Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

kbd512 · 2022-05-30 15:44:20

Calliban,

Prometheus Fuels is using an electro-chemical process that keeps the alcohols entrained in the water, using membrane technology to separate them out. This is not the same as the brute force method of attempting to first split H2 and then recombine it with CO2 in separate process steps. However, since virtually all other processes attempt to do that, I can see where the confusion comes in. You do need some electricity, but nowhere near as much as pure water electrolysis.

Calliban · 2022-05-30 16:31:48

kbd512 wrote:

Calliban,
Prometheus Fuels is using an electro-chemical process that keeps the alcohols entrained in the water, using membrane technology to separate them out. This is not the same as the brute force method of attempting to first split H2 and then recombine it with CO2 in separate process steps. However, since virtually all other processes attempt to do that, I can see where the confusion comes in. You do need some electricity, but nowhere near as much as pure water electrolysis.

You make it sound like a perpetual motion machine. Electro-chemical means electrolysis. The process must break chemical bonds to resynthesise the fuel. That takes a minimum of about 13MJ of energy for each kg of water. And you will need 4kg of hydrogen for every 32kg of methanol produced, assuming your reactants are hydrogen and CO. The energy needed to create the fuel from water and CO2 cannot be lower than the energy released by burning it back to water and CO2. That is the first law of thermodynamics. Whatever process you use will also be less than perfectly efficient as total entropy must increase. That is the second law.

Here is how BMW (Prometheus' largest investor) describes the process:
https://www.bmw.com/en/events/ces/bmw-i … fuels.html

'The Prometheus Titan Fuel Forge pulls CO2 and water from the air using a novel direct air capture system. The salvaged CO2 encounters renewable electricity in an electrochemical stack called the Faraday Reactor. The electricity "charges" the carbon with hydrogen molecules from the water to create long-chain alcohols, releasing pure oxygen. In the next step, the alcohols are harvested using the Maxwell Core, a special type of nanotube membrane exclusively owned by Prometheus. In a final catalyst step, the alcohols are combined and water is recovered. This last step can be customized to produce gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel that are atomically identical to the fossil fuels used today.'

That sounds a lot like integral water and CO2 electrolysis to me. From the Wikipedia description, it sounds like they are using the copper cathode as a catalytic surface for combining CO and H2 into methanol. They are then using microfiltration to remove the methanol from the chamber and a catalyst (zeolite?) to promote condensation reactions, converting it into long chain hydrocarbons. It is an impressively elegant process, integrating three reaction steps into a single electro-chemical stack. Whether it will be more efficient than attaching a plain old alkali electrolysis stack to a gas shift reactor, remains to be seen. But I don't see that this is something that allows us to substantially reduce the energy needed for fuel synthesis. This is still an electrolysis driven process. It is just integrated in a way that may prove more efficient.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-05-30 16:48:28)

SpaceNut · 2022-05-30 18:12:02

There is a biological digester method that can use the oceans water along with algae to do this naturally as well.

The establishment of a marine focused biorefinery for bioethanol production using seawater and a novel marine yeast strain

The utilization of seawater for the hydrolysis of macroalgae and subsequent bioethanol fermentation

http://www.ethanolproducer.com/articles … ce-ethanol

Production of Methanol as a Fuel Energy from CO2 Present in Polluted Seawater - A Photocatalytic Outlook

kbd512 · 2022-05-30 22:14:44

Calliban,

No, it's not perpetual motion. It requires an enormous amount of energy input, but straight electrolysis is not the only method used to split water into H2 and O2. In all the literature I've read about using nuclear power to electrolyze water, it's proposed that elevated temperatures are used to significantly decrease the amount of electrical energy input required. Is there some reason why that could not also be done using solar thermal power?

If we electrolyze Hydrogen using Hysata's water electrolysis cell, then we would need 5,602.5TWh of input electrical power per year, at 41.5kWh/kg of H2, to produce 135 billion kg of Hydrogen for the 135 billion gallons of gasoline we consume each year. That's equivalent to about 640 1GWe nuclear reactors running at maximum capacity, all year long. Something tells me we'd have a hard time managing that, though I will freely admit that the input material requirements are bound to be much lower for nuclear power.

However...

Now I know why those numbers you provided for the weight of steel per square meter of panel surface area looked a bit high:

Eurotrough - Parabolic Trough Collector Developed for Cost Efficient Solar Power Generation

For the ET100 / EuroTrough 100 design, with 545m^2 of surface area, the weight of steel per square meter is 19kg, which is nowhere close to 117kg. That means 19,000t of steel per square kilometer. The ET150 design uses 18.5kg/m^2 of collector area.

Exact component mass breakdown, including total mass of steel structure and steel structure mass per square meter:

EUROTROUGH DESIGN ISSUES AND PROTOTYPE TESTING AT PSA

34,200km^2 * 19,000t/km^2 = 649,800,000t of steel or 16,245,000t of steel over 40 years.

650,000,000t * $220USD/t = $143,000,000,000USD (this amount of steel would enable the production of more than double US daily consumption of gasoline / diesel / kerosene)

Even if we used 100% electrical input power and no process heat to split every kilogram of H2 and synthesize the end product, at 50% overall efficiency, then we're not talking about insurmountable quantities of steel over 40 years. I'm also assuming that we roll out this technology in the US first, so that other nations can learn from our experimentation. If I presume that the US consumes 550 million gallons of fuels per day, and each gallon of fuel contains about 1kg of Hydrogen, then I need to come up with 550 million kg of Hydrogen, which equates to 23TWh/day or 8,395TWh/year. If US requires 17,100km^2 of solar trough collectors to cover its own gasoline / diesel / kerosene consumption requirements, or 325Mt of steel. The US produces about 105Mt annually, so over a period of 40 years that represents about 13% of domestic production.

I don't know for certain what the total installed cost would be, because the prices I've seen are so variable- anywhere between $65/m^2 and $100/m^2, total installed cost. The costs decrease significantly as more of the same equipment is produced. I have a document from Abengoa about total installed cost, which I'll post tomorrow.

Calliban · 2022-05-31 07:25:22

Easy to get lost with so many numbers flying around. This paper examines materials requirements for two types of solar thermal power plant: tower concentration and trough concentration.
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio … rmal_Power

Here we are examining the second. The validity of the calculations that follow rest of the validity of data within this paper.

Whilst there are many inputs identified, two in particular will dominate the embodied energy of the plant: iron and steel. It isn't clear from the document if iron means cast iron, or if the author is talking about mild steel, which is close to being pure iron. Likewise, it isn't really clear in the reference if steel refers to stainless steel, low alloy steel, or some mixture of both. But anyhow, a powerplant producing 1TWh of electric power per year will require the following ferrous inputs:

170,000 ton iron;
63,000 ton steel.

Collectively, that is 233,000 ton of ferrous metal. One imperial ton equates to 0.9072 metric tonnes. So that is 211,374 metric tonnes per TWh/year.

In terms of how much power we need to produce the entire world's diesel, I am going with my original estimate of a 50% conversion of electrical energy into chemical energy for the time being (more later). If that estimate is later shown to be pessimistic, then I will adjust downward the amount of ferrous metal needed.

We need 17,100TWh per year of fixed chemical energy. So 34,200TWh per year of electrical energy to make it.

211,374 x 34,200 = 7.23 billion tonnes.

That is about 4 years of global ferrous metal production. If we assume a 40 year lifespan for a powerplant, we need about 10% of existing global ferrous production to be able to maintain a 34,200TWh/year generating capacity. The plus side is that most of this ferrous metal can be recycled. In fact, given the size of our demand, we could have dedicated electric furnaces for recycling specific types of steel.

Only 23% of ferrous input is listed as steel, with iron (mild steel?) making up the balance. I suspect that iron refers mostly to reinforcing iron. The interesting thing here is that pure iron is a substance that has no particular resource pressures and is easily recyclable in an electric furnace.
_________________________________________________________________________________________

Post note 1. I estimated earlier that in a high insolation climate, each m2 of collector area would generate 500kWh of electric power per year at a 20% conversion efficiency. If we are raising steam at a temperature of 400°C, then efficiency should be closer to 30%. So each square metre would generate 750kWh per year.

If we take steel inputs alone (55,700 tonne per TWh per year), it turns out that we need 42.5kg steel per m2 of collector area. Assuming that some of that steel is used in the powerplant and heat transfer pipework, then we aren't far away from the 19kg/m2 in the collectors alone that you referenced.
_________________________________________________________________________________________

Post note 2. Regarding the use of heat to reduce the electrical inputs needed to drive electrochemical reactions. This is the basis behind high temperature electrolysis. With rising temperature, o-h bonds lengthen, reducing the Gibbs free energy required to break them.
https://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/pdfs/doctor.pdf

At 700K (428°C) the Gibbs free energy will be 10% lower than its value at 300K. This implies that electricity requirements for electrolysis decline by 10%. The other 10% of energy comes from solar heat. If we use this process, then the solar power capacity we need will be 7% reduced. The problem is that high temperature electrolysis is an experimental process that introduces problems of its own. At 700K, the density of water will be much lower, which will impose limits on the current density of the electrolysis cell. Pressures are much higher and corrosion will be more of a problem. I suspect that HT electrolysis will achieve a slightly lower power cost at the expense of much greater capital costs at the electrolyser.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-05-31 08:59:32)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-31 07:55:59

For Calliban re #555

Thank you for providing these figures for study/reflection.

I asked Google for an estimate of steel production world wide, and got this result:

In 2020, total world crude steel production was 1877.5 million tonnes (Mt). The biggest steel producing country is currently China, which accounted for 57% of world steel production in 2020.
List of countries by steel production - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › List_of_countries_by_steel_production
About Featured Snippets

Your figure for steel/iron for total replacement of diesel from the ground, with manufactured diesel is 7.23 billion tonnes.

1.8 X 4 >> 7.2 .... four years annual production would do the job.

However, a well designed system should last a minimum of 40 years, and I think modest maintenance should sustain the system for 100 years or more.

In any case, converting to manufactured diesel would be spread over a number of years, hopefully well matched to the exhaustion of ground supplies.

On the face of it, the proposal seems reasonable (to me at this point, and subject to additional inputs).

Speaking of additional inputs....

Are you willing to tackle solar flux requirements?

There is plenty of desert on Earth.

In a fairly recent post, kbd512 gave an estimate of the land area that would be needed for a large project on this scale, and my recollection is that the land area was reasonable for a Nation the size of the US or comparable, such as Saudi Arabia.

PS ... there is a bogeyman out there that I want to swat before it shows up again....

All components of a solar trough system should be produced using solar power as soon as sufficient capacity is available.

The use of fossil derived energy for production of these systems should be discontinued.

Please include this sensible policy in your calculations.

(th)

Calliban · 2022-05-31 08:20:35

According to the reference I used, trough solar requires 250,000 ton cement per GW capacity. However, a powerplant producing 1TWh needs 65,000. So we need a 260MWe plant to produce 1TWh per year.

The Solaben power plant in Spain is a 200MWe-p plant, with a reflector area of 1.2km2, covering an area of 3km2. A 260MWe-p plant would cover an approximate area of 3.9km2. We need 34,200 of these to make all of the world's diesel. That amounts to a total area of 133,340km2. About the same area as Louisiana.

I don't think land area will be a problem. The world has an ample supply of hot, uninhabitable desert where we can build these plants. The Sahara covers an area of 9.2 million square kilometres. We would need to cover less than 2% of it to manufacture all of the worlds diesel. And it is but one uninhabitable desert region that we could use. In reality, these facilities would be spread around the Earth's sun belt.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-05-31 08:42:36)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-31 08:29:33

For Calliban re ongoing study/evaluation of solar powered diesel replacement ...

Thanks for keeping the momentum going! I'm logged in to work on SpaceNuts ancient collection of posts.

This post is intended only to acknowledge your ongoing work and to offer such encouragement as I can.

I remain worried/concerned about the availability of land with sufficient exposure to sufficient solar power to support the project.

So far I have seen nothing that would be a show stopper.

Humans have built massive infrastructure to support extraction of fossil fuel and processing of same.

They accomplished that in only a century or so.

Replacement of the fossil fuel process needs to go more rapidly than that, of course.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2022-05-31 09:07:22

Do not forget that if the source of water and co2 are from sea water that a floating unit can perform the same while providing shade for the ocean causing a cooling effect to happen from the very large platform which has the troughs on it.

That said its oriented east west with 1 axis of tilt to keep the sun at its max for the focus point.

kbd512 · 2022-06-01 09:09:47

Calliban,

I would like to point out that while Hydrogen production may require lots of electricity (I have no idea which process is "best", but there are dozens of water splitting processes that use UV photons- a process that is almost 100% efficient, heat, electricity, or any combinations thereof), the seemingly "industry standard" Socony-Mobil processes for ETG or MTG use zeolite catalysts to convert alcohols into gasoline / diesel / kerosene primarily require lots of process heat (at 300C to 400C- the exact temperature range where most solar troughs operate at) and increased pressure (20atm to 30atm). The ZSM-based catalysts are used to convert CO2 and H2 into alcohols. They're known to be stable and reasonably long-lived, but not cheap and many thousands of tons will be required.

That Vertimass LLC / Technip pilot plant uses 13,700kg of their Ga-ZSM-5-based catalyst. That plant is under construction now and will come online in 2024, with a production target of 50 million gallons per year. It achieves an 80%+ single-pass Ethanol-To-Gasoline conversion, and may achieve up to 90% conversion using dual-pass.

[url=https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/05/f34/thermochem_hannon_2.3.1.201.pdf]One-Step High-Yield Production of Fungible
Gasoline, Diesel, and Jet Fuel Blend Stocks from Ethanol without Added Hydrogen[/url]

Ethanol Conversion to Fungible Gasoline, Diesel, and Jet Fuel Blend Stocks and High Value Chemical Coproducts (BTEX)

tahanson43206,

I would expect that there would be multiple large plants in the US, spread across West Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Southern California. Europe could either source their fuels from Spain or from the US and North Africa, if Spain is unwilling to commit their land to fuel production. I'm not sure why Spain would have a problem with this, but if they do then there are secondary options available. Africa would have its own plants in the Sahara, probably Egypt. Saudi Arabia would have their own plant to cover the Middle East. China would have plants in the Gobi Desert. Australia would have a plant in the Outback. All of them will be supplied with sea water. From a pipeline infrastructure standpoint, Spain / Saudi Arabia / Egypt are the easiest to supply. Of particular note is that this will drastically reduce the need for shipping crude oil around the world, and hopefully decrease the incidence of conflict over energy resources. All the major consumers get their own fuel synthesis plants, so there's no reason to fight over the oil. Russia has enough of their own oil that they can continue extracting it.

As the American plants come online, they will relieve supply pressure on conventional gasoline and diesel production from crude oil, so more is available to other countries at reduced cost. There will also be less need for America to maintain a strategic petroleum reserve, because our supplies will not be dependent upon crude oil imports or even domestic production. The various human-caused calamities will not greatly affect production, either. If something like a global pandemic simultaneously destroys demand and supply, then we simply stop producing fuels and instead produce more electricity, because we can change the total mix of fuel / manufactured products / electrical power to some degree, which is not possible with an extracted resource that requires years of preparatory work prior to refining.

The production plants can be run by the major oil and gas companies, similar to how our major ammunition manufacturers run our government arsenals at Lake City and Watervliet. The minor companies can maintain the equipment. Everyone will be contracted for a specified period of time by the government, similar to how our arsenals are run. The Army Corps of Engineers and Navy SeaBees will provide construction and assembly labor to reduce setup costs.

Calliban · 2022-06-01 11:33:43

This paper examines the thermodynamic efficiency of the magnesium chloride thermochemical water splitting process.
https://www.iieta.org/journals/ijht/pap … jht.390222

The thermodynamic efficiency is 12.7%, which on the face of it, sounds quite poor. But there may be milage in this technology, because it converts direct heat at 400°C into hydrogen without the capital costs associated with electricity production or electrolysis. All processes are driven by heat and take place in stainless steel vessels. The temperature is within the capabilities of the trough solar collectors that you are considering.

There are higher temperature thermochemical cycles that achieve much greater efficiency. But what they achieve in efficiency comes at the cost of more engineered complexity. The iodine sulphur process involves thermal decomposition of sulphuric acid at temperatures greater than 800°C. It is easy to talk about how such a process would work at a conceptual level. But when we get down to the nitty gritty of having to design chemical process equipment, technological problems start to stack up. How the hell do we design chemical reactors that survive exposure to sulphuric acid at 800°C? At those temperatures, H2SO4 will corrode the shit out of almost any metal. Diffusion of hot hydrogen into grain boundaries would create nightmare problems with metal embrittlement.

The MgCl2 process works at temperatures low enough for ambient pressure oils to serve as heat transfer fluids from our solar thermal plants to our fuel synthesis factory. That is a very big advantage. However, a chemical plant like this works best when it is scaled up. Corrosion and heat loss act over exposed surface areas. And scale economy is important everywhere. So ideally, we would build about 30km2 of solar collectors and have them feed into large diameter heat mains that flow into the fuel factory.
************

Post note: The copper-chlorine cycle is another option that appears to offer better overall efficiency - over 40% heat to hydrogen.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper% … rine_cycle

The problem is that higher temperatures are needed. There are three reaction steps. One of these requires temperature of 500°C. This might be challenging using trough collectors. Maybe a hybrid process is possible, with troughs producing heat for two of the reaction steps and a solar tower generating heat at 500°C for the final step.

This process would work extremely well if coupled to a large sodium cooled fast reactor. This could generate hotleg temperatures of 600°C. But regulators and flower power idealists across the western world have made it next impossible to build things like this.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-06-01 12:28:58)

SpaceNut · 2022-06-01 19:38:02

Fuel prices were stuck at 4.81 for a couple of days but that changed today as its now up to 4.89 a gallon.

https://www.spiraxsarco.com/learn-about … ated-steam

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superheated_steam

driving pressure and temperature up to that of a reactor chamber....

mix thoroughly with co2
https://www.energy.gov/sco2-power-cycles
https://netl.doe.gov/carbon-management/sco2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercrit … on_dioxide

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-06-05 10:45:16

The U.S. has seen a steady increase in gas prices since 2021 maybe thanks to a number of factors.

Inflation driving costs up for many of LA's food trucks
https://news.yahoo.com/inflation-drivin … 39269.html

Gas prices double since Biden’s presidency began
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 … ncy-began/

US Boosts Biofuel Quotas as Gas Prices Surge
https://www.truckdriver.com/trucker-for … ces-surge/

Varney slams Biden over inflation, gas, border surge: 'It's all on him'
https://www.foxbusiness.com/varney-co/v … rder-surge

Another mail contractor files for bankruptcy
https://www.thetruckersreport.com/truck … y.2426015/

Inflation is the top issue both US parties agree on
https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2022/05/infl … ee_on.html

Five Thirty Eight and IPSOS did a poll of 2,000 Americans about the most important issues. The top five overall were:
Inflation 52%
Political polarisation 29%
Gun violence 23%
Immigration 20%
Govt deficit and debt 17%

What one hospital is doing in response to lack of medical supplies due to inflation
https://news.yahoo.com/one-hospital-doi … 08591.html
Gas prices are taking a bite out of the bottom line for so many companies
https://www.wxyz.com/news/community-con … -companies

How can the trucking industry keep pay high and costs low?
https://www.classadrivers.com/forum/cur … s-low.html

Inflation and soaring gas prices have forced a North Carolina logging company to shut down after 37 years in business
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/inflation-soa … 56569.html

German inflation soars, oil breaches $120 a barrel, Denmark risks having gas supply cut
https://www.ft.com/content/971e3722-81c … 59920454fd

French economy shrank in first quarter as inflation unnerves consumers
https://www.investing.com/news/economy/ … rs-2831871

The link between Texas's truckers shortage and inflation
https://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/ … 639bc95902

Inflation is Going to Get Worse. Blame a Lack of Diesel
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/infla … 08806.html
Diesel prices over $6.50 a gallon are displayed at a Chevron gas station

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-06-05 11:24:42)

SpaceNut · 2022-06-05 20:25:25

Price at the pump has been holding steady even with all of the bad news circulating with the cost of a barrel of oil really not being the cause of the gas and diesel that we use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_ … ed_States)

Gulf of Mexico Field Production of Crude Oil

Oil and Gas - Gulf of Mexico

Calliban · 2022-06-06 17:24:41

Latest US oil production and world data.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/us-march-oil- … -recovers/

The US is still down about 1.5m b/d from 2019 and recovering only slowly, as growing Permian output offsets declines or stagnation everywhere else. The world w/o USA has declined by 4m b/d since Nov 2018 and is now outright declining at a rate of about 1% per year. Global peak oil is now nearly 6 years behind us.

It will be very difficult and expensive to reverse that trend. The remaining growth options are tight oil (mostly US), biofuels, heavy oils, offshore and Arctic and various synthetic oils. Whilst these resources can cushion the decline, the result is that each new barrel is more expensive than the depleted resources that it replaces. EROI is also generally declining. That tends to mean that as energy prices rise, the cost of developing new oil rises as well, as all material and labour costs are effected by the price of energy. So more expensive energy does not expand the resource base in the way one might expect. Effectively this is because there is an energy intensity to all of the equipment, tech and organisation needed to bring new oil on line.

The recent proposal for production of synthetic oils relies on condensation reactions between alcohols over a zeolite catalyst. The resultant oil will tend to be very light. This may be doubly useful as a liquid fuel supplement as it can be blended with heavy oils to produce a blended crude that is suitable for US refineries. This would allow a relatively high cost of synthetic fuel to be leveraged as a component that allows us to upgrade otherwise unusable heavy oils. This might provide an entrance for syntyetic fuel, allowing it to gain market share until scale economies bring down costs sufficiently for synthetic short chain hydrocarbons to directly displace fossil oil.

Hydrocracking is the process of upgrading heavy oils into lighter oils by using hydrogen to crack hydrocarbon bonds.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/ch … rocracking

This provides a way of using relatively expensive renewable heat and hydrogen to unlock hydrocarbon resources with a much higher energy yield than the renewable energy could provide alone. The resulting distillates and heavy fuel oils would supply diesel and bunker fuel for ships. We woukd need to build a heavy oil refinery for this to work a primary source of crude. That is expensive. Alternatively, it could be shipped to a conventional refinery and blended with tight oil or anotger syntgetic oil to produce a syncrude with the correct density ans specific heat for refining.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-06-06 18:01:59)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-06-07 05:49:14

Saudi Arabia hikes oil prices sharply, sending US crude futures up to a 3-month high

https://markets.businessinsider.com/new … ces-2022-6

Oil is coming on delivery months ago, refined weeks ago....more and more it seems like a globalist cartel.

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-06-07 05:50:11)

tahanson43206 · 2022-06-07 06:38:09

We have visions on the table, in this forum if nowhere else, to produce all the synthetic fuel needed by humans on Earth.

We have a vision to accomplish this with solar power, and another to do the same with nuclear power.

It would take some work to accomplish either vision.

The immediate challenge is to improve the articulation of the vision enough to justify someone accepting the risk of publishing (either one).

This forum is a terrific place for far out ideas to receive a first viewing. A few deserve to move outside the rarefied atmosphere here.

(th)

kbd512 · 2022-06-07 11:42:06

Although it would require considerable conversion cost, most of the semi-trucks could be converted to burn gasoline in spark-ignited engines.

There's a popular but false assertion about diesel engines, in that they produce more torque and therefore power at lower rpm. Maybe there was some minor truth to that assertion before gasoline engines were frequently supercharged or turbocharged, but such is no longer the case. If you run a gasoline engine with the same intake manifold pressures that most modern heavy duty truck diesel engines run, meaning fed the gasoline engines with the same 60psi+ of boost that many modern diesel engines run, then the gasoline engines would produce as much or more power and torque than the diesel engines at virtually any rpm level off-idle.

We can clearly see how well this works with Chrysler's 6.2L/6.4L Hemi platform engines vs the 6.7L Cummins 24V "High-Output" diesel engines. The Cummins (modernized variant of the 6BT) is making 20psi+ of boost and produces about 400hp / 610ft-lbs of torque (at 1,800rpm). The supercharged 6.2L Hemi in the Hellcat Redeye makes about 14.5psi of boost via an intercooled supercharger and makes up to 797hp and 797ft-lbs of torque (610ft-lbs of torque by 2,000rpm, and then considerably more torque as engine rpm rises).

What should be obvious is that Chrysler's "BGE" / "Big Gas Engine" / 6.2L Supercharged "Hemi" V8 has a slightly smaller displacement and is about 2/3rds the weight of the Cummins, 1,070lbs for the Cummins vs 700lbs for the Hemi with its supercharger, which adds 110lbs of weight to the base Hemi engine. The Cummins engine, as good as they are, represents a substantial increase in weight and decrease in available power. At almost identical rpm levels, a Hellcat's Hemi engine is producing more torque at the rear wheels, for about equal total cost, ignoring the maintenance costs of the diesel. If you increased the displacement of the Hemi to 6.7L, then it would out-perform the Cummins at any rpm level and equivalent or lower boost pressure, rather than simply matching it using less boost pressure and less displacement.

The extra 370lbs of engine weight associated with the Cummins is not a showstopper in a heavy truck, but pound-for-pound that supercharged Hemi will consistently outperform a Cummins in every metric except fuel consumption. Real world towing performance with near-maximum load is around 3mpg better with the Cummins, because the diesel emissions equipment seriously affects its fuel economy improvements over gasoline.

If we translate that to a 13L to 15L displacement Inline-6 gasoline engine used to power a semi-truck, then we would expect to see a 800lbs weight decrease using gasoline (about 1/4 of that provided by an Aluminum vs Iron cylinder head and the other 3/4 provided by much lighter engine components and the deletion of diesel emissions equipment). If the 13L to 15L engine was using Mazda's Skyactiv technology, then our fuel economy may be little to no worse than using diesel. The Cummins ISX cylinder head used in heavy duty semi-trucks weighs in at 517lbs. It's reasonable to think a 250lbs Aluminum head could replace it in an equivalent displacement gasoline-fueled variant. The block would still be CGI and would remain near its original weight to provide the durability required, but the crank / connecting rods / pistons could all be considerably lighter. The exhaust noise levels associated with a turbocharged gasoline engine could also be reduced.

tahanson43206 · 2022-06-07 12:15:58

For kbd512 re entire topic and related topics ...

I don't have any preconceived notions in asking this question...

You've just offered a post which seems (as I read it) to be making a case for creating synthetic gasoline instead of diesel.

Is there a reason why entrepreneurs couldn't divide the market and concentrate on one or the other, and excel at that?

It seems to me that we have a lot of preaching to the choir going on here.

Is there some fundamental reason we (members of forum) are not reaching out to the global community to put some of these sensible ideas into practice.

I often see protests that one thing or another is "expensive".

So what! Anything worth while is "expensive". Whatever it is needs to be traded for with something of value.

Often that "something" is time. Many (if not most) positions in society do NOT involve hands on work.

Instead, income in the trillions of dollars is earned by exercising brain cells and communicating by voice or text.

(th)

kbd512 · 2022-06-07 13:43:45

tahanson43206,

Cummins has already started making, as well as offering for sale, gasoline-fueled variants of its most popular diesel engines. Gasoline produces more CO2 than diesel due to fuel economy differences, but Skyactiv technology has already addressed the fuel economy differences through increased fuel burn efficiency, while it produces less of everything else that diesels produce, namely NOx (won't change at all using synthetic fuels) / SOx (can be addressed using cleaner synthetic fuels) / PM2.5 (won't change much using synthetic fuels).

The current diesel emissions control equipment has nearly erased the fuel economy improvements that compression ignition offers, which were only about 10% to begin with. As such, I see less and less reason to invest in supplying large quantities of synthetic diesel fuels when gasoline or lighter fuels (CNG and LPG) in equally efficient spark-ignited engines produce fewer objectionable emissions at lower total cost. If we go back to simpler technology that doesn't reduce NOx / SOx / PM2.5, then I can see greater benefits to producing synthetic diesel, but we're not likely to do that. The "other emissions" is why either diesels burning CNG or spark ignition (implies gasoline or LPG outside of specialty military applications that burn distillate fuels in spark-ignited engines) makes more sense.

Diesel engines, especially when burdened with emissions equipment, are always more expensive to produce than gasoline engines, and the fuel economy increase of diesel is evaporating thanks to improvements made to spark ignition, so there's increasingly less reason to bother with diesel synthesis. I can still make an economics-based case for powering ships and trains using diesels, but if we eliminated significant diesel production from our supply chain for road-based vehicles, then that pretty much kills the argument for large-scale synthetic diesel production. Synthetic gasoline would then serve the widest variety of customers. Ships, trains, and commercial aircraft would still require distillate fuels, but the total quantities involved could be provided by altering the hydrocarbon chain length of products produced from oil wells. We would eventually refocus on synthetic diesel production as the supply dwindles, but it's secondary to filling gasoline quotas.

The US consumes 369 million gallons of gasoline per day, 122 million gallons of diesel per day (most of that used by trucks), and about 45 million gallons of kerosene per day (most of that used by commercial aircraft). If all of our gasoline was synthesized and most of the heavy duty trucks were back to burning gasoline, then that takes an enormous amount of pressure off of our refineries and oil drilling capacity. The ships / trains / commercial aircraft simply don't account for a significant portion of the refinery output, when compared to gasoline. If most of our passenger vehicles and highway trucks were burning synthetic gasoline, then there's more than enough refinery capacity to both keep up with domestic demand and supply overseas customers in Europe.

In a de-globalized near-future where we have a lot less commercial shipping and fewer reasons for business air travel, prioritizing synthetic gasoline makes the most sense. We need an enormous economy of scale for fuel synthesis to be economical, which we help achieve by largely switching over to a single fuel that we mass-produce at global scale. Basically, a lot of the applications where distillate fuels make sense will be "going away" because they're too costly to maintain at a regional, let alone global scale. Globalization is in the process of "going bust". It was a fine idea, but didn't pan out in practice.

tahanson43206 · 2022-06-07 15:42:02

For kbd512 re #670

Thanks for your detailed explanation of the merits of your "single fuel" recommendation ...

Does anyone else have a comment?

This ** should ** be a simple problem for a capitalist culture to solve.

The ideal solution will insure that needed supplies of fuel are available, investors are rewarded, and everyone involved in the hands-on activities is compensated adequately, if not generously.

We don't need more pessimism or hand wringing. It's time to pick up the vision given by kbd512 (on numerous occasions in in numerous variations) and make it happen.

(th)

Calliban · 2022-06-07 16:38:28

Spark ignition engines are a good idea. In addition to allowing trucks to run on gasoline, LPG and compressed natural gas, they also allow this:
https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2017/0 … wood-today

This is the technology that kept the trucks running in Europe during WW2. Very little diesel or gasoline was available in mainland Europe. What little there was went to the war machine. Charcoal has about tge same mass energy density as gasoline. Biochar coukd be produced using raw biomass almost anywhere. We could power trucks, tractors, trains or even ships this way. Maybe we could design something a little less cumbersome with modern technology. If liquid fuels become scarce, this is a system that we have used in the past and could do again. The neat thing about this is that the fuel is solid. It can be stored as a heap,meither in a shed or in open air. Farmers coukd make it from crop residues in autumn and store as much of it as needed throughout the year.

It is easier to make it work in spark ignition engines. It could be used as the sole fuel or as a partial replacement for gasoline or diesel, with syngas replacing half of liquid fuel consumption. That allows the diesel or gasoline to go twice as far. Definitely something we will use, if we have to.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-06-07 16:52:52)

kbd512 · 2022-06-07 18:18:28

tahanson43206,

People who think the world will continue to operate and innovate at the rate it did prior to the decline of the total available energy supply are in for a very rude awakening. Progress is not a one-way street. Traffic on that street can flow in both directions. Resources can be depleted, energy reserves used to create the technologies that our green ideologues love so much can become unavailable, and manufacturing capacity can be destroyed even more easily than it was created to begin with. There's no such thing as "creative destruction" when it comes to energy- merely "destruction".

Cheap and abundant energy availability is the lynchpin technology upon which all other technologies are based. Without it, we revert back to the world that existed before industrialization. I seriously doubt that anyone wants to be hand-carried to a hospital because an ambulance truck is too costly to manufacture and operate. Bucket brigades were replaced with fire engines and professional firefighters long ago for a very good reason- the fire engines and their trained crews could deliver more water to a fire than 100+ men using buckets.

Those fire engines are very costly to purchase, easily $750,000 to $1,000,000. When the tax base no longer exists to support such government purchases because the revenue base has been destroyed by a lack of forethought about what cheap and abundant energy availability means at a global scale, those "nice-to-have" services and technologies disappear. Unfortunately for humanity, the medical emergencies don't disappear, the fires don't disappear, the need to grow and ship food to market doesn't disappear, and so on. Goods don't show up in stores by magic. The widespread availability of modern conveniences, which is very inconvenient to live without- if not life-threatening in certain cases, depend upon passenger vehicles, trucks, trains, cargo container ships, and a bustling economy that both "keeps the lights on" and allows for organic vs artificial expansion / growth.

De-growth / de-industrialization is monumentally stupid, as are the people who advocate for that. Going backwards only increases human misery and toil. If forced to as a result of an energy availability deficit, then humanity will go back to burning wood and cow dung, which is not a good way to live. Humanity quit doing that after coal, then oil, then gas, then nuclear, then solar became available. It took the better part of a century to more than double the number of trees in the western world, largely because we quit burning wood as a fuel source. That amount of re-forestation progress could be undone in fewer than 10 years if energy-starved poor people were forced to resume burning wood. I can't fathom any good reasons to deliberately put ourselves in that position again, so people who fancy themselves environmentalists would do well to remember that- any illusory gains they think they'd achieve through reducing the burning of fossil fuels would instantly be wiped out by burning through that much wood, and then there's also no trees left to soak up CO2, no manufacturing base left to make the electronic machines they lust after, and vanishingly few customers who could afford to buy those machines.

kbd512 · 2022-06-07 18:51:13

Calliban,

I think I'd much rather synthesize sufficient quantities of gasoline so that we don't have to worry about going back to burning wood. Everybody ditched those wood burners immediately after WWII for a reason. Even though it technically works, it was always a substandard solution when compared to gasoline.

SpaceNut · 2022-06-07 20:07:59

Calliban's 572 post is the wood gas burners that I have read about. It basically re-burns the fuel present in the fast burn chamber.

Synthetic fuels do need to catch on for sure.

I was wondering about the water electrolysis with flash back chamber for direct feed into a generator as to how much water is required for a given power output to be used.

https://youtu.be/qdDoxQEwMxU
For diesel

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#551 2022-05-30 15:44:20

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#552 2022-05-30 16:31:48

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#553 2022-05-30 18:12:02

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#554 2022-05-30 22:14:44

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#555 2022-05-31 07:25:22

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#556 2022-05-31 07:55:59

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#557 2022-05-31 08:20:35

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#558 2022-05-31 08:29:33

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#559 2022-05-31 09:07:22

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#560 2022-06-01 09:09:47

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#561 2022-06-01 11:33:43

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#562 2022-06-01 19:38:02

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#563 2022-06-05 10:45:16

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#564 2022-06-05 20:25:25

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#565 2022-06-06 17:24:41

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#566 2022-06-07 05:49:14

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#567 2022-06-07 06:38:09

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#568 2022-06-07 11:42:06

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#569 2022-06-07 12:15:58

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#570 2022-06-07 13:43:45

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#571 2022-06-07 15:42:02

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#572 2022-06-07 16:38:28

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#573 2022-06-07 18:18:28

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#574 2022-06-07 18:51:13

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#575 2022-06-07 20:07:59

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

Board footer