Re: More Infor on BioDiesel

They do, you just have to order it. I'm getting ready to buy a new

2005 Nisson X-terra with a diesel engine, I have to special order it tho. The price believe it or not is about the same as a gasoline model. IIRC there are a lot of vehicals that you can special order the diesel for. The cars you buy in the U.S. are gas powered for the most part, however those same cars that are made for the Europe and South American market are diesels, YMMV.

You forgot to add that Diesels get better mileage than gas engines of the same displacement.

There are two reasons for this. One is that diesel fuel weights more than gasoline so there is more energy in a gallon of Diesel than there is in a gallon of gas. The second is that Diesels work at a higher average pressure than the gas engine (remember the PLANK formula when figuring horse power) and there fore produce more horsepower than a gasoline engine of the same size running at the same RPM. (The reason that Gas engines seem to develop more horsepower is that we run them at higher RPM's). That is why diesels run 200,000 to 300,000 miles between overhauls and gas run between 100,000 and 150,000. Well the fact that diesel is an oil which has a higher lubricant value than gasoline also makes a \ difference.

The Independent

"R. David Steele" wrote:

You forgot that there are also no throttling losses in a Diesel. I haven't heard the fuel weight argument before. What are the respective BTU's per lb and density for gas and diesel?

((snip))

How about a VW Touareg SUV with the V10 Turbo Diesel

Or the BMW X5 with the sporting 3ltr straight 6 Turbo Diesel In Europe they sell the Mercedes S Class and the 7 Series with big diesels too.

It's the lack of good modern diesels that has caused problems for US owned car companies in Europe, like Jaguar/Volvo/Saab etc., obviously their masters couldn't understand the need until recently.

Personally, I'm a petrolhead as you can see below. :-)

Now I am going back a long way into the memory archive here but I seem to remember that the oxidation of one molecule of benzene (the major component of Gasoline) produces more heat than the oxidation of one molecule of diesel. However since figuring the oxidation of any solid or a liquid with a gas you need to use weights as that factors out the pressure of the gas. Since gasoline weighs about 6.5 lbs per gallon and Diesel weighs just under 7.0 lbs per gallon.

To oxidize gasoline at the most efficient ratio of gas ot air of 15/1.

That means you need 105 lbs of air to oxidize 7 lbs of of Diesel fuel.

Gasoline only need 97.5 lbs of air to oxidize 1 gallon of gasoline.

In engines of the same displacement a Diesel Engine will turn more revolutions than a gasoline engine. Those revolutions turn into higher defiency.

There is also the torque factor in that in a gasoline engine all the fuel is in the cylinder at the moment of ignition and heat though being higher initially as the gas expands the temperature starts to drop.

Because Diesel is injected into the cylinder once ignition starts some amount of fuel is injected into the cylinder as the gas in the cylinder is expanding the heat of the gas charge stays at the elevated level loner, their by yeilding more torque in the turning of the engine.

The Independent

Rob Munach wrote:

Gasoline, regular unleaded, (typical) gallon 114,100 BTU 1.00 gallon Gasoline, RFG, (10% MBTE) gallon 112,000 BTU 1.02 gallons Diesel, (typical) gallon 129,800 BTU 0.88 gallons

-Bret

They already have and do, no one wants them. Europeans wouldn't want them either if gas was $2 a gallon there too.

On or around Wed, 12 May 2004 00:48:23 -0300, Chris Phillipo enlightened us thusly:

yeah, but gas is going up in the states too. and will continue to do so, is my guess. our "gas" (petrol) is just over 80p per litre, 3.63 per (proper UK) gallon, which is probably somewhere around $7 at the moment. Diesel is if anything slightly more, but the diesel-engine vehicles typically get more MPG - our TDi discovery for example gets about 30 mpg with reasonable driving, whereas a petro equivalent (although more fun!) would be lucky to break 20.

'course, we really do need to look into biodiesel, since the fossil fuel supply is being devoured at way more than a sustainable rate. We also need to look at patterns of life and work, and stop having people commute to work who could easily do their work from home.

Yes but diesel is much cheaper to make, so Diesel might be $1.50 /gallon, and still more efficient than "gas". Where is your argument then ?

I would like to know how much land it would take to grow biodiesel for, say, my car which does 10-12,000 miles/year at 40-50 mpg. Then scale it up. Have we enough land ?

Steve

On or around Wed, 12 May 2004 13:09:24 +0100, Steve enlightened us thusly:

According to some approximate figures I worked out a bit back, the fuel used in cars in the UK must come into the region of millions of gallons per day.

However, I've no idea how much oilseed rape you have to grow to produce that much fuel, or indeed any given amount of fuel.

->Aust->> On or around Wed, 12 May 2004 00:48:23 -0300, Chris Phillipo

->> enlightened us thusly:

->>

->>

->>>They already have and do, no one wants them. Europeans wouldn't want

->>>them either if gas was $2 a gallon there too.

->

->Yes but diesel is much cheaper to make, so Diesel might be $1.50

->/gallon, and still more efficient than "gas". Where is your argument then ?

You are forgetting tax, because of the tax diesel in more expensive then petrol.

Apparently the current UK oilseed rape crop would meet around 5% of our Diesel needs.

Well according to the table that the Alternative fuel association and the department of Ag put out, you can get 127 gallons of oil per acre of Rape seed. (I suspect that this is under optimum conditions. For planning purposes I would suspect that you can count on 50 gallons an acre).

Lets use the lower number for planning purposes so 12,000 miles divided by 40 miles per gallon. It comes out to 300 gallons per year. In the making of biodiesel you can only esterize the triglycerides so you only get about 50-55% recovery of biodiesel from rape seed oil. So you can expect that to have 300 gallons of biodiesel you would have to raise

600 gallons of rape seed oil. This would mean that you would have to have 12 acres of rapeseed.

Then you would have to have at least 60 gallons of ethanol made from sugar beets (412 gal per acre), Potatoes (299 gal per acre) and Corn (214 gal per acre). So I would say that an additional acre of land for the raising of potatoes would give you the alcohol for the conversion process. Then you would need about a 5 lbs of lye which you can buy at the super market (RED Devil cleaning lye).

So I guess 13 acres would be all you need.

The Independent

Now I don't know what the conversion factor of ethanol to corn is but I would probably put it at not more than factor for

On or around Wed, 12 May 2004 14:42:19 +0100, Geoff enlightened us thusly:

in the UK, currently, both have duty levied at around the same rate, about

45p/l, plus VAT (!) Low-sulphur fuels are slightly better, and bio-diesel significantly better, but I know of no garages actually sellgin bio-diesel. There is some bio-blend about, which is a mixture of bio and fossil.

You are delusional if you think diesel is "made", all diesel besides the stuff a dozen or so people are pilfering from the back of McDonald's comes from the same place as gasoline. You are equally delusional if you think it would be any cheaper per gallon in the US if demand for it was as high as it is for gasoline.

Not even for just the cars in London.

And diesel is _more_ expensive here in California than any of the main varieties of gasoline.

The reason is obvious: the long-distance trucks _have_ to run on diesel, whereas a lot of gasoline users are cutting way back on travel. The result is that diesel is being bid up, with the consumers of vegetables and milk and other goods paying.

Riding on the coat tails of diesel is sometimes good, sometimes bad. Right now, it's real bad.

--Tim May

Chris Bio Diesel can be made from any plant oil. I posted the types of plants and the yeilds per acre of the various oil producing plants some time back. Right now Rape seed oil is probably the most economical to grow. The USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) estimates that the yield of rapeseed oil is about 179 gallons an acre. With a viable bio diesel market we could probably raise 20 million gallons of the stuff with out much impact on the commercial markets of other agricultural products.

With the creation of BioDiesel and ethanol to fuel gasoline engines (Modern cars with computer controlled fuel injection could burn ethanol with just reprogramming the computer) The United STates could cut its oil imports by %30 or more. The added benefit would also be less pollution as both ethanol and biodiesel burn cleaner than fossil fuels.

After looking at some alternate fuel web sites and looking at the yield tables published by the USDA. (299 gallons of ethanol per acre from potatoes) with all the surplus potato land in Idaho, Oregon, Washington we could make one hell of a lot of ethanol. The heat for the distillation process can come from the burning of the left over waste of the fermentation process.

The only thing that keeps biodiesel and ethanol from becoming major players in the fuel markets is the relative low price of crude oil. If crude oil stays below $35.00 a barrel then there is no economic incentive for bio fuels. But with crude hitting $40.00 yesterday it now becomes possible for bio fuels to become players in the fuel markets.

The Independent

The Independent wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@web-ster.com:

Can be made from animal fat too , the gylcerine content is way higher though . Smells like hamburger vs corn chips when your running on it .

Diesel IS made ! It certainly ain't pulled from the ground and put in your tank !

The refining process for Diesel is cheaper than that for gasoline, and it uses a rougher grade of crude oil, not a high aromatic stock like Arabian Light. Hence its cheaper to make.

Steve