----- Original Message -----
From: "Mel Miller" <nourmahal@worldnet.att.net>
To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2001 6:08 AM
Subject: Re: [MV] Fryer fat in a deuce??
> ygmir wrote:
>
> > So I wonder, then, what the parameters of usable fuels are?
> > Henry
>
>
> I do not know the specifications for the Multifuels feeding but I'll bet
> someone in the group is very knowlegable! I seem to remember,I believe
> it was Richard Notton (sp?) giving a wonderful explication of gasolene
> standards during WWII involving a tanker full of gasolene and the
> tankers name got incorporated into the name of the standardised fuel
> etc, etc.
>
Well, thanks for the kind credit, it was really only an illustration of the
problems specifying gas/petrol by octane rating alone.
Dr. Rudolf Diesel never had diesel fuel as we know it in mind when he made
the first CI engine, he was striving for two things, an efficient engine
running on the ideal heat cycle theorised by Sadi Carnot and the use of an
embarrassingly abundant waste product of the time - coal dust.
Notwithstanding the flawed patents Dr. Diesel took out, quite obviously the
perfect engine could not be made, indeed his first attempts would give
insufficient power to even overcome their own friction. Ultimately his
first practical engine was so far removed from the precepts of the initial
patent that he was heavily criticised and felt hounded for the rest of his
life.
These early diesels used HP air from a compressor to effect the injection
and solid injection as we now know it didn't come about until 1919 due to
the work of Prosper L'Orange working then for Carl Benz, the first
production engine with solid injection was on sale in 1920 and a diesel
powered truck followed in 1924.
Air injection has the advantage of allowing powdered solids to be injected
although Dr.Diesel soon found out the ash left from coal dust injection was
seriously unfriendly to pistons and bores, whilst almost any combustible
fluid could be used for the diesel engine some surprising solids/powders
will work too.
There is no doubt that most oils, vegetable or mineral will work with due
allowance and adjustment, indeed the truly gigantean cathedral (they are
that big) diesels in super tankers producing typically 25,000 shp often use
the crude oil cargo they are carrying, Kuwait crude is like candle wax at
room temperature and needs heating to 100C just to be pumpable.
Ordinary flour, air injected, will diesel quite happily, indeed the
anti-ignition precautions in a flour mill are similar to deep mining
operations. Make a small cloud of flour dust and hold your Zippo to it and
see what happens when each speck has enough air around it to burn, beware of
a goodly woomph though.
Reputedly South Africa largely ran on sunflower oil during the years of
anti-apartheid trade embargo, a prolific plant in their climate. A common
rain forest tree, the Codiaba Ferra (or something like that as Latin names
are beyond me) produces refined diesel oil when tapped off like a rubber
tree.
The upside is that CI engine fuel will never run out, simply grow it as a
crop and indeed most combustible oils with due design will operate a diesel
engine, just need to remember the devices we see today are very highly
developed for a single specific fuel type.
Richard
Southampton - England
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Sep 02 2001 - 11:15:38 PDT