For Ukraine CTL (coal to liquid) technology is more usefull. There are ideas to build such plants in east of Ukraine. SASOL is sucsesfull company!

German tanks near Moskow had special, designet for synfuel motors by Maibach. But there were 2 kinds of fuel: Khogazine 1 (for summer) and Khogazine 2 (for Winter). But in february of 1942 they stalled, because tanks were filled by summer fuel. Russian tanks had turbo diesels.

I had a phone conversation to one of Gov. Schwizer's partners, and he told me, that he is looking forward and he wants America to have CTL plants and to forget about the oil. One of plants is still building by WMPI (Pensilvania). May be this is the right stuff for us?

There are 2 progects in Moskow: DME (Dimethil-ethir) for diesels and Methanol plants, but this fuel is not popular, because methan is still cheap here. That's why I will add 3 methan vesseles this spring. But octane of methan is more then 104 and I will increase compression ratio installing other heads. But I'm still waiting for natural gas war betving Putin and Yushenko...

 

First of all, our economic system is really good at separating good from less-good. If ethanol from corn, sugar or garbage were cheaper/better, we would all be burning it without government meddling(period)

 

How do you figure? Our economic system will eventually do what you said, but consider that LithIon batteries were originally invented over 50 years ago. So how come they didn't become readily available till recently? You don't suppose it had something to do with rich bozos messing up the works because it might upset their own superiority would you? The reason Ethanol has not taken off and been selected as a fuel of choice, is because the oil companies don't want it to. Ethanol is much cheaper, and a good example is the low cost of fuel through the midwest. You don't suppose that they try to keep the cost their somewhat lower in order to prevent ethanol from upsetting their customer base there? The oil in our area comes from a location about 300 miles outside of SLC. It is coming mostly from eastern Utah and Southeastern Wyomoing, and yet our fuel costs are compareable to the national average, and higher than through the midwest. You don't suppose money has something to do with that do you?

Ethanol is used in raceing and avaition applications due to its light weight, high power output, cooling effect, and high compression capability. It is ideal.

One thing that you might want to consider. While oil supplies on this earth are very abundant, we ARE consumeing the oil reserves at a greater rate than they are being naturally replenished. In the mean time, greenhouse gases are being introduced into our atmosphere. While I don't believe that global wrming is a real phenomenon, the fact that Ethanol is made from 100% recycled greenhouse gases is a very good thing. Biofuels are the way of the future, because biofuel sources are sustainable, and even beneficial to the earths ecosystems.

 

Nothing on God's green earth can stop the best technology from being marketed cheaply and efficiently.

i was looking into manufacturing biodiesel from various waste oils. What I found out is it is not possible to do even with todays prices unless you get the feeds free. I guess petroleum is still cheap. ( wish it were cheaper though.

Ken

 

Yeah! you are right. Oil companies will do everething to get maximum from oil and to be the first in CTL ore Ethanol technologies in the future.

 

Ken, your statement is false. There is a company here in SLC, that buys the oil, and makes the finished product, complete with additives for 2.10 per gallon. The name of the company is Biofuel.

 

Dear Khaty,

I bet they are subsidised by the government. That is when the government taxes your family in back-door ways (food, etc.) to give money to someone to do something they would not do because it loses money. (stupid). This is what Brazil did. It cost them more BTUs to grow the sugar and distill it than they got out at the end. That is why it has not caught on everywhere. If it is better, it will happen. There has been talk of using Nuclear heat to do the distilling, maybe that could work. It takes lots of BUUs to boil off the alcohol from the mash.

I did not check into subsidies when I did my study. Worthwhile things happen as though moved by an invisible hand (Adam Smith), dumb things happen when moved by the government. Witness the spate of solar water heaters put on houses during the Carter years that worked for two months, then watered the neighbors lawn.

Maybe I am naive, but I believe in our system of minimum interference and the incredible efficiency of our free system of enterprise.

Khanty, if you invented a device to improve mileage 40% with equal performance, could you be "bought off"? I think not. Even if you were, someone that helped you would know enough to do it. You would also do it, not only for the money, but for the FAME and the fact that your name would be next to Watt and Boulton in the history books as a legacy.

Trust our system, nothing, but nothing, is better.

Ken

 

Nope, they are not subsidized by any government program. I know the owner well, we used to do business. I am in the catalytic converter business, and at the time, he was in offroad performance vehicles, so he would cut the converters off. This is legal to do with vehicles that are not street legal anyway. I would buy the old ones from him, and so I know him well. He now manufactures and sells Biodiesel, no government subsidizeing. And in Europe, all diesel fuel must be 60% biodiesel by volume. And get this, much of the oil they are useing comes from Europe.

My statement above had nothing to do with any sort of device that improved fuel economy by 40%, where did you come up with that?

Volvo bought pattents to all sorts of battery technologies and then used them to prevent anyone from makeing them. The fear was, that high capacity lightweight batteries could threaten an oil economy. The technology was held in check until cell phones came along, and lieghtweight high capacity batteries where required.

GM built a car (EV1) that was fully electric, and very reliable. Over 200 were leased to California residents. The efficiency of these cars was amazeing, calculateing fuel consumption at the power plant in BTUs revealed these cars equated to over 200 mpg on the freeway. They were extremely reliable, some cars had over 150,000 miles and still needed no major maintenance. They had fewer moving parts, and in a worst case scenario, the electric motors cost less than engines. The cars could be commercially manufactured for under 20,000 US dollars retail. And get this, these cars were already paid for by US tax dollars. So what does GM do? They recall and crush every last one, and try to pretend it never happened. Several of the leasees wnt to jail, because they wouldn't return the cars. The idea will eventually catch on, and the free market system will find the best solution, but temporarily, the rich make the rules. You statement is partly true, but extremely naive.

Also, the above statement of "bought off" is a little deceptive. Often what happens, is individuals invent a product, but lack the capital to produce it, so they sell the patents. Often, individuals who do not want certain technologies will look for any patents of a certain type, and attempt to buy the rights to the product. This is what happened with the various batteries. If you don't believe me, the whole thing is documented, even quoted on TV shows such as Scientific American (on their documentary about the cars of the future.)

 

Dear Khanty,

Your statement of no subsidy to biodiesel is heartening to me. i love it when things happen naturally. Good for him!! What oil feeds does your friend use?

I do know that govt subsidys are common in the ethanol game. (govt pork)

Did you know that one of the largest manufacturers of solar panels is BP, British Petroleum and Shell oil. These companies consider themselves in the energy business, not the oil business. They took heed of the experience of railways in the '40s. RRs considered themselves in the rail road business, not the transportation business. Hence the lack of Union Pacific Airlines.

Your comments about electric cars, particularly the EV1 may be in error. In hilly country one could not drive 90 miles before running out of electrons. I live near Phoenix, Az and one could not drive an EV 1 from phx to Payson, az, about 90 miles. I know they are inexpensive to run but the battery capacity is just too low. I have heard that a ton of storage batteries holds the same energy as 2 quarts of gasoline. (remember electric motors are more efficient than IC motors.)

Khanty, if the EV1 was so good, cheap, reliable, clean (but every electric outlet IS hooked to a smokestack somewhere), why dont they make them. Are they stupid? Don't they want to make money? I should admit that I do have a fascination for electric cars, I spent many hours last week researching their manufacture. You and I just have to come up with battery technology.

Ken

 

Dear Khanty,

Google "biodiesel subsidy". The govt apparently just approved a 1.00 per gallon subsidy for biodiesel which, they say still leaves biodiesel more expensive than petroleum diesel.

What I know for sure is that it is not economically possible in my area without free feeds.

Ken

 

I belive mostly canola and sunflower, and he buys from restaraunts, which must dispose of their oil regardless. Sure there are lots of people takeing it for free, but if he pays, and picks it up on a regualr basis, then he has secured his sources.

That was the EV1s drawback, range. They could maybe go 100 miles, if the terrain was not too difficult, and combine that with a minimum 4 hour charge time, they couldn't just up and go if they went dead.

 

Dear Khanty,

i always thought that an electric vehicle that was electric propulsion only with an ev1 type of drive system with a gasoline motor of small capacity, perhaps 20 HP for range extension and recharge capability could work. this is the so called series hybrid rather than parallel hybrid that is popular now could be a good idea.

As you know, the gas engine could be totally constant speed with all the incumbent efficiency that comes from that. No one is doing this so it mustn't be all that good but the thought always appealed to me. One would never get stranded without electrons and the efficiency of all electric would not be sacrificed like it is in the current hybrids.
The gas engine would only run when the battery was 75% or so discharged. One would plug this machine in every night for a cheap recharge. You would also have the dino fueled engine to provide heat in the winter. Must stink though, no one is doing it.

i believe Volvo experimented with this concept using a small turbine to run the back-up generator. Nothing has come of it yet. Volvo also has a turbo-compound engine using the exhaust of a diesel to turn an alternator feeding power to the crankshaft directly. Nothing much has come of this either. That has always been a pet fantasy of mine for years.

Ken

 

You are right. Series Hybrids are much more efficient. Even current hybrids demonstrate this, by the simple fact that adding more batteries to say, a Prius, increases its efficiency to about 80 mpg. In fact, this has caught Toyota's eye, and they are seriesly considering doing something about it, only in this case, instead of hideing it, they want to capitolize on it.

What do you mean no one is doing it. The hybrid cars was invented by a guy tinkering in his garage. It works very well, if you have the right batteries. LithIon is lightweight, and less expensive, but takes up a lot of room and weight for its capacity. NiMH batteries are high capacity, lightweight, and recahrge quickly, but are susceptible to overchargeing. They would require a finely tuned chargeing circuit, that is coverned by a computer, but hey, all cars have one anyway, so thats not a problem. The EV1 was powered by NiMH batteries. It had 800 lbs of them, so you can see that the old figure of 1 ton = 2 gal gasoline, is only true for low power density batteries like lead acid. If you mounted a small lightweight electric start motor coupled to a high current alternator, that had a really good electronic governer, you could have a EV1 with either greatly extended range, or truely unlimited range. The engine could be located out of the way, just about anywhere.

So to sum it up, yes, a small car like what you envisioned would work, it would not be as effecient running and chargeing off the motor, but so long as you kept the motor running to a minimum, the car would get very close to its ideal 200 mpg.