12-03-2008, 03:52 AM
Racer X wrote:
I am still baffled why no one makes a small aluminum-blocked diesel electric hybrid. Small light diesel that runs a generator to suplament batteries. run biodiesel or ultra low sulfur.
FYI, the sulfur is an upper cylinder and injector pump lubricant. These ultra low sulfur blends cause some real challenging engineering problems for the engine manufacturers.
That is why biodiesel is looking attractive. It has a higher lubricant factor than the ULSD and can make up for some of the loss due to going to a lower sulfur content.
On a different issue, production of fuel from non-food plant growth, a researcher here discovered a microbe that is good at making ethanol. It can go directly from cellulose feedstocks such as plant stalks, wood chips and grasses to ethanol. Other microbes have been used in the past, but they took a two-step process to first convert cellulose to sugar and then fermentation to create ethanol. It was discovered in soil samples taken near the Quabbin Reservoir in W. Mass. and the process is currently under development.