WhiningKhan
Regular
That is why I've been placed into this world, and I want to do it well._xxx_ said:Don't you be so nitpicky!
What kind of car(s) do you guys drive?
- Thread starter dukmahsik
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I guess that makes sense, just because the Carbon atoms are so much more massive than the hydrogen, that CO2 production should be directly proportional to mass. But the question still remains as to how much energy these things take to refine (on average), and more importantly for the future, how much they take to refine from renewable resources.WhiningKhan said:
WhiningKhan
Regular
Chalnoth said:
IANAE, but AFAIK diesel requires less processing steps than gasoline. Gasoline requires at least cracking of the longer hydrocarbons. (As you may or may not remember from high school chemistry classes, octane has a chain of 8 carbon atoms and cetane 16.)
The future is something I leave for others.
WhiningKhan
Regular
Chalnoth said:Oh, yeah, per mile diesel engines seem to be quite a bit more efficient. The gains from diesel on on par with the gains from going hybrid. Now we just need a company to do both
European manufacturers do already have diesel hybrids, don't know when they enter mass production. Google for "PSA diesel hybrid".
Never looked at the structure of gasoline in high school chemistry.WhiningKhan said:
Anyway, that would make it seem to depend upon the type of oil. More interesting for the future than how it's refined from fossil oil is how hard it would be to refine from bio matter. I would naiively expect that the lighter gasoline would be easier to refine.
WhiningKhan
Regular
suryad said:
[NITPICK]
You guys need to stop thinking about gallons. There is no 'emissions matching up' to be done.
The amount of emissions of burning process does not have anything to do with the volume of the fuel, but the actual amount of burning matter. There is no point in comparing emissions from gallon of gasoline and gallon of diesel, since their energy contents are not the same per gallon and thus same amount of work requires different amount of fuel. Your reasoning leads to correct result, but with unnecessary intermediate steps.
[/NITPICK]
WhiningKhan
Regular
Chalnoth said:
Me neither, but surely everybody should be familiar with alkanes - methane, ethane, propane, buthane and so on.
EDIT: Ok, sorry, actually now I remember that the teacher did talk about what gasoline is made up of. But anyway, this is elementary organic chemistry.
Chalnoth said:
I believe it is vice versa, I haven't ever heard of bio-gasoline. And while gaseous bio-fuel can already be produced, why would we want to refine it to longer-chained gasoline? Ethanol is easier. Bio-diesel, on the other hand, is produced from organic oils - I suppose it could be cracked to shorter hydrocarbons, but again, why?
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Heh, no way. It has absolutely no effect on anything I'm going to be doing. In fact, I specifically avoided chemistry in college because I abhor memorization.WhiningKhan said:
Right, but organic oils are only a tiny portion of available biomatter. I'm not talking about that: I'm talking about refining raw biomatter (say, waste products from the food industry) into some sort of bio fuel.
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
There are people conceiving such ideas and/or related ideas. BMW has its gasoline+steam hybrid where heat from the exhaust drives two small steam turbines provide extra torque to the crankshaft to take load off the ICE. The main thing that's kind of nice about this approach is that unlike gas-electric hybrids, you get the benefit throughout all operating speeds.
There's also the whole HCCI thing, where the idea is still petrol-based, but you're compressing to photo-ignition like you get out of a diesel. That works about as well in terms of getting the efficiency and full-burning of diesel, but it's a little bit more fidgety and harder to achieve since gas is so much easier to burn, and the quality of it is all over the place. It's entirely common to run across providers who get more condensation in their tanks than others, and ethanol in the mix is only hurting further.
The big problem with diesel-electric hybrids, for one, is quite simply cost. Diesel engines are more expensive and are more massive and service on them is more costly. You can eventually deal with the infrastructure if the vehicles themselves become popular. And there are still some states that don't like diesels in specific vehicle classes, but that again is largely due to paranoia on NOx.
There's little doubt that when saving fuel, if anything needs to be unleaded, it's the driver's foot. The fact that diesels give you more power and torque earlier in the rpm range only means that throttle need not be so hard to get the same kind of performance. But it's a lot harder to train people to be gentle with their feet, and that in turn is why hybrids don't achieve much in the US. Compare that to the same hybrid cars in Japan, where the traffic congestion is so much more severe, that the gas mileage is nearly double what people experience here in the states.
People in this country feel it's their god-given right to have cheap energy and fuel, so that's why they complain when their gas prices are half those of Europe. Hybrids look attractive because it looks on the surface like they'll be saving money on gas without any sacrifices (other than lightening the wallet on the car itself). That's why they complain when it doesn't get EPA's mileage estimates as if it's not their own fault.
Well, no, it's more like we've never experienced the gas prices in Europe, and so our only frame of reference is (for the vast majority of Americans) the local gas prices, which have been increasing fairly dramatically over the last few years. So of course people are going to complain (except people like me, who don't drive muchShootMyMonkey said:
)WhiningKhan
Regular
ShootMyMonkey said:
Yes, like I mentioned earlier, Peugeot/Citroen has diesel/electric hybrid ready.
http://www.technologyreview.com/NanoTech/wtr_16343,303,p1.html?PM=GO
http://www.autoblog.com/2006/01/31/psa-peugeot-citroen-unveils-diesel-hybrid-technology/
ShootMyMonkey said:
While engines themselves are more expensive, the service really isn't, unless you are talking about complete engine overhaul which shouldn't be average consumer's problem. If anything, diesels are generally more reliable and last longer.
.Melchiah.
Regular
archie4oz said:Currently drive a lightly modified 2005 Mini Cooper S...
That's one of the three cars I like the most, along with Chrysler PT Cruiser and my current vehicle, Volkswagen New Beetle 2.0.
.Melchiah.
Regular
hey69 said:so how does that feel, driving months and months on snow and ice?
I'm horrified when i see the slightest snow over here in belgium when I need to drive my rearwheel driven bmw in the snow
It's not that bad when you get used to it. I, and most of the Finns, use to drive at summer speeds (120km/h) at frozen freeways all the time. =P After years of experience you get used to driving in these conditions, and it doesn't feel that hazardous. Says a man, who just yesterday was about to crash onto someone in front of him.
I've driven a BMW couple of times in winter, and I have to say I didn't like it a bit.
