There are plenty of mixed messages flying around confusing normal people like us to a point whether we are coming or going...
Fuel price hiking up everytime you fill up your tank...
So I got concerned about how do I get to work of I can no longer afford fuel to drive my car...but I was missing something there fundamentally...
The truth is...if I can not get fuel, nor could everyone else apart form some highly previleged people...in that case, actually there is no point of me trying to get to work becasue there is none...
Anyway...
I started reading about some pioneers of biofuel adventures about what they did and how they did it and started to dream about me doing the same...
There are a couple of prime candidates as potentially vaible fuel source as it has become widely known at this point...
a) Biodiesel
Yes yes yes we heard it all...bio diesel...all good in theory...
Where do you actually buy it!!!?
Well, you only get small quantityes of it in most countries at premium price...or else make it your self.
It is relatively easy to make but, I soon discovered that the cost of chemicals, electricity, consumables exceeded the price of diesel at the pump!!!!
However eventhough you found a economical supplier of chemicals and built large batch processor, there is a limitation in supply of used vegetable oil. Imagine, how may litres of oil would a standard size restauralt dispose in a week? Ones I saw were disposing around 40litres in a week. You could go around and say find 10 restaurants in a town that does not have disposal agreement with oil supplier, that is 400 litres.
approx 80 litres used just going around the restaurants looking for used oil. The balance would just about keep 6 to 8 cars moving for a week.
To make any significant environmental change it is easy tu guess, you do need to tap into oil supply from food production industry and that would have obvious negative impact on food prices...
The actual making of it:
It is highly labour intensive to make it with good quality with low budget. Each batch of oil has different Ph reading on it and you just cant mix low ph batch with high one to cancel it out...you have to treat them separately...so there is a risk of messing up a process....
if you do...I don't know where you can put it to dispose of it as it is highly poluting if it is not treated right.
Since it was so inefficient to do titration for every 20L of oil I have tried a few lazy methods described in many websites however the fuel it yielded was very poor indeed. It would either corrode PET bottle I took samples in or would mess up the injection pump on diesel engines.
If you really insist on manufacturing biodiesel, you need a serious chemical handling license and say bye bye to any other passtime you would have liked to enjoy...
For me, it was one of those thing I say "been there, done that wore the T-shirt".
I guess there still is a big debate about how environmentally friendly is bio diesel...I say...it is as good as any other fuel existed...
Money wise...? ...Isn't it obvious? If you could take it on, you could easily get a second job and pay for the fuel..!
b) SVO (Straight Vegetable Oil)
This is somewhat controversial issue as use of corn oil, soya oil, rapeseed oil as transport fuel has some what messed up the food market...
There are some companies that mass produce proper kit for converting your average diesel engine to run on vegetable oil so they say...
So just like my normal self I believed in all the claims and off I went bought a set of injectors and few other bits and pieces for a whopping €600 from Elsbett in Germany!!!
General rule of thumb for SVO compatibility of your vehicle as prerequisites:
1) Your car must have a diesel engine
2) Works better with swirl chamber design but known to work with some DI engines also
3) Your car must not have Lucas CAV pump as it has design feature which requires low viscosity lubrication
4) The engine must be in good woking order
5) But you are prepared to mess it up if something goes wrong
Other requirements after installation
1) Frequent oil change
2) Frequent fuel filter change
3) Frequent injector inspection and cleaning
4) Have a spare fuel filter in your car
5) Have a most recent receipt of purchase form an authorised fuel grade SVO retailer
6) Need to mix 50% auto diesel during winter season
It is easy to install and all but you still have to send those special injector nozzles (basically has bigger openings so that it spraiys thicker oil much easier) along with your injector housings to be pressure set at specific pressure by diesel specialist. To me at the time sounded like a good solution as it is just straight into the fuel tank...
***Note: All prospective adventurers must be cautioned that SVO does not work on just any diesel engines!!
So did it work???
It worked better than trying to start an engine with standard injectors and cooking oil. Actually I was able to start the engine...and it smelt like 10 chippeers running simultaneously... in a single room.
Perfornance was somewhat compromised...especially at higher rev range and I am certain it is putting a lot of strain on the diesel pump.
Again, in most countries the supply of SVO is very limited. I found 1 service station about 1.5hr away form my house that would sell SVO out of pump. It was about 10% cheaper than normal auto diesel...untill of course the hiking fossil fuel price eventually push the SVO price up also.
Back then I had to load up 3 of 55Gal drums on the flat bed of my truck to get a fill up to last me a month and half to make the trip worth while...
Because the vegetabel oil gets gummy when it gets oxidised there was always something gooey around the fuel cap and from transporting it the flat bed was always greasy... also messed up the fuel level sensor...
Was it really good for the environment???
It would more than likely end the life of engines quicker than running it on auto diesel, also you consume lubricant oil thanks to frequent oil change needed to stop oil sludging up... Just to remind you that the lubricnant oil is also produce of minerla oil...
In addition,
Extra driving to run the farm plant and farmers running fossil fuel machinery to harvest those rapeseeds and then squeezing and filtering it with electricity generated by fossil fuel and then transported using maybe some biofuel maybe not...
Also, nowadays the existance of SVO tolerant engines are getting rare, especially in good condition.
At the end of all...all I am left with is another quesiton...
Is it worth it...?
c) Electric Vehicle
A car that runs on electricity alone...reduces pollution...?
Really???
What exactly is happening here...?
Fact 1) Most of electricity is currently generated using fussil fuel steam turbines and nuclear reactors...windmill and hydro power is only a small fraction...
Fact 2) Current standard power grid distribution efficiency si about 13% - where as internal combusiton engine can convert chemical energy to mechanical energy with about 30% to 35% efficiency...You have already lost the benefit even before driving it.
Fact 3) Right now electric vehicles are limited to small proportion of motoring population due to high purchase price...It the technology allows mass marketizing viable and hits the market, it will spread like some plague due to initial tax incentive. Remember, for a normal family size cars, it consumes 15kw of power for average cruising...Probably more like 21kw for city driving.
Assuming that an average commuting time for general population of about 45 minutes... the car consumes about 15.75kw.h
Return trip would consume about 32kw.h
Average automotive battery provides about 65A.h at 12V
So that is about 0.78kw.h...
It would be equivalent to recharging about 41 of those batteries similtaneously every night from empty...
At night, everyone who owns electric vehicle plugs in to recharge... For flexibility a lot of people would obviously opt for rapid charging capability...
That is comparable to taking a shower every night using 9.5kw electric shower at full power for 3.36hours...
Do you think the electricity supply grid can handle it as it is now...?
Will power station supply that much electricity at 13% efficiency burning fossil fuel and using nuclear reactors?????
Does that really save the environment???
Guess it is just shifting dirt to different location where most people don't see.
Fact 4) Did anyone ever see an environmentally friendly battery...? Better the performance more toxic it gets becasue it is chemical reaction that provides energy. Aggressive chemicals are dangerous.
By the way, batteries don't last forever either...where would you put all those batteries?
Lets run cars on lemons and grapefruits!!
d) Man powered Vehicle
This one may have a chance of actually saving anything. Bicycles, rikisha, jogging, tricycle, etc.
I have an idea!! Lets create new jobs buy inventing a job title called "Motivator" :-)
Guess what they do...?
They provide motion to vehicles by replacing internal combusiton engines on a haulage vehicles and ships just like Roman times.
Back then these people got no pay but in modern times they should be given a plenty of compensaiton for providing power source for modern economy... :-) Why not? have you ever thought about the amount of money we pay to the oil companies???
Isn't that great? Stay fit and paid well...Wouldn't that solve current unemployment and obesity problem?
e) Wind propelled vehicles
It powered sea transport for centuries in the past. It may not be very fast but when you think about it, we got to where we are now.
Is it possible to power road vehicle using wind powered vehicle? Do you think it is not as reliable as intgernal combusiton engines?? Well, how many people pull sickies on Fridays and Mondays?? How reliable are they?
f) Fuel Cell Vehicels
Fuel cells are basically battery that runs on fuel such as oxygen and hydrogen. Instead of recharging by lelctricity, it gets topped up with Hydrogen ad the Oxygen is supplied by air. It works neatly like an internal combusiton engine...
However the cost of fuel cell large anough to power a car is still expensive and production and transportation of Hydrogen os still expensive...
There have been many attempts made to produce hydrogen economically however apart from some real expensive methods the inventors are often been sued, jailed for fraud, otherwise dead or in hiding...
One thing is true though...You get what you put in : the law of conservation of energy can not be ignored...To make fuel to drive 10 miles this energy comes from somewhere...Where do we get that much electricity...?
There is only one viable source right now - fossil fuel by cracking methan. or use electricity generated by fossil fuel to crack water...
g) Bio Gas
Remember a movie form 80s starring Mel Gibson and Tina Turner?
That is exactly what it is going to be...Pig dung Cow dung and scraps rotting away, we collect the gas and drive around in a recycled internal combusiton vehicles...
We beat each other up for a bottle of clean water...(did I get the movies mixed up...? Ah, it doesn't matter these movies all look the same anyway)
Lovely...
h) Steam engine running on crops and grains
Crops and grains contain a lot of carbons whai can provide energy, also they grow pretty fast...very little processing needed. The yield is not too bad either as the strow can also be burned relatively efficiently...although generate some ash. Though I am sure it is fairly easily separated and dumped or sent back to farm as part of furtilizer...
One of the draw backs are that the calorific value of crops are about half of what you get from fuel oil per kg weight. For replacing a 50L petroleum fuel tank, a 100L tank is reqired...
Could casue another pricing issue once introduced to transport fuel market however that is human. People are greedy. When they see opportunity they exploit it for a personal gain. That is natural. However, there are plenty of crops thrown around which are perfectly good just to manipulate market pricing, why not reuse it for something useful?
i) Internal combusiton - Electric hybrid
As far as I know, there are following types of hybrid system...
1) Series configuration with direct drive
This system I believe is so outdated that it only exist as hobby vehicle. The motor is placed in line with a combustion engine to provide main propultion and provide extra propultion using elctric motor when required. The motor can be coupled or decoupled using electromagnetic clutch to remove dead load on the engine.
2) Parallel configuration with direct drive
3) Series with electric connection only
The benefits of makng engines that run at fixed speed are;
a) Engine can be smaller capacity than direct drive engine
b) Can be made quieter and smoother
c) Can be made lighter
d) Freedom in engine placement location
However, the system available right now are mediocre petrol engine mated with an electric motor...the gain in fuel saving is not as good as you would want it to be. Which is rather unfourtunate...even if a latest common rail diesel is mated to the idential electric system it would be a huge improvement...
Untill there is drastic improvement in internal combustion engine technologie is made available, hybrid technologie probably would always be mediocre...
I like what Jaguar tried recently on a concept car with twin miniature gas turbine engines and Li-Ion battery.
Which does make sense since many internal and external combustion engines are, if designed correctly, more efficient to be running at constant speed that having to change power output randomly and becuse of that reason the engine can be optimised for a specific operating condition.
To be continued