Lots of people lie about what they've made. Nothing new there.
I notice you ignored my point about hydrocarbons, and how if there were unburned ones left by the normal carb, that they'd show up in the exhaust. Why, oh why, might that be, I wonder?
You should talk to somebody about your hostility problems.
Depends also on when and where they were burned.
The Honda Controlled Velocity Combustion Chamber (CVCC) is (was?) a very smart approach to fuel efficiency. The cylinder was fed a very lean mixture--too lean for reliable spark ignition while the spark plug was housed in a sort of antechamber atop the cylinder which was fed with a rich mixture. The result was reliable ignition of the rich mixture at the plug producing a flame front that reliably ignited the lean mixture in the cylinder, which in turn burned up the fuel almost completely during the power stroke. Overall the engine burned leaner, and therefor more efficiently and cleaner (as Mr Hinz notes the two go hand-in-hand).
My Honda FE got 50-52 mpg on the PA turnpike cruisig with traffic at about 65 mph. That's a car, not a motorcycle.
Lots of little motor-bikes and scooters over there -- a fair number of which get mileage numbers in that range. Top speeds of 65 km/h, or less, (sometimes significantly less) though. Supurbly suited for 'in-town' errands and such, much less so for inter-city travel.
I know of at least 2 that are operating in the U.S. licensed, 'street legal'.
Yeah, you have to reduce the frontal cross-section, and thus aero drag, proportionally, as well. Which is why I continued ....
I'm underwhelmed with those Saab figures -- in that same time-frame, got
23MPG in-town, with a 3200lb Dodge, with a 4.6L V-8 engine in it.In the late 80s a friend was getting 43-44 mpg on the highway, with a Nissan Sentra, with a 2.8L (I believe, might have been a 2.2) engine. With the a/c running. More like 50mpg without the a/c.
Have you ever run the numbers on how much biodiesel one can produce from an acre of farmland in a year?
Uh, how confident are you that they are really two different people?
IIRC the Fiat Spider came close. Google is your friend.
Robert Bonomi wrote: ...
Ethanol is better deal to date, but biodiesel is coming on...net positive energy ratios are improving every year w/ better hybrids and improved processes...neither will ever be 100%, but are both net positives.
I emailed several buyers selected at random... for whatever that's worth.
Made from corn? I have been wondering if it would not be better to use sorghum, which grows well over much of the same range as corn, for producing the sugar used to make ethanol.
Why waste time with farmland when you have all the used oil drom those deep well fryers at the fat farms of the country such as McDonalds, Burger King, etc, available?
Lew
Which relates to the question I posed, how?
How many acres of farmland does it take to produce say, 1,000 barrels of either ethanol or biodiesel?
I'm not arguing about the efficiency of the conversion from 'raw' biomass to 'useable' fuel, Rather, I'm commenting on the ability, or lack thereof, to supplant any significant amount of petroleum imports.
I dunno. maybe because the oil in those fryers -- at maybe 5-10 gallons per site -- typically gets changed far less often than once a week.
Assuming there's 1 such fryer for every 10 people -- I have no real idea, but I suspect its more like 1 per several hundred, if not thousand -- that source will produce an average of 1 gallon/week per person. This isn't exactly a significant dent in usage.
I have a customer who does collect used fryer oil as well as a lot of other waste materials which they render.
They do quite a business these days.
Lew
That's a good question, and I've throw it to at one of our senior reporters at work (farm newspaper) to see if they know the answer.
We ran a story a couple of weeks ago about a research pproject that was close to producing bio-diesel from the animal parts that can no longer be rendered due to the BSE scare and the closure of the US border to our cattle. Interesting stuff. There may be more sources for bio-fuels that simply growing plant matter and converting/digesting it.
Primarily corn, yes. Sorghum doesn't have nearly the sugar content of corn and nowhere nor the yield/acre. Sorghum is essentially a corn substitute where corn is not economical to grow--dryland regions or where excessive fertilizer costs are limiting, for example.
Much production is from hybrids bred specifically for ethanol production and more is going that way every year. I've not seen a specific percentage recently.
I've not seen it in those terms altho it can be derived...what's more significant and what is the focus of all reports I've seen is the NEV (net energy value)--how much energy is available after production inputs, distribution, etc. The production on a per bushel basis isn't so useful a measure so it normally isn't the focus.
Last data I saw was roughly 1.33 for ethanol. I don't recall for biodiesel, but it's >1. Both are improving w/ time, from both improved processes and fuel stock enhancements. Reducing inputs w/ more efficient cultivation practices, reduced water/chemical/fertilizer inputs is also a factor.
Wouldn't do for me for my 90+ miles per day commute, I'm afraid. That and the whole "idiots not seeing bikes" problem.
Well, it was just an example of "car of that weight and displacement not getting 80" I guess was my point. Saab has always been very good about aerodynamics; I think the drag coefficient of the Saab 96 is 0.39 or so, which for a 1960 design is pretty low.
No, I haven't, but I know there's an awful lot of farmland in CRP (or whatever it's called this decade), which could be growing corn for alcohol or soybeans for biodiesel/cattle feed if it paid well enough. I'd rather see the gummint subsidize something like that than some of the other (ahem) stupid stuff it's spending our money on.
Dave Hinz
That's fine for one person, or a small group, but the volume isn't close to what's needed to make it into an infrastructure process.
OK, I did find a reference...for ethanol, 2.65 gal(anhydrous)/bu corn. At 200 bu/A (easy) that's 530 gal/A ==> ~17 bbl/A. So a 1000 bbl ==> 60 A.
The 2.65 gal/bu came from
As a followup I sent a query to the National Biodiesel Board...here's the response...
Extrapolating on basis of 31.5 gal/bbl, that would convert to something under 600 A/1000 bbl, higher than the estimate for ethanol from corn, but still, there are millions of actres in production and additional acres can easily be devoted if needed.
Except those numbers don't add up.
200 bu/a is *really* optimistic. 140-160 is more the 'typical' range for serious corn growing states -- e.g. Iowa, Nebr, Missouri, etc. non-corn-belt states will be significantly lower yields. USDA figures for the 2001 crop put the nation-wide yield at 131+ bu/acre -- the _third_ _highest_ number on record.And a bbl of oil is 42 gallons.
Combined, you get a more realistic number of 9.46 bbl/acre.
Now, here's what I was leading up to ---
A car, driven 15,000 miles/year, and getting 25mpg, will need 14.285 bbl of fuel/year. That's the output from 1.5 acres.
The entire corn crop for the state of Iowa, last year, was 1.2 million acres.
100% conversion to fuel, would be about 800,000 cars worth. Somewhat over _half_ the cars registered in the state. Not counting any bus/truck/etc. demand.Automobile usage is a small part of total fuel consumption. like 1/5 or less. of vehicular use. well under 10% of all petroleum consumption, when you include oil-fired heating, farm implement, and marine use.
Iowa's _entire_ corn crop, used for fuel, might make a 2-3% reduction in petroleum fuel usage in Iowa. With a realistic level of diversion to fuel, you might get a 0.5% reduction _in_Iowa_. On a national basis, probably an order of magnitude (at least) lower.
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