And there you have it: Mobility.
A to B.
If we could slow down a little, railroads offer outstanding gallons of fuel used per mile/ton hauled (economy) and is an excellent answer to inter-city transport but decades of "Just-In-Time" logistics have skewed our expectations.
"Just-next-week-and-a-warehouse" is a far more sustainable option but unfashionable/expensive in our current inventory tax structure. Al
I saw the old African Queen on a tv documentary a few weeks ago. Someone bought it, has berthed it as an attraction, I believe.
IIRC, it didnt really run on steam. Hollywood made it look that way.
What did the African Queen boat run on then?
Back in the 1970s, Cadillac experimented on an engine that was suppose to run on coal.It was mostly a regular gas engine and the coal fuel was ground up very fine, sort of like foot powder. cuhulin
The car that ran on coal is no joke.
The steam engine was a replica, and a shill at that. It was not even bolted to the boat. I believe a small diesel engine actually powered the Queen.
The original Queen is berthed behind a Holiday Inn in Florida, I am pretty sure.
It was one of Rudolph Diesel's goals to run "Diesel" engines on powdered coal. His early patent was for a Diesel engine running on powdered coal. He also ran them on peanut oil - making him the Father of Bio-Diesel fuel as well.
See
I have read about some home water heaters blowing up before, or something went wrong and the water heaters taking off up through the roof like a rocket.My old 20 gallon water heater is electric.
Get a Horse! cuhulin
A lot of dusts would certainly explode in a spark engine, just as they do in the occasional mine, flour mill, grain elevator, etc. Apparently it works with just compression heating too -- a coal dust diesel is said to have been one of Rudolf Diesel's early experiments, motivated mostly by taking advantage of an abundant fuel, and it worked but he switched quickly to liquid fuels.
Maintaining and dispensing and regulating a supply of dust in a smallish mobile engine (without risk of explosion) would seem to be a lot of trouble -- yet another of those things that might scale up, especially for stationary use, better than it scales down. (I'm imagining something with all the charm of bulk copier toner, here -- says the guy in the office who always seemed to get fingered to change that stuff!) And of course for large stationary installations it has to compete with other ways of using coal.
--Joe
Let that static electricity in the air get just right.Back in the 1950s a Nabisco crackers factory in Omaha (or somewhere) exploded.It was that flour dust floating around in there. cuhulin
I talked yesterday to a friend of mine who is a railroad guy, and he says that operator's licenses have only been required for stationary boilers. He said that locomotives never required a boiler operator's license, and so consequently that may have been passed over to cars.
--scott
A couple of old buddys of mine are Railroad nuts. cuhulin
Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.
Ask the community — no account required