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Old 03-23-2005, 01:01 PM
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aklim aklim is offline
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Location: Location: Greenfield WI, USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Habanero
You could just as easily write an article saying peeing in your gas tank improves your mileage and people would probably believe that as well.

And don't try to compare this with the WVO movement. As most of us know, the first "diesel" engines were fueled with vegetable oils. So it isn't really that much of a leap of faith to fuel a modern diesel engine on veg. oil.

If you want to take the environmental route, from what I have read most acetone is currently produced from petrochemical feedstocks. There are fermentation pathways, but if you are going to go that route, why not produce ethanol which is already scientifically proven to be a suitable replacement for gasoline.

Well, if you pee in the tank, it might cause the engine not to work right. In which case, if the tow truck tows it far enough, you have mileage without using fuel so your mpg will actuall go up.

In 1892 Rudolf Diesel was issued a patent for a proposed engine that air would be compressed so much that the temperature would far exceed the ignition temperature of the fuel. Baron von Krupp and Machinenfabrik Augsburg Nurnberg Company in Germany backed Rudolf Diesel financially as well as providing engineers to work with him on the development of an engine that would burn coal dust, because there were mountains of useless coal dust piled up in the Ruhr valley. The first experimental engine was built in 1893 and used high pressure air to blast the coal dust into the combustion chamber. This engine exploded and further developments of using coal dust as a fuel failed, however a compression ignition engine that used oil as fuel was successful and a number of manufacturers were licensed to build similar engines.

The original oil burning engines used very crude mechanical injection equipment so Rudolf Diesel again began using air blast to provide atomization of the fuel as well as turbulence of the mixture. This was very successful and utilized in Rudolf Diesel's third engine built in 1895. This engine was very similar to engines being used today. It was a four-stroke cycle with 450psi compression. Progress in diesel engine development has since depended on improvements in fuel injection technology.


Just because that was what it was designed for 100 years ago doesn't mean that it is the same thing. I don't want to try powering my engine with coal dust either.

I try avoid ethanol gas becasue somehow, the car doesn't see to run as well on ethanol even at 10% levels. The engine power doesn't seem to be quite there and the car seems less responsive, IMO.
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