Is Diesel the answer?
It seems so, given that my bosses 1 ton dodge gets 30 mpg at 55 mph., but the thing I understand is that once the demand for diesel goes higher, the price will stay high or go higher.
I was told during the world war II that the need for jet fuel was great and the price for regular fuel was at its lowest.

So what is it going to be 23 mpg @ 3.40 per gallon or 17 mpg @ 2.80 per gallon. Diesel was the way to go a few years ago, but now I'm kinda skeptical as to whether diesel will really be the answer to our fuel woe's.

Maybe if all the fuel stations carried diesel it may be cheaper due to compatition, but even then I don't think it will go down much. plus, you get less diesel from a container of fuel. sure gas takes more refining, but once the epa standards start hitting diesel full bore, then it will take more refining to make diesel fuel work for the US.

I think the companies might be making a good choice due to the efficiency of a diesel, but at the same time it may not help the economy if the price of diesel will stay high. If diesels take over, the gas prices will drop significantly and then the demand for gas engines will go back up since it will be cheaper to drive a gas truck than driving a diesel truck.

It will all work, if the diesels are over 40% more efficient than gas. We'll see.

everyone please tell me if I'm wrong on any of my suppositions.

I think they should just have F150's with turbo V6 propane or natural gas powered engines. Propane handles the higher compression better than gas and is cheaper than both gas and propane, even though it's a pain for fillups. You would have more power at a lower rpm, a turboed engine, and most likely better mileage since it has high compression. I watched on TV where these guys made a propane drag car big block with something like 17 to 1 compression. Your engine is cleaner and lasts longer, and your oil will last over 15,000 miles if you dont have any leaks. Anyone ever taken a propane engine apart? You dont even have to clean them, they are absolutely spotless. Plus you wouldnt have the polution troubles since the conbustion biproduct is CO2.


just my $.02

jeremy

 

Yeah, it's too bad the range of a propane vehicle is so short without a huge pressure vessel for a fuel tank. And measures would have to be taken to protect the occupants of the vehicle in case of an accident.
What is propane made from? Is there any pollution made in the manufacturing process that would negate it's benefits during use?

 

My $.01

Diesel prices tend to stay very close to gas. There are peaks and valley's in the price, but gas fluctuates just the same as diesel. Take averages over the life of owning a vehicle and you'll see that the actual price you pay for each gallon of diesel is about the same as a gallon of gasoline.

The same vehicle powered by diesel will consistently get better mileage than it's gas powered counterpart. Over time you will spend less money on fuel. The offset is the premium price of a new or used diesel vehicle at the time of purchase. You can also argue that the depreciation of that same diesel powered vehicle is better than the gas counterpart, so the purchase price difference can now be somewhat a moot point.

The refining process of the new ULSD has added one additional step to scrub the sulfer content to about 10 PPM or lower (level of sulfer tends to raise post production via contaminants in the pipeline). So the refining process of diesel is still easier than gasoline.

Propane is a great fuel and has been around for quite a while now. The problem is 1) current infrastructure for distributing on a large scale (by large scale I mean the same scale as gasoline is currently) is not there; 2) It is difficult to design a small vehicle with a tank large enough to meet normal driving ranges (about 300 miles); 3) Tank safety is another concern since a ruptured propane tank is more volitile than a ruptured gas tank.

The future right now is hybrid vehicles. In Europe they are unveiling 3 hybrid diesel engines. These should be the first (not counting locomotives) hybrid diesels to hit the market in the next couple of years. Mileage tests have these engines starting at close to 70 mpg and up. These will probably be introduced in small cars first, then later in trucks and suv's.

Last bit. Isn't it funny that it has been more than 10 years since the Geo Metro, and not a single passenger car sold in the US can match or beat it for mileage? Even the Hybrids fall short. Food for thought, have fun with that one.

 

Propane is a byproduct of two processes, natural gas production and crude oil refining. Last I checked, propane was 47 cents a liter, which is just a little over 50% of the current price of diesel. I'm not sure what the efficiency/power rate is in a diesel engine but in a gas engine, I think it's somewhere around 80%. May be a bit higher in a diesel because of the higher compression.

 

one thing I cant understand is that a 1968 stock 3/4 ton chevy pickup can range between 11 to 16 mpg in an automatic(3 spd). Now look at a 2006 3/4 ton chevy and it might get 1 mpg better. thats 38 years of technology that has done jack squat! my 1973 chevy pickup with a stock 4 barrel got 12 mpg with big tires and a heavy flat bed. it had stock 145 hp and 345 torque. It would keep up with my 1996 v6 camaro which ran a 15 second 1/4 mile. Not to bad for an old rust bucked beater. Now look at the new 2006 1/2 ton long bed 4x4 and it will get maybe 16-18 on the highway, the same as my old truck in the city, and isn't quite as fast. Sure it may have 200 more horsepower, but any truck owner knows hp dont mean squat in a truck. Torque is what moves the truck down the road, especially while towing.

my question is, why aren't the now sequencial fuel injected, variable valve timed, electronic ignitioned, laser cut, etc. etc. technological advances triumphing over the carburated, points, cap/rotor, simple technology.

the new trucks should get 30 mpg. They should build gas engines for torque, not horsepower. thats why diesels are so good, they use the torque.

i hear ya on the geo thing.

quick story, My non BSing friend told me that in the early 70's he had an uncle that designed and patented a water injection setup for gas engines. it almost doubled the mileage of the average car. Heat created by combustion adiabatically increases the pressure in the cylinder. This pressure pushes the piston down. With water injection, the water would create an expanding medium that was superior the nitrogen expanding in the cylinders and thus push the piston down with more force, with the same amount of fuel. Or as this guy intended, the same force with LESS amounts of fuel.

long story short, an oil company wanted to buy him out and he refused. Not long after, the guy and his immediate family disappeared and was never heard from again. My friend wanted to do this, but his father strongly encouraged him not to because he didnt want to loose another person close to him.

I thought it sounded pretty far fetched, but my friend is the most realistic guys I know so...

anyway, just some more things to think about.

 

Just an FYI: There weren't many jets around in WWII. And the ones that were around were primarily developed / used by the Germans.

The answer to this question: " ...why aren't the now sequencial fuel injected, variable valve timed, electronic ignitioned, laser cut, etc. etc. technological advances triumphing over the carburated, points, cap/rotor,..." You may not be willing to pay the up front price.

And nothing against your non-B.S.ing friends but, you might not want to believe absolutely everything they tell you.

 

maybe I got my wars mixed up, but the gas prices were super low at the time of the need for jet fuel. come to think of it, the ones used by the germans didnt last too long in the air either. I think the first turbines lasted between 10 and 15 hours Total Time in Service. I cant remember the war, but now that I think of it it must have been some time in the sixties...i think

about the "up front price" i dont have a clue where you are going with that answer, you'll have to be more specific

and, the reason I reply that he is a reliable source of information is so that you can have your own take on the story. I myself find it hard to believe, especially in the fact that more engineers would come up with something like that, given teh fact that a back yard mechanic thought it up. I have heard several stories about people finding the problems with stock carburators and selling kits that give the small block chevys 50 mpg. then after taking a fuel metering class and disecting some of the simplest carburators(Marvel-Scheblers*) and some of the most compleBendix pressure carburators) I cant see how the 50 mpg thing is believable. The water thing is though. Back in the day and I think it is used still by military, they add water to turbines and used to to recip engines to produce more thrust or more efficiency. The reason more aircraft didnt adapt to this and the reason it never caught on, was the fact that water weighed too much for the benefit. Now a few gallons are used on some aircraft solely for takeoff because of the need of added power.

not to sound jerkish or anything, but please don't presuppose a lack of common sense on my part.

but about the paying the price answer, I dont have much to pay, but gimme the answer!

 

That used to be true, but I doubt it will be in the future. There are too many diesel powered engines in use anymore, not to mention that (to the best of my knowledge anyway) there is more gas then diesel fuel produced during the refining process from each barrell of crude oil. This means that as demand for diesel increases relative to gas, the price differences will only get worse.

Add in the fact that not only do diesels cost more money to purchase, any repairs cost a big premium over gas engines also. This is hard to justify for the average consumer.

Regarding propane vs diesel, propane has app 93,000 BTUs per gallon, while #2 diesel is app 140,000 BTU per gallon. This means that to get the same energy, you propane has to sell for app 44% less then diesel per gallon, so at current propane prices this isn't a huge savings. And if you add in highway taxes, which I'm sure are if you fill up at a roadside propane station, then the savings are pretty much gone.

 

I was refering to the cost of the vehicle.

In the mid 60's I was paying $ 0.17 - $ 0.20 / gal here in Texas. $ 0.14 if the stations were having a gas war.

I agree that if, as projected, more diesel engines are made available to cars and light duty trucks...the price of diesel will be higher. Supply and demand.

 

The Junkers Jumo (the "j" is silent) 003B that was placed in the German Me262 had about 25 hour service time before overhaul. You couldn't accelerate to fast or too slow, either would cause either a flame out or would burn out the turbine. The BMW turbojets didn't last much longer. But these days they are well over 3,000 hours.

The diesel engine by its nature is more able to accept different fuels. Rudolf Diesel designed his engine to run off peanut oil. Henry ford built a car completely out of plastic derived from plants, it was tougher than the metal cars that he was building. He even had a large amount of land dedicated to peanuts for his research.

The optimal diesel for alternative fuels is Indirect injection, fed by an inline fuel pump, intercooled and some form of pressure charging. Direct injection is fine, but IDI is better suited.

We dont need cheaper gas or diesel we need ALTERNATIVES!

Call me a hippie, but how useful will your CDI diesel with big power numbers be when there isnt anymore petroleum?

P.S. A 4.9 with a turbo is SOOOO much cooler than a 4.2 V-6 with one
plus more down low torque!

 

I would submit the following thoughts to all of your posts.

The question was... Is Diesel the answer? Simply put.. No it is not! It's a petrolium product with a limited supply. However, are diesel engines the answer? I submit they could be. Someone already mentiond the original maker of the diesel engine made it so it would run on a variety of fuel products, peanut oil being one of them.

If all y'all would click over to the bio-diesel forum you'd learn that more than a few people are producing their own fuel from Waste Veggie Oil.. Depending on how technical you want to get there's a gentleman there producing his bio-fuel for .32c per gallon. The average I've heard is about .48c pg. The reason the gentleman can make it cheaper (.32c) is he recovers 45% of his methanol.

So, if you have the garage space, time, and ingenutiy to build your own refinment processors, a diesel engine can be run very cheaply.

You can also purchase ready made processors. Those using them usually say it costs them about .48c per gallon to produce their own bio-fuel. That's still $2.17 a gallon cheaper than what you can u buy on the street, and lots better for the environment.

Combine bio-fuels with diesel engines and you have the winner! hands down!

 

aaahhhh....how nice it would be to have some cheap fuel.

reality is....nope! they like it at this price and now has made us use to it.

if the gov was really concerned with alternative fuels, they would research it and implement it more than they do now, how much of our military stuff runs off of some alternative fuel?

to put a twist on it all, everyone blames the increase of oil due to china and india's huge rise in demand, well....who the heck you think is funding there little economic oil consuming engine? we are!!! this little cheap labor so we can get our still expensive nikes and i-pods are also costing us in everything else.

diesels get great mpg, just look at the power vs mpg the superduty diesels make compared to the gassers, also look at that vw diesel car, great mpg. the tech is already there, it would be nice for ford or gm to come out with a low cost mid-size and compact diesel.

of course there is my thought the gov wants diesel prices to stay high due to the fact if there is a demand for diesel cars and companies start making them, the gov will lose money from gas taxes due to the lower consumption and lose billions of dollars they they reallt really want. i.e no serious gov backing (fed or state level) of fuel effiecent vehicals. why else did my 1971 chevy 3/4 with a 454 get the same mpg as my 1995 f350 with a 460?

 

The Air Force just did a test flight with a B-52 using synthetically made fuel. They have experimented with different refinery processes using natural gas, coal, and even garbage. This project has been going on for over 4 years now.

 

garbage? sounds like the delorian in back to the future, when Doc was fishin through the garbage to get more fuel to power is high voltage unit.

I'm sure the government has far superior technology than we know of. where did laptops come from, where did fuel injection come from, most of our awesome technology came from the demands of war. my dad was telling me that when he was in the army, they would run (for example) a dodge 440 engine for 10,000 miles. then instead of rebuild it or sell it to the public, they would bury it in the dirt. I wonder if the government was trying to hide teh 45 mpg big block engine.