The End of Oil? Breakthrough Turns Coal Into Clean Diesel

National Geographic ^ | 4/18/2006 | Sean Markey

[taxed2death]

Duuuuuuuude! Is that thing for real?

I want one!

[MadeInAmerica]

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.
__________________________________________________

Thanks. It was a 4 year build, just finished this summer.

[djf]

Not gonna happen. US is the mid-east of coal, we have by far the largest reserves in the world. And these are just known reserves, not counting what might be on the continental shelf and the gulf.


http://lsa.colorado.edu/essence/texts/coal.htm

[djf]

Yup, a huge reserve of low-sulfur coal here in Utah and the bent one puts it out of bounds because of an India Lobby group that claimed it would reduce the $ amount they would get from their coal exports.

Yeah, but you know what?


We still got it!!!!

[NVDave]

There is a project at MIT right now working on injection of ethanol at the top of the compression stroke to allow an an increase the compression ratio of gasoline engines.

Back in the 50's, the Oliver tractor company (no longer in business under that name -- they were bought by White, and White was acquired by Agco, which exists today) worked on a high-compression tractor engine to burn gasoline. Most gasoline engines have a 9.5:1 compression ratio at the top end, needing anti-knock additives to keep the engine from pre-combusting. Many of the older gasoline engines that used low-test gasoline used a compression ratio of 6.5:1 to about 8:1.

Oliver was working on a gas engine with a compression ratio of 12.5:1, which drastically increased the fuel efficiency. The barrier to fielding this engine was that the fuel refiners refused to produce a gasoline that wouldn't pre-detonate, so that was the end of the project. The MIT project seeks to use ethanol to prevent the pre-det in a high-compression engine, which means that no new fuel additives are necessary.


Diesel engines, in the end, will still have higher specific efficiency than Otto-cycle engines. There is a reason why farmers and truckers use almost nothing but diesel engines now -- the consumption of gasoline to get the same amount of work done in current gasoline engines would lead to about a 40% increase in fuel consumption for the same application. Modern diesels with computer-control of the fuel rack have largely solved the soot issues. Our F-350 pickup, with computer controlled fuel injection almost never emits any sooty smoke. It might smoke white upon start-up in winter, but that goes away as soon as the engine warms up.

The problem for diesels' image is government: most people get their lasting impression of diesel engines in cities from sitting behind some soot-belching muni bus that is running a clapped-out Detroit two-stroke diesel. The private sector won't run those engines in a mobile application any more, due to their fuel consumption, but government agencies still run tons of these beasts, with the attending pollution and fuel consumption.

[dennisw]

We need demonstration projects funded now so we can build plants quickly once people are certain that petroleum prices will stay high. Coal liquefaction to diesel makes economic sense at $45 oil