $3.00 a gallon, Biofuels, at around $2.00 a gallon, can become a viable alternative and you will see more of it becoming available as production ramps up, but it takes time.
One small problem, if a B-52 goes super-sonic, somebody’s in trouble, as the B-52 was built as a sub-sonic, long-range strategic bomber. A sonic boom coming from a B-52 would probably be the sound of a premature detonation of its armaments or the sound of it coming apart[xx(]. There are some tails of B52’s going supersonic in emergencies, but the plane was grounded and given a thourough going over before it was allowed to fly again.
Refining coal to get a liquid fuel is IMHO far more reasonable than those fancy coal-slurry-pipelines.