Alternative Fuels

[Graebarde]

thanks -lots of useful info here -for RL and ingame.

Theres a differance I have found a LOT of useful RL information doing game research. I'm STILL trying to find consumptions for steam trains. I have some but again, lost them. (I HATE moving around!) Anyone have some sources I would love to have them. I realize there are numerous variable when it comes to that, more than with internal combustion, but relevance is the name. I do know it takes from 2-4 times as much water as fuel, and water sources are sometimes more difficult to get than the solid fuel, since you need CLEAN water, with LOW mineral content or your going to spend more time cleaning the boiler from buildup than running.

(some more useful trivia)

Grae

[Brother in Arms]

As for Gasogene

I used to be a blacksmith, but I didn't have a good supply of blacksmith coal and I was too poor to have it shipped to me. I tried using other types of coals but with poor results. However my now ex-girlfriends father had a saw mill with lots of wood scraps from the process, so I built a charcoal maker.

Very primitive in design..but it was a 55 gallon drum with a bunch of holes shot through it for air. It also had a old wheel hub from a truck in the center of it which the fire was built around. I built the fire using the waste slab wood from the mill, old news papers for kindling and spoiled heating oil from a freind who was a furnace repair man. while the fire was going I would pack more wood tightly into a 30 gallon grease drum (which had been power washed). Once the fire was going well I would place a 30 gallon grease drum on the fire and it sat on top of the old truck wheel hub. The grease drum had no holes except for it had a nail hole in its tightly sealing top. I would continue to add slabs into the oil drum as the fire burned down. As the wood in the grease drum was burned without allowing oxygen (or destructively distilled) it turned the wood into charcoal. All the while dark brownish to greenish grey smoke would pour out the hole in the lid. If the lid was actually airtight it would have blown off. However if you took a burning splint and put it to the smoke it would ignite and burn about 3 inches off the top of the hole in the barrel like a propane gas pilot.

My ex's dad was a small engine repair man and he always wanted to try to trap and pressurize the gas much like they do with methane gas using an inverted cone in a concrete tube with water above it. As the gas pressure increases the cone rises and eventually the gas will condensate at the right pressure into a liquid where it can be tapped off much like LNG.

However it never got more advanced than a simple charcoal maker.

Brother in Arms

[Graebarde]

Great info Bro,
Necessity works wonders for ingenuity. Thinking on that project for charcoal, it makes wonderful sense, and simplicity is awesome. As fro trapping the gas, a copper line from the hole to the storage unit. If your doing pine, you can also distill the gas for wood spirits (turpintine), or so I've heard.

Sounds like a realatively quick set up too after scrounging the materials. Hard part is chopping the wood. And for practical purposes your smithing fuel becomes free.

BTW how long would it take to char a can of wood And how much fuel was used to char the can

You also realize other than for smithing, this is the first step for black powder production.

Grae
(a guy who admires primative and obsolete technology)

[Targan]

You also realize other than for smithing, this is the first step for black powder production.

Great point Grae.

[Brother in Arms]

Grae
it was relatively easy to get set up my ex's dad had everything I needtd on site of course he did live in a junk yard.

As for time it took several hours to char a 30 gallon can completely. There is a lot of moisture, wood alcohol ect. that has to be burned off in a piece of wood to turn it into charcoal. As for how much charcoal it made, it made a full 50 lbs grain bag. I can't really say how much is weighed because it was very light for the volume of charcoal you obtained. One thing to note is the fire had to be completely burned out cold before you could open the charcoal barrel. In fact I would let the fire in the drum burn out completely then remove the char coal barrel from it and make sure it was completely cold before opening which took several hours. The reason for this is I had made char cloth before (for catching sparks when making flint and steel fires) and if you open the tin or in this case the barrel too soon the charcoal is still super heated and exposure to air would cause it to burst into flame!

I tried several woods, pine burned very hot but cracked and snapped relentlessly. Hard wood didn't snap or and was denser charcoal so I think it put out more BTU overall but the pine put out heat faster so I would use the pine to get the hardwood charcoal going in my forge. As for gunpowder I thought about making it but the best charcoal for that is willow or alder wood and I didn't have any of that around.

I also bought manufactured natural charcoal at the hardware store and it coast about $15 per 25 lbs bag. But since I had all the free wood scraps around and my ex's dad was a bit of a tinkerer it worked out great.

I am now thinking of making a new blacksmith shop after a long hiatus in blacksmithing but instead of charcoal make a Natural gas forge and convert it to methane! Many blacksmiths now use propane forges but as I might be living on a farm soon and I thought building a methane digester for horse waste would be a great idea and convert a propane forge to methane. The major difference is the size of the gas apertures.

But we shall see I am not sure where I am going to end up at this point.

Brother in Arms

[pmulcahy11b]

Hello

Here is the link to it

http://solsys-ap.ifrance.com/

I think they have done a great job but saddly it's only in French. I prefer T2K but they have an interesting different approach. I haven't read everything but they seem to be somewhere between T2K and a french novel (about 40 books or so) called "la compagnie des glaces". I haven't found a translation of the title.

Are there electronic versions If so, there may be hope of using a computer program to have them translated, at least to the point where one gets the gist of it.

[headquarters]

actually ..yes

Theres a differance I have found a LOT of useful RL information doing game research. I'm STILL trying to find consumptions for steam trains. I have some but again, lost them. (I HATE moving around!) Anyone have some sources I would love to have them. I realize there are numerous variable when it comes to that, more than with internal combustion, but relevance is the name. I do know it takes from 2-4 times as much water as fuel, and water sources are sometimes more difficult to get than the solid fuel, since you need CLEAN water, with LOW mineral content or your going to spend more time cleaning the boiler from buildup than running.

(some more useful trivia)

Grae

since there is a char in our campaign who controls an armoured train this is rather interesting news.For the moment he is in the northwest ,but should he decide to travel to a drier spot hehehe..

[Graebarde]

Thanks for the info Bro. I'll be interested in hearing how the methane forge goes. I would think it would work for heating as well as, or nearly so, as propane. We used propane for most of our hot iron work, but because it was quick to get going and shut down for smaller projects. IF we had a bigger one, we called my uncle to do it on his forge. That man was very good with metals. He welded a broken head off a cast iron hydraulic ram on. Took him almost two weeks I guess, and he slept by the forge between jobs. Saved the county big bugs, it was in the 30's. Don't know if you've worked cast iron, but he knew the heating tricks. If I could be 10th as good as he was.. ah well.


And for the train water. I helped demolish a water purification plant on the Great Northern (no BNSF) back in summer of 66. The had to treat all the water for the steam engines. It was an interesting job. I recall 'collecting' some interesting maps and papers from the office. The place hadn't been used in over ten years when we went into tear it down, board by board. HARDWOOD T&G walls and floors, with TWO tanks that held 30000 gallons each easy made from T&G redwood. The RR spared no expense when the plant was built back sometime before WW1. But like I said, water is the key element to steam operations. Good water, which is hard to find. I do know enough chemistry to know the minerals can be percolated off with addition of other chemicals, but dang if I can remember what those other chemicals are.

Head scratching,
later,
Grae

[Mohoender]

I haven't read everything again on this post. Sorry if I'm giving a bad type of info or repeating someone else saying.

However, I have seen Grae talking about diesel and alcohol and that interested me: it can't work. However, diesel engine were designed for heavy oil and they would work on any type of oil (from arachid to olive). You can put about 50% of vegetable oil in any diesel engine and 100% if you can attached some eating device on it.

About Gazogene, the last info I had is that are used again. Older model type are still workable and they would use coal, wood, or anything that can burnt. However, you need some time to start the engine. Newer models are fun so; they use specific type of wood and are more expensive to run than gas vehicles.

Nice point about Methane, every town and city could burry their trashes and get some.

[Graebarde]

Polish Steam train operation

http://www.krykiet.com/polish_steam.htm

This is a link I stumbled across in my quest to find the fuel consumption data for steam trains (yes Virginia I love steam operations, be they rail, water (though I prefer sail on water) or tractive motors (tractors as used in agriculture and lumbering)). Anyway it brought to mind the Going Home module where they have a train in it. It is now 2008 RL and they are still using steam power on this section of rail in northwestern Poland. What a grand scheme I can think of for playing that our.

Grae
lover of 'obsolete' technology

PS. didn't know where to put this, didn't think it really deserved a new thread.

[Graebarde]

Rail Road Fuel Consumptions

I have managed to find some figures finally. One publication I found on line and managed to get a .pdf of deals with steam operations of all nature is Steam Engines by Ludy, dated 1913. According to his works, at the 1901 St Louis Exposition they tested several steam engines of the period. He's quoted as saying one pound of coal will evaporate one gallon of water. Now it takes some math as there are varibles, such as the load pulled of course and grades etc, but it come out simple (vs. compound type steam engines) freight engines used about 24 pounds of water per engine hp per hour, which would be three pounds of coal at the 8:1 ratio. Passenger engines used a bit less at about 21 pounds of water. Compound engines use about 1-3 pounds of water less for the same operation (more effecient).

I also found a site where they have a restored 4-8-2 "Mountain" of Frisco heritage. It is oil fired with Bunker C oil (#6 Fuel). This engine is about 3600 hp at the rails, with a tractive effort of 56800 pounds. It uses 100 gallons of water and 14 gallons of oil per MILE. The tender for this carries 4500 gal. of fuel oil and 11700 gallons of water. The engine boiler holds an addtional 4000 gallons of water. They also have an auxillary tender for water that hols 13000 gallons since the water towers of old that use to be every 50 miles or so are long gone. He also stated on the site that they have to stop and service the engine ever 125 miles or so, that is greasing and oiling. It takes the better part of an hour for a large crew (not the two man engine crew, but a service crew) to do the lube job.

For diesel-electrics I found some information in military manuals on line (and they are more current than the ones I have in storage by a generation LOL). For DE they use a planning figure of 2.5 gallons per mile or 11 gallons an hour in light load (such as switchers which sit a lot).

So, rail is thirsty, but the ton-miles per gallon beat the pants off trucks. An EMD GP38-2 2000 hp DE can pull a 1300 ton train at 10 mph. Note there is an inverse relationship to tractive effort and speed. As speed increases the amount you pull lowers, so the 1300 tons at 10 mph, will only be in the neighborhood of 4-500 tons at 30 mph or so. However that too has many variables such as rolling resistance due to track condition and wheel bearings, as well as controling grade and curvature, and weather.

But a 1300 ton train made up of say 25 cars grossing 50 tons (25 of it cargo), would be the same as 40 trucks. A truck can haul 20 tons, but since we are using the reduced tonnage in the train (it usually cubes out before it weights out) Lets make the need to haul it 100 miles for easy figuring. Train uses 250 gallons of fuel (2.5 gallons/mile), travels 10 mph and makes one trip. The 40 trucks will burn about 16 gallons each at 6 mpg, for total of 640 gallons of fuel to move the same cargo the same distance. Yes they can make two trips in the time it takes to make one for the train, BUT at what cost.

Now this brings me to the next question. BOTH vehicles can burn vegetable oil with minor problems, the train easier than the trucks btw since they already have preheaters which most trucks do not unless they run up north. As previously mentioned (at least I think I did) soybeans yielding 40 bushels of beans yielding 25% oil will provide 75 gallons of SBO. In post TDM, figure yields of about half if you're lucky.

Another side note on fuel consumptions. The planning figures I looked at, and have been for over 30 years, show a heavy division uses about 600,000 gallons of JP8 a DAY! That's nearly 8000 acres of soybeans to keep ONE division moving ONE day. So you can see, unless you can really get ramped up and fast, armies will be back to muscle-powered movement more so than even the canon depicts. Pwesonally I think it would be much like the Great War (WWI) as far as mobility goes, with very few motorized vehicles. (note: I edited this because I had one too many zeros in the inital yield, which made a MAJOR difference)

Just my two cents
Grae

[Graebarde]

However, I have seen Grae talking about diesel and alcohol and that interested me: it can't work. However, diesel engine were designed for heavy oil and they would work on any type of oil (from arachid to olive). You can put about 50% of vegetable oil in any diesel engine and 100% if you can attached some eating device on it.

Mo I think there was some confusion here. Sorry if I didn't explain it fully.

What I was trying to get across, you do NOT burn alcohol in a diesel engine, just as you do not burn gasoline, though you can in a multi-fuel engine which also has plugs. However in refinement of biodiesel they use alcohol a solute for the hydroxide which soaponifies the veg. oil. YES you can run the oil straight with minor problems. One thing that needs to be done if your running straight VO is to have some heater for the oil in the tank, which helps with the vaporization since the vescosity is heavier than diesel. Also periodically you should (if possible) add some mineral oil to the tank. This provides lubrication to the injectors. The VO does not do the job as well as the mineral oil, causing early injector failures. I have seen figures of 1 QT per 100 gallons. If your running blended biodiesel this is not required.


Grae

[chico20854]

Some fuel consumption figures for various US Navy ships, in barrels/nautical mile, at economy cruising speed:

CG-47 Aegis cruiser: 2.46
FFG-7 Perry-class frigate: .98
USS Midway aircraft carrier: 4.09
Newport-class LST: .81
Tarawa-class LHA: 3.91
Sealift-class tanker: 1.9
Cape D-class ro/ro: .92

[Targan]

Some fuel consumption figures for various US Navy ships, in barrels/nautical mile, at economy cruising speed:

Good info there. How about smaller vessels (more likely for PCs to be involved with)

[chico20854]

Good info there. How about smaller vessels (more likely for PCs to be involved with)

Some of the smaller ones on my web site's ship design page (http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeedox4/ship_designs.html):

USS Betsy Ross: 5.83 gallons/nm
Atlantik-class Soviet trawler: 8.5 tons diesel/day at 13 knots; 6.0 tons diesel/day at 12 knots
passenger-cruise boat: 3.24 gallons/nm at 10.5 knots
supply/salvage tug #2: 12.5 tons/day at 12 knots, 10.1 tons/day at 10 knots.

and...
NOAA's Rude, 12 tons of fuel goes 800nm at 10 knots!