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Diesels in the News

8143 messages,  Last post on Nov 27, 2009 at 12:10 PM

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#2359 of 8143
Re: Bio diesel (no longer) out of the garage. [bristol2] by gagrice
Apr 16, 2007 (8:33 am)
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Replying to: bristol2 (Apr 16, 2007 8:14 am)

Kind of an unlikely alliance. It will not hurt us to have a little less fat in our Beef, Pork and Chicken. Extract the fat to run our cars. Great idea. Business seems much better at coming up with alternatives than government.
 
I can see it now. "A Tyson chicken in every Tank".
#2360 of 8143
Re: Bio diesel (no longer) out of the garage. [bristol2] by qbrozen
Apr 16, 2007 (8:59 am)
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Replying to: bristol2 (Apr 16, 2007 8:14 am)

BTW- diesel engines typically last longer simply because there is less stress at work in the engine.
 
i don't know if i would call it less stress. Yes, the lower revs help, but the extremely high compression ratio does not. One of the reasons for their longevity is that they are built to survive those high compression ratios.
#2361 of 8143
Re: Bio diesel (no longer) out of the garage. [qbrozen] by ruking1
Apr 16, 2007 (9:09 am)
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Replying to: qbrozen (Apr 16, 2007 8:59 am)

I would agree. The VW Jetta TDI has a compression ratio of 19-1 down from more like 23/25 to one on complaints diesels sounding like "marbles in a can". This of course truncates (lessens) performance on many levels. But oxymoronically, if you do not buy it due to the "marbles in the can" syndrome, performance goes for naught.
 
On a more macro level, I literally had to look for a small needle in a HUGEhaystack to find this information: the design life for a TDI is 25,000 hours at 80% (constant) load.
 
It is also close to a state secret what the normal design life for a gasser would be. That would fall under the category of a doz huge haystacks with only one needle- and a small one at that.
#2362 of 8143
Chrysler Group leads diesel push by moparbad
Apr 16, 2007 (10:56 am)
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Chrysler Diesel Push
quote-
As the auto industry moves toward more fuel efficient, cleaner vehicles, there's a cluster of automotive, environmental, and energy experts rooting for the diesel engine.
Perhaps their biggest challenge is to convince drivers that today's diesels aren't the slow, noisy, smelly diesels of the past.
A leading voice in that effort is DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group, which in January started producing its second diesel vehicle for North America.
Hitting dealerships soon is a diesel version of the Jeep Grand Cherokee. This comes after the automaker sold more than it expected of the diesel Jeep Liberty last year, Robert Lee, vice president of powertrain product engineering for DCX, told more than 100 people at the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress on Monday at Cobo Hall. The Liberty diesel was an experiment to see if consumers would be willing to pay an extra $1,500 for a diesel vehicle.
It worked well enough for Chrysler to release the diesel Grand Cherokee, which costs an extra $3,000, and is expected to save drivers $592 a year on fuel.
Diesels make up less than 0.5% of the cars produced in North America — though a greater percentage of trucks. By 2015, diesel car production expected to increase to 15% and 18% by 2020, according to estimates from the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute.
Offering an average of 30% better fuel efficiency than gasoline engines, diesels are a good gasoline alternative for highway driving, compared to a hybrid, which is ideal for stop-and-go city traffic, said Jim Eberhardt, a scientist with the Department of Energy.....end quote
 
How about offering the Chrysler 300 Touring Diesel (Magnum in Chryler guise that is sold in Europe) for the USA?
#2363 of 8143
Biopetrol by jlbl
Apr 16, 2007 (11:24 am)
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Hmm, this is only indirectly related with diesels, but in any case it is a promising piece of news that deserves to be followed up.
 
"A Spanish research team has reported today that it is successfully developing a process in order to efficiently produce petrol from algae. Such a process will consume atmospheric CO2 instead of 02. The end-product should be gasoline, diesel fuel, kerosene, plastics, etc... even coal."
 
We will see, cautiously thoug with hope.
 
Regards,
Jose
#2364 of 8143
ML320 CDI by moparbad
Apr 16, 2007 (11:59 am)
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A review of the 2007 ML320 CDI.
 
ML320 CDI
#2365 of 8143
Re: Bio diesel (no longer) out of the garage. [bristol2] by hypnosis44
Apr 16, 2007 (12:23 pm)
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Replying to: bristol2 (Apr 16, 2007 8:14 am)

We seem to be getting more perverse in our "up against the wall desperation" for fuel substitutes, diesel or otherwise.
 
Economically The "surplus" animal fat available to produce diesel fuel will be immediately absorbed in the demand stream. The increased use of dead animal fat will then produce an additional up stream demand that has the effect of increasing the marginal rate of profit of animal production and therefore increase production itself. As producing animals for any purpose creates an additional demand for animal feed, this development will also drive that demand. Any increase in the growing load on the available farm land increases the cost of food for all consumption, animal or human. It will concomittantly increase the the use of water, which is in increasingly short supply, and also that of fertilizer which is largely fossil fuel dependent. Additionally, feed lot methane production, a green house gas, will be increased, ground water pollution from animal waste and chemicals, now down to the third level aquifers, will also become worse. The poluted water will become increasingly more costly and energy dependent to clean up, to the extent that it can be at all. I am sure that the corporations, who are the chief beneficiaries of this diesel petroleum scheme, will be more than happy to address the un-recognized costs of their enterprise.
 
And that is only the tip of the ice berg.
 
There don't seem to be any free lunches.
#2366 of 8143
Re: Bio diesel (no longer) out of the garage. [hypnosis44] by ruking1
Apr 16, 2007 (12:37 pm)
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Replying to: hypnosis44 (Apr 16, 2007 12:23 pm)

Most folks are not sure why you even thought there was a coupon for "FREE LUNCHES" in fuel substitutes. All you really had to do was take (the perverse as you refer to it) ethanol as an example. FED STATE and LOCAL subsidies, add to that tax CREDITS, as well as higher per gal prices and 25% less efficiency than unleaded regular, by ANY metric does NOT spell "free lunch". It can be seen as giving a reward for "changing" behavior. My take here since the cost per mile driven is driven ever higher: no good deed goes unpunished.
 
For change of behavior toward diesel, not much is really required as for ethanol. Just let diesel models be available, let them get 30-40% fuel economy over like unleaded regular models. This uses less resources than unleaded regular and even less resources compared to ethanol. The cost per mile driven is easily 20-40% cheaper. If you want to accelerate the changeover to diesel, cut the tax rate, volume and %. This is FAR too sensical and logical, which translates to political impossibility.
 
Of course there is hydrogen. A Civic sized car gets all of 22 mpg. Current price of hydrogen per gal WEIGHT= 18 dollars per.

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