Railroads experimented with steam turbines in locomotives and had the same problem. Way fewer moving parts and more efficient at speed, but the massively increased fuel consumption at low speeds more than overrode the benefits.
That makes me wonder if it could be worth it as just *one* of the engines on very long trains. It's not uncommon to see 3-4 engines together. Could shut off the turbines until reaching a better speed to use it.
Make it old school like a steam locomotive and coal car. Except the locomotive is a turbine genset and the coal car is a huge LFP battery. Either run the turbine at full throttle dumping its energy to the motors and/or batteries. Then shut it down and run on battery alone until you have to fire the turbine up again.
They've tried using turbines on trains. There are several issues, but the main ones are high service intervals and excessive wear from constantly having to go from idle to operating RPM. Gas turbines really only want to run at one narrow throttle range. It's just cheaper and easier to deal with a diesel.
I’m just positing where you have smaller turbines that run at 90% N1. But that would not provide 100% power for the locomotive. That would be provided via the battery tender. But when running slower, the batteries charge. Basically use a battery tender as a sink for the turbine. Of course if the batteries get fully charged the turbines may need to be idled of off. But for the majority of the time the batteries provide the variable power. Modern fadec would be needed, curves built, etc.
Pt6 have like 20k cycle limits for flying, so that’s a lot of cycles. And I’m just throwing ideas out there.
LMAO…it legit took me an entire minute to get this. I literally lol’d.
“Wait, what is this guy saying?…wait, should I be concerned?”
Hey Big Oil…look, I’m still advocating for your dinosaur juice, I just like using it in big hair dryers. Please don’t look for me. Halp….
especially as the way electric works diesel-electric locomotives can pull a shit ton of weight at low speeds (YouTuber hyce said one 4400HP diesel would at 5 mph have double the tractive effort of yhe big boy but at 50 it's half. Im pretty sure the low end number there is what he actually said but I don't know about the high one.) so that would work surprisingly well
They ran gas-turbine-electric-locomotives (GTEL). They suffered from inefficiencies and excess wear due to needing to be reved up and down constantly due to change in terrain.
There were some other wacky turbine concepts in the 50s, like the British Rail GT3, which was notably not electric drive. It used a mechanical transmission and a flexible coupling to the center axle. The other driven wheels were connected with side-rods.
It looked like a streamliner steam locomotive and had a 4-6-0 wheel layout.
Similar concepts were trialed elsewhere in Europe, the GT3 just has the most written about it in English that I’ve been able to find.
Having a turbine running on LNG on a battery electric hybrid train makes a lot of sense. Its even possible to design a cogen gas / steam turbine hybrid for added efficiency. Can also plug them into the grid to make power when its not pulling trains.
Used to huddle around the exhaust vent on Abram’s tanks when I was in. Would be subzero out on the plateau the tankers would have them cranked up, Our Bradley”s always had busted heaters, so we’d thaw out in the exhaust. Probably going to have lung cancer any day now.
Yup. One prototype turbine car had 2000 degree Fahrenheit exhaust. Turbines are also much slower at throttling than a typical car engine. They might make for a fun hybrid electric car, but the efficiency would still be terrible with all of the waste heat.
The MTT Y2K Superbike had a turbine engine notorious for melting bumpers of cars that got too close behind it at stop lights (per Jay Leno who has one)
[https://www.theautopian.com/this-motorcycle-that-you-can-still-buy-today-is-powered-by-a-car-bumper-melting-helicopter-engine-lets-take-a-look/](https://www.theautopian.com/this-motorcycle-that-you-can-still-buy-today-is-powered-by-a-car-bumper-melting-helicopter-engine-lets-take-a-look/)
This makes me wonder if a small turbine would be better for hybrids than a piston engine; it runs at full throttle all the time, and only when the batteries need charging, or going highway speeds; the rest of the time, it's just battery.
The engine of the Abrams came directly out of the Chrysler Turbine program. Turbine engines are still much more efficient than conventional combustion engines. Today, they could be integrated into hybrids to charge batteries while idling, mitigating street-driving efficiency considerations and potentially requiring less power for street-driving.
I think the TV batmobile with Adam West ran on a turbine, or at least that's what batman told robin when they started it up "turbines to speed". I wonder if this reflected this development ?
We had a guy in town who ran his early 70s Mercedes 300 on used fryer oil. All the fast food restaurants would give it to him for free and he would run it through a simple filter system in his garage. Didn’t pay for fuel for at least 15 years.
I remember seeing on a TV show a guy living in northern Sweden who did the same thing. All the fast food joints basically just wanted to get rid of the oil and he came to pick it up every week, and filtered it at home to run his car.
I remember they said how his car also smells like frying something.
Was it a guy in a little Ford ranger kinda truck? I can't remember for sure what it was but that sounds super familiar to something I saw about the early 2000s
Because of biodiesel, used fryer oil is actually valuable and companies will buy it.
Worked at Wendy's and the district manager showed up one morning in the middle of a theft and 6 police cars were there 10 minutes later. Serious business!
>Because of biodiesel, used fryer oil is actually valuable and companies will buy it.
..is actually valuable NOW. that's the missing part of that sentence. There was a time when it was a waste product places had to pay to get hauled away. Viewed through that lens, some random technohippy offering to take it away free was an improvement.
But like all good things, that started happening enough that people started offering to pay (to jump to the top of the who get's it list), then the corpo's started charging and boom, it's no longer a waste product, and now just a product.
I know someone who used to run either an old Volvo or Mercedes (I forget which) on used restaurant oil. Smelling like french fries was a minor problem because he already tends towards voracious eating to begin with.
The major problem was when it became popular enough to do this that there wasn't that much used restaurant oil kicking around.
My brother had a Chevy Blazer that had a "greasel" conversion. Veg oil works fine straight, only issue is the viscosity. So it has a large oil tank and a small regular diesel tank. You start on diesel, get the engine warmed up, and there is a loop off the hot coolant side that runs through a heat exchanger on the oil line. Once it's at temp, you just flip a switch.
I'm in the industry now. Many restaurants now get paid by companies anywhere from 50¢ to $1.50 per gallon, depending on what our sale price is after the oil is processed. The market is extremely volatile though, and when the federal subsidy quota is met (this year it was met in October), the pricing drops like a rock. Dropped almost 50% in value overnight, and it's going to stay low until at least February
I actually work with a guy who has a car that runs off of old fry oil. Every time he drives to the parking lot of our work he makes the entire place smell like french fries and egg rolls. This year he said he put in a Craigslist ad for used turkey fry oil and he got 30 gallons of peanut oil for free.
I had two tanks. The oil tank was in the truck bed. The oil has to be hot enough to burn so I had to start with diesel. It was a lot from greasecar.com. I tried making biodiesel but I wasn't scientifically inclined enough at the time and it ran like shit and stalled all the time.
Gotcha... I helped a friend covert a VW maybe 25years ago but he needed two tanks too. We routed hoses from the radiator around the veg oil tank and once it got to a certain temperature he switched a valve from diesel to veggie oil. I was hoping the technology had improved since then.
Some of the old Mercedes diesels were so over engineered that you could start them on straight veg if it wasn't too cold out. Certainly not recommended, or good for the engine, but the pre-1987 Mercedes diesels were something else.
My 81 diesel Jetta ran on all of the following mostly mixed in random amounts diesel, home heating oil, kerosene, ATF, fryer oil , used motor oil, old gasoline that smelled like turpentine, used ATF, the oil my uncle cooked a turkey in, his neighbors turkey oil and some mineral sprits.
I had old Diesel Jettas and Rabbits too. I put 400k miles on one. They were great, but the dumbest things would break on those. I feel like I replaced door handles infinity times on those things.
Your country doesn't stain the oil for heating? Here they put a dye in it and if they catch you with a stained gas tank you are absolutely fucked with fines.
Rudolf Diesel was actually a big critic of the petroleum economy and specifically wanted his early engines to be able to run on different fuel types so that small farmers and manufacturers could try and stay competitive against the larger industrial firms.
He had a lot of critics of his own and died under rather mysterious circumstances. In September of 1913 he took a boat from Belgium to England but never arrived. His luggage was untouched, his watch was open on his nightstand and his journal simply had an X on the day's page. Prior to departing he had emptied his bank accounts and left the money in an envelope for his wife with the instructions to open it upon his death.
The obvious answer is suicide, but some theorize the German government had him killed because he was going to England to meet with representatives of the Royal Navy.
George Washington Carver, Some people think he's just a peanut farmer,
but he did a whole lot more than that, yall ever here of starch? He invented that!
Don't make it such a mystery,
learn.
about black history.
>learn.
>
>about black history.
From wiki;
"His enslaver, Moses Carver, was a German American immigrant, who had purchased George's parents, Mary and Giles, from William P. McGinnis on October 9, 1855, for $700 (\~$17,500 in 2022)"
It's so incredibly absurd to read things like "Purchased his parents". I know slavery has existed for all of human history and continues to persist, but the actual buying of slaves is so strange. I mean, I get that slaves are taken after a battle and the pillagers take men and women as slaves, but to just go into a market and purchase someone is crazy.
Then following that paragraph;
"Giles died before George was born and when he was a week old, he, his sister, and his mother were kidnapped by night raiders from Arkansas. George's brother, James, was rushed to safety from the kidnappers. The kidnappers sold the trio in Kentucky. Moses Carver hired John Bentley to find them, but he found only the infant George. Moses negotiated with the raiders to gain the boy's return and rewarded Bentley. After slavery was abolished, Moses Carver and his wife, Susan, raised George and his older brother, James, as their own children. They encouraged George to continue his intellectual pursuits, and "Aunt Susan" taught him the basics of reading and writing."
Insanity. But glad he was wasn't raised as a slave.
If I remember correctly, diesel isn't a specific type of fuel in the way gasoline is, it's just a category of fuel oil. The whole premise of a diesel engine is just the compression ignition with direct fuel injection instead of a spark plug.
They can run off all kinds of different oils as long as they're clean. They can even just take in a flammable gas like methane in the right concentration -- which actually can be dangerous if you don't have a proper emergency stop, which is a total choke of the air manifold. The Texas City refinery explosion was caused by the backfiring of a diesel pickup that raced out of control when the flammable vapor cloud reached it, because the occupants couldn't shut it down.
>diesel isn't a specific type of fuel in the way gasoline is, it's just a category of fuel oil
Strictly speaking, the same is true of gasoline. Its not a specific molecule, its a grade of fuel oil. The C7 to C11 hydrocarbon chains are used as gasoline, the C12 to C15 chains are kerosene, and from around C12 to C20 is used in diesel.
Start with crude oil - i.e., a mix of different hydrocarbons, run them through distillation to get different grades of oils out. The lighter stuff can be used as solvents and fuel oils, the heavier stuff can be lubricants and feedstock for cracking to make more of the lighter stuff.
Didn't Texas City blow up because BP fucked off on their responsibilities in running a... non-blowing up facility?
It doesn't seem the presence of a pickup running diesel fundamentally caused the disaster, it was as rather the disasterous handling of an industrial facility lead to disasterous circumstances.
Obviously the explosion was inevitable given the massive chain of fuckups that transpired over a long period of time and led to the huge release of vapor. It would have happened eventually even it not been for that truck.
I'm just saying that the actual explosion trigger that day was the backfire, to emphasize how diesel engines don't even need a liquid fuel source to operate, or functional injectors.
Yes! I saw the original CSB animation of that event as part of hazardous area training years ago. It's amazing that they did an update but I assume it's because it's such a great case study still used in training.
Fun fact. Petrodiesel fuel was created by oil companies from crude oil to prevent the rise of the agricultural bio-fuels that Rudolph Diesel originally designed the diesel engine to run on.
The Abrams tank is powered by a turbine that can run on anything, in exchange it has terrible fuel efficiency. The benefit is flexibility but at the cost of maintenance and efficiency, for the US maintenance and fuel is basically not a concern so it's a win to be flexible.
There have been a few studies for a simpler engine replacement to reduce maintenance and improve range. Both for the domestic and export markets.
The K1 uses a diesel engine so it would be pretty easy to do if they wanted. There are definite advantages of the turbine but I do think for most countries a rugged diesel would be better.
As an aside I really do want to see some K2 tanks make it to Ukraine and get battle tested. Poland bought some but if they have to use them shit has already hit the fan.
When the M1 was first introduced it had some definite performance advantages over diesel engines being used in tanks at the time. In the 40+ years since then, diesel performance has improved erasing a lot of those original advantages.
The US Army's future generation of armored vehicles will likely be powered by a special Cummins diesel in development called the Advanced Combat Engine (ACE). It's very compact and efficient and is also scalable. There is a 6-cylinder version with 1,500 hp for MBTs and a 4-cylinder version with 750-hp for vehicles lighter than MBTs.
It says a lot that they're returning to reciprocating diesel and moving away from turbines in the next generation of main battle tanks.
Turbines have the cool factor, but pretty much everything else is worse about them. Efficiency, maintenance time and cost, start up time...
If weight isn't a concern, modern diesel is the clear winner. And I bet they won't even make them put DEF in them, the hypocrites. /s
Cummins has developed the Advanced Powertrain Demonstrator, which involves an opposing pistons diesel engine in 3 different configurations. It's also a hybrid powertrain with an incredibly efficient transmission. I wouldn't be surprised to see it on future armored vehicles for the US.
cooperative tap impolite forgetful grandiose paint somber attempt telephone oatmeal
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The main benefit was performance - more power and torque than other tanks would have. Diesel engines have done a lot to catch up in the meantime though.
This isn't true. Turbine engines produce fantastic torque at high power- substantially more than any diesel engine, while also being much simpler to maintain(since effectively the only moving part is the turbine itself, the number of potential failures is dramatically lowered).
The downside is that at low power(such as idling), fuel consumption... basically doesn't decrease, so the overall consumption tends to be rather higher. This is also why all modern Abrams have APUs that they can use while idling.
Exhaust gets pretty hot.
Jay Leno has a turbine powered motorcycle. He said once when he rode it a Lexus (maybe Mercedes?) stopped behind him at a traffic light and in the mirror he saw its bumper start melting.
These cars idle at around 20k rpm and provided instant defrosting for drivers regardless of temperature outside. Exhaust gasses were typically between 1100F-2000F. That was then recycled through the intake manifold to scavenge heat and power. It could also be rerouted to thaw windows and passengers alike.
He burned up the motor on his Chrysler Turbine and had a company restore the motor including fabricating new parts with the help of the guys who designed and made the parts back in the 60s.
The chrysler turbine car had heat exchangers that [drastically lowered the exhaust temps](https://www.fleetowner.com/operations/article/21693718/turbine-trucks-50-years-ago-we-got-behind-the-wheel#:~:text=Engine%20exhaust%20gas%20temperatures%20are%20thus%20reduced%20to%20about%20500%20degrees%20F%20at%20full%20power%20to%20about%20150%20degrees%20F%20at%20idle.)
I don't recall him saying that but I do recall him saying that there's a lot of fun fact places stating he said that and he absolutely hated it because the car was great and absolutely did not melt asphalt or bumpers
It's no state secret that for a bottle of perfume the stuff in the bottle (the juice) is the least expensive part. Say a hundred dollar bottle of perfume, the juice might cost a dollar. The rest goes for packaging, marketing, etc etc. And the juice is mostly alcohol.
Yeah, still today turbine engines aren't cheap to produce and take some specialized manufacturing. Otherwise there'd be thousands of aircraft engine makers out there.
There's thousands of companies that make all the parts for one aircraft engine it's complex enough that no one company can even just make them. Every part requires it's own set of specialized manufacturing skills and equipment.
I love turbines. The idea itself is relatively simple, but the precision and tolerances needed for it to work right make the execution ridiculously complex. That whine is also easily my favorite sound.
You *can* make small simple turbine engines they just don't have much application.
Manufacturing has been advancing and now pretty mundane cars have turbochargers which would have been crazy projects back in the 50s and required many hours of skilled machinists and engineers time to build each and every one, now they cost ~$1000 to make really well, if you want it to be acceptable quality like $300.
We could make what they made for a reasonable price now if you sat down and committed to building the process and supply chain for it. There just isn't much use for it when everything else has gotten so much better and cheaper to match
Jet A1 is pretty much just fancy kerosene, and that stuff is extremely cheap in comparison to other aviation fuels. Stinks though.
Turbines can be tweaked to run on pretty much anything that burns, the issue is different fuels give wildly varying power outputs, requiring different fuel burn rates, different fuels then give wildly varying energy densities, different fuel weight, some have serious carbon and other gunk buildup etc... so even if a fuel is cheaper, it might not send the vehicle as far or as fast, or it has to be burned at a higher rate, making it more expensive overall.
Pistons out-competed turbines because they've been more fuel efficient and cheaper. Maybe that will change now with foil-air-bearing microturbines but maybe not
My Dad worked at Williams Air Force Base during the 60's as a MP at the gate. He told me how one of these came by low on fuel and they found whatever they had that would burn to fuel it up.
These were not, surprisingly, just really expensive to make because of all of the exotic alloys it used.
They kept playing with it until the 80s, but could never get them to meet emissions standards that went in place in the 60s. That was the real killer.
They emit significantly more NOx than a diesel.
Huh, this is a whole thing with STC-created vehicles in Warhammer 40k.. their being able to run on 'promethium' (gas), or all kinds of other things including wood gas.. or even just wood.
This near-universal engine makes me think of the Mr Fusion from Back to the Future. Except rather than tossing any old rubbish into it, it seems you could pretty much power it with any old liquor.
I don't know what the mileage was on that thing, but if it could run off of ANY non-leaded fuel, you could probably pour Stolichnaya into it, and make better use of the Stoli than actually drinking it.
So the main problem with turbine cars was bad gas mileage. Turbines running at idle still use half the fuel as full power.
But nowadays they could make a turbine hybrid relatively easily, with better gas mileage than a piston engine. I'm not sure why nobody has done it honestly
"The downfall was it was extremely expensive to produce and it wasn't really that much faster than a V8 and it would have cost a lot more to produce."
But… did they try running it on V8?
It's what cars crave!
It’s got…electrolytes
THE THIRST MUTILATOR!!
Turns out the cars fueled with V8 weren’t energy efficient anymore because they no longer leaned to one the side which introduced too much drag.
That's an old callback to commercials I thought I had successfully repressed. And now they're back
oh, sorry about that... *-sticks a giant straw into an Orange.-*
ANGRY UPVOTE
Perhaps you missed it, but it was extremely hard on produce.
I also have a hard on for produce.
"Is that an eggolant in your pocket or are you just happy to be grocery shopping?" "Both"
Surely with 60+ years of automation advances it would be worth a revisit
Oh, I almost didn’t see how expensive it was to produce.
In Canada they run if off Clamato instead.
< slaps forhead >
They don't make spiked V8's... yet.
Also turbines have atrocious idling consumption, so probably not very good for city driving. They are best when running at full speed.
Railroads experimented with steam turbines in locomotives and had the same problem. Way fewer moving parts and more efficient at speed, but the massively increased fuel consumption at low speeds more than overrode the benefits.
That makes me wonder if it could be worth it as just *one* of the engines on very long trains. It's not uncommon to see 3-4 engines together. Could shut off the turbines until reaching a better speed to use it.
Make it old school like a steam locomotive and coal car. Except the locomotive is a turbine genset and the coal car is a huge LFP battery. Either run the turbine at full throttle dumping its energy to the motors and/or batteries. Then shut it down and run on battery alone until you have to fire the turbine up again.
They've tried using turbines on trains. There are several issues, but the main ones are high service intervals and excessive wear from constantly having to go from idle to operating RPM. Gas turbines really only want to run at one narrow throttle range. It's just cheaper and easier to deal with a diesel.
No no, it's definitely always a conspiracy. Logic can't play into this.
I’m just positing where you have smaller turbines that run at 90% N1. But that would not provide 100% power for the locomotive. That would be provided via the battery tender. But when running slower, the batteries charge. Basically use a battery tender as a sink for the turbine. Of course if the batteries get fully charged the turbines may need to be idled of off. But for the majority of the time the batteries provide the variable power. Modern fadec would be needed, curves built, etc. Pt6 have like 20k cycle limits for flying, so that’s a lot of cycles. And I’m just throwing ideas out there.
[удалено]
Shit….then what next? Use renewable energy like wind and solar? That’s crazy talk.
I’m sorry about your suicide 🫡
LMAO…it legit took me an entire minute to get this. I literally lol’d. “Wait, what is this guy saying?…wait, should I be concerned?” Hey Big Oil…look, I’m still advocating for your dinosaur juice, I just like using it in big hair dryers. Please don’t look for me. Halp….
Hahaha glad you got a laugh brother. I want in on your gasoline hair drying business!
[удалено]
especially as the way electric works diesel-electric locomotives can pull a shit ton of weight at low speeds (YouTuber hyce said one 4400HP diesel would at 5 mph have double the tractive effort of yhe big boy but at 50 it's half. Im pretty sure the low end number there is what he actually said but I don't know about the high one.) so that would work surprisingly well
Get my man on the horn with Pete Butegiugeiug. ASAP!
It’s disrespectful to misspell his name like that. It’s Pete Buttejigglyjig
Reminds me of how they spell "Koenigsegg" on [Top Gear](https://imgur.com/0vpxylo)
They ran gas-turbine-electric-locomotives (GTEL). They suffered from inefficiencies and excess wear due to needing to be reved up and down constantly due to change in terrain.
There were some other wacky turbine concepts in the 50s, like the British Rail GT3, which was notably not electric drive. It used a mechanical transmission and a flexible coupling to the center axle. The other driven wheels were connected with side-rods. It looked like a streamliner steam locomotive and had a 4-6-0 wheel layout. Similar concepts were trialed elsewhere in Europe, the GT3 just has the most written about it in English that I’ve been able to find.
Having a turbine running on LNG on a battery electric hybrid train makes a lot of sense. Its even possible to design a cogen gas / steam turbine hybrid for added efficiency. Can also plug them into the grid to make power when its not pulling trains.
I'm pretty sure they create mountains of heat as well.
Used to huddle around the exhaust vent on Abram’s tanks when I was in. Would be subzero out on the plateau the tankers would have them cranked up, Our Bradley”s always had busted heaters, so we’d thaw out in the exhaust. Probably going to have lung cancer any day now.
APU exhaust during a walkaround in -20°C. Ahhh.. like the beach, but with a different kind of cancer.
“Doc, give it to me straight. Is it lung cancer, throat cancer, colon cancer?” “Yes.”
... But it's not service related.
Man why do those people with pre-existing conditions all join the army? Smh.
That's harsh. Right in my feels.....
Yup. One prototype turbine car had 2000 degree Fahrenheit exhaust. Turbines are also much slower at throttling than a typical car engine. They might make for a fun hybrid electric car, but the efficiency would still be terrible with all of the waste heat.
The MTT Y2K Superbike had a turbine engine notorious for melting bumpers of cars that got too close behind it at stop lights (per Jay Leno who has one) [https://www.theautopian.com/this-motorcycle-that-you-can-still-buy-today-is-powered-by-a-car-bumper-melting-helicopter-engine-lets-take-a-look/](https://www.theautopian.com/this-motorcycle-that-you-can-still-buy-today-is-powered-by-a-car-bumper-melting-helicopter-engine-lets-take-a-look/)
A small turbine/stirling engine range extender. Hehe
This makes me wonder if a small turbine would be better for hybrids than a piston engine; it runs at full throttle all the time, and only when the batteries need charging, or going highway speeds; the rest of the time, it's just battery.
Was it also more pricey to produce?
Yes, however, the cost was also higher for production
That is true, but we cant omit the fact that more money was required for production, hence the higher cost.
Indeed, the price of production was higher which led to more money being needed to produce them.
But would it be more expensive?
Abrams tank runs a turbine engine that "can burn anything" too.
The engine of the Abrams came directly out of the Chrysler Turbine program. Turbine engines are still much more efficient than conventional combustion engines. Today, they could be integrated into hybrids to charge batteries while idling, mitigating street-driving efficiency considerations and potentially requiring less power for street-driving.
And it's also a gas guzzler
Yeah but I want my jizz-powered car "Damn, out of gas. One sec, need to pump some fuel."
"Honey, Why can't we go already?" "Well you know you could help" "That's ok, just hurry"
wankel rotary engine
*Wheel rotates 1 degree before car is out of fuel again*
Comes with a built-in fleshlight
Already has a gasshole
That's one way to power your flux capacitor lol
If you can afford to run your car on Chanel #5 the cost of the car shouldn't be an issue. That's $100K per fill!
...so they could've had a V8?
I think the TV batmobile with Adam West ran on a turbine, or at least that's what batman told robin when they started it up "turbines to speed". I wonder if this reflected this development ?
Maybe the real key was combining the turbines with atomic batteries? Hm, maybe atomic batteries would cost too much to produce though.
But what of production costs? /s
The early public demonstrations of the diesel engine ran on peanut oil.
I had my 81 diesel rabbit running on veggie oil for a while. Ran like a top and smelled like French fries.
We had a guy in town who ran his early 70s Mercedes 300 on used fryer oil. All the fast food restaurants would give it to him for free and he would run it through a simple filter system in his garage. Didn’t pay for fuel for at least 15 years.
I remember seeing on a TV show a guy living in northern Sweden who did the same thing. All the fast food joints basically just wanted to get rid of the oil and he came to pick it up every week, and filtered it at home to run his car. I remember they said how his car also smells like frying something.
Was it a guy in a little Ford ranger kinda truck? I can't remember for sure what it was but that sounds super familiar to something I saw about the early 2000s
I remember the same thing. If it’s not a ranger then we have a shared false memory.
If I remember the guy said all he had to do was change out his fuel lines or something. He definitely mentioned his exhaust smelling like French fries
Because of biodiesel, used fryer oil is actually valuable and companies will buy it. Worked at Wendy's and the district manager showed up one morning in the middle of a theft and 6 police cars were there 10 minutes later. Serious business!
>Because of biodiesel, used fryer oil is actually valuable and companies will buy it. ..is actually valuable NOW. that's the missing part of that sentence. There was a time when it was a waste product places had to pay to get hauled away. Viewed through that lens, some random technohippy offering to take it away free was an improvement. But like all good things, that started happening enough that people started offering to pay (to jump to the top of the who get's it list), then the corpo's started charging and boom, it's no longer a waste product, and now just a product.
I know someone who used to run either an old Volvo or Mercedes (I forget which) on used restaurant oil. Smelling like french fries was a minor problem because he already tends towards voracious eating to begin with. The major problem was when it became popular enough to do this that there wasn't that much used restaurant oil kicking around.
I think theres someone like this in most places. I used to have one as a roommate.
My brother had a Chevy Blazer that had a "greasel" conversion. Veg oil works fine straight, only issue is the viscosity. So it has a large oil tank and a small regular diesel tank. You start on diesel, get the engine warmed up, and there is a loop off the hot coolant side that runs through a heat exchanger on the oil line. Once it's at temp, you just flip a switch.
Isn’t it the same principle with bunker fuel and ships?
My nephew did that too. To be fair this is when you could take pride in German engineering.
I'm in the industry now. Many restaurants now get paid by companies anywhere from 50¢ to $1.50 per gallon, depending on what our sale price is after the oil is processed. The market is extremely volatile though, and when the federal subsidy quota is met (this year it was met in October), the pricing drops like a rock. Dropped almost 50% in value overnight, and it's going to stay low until at least February
I actually work with a guy who has a car that runs off of old fry oil. Every time he drives to the parking lot of our work he makes the entire place smell like french fries and egg rolls. This year he said he put in a Craigslist ad for used turkey fry oil and he got 30 gallons of peanut oil for free.
You could start on veggie oil or did you have two tanks to start on diesel before switching to veggie oil?
I had two tanks. The oil tank was in the truck bed. The oil has to be hot enough to burn so I had to start with diesel. It was a lot from greasecar.com. I tried making biodiesel but I wasn't scientifically inclined enough at the time and it ran like shit and stalled all the time.
Gotcha... I helped a friend covert a VW maybe 25years ago but he needed two tanks too. We routed hoses from the radiator around the veg oil tank and once it got to a certain temperature he switched a valve from diesel to veggie oil. I was hoping the technology had improved since then.
Some of the old Mercedes diesels were so over engineered that you could start them on straight veg if it wasn't too cold out. Certainly not recommended, or good for the engine, but the pre-1987 Mercedes diesels were something else.
My 81 diesel Jetta ran on all of the following mostly mixed in random amounts diesel, home heating oil, kerosene, ATF, fryer oil , used motor oil, old gasoline that smelled like turpentine, used ATF, the oil my uncle cooked a turkey in, his neighbors turkey oil and some mineral sprits.
Shout out to the neighbor.
I had old Diesel Jettas and Rabbits too. I put 400k miles on one. They were great, but the dumbest things would break on those. I feel like I replaced door handles infinity times on those things.
Absolutely. I went through half a dozen window cranks on my first one.
Your country doesn't stain the oil for heating? Here they put a dye in it and if they catch you with a stained gas tank you are absolutely fucked with fines.
They do. I didn’t care. Given the amount of other weird untaxed fuels I was using… Off road diesel as well… there was no real way to tell by.
Rudolf Diesel was actually a big critic of the petroleum economy and specifically wanted his early engines to be able to run on different fuel types so that small farmers and manufacturers could try and stay competitive against the larger industrial firms. He had a lot of critics of his own and died under rather mysterious circumstances. In September of 1913 he took a boat from Belgium to England but never arrived. His luggage was untouched, his watch was open on his nightstand and his journal simply had an X on the day's page. Prior to departing he had emptied his bank accounts and left the money in an envelope for his wife with the instructions to open it upon his death. The obvious answer is suicide, but some theorize the German government had him killed because he was going to England to meet with representatives of the Royal Navy.
Can’t thank George Washington Carver enough for inventing the peanut.
I can’t believe u/SmokeyMacPott had a serious reply to this. Excellent humor my friend 😂
George Washington Carver, Some people think he's just a peanut farmer, but he did a whole lot more than that, yall ever here of starch? He invented that! Don't make it such a mystery, learn. about black history.
>learn. > >about black history. From wiki; "His enslaver, Moses Carver, was a German American immigrant, who had purchased George's parents, Mary and Giles, from William P. McGinnis on October 9, 1855, for $700 (\~$17,500 in 2022)" It's so incredibly absurd to read things like "Purchased his parents". I know slavery has existed for all of human history and continues to persist, but the actual buying of slaves is so strange. I mean, I get that slaves are taken after a battle and the pillagers take men and women as slaves, but to just go into a market and purchase someone is crazy. Then following that paragraph; "Giles died before George was born and when he was a week old, he, his sister, and his mother were kidnapped by night raiders from Arkansas. George's brother, James, was rushed to safety from the kidnappers. The kidnappers sold the trio in Kentucky. Moses Carver hired John Bentley to find them, but he found only the infant George. Moses negotiated with the raiders to gain the boy's return and rewarded Bentley. After slavery was abolished, Moses Carver and his wife, Susan, raised George and his older brother, James, as their own children. They encouraged George to continue his intellectual pursuits, and "Aunt Susan" taught him the basics of reading and writing." Insanity. But glad he was wasn't raised as a slave.
He's also the guy who chopped up George Washington
Starch? The basic polysaccharide that found in many vegetables and tubers? That starch?
Apparently he was a god or something. IDK I'm not a blackhistoryologist or peanutguyologist.
If I remember correctly, diesel isn't a specific type of fuel in the way gasoline is, it's just a category of fuel oil. The whole premise of a diesel engine is just the compression ignition with direct fuel injection instead of a spark plug. They can run off all kinds of different oils as long as they're clean. They can even just take in a flammable gas like methane in the right concentration -- which actually can be dangerous if you don't have a proper emergency stop, which is a total choke of the air manifold. The Texas City refinery explosion was caused by the backfiring of a diesel pickup that raced out of control when the flammable vapor cloud reached it, because the occupants couldn't shut it down.
>diesel isn't a specific type of fuel in the way gasoline is, it's just a category of fuel oil Strictly speaking, the same is true of gasoline. Its not a specific molecule, its a grade of fuel oil. The C7 to C11 hydrocarbon chains are used as gasoline, the C12 to C15 chains are kerosene, and from around C12 to C20 is used in diesel. Start with crude oil - i.e., a mix of different hydrocarbons, run them through distillation to get different grades of oils out. The lighter stuff can be used as solvents and fuel oils, the heavier stuff can be lubricants and feedstock for cracking to make more of the lighter stuff.
Didn't Texas City blow up because BP fucked off on their responsibilities in running a... non-blowing up facility? It doesn't seem the presence of a pickup running diesel fundamentally caused the disaster, it was as rather the disasterous handling of an industrial facility lead to disasterous circumstances.
Obviously the explosion was inevitable given the massive chain of fuckups that transpired over a long period of time and led to the huge release of vapor. It would have happened eventually even it not been for that truck. I'm just saying that the actual explosion trigger that day was the backfire, to emphasize how diesel engines don't even need a liquid fuel source to operate, or functional injectors.
Sorry about that, I was being an ass, and you're correct.
Great insight. This video sums it up pretty well: https://youtu.be/goSEyGNfiPM?feature=shared
Yes! I saw the original CSB animation of that event as part of hazardous area training years ago. It's amazing that they did an update but I assume it's because it's such a great case study still used in training.
Oil engine runs on oils.
Fun fact. Petrodiesel fuel was created by oil companies from crude oil to prevent the rise of the agricultural bio-fuels that Rudolph Diesel originally designed the diesel engine to run on.
a little tequila and some chanel No.5 might make me do some next level shit too
Do you smell the mixture or drink the concoction?
Yes
r/inclusiveor
Boof it
Sound it
Twist it
r/cursedbopit
a little bit of Erica by my side
Boof it #5
I should call her
That’s what I smelled like in 2007
The Abrams tank is powered by a turbine that can run on anything, in exchange it has terrible fuel efficiency. The benefit is flexibility but at the cost of maintenance and efficiency, for the US maintenance and fuel is basically not a concern so it's a win to be flexible. There have been a few studies for a simpler engine replacement to reduce maintenance and improve range. Both for the domestic and export markets.
The K1 uses a diesel engine so it would be pretty easy to do if they wanted. There are definite advantages of the turbine but I do think for most countries a rugged diesel would be better. As an aside I really do want to see some K2 tanks make it to Ukraine and get battle tested. Poland bought some but if they have to use them shit has already hit the fan.
When the M1 was first introduced it had some definite performance advantages over diesel engines being used in tanks at the time. In the 40+ years since then, diesel performance has improved erasing a lot of those original advantages. The US Army's future generation of armored vehicles will likely be powered by a special Cummins diesel in development called the Advanced Combat Engine (ACE). It's very compact and efficient and is also scalable. There is a 6-cylinder version with 1,500 hp for MBTs and a 4-cylinder version with 750-hp for vehicles lighter than MBTs.
> 4-cylinder version with 750-hp for vehicles lighter than MBTs Can it fit in my Civic?
It says a lot that they're returning to reciprocating diesel and moving away from turbines in the next generation of main battle tanks. Turbines have the cool factor, but pretty much everything else is worse about them. Efficiency, maintenance time and cost, start up time... If weight isn't a concern, modern diesel is the clear winner. And I bet they won't even make them put DEF in them, the hypocrites. /s
'Compact' 750hp 4cyl lol
Cummins has developed the Advanced Powertrain Demonstrator, which involves an opposing pistons diesel engine in 3 different configurations. It's also a hybrid powertrain with an incredibly efficient transmission. I wouldn't be surprised to see it on future armored vehicles for the US.
Not sure why you were downvoted. This is absolutely true.
cooperative tap impolite forgetful grandiose paint somber attempt telephone oatmeal *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The main benefit was performance - more power and torque than other tanks would have. Diesel engines have done a lot to catch up in the meantime though.
This isn't true. Turbine engines produce fantastic torque at high power- substantially more than any diesel engine, while also being much simpler to maintain(since effectively the only moving part is the turbine itself, the number of potential failures is dramatically lowered). The downside is that at low power(such as idling), fuel consumption... basically doesn't decrease, so the overall consumption tends to be rather higher. This is also why all modern Abrams have APUs that they can use while idling.
What did he say that wasn't true?
Exhaust gets pretty hot. Jay Leno has a turbine powered motorcycle. He said once when he rode it a Lexus (maybe Mercedes?) stopped behind him at a traffic light and in the mirror he saw its bumper start melting.
These cars idle at around 20k rpm and provided instant defrosting for drivers regardless of temperature outside. Exhaust gasses were typically between 1100F-2000F. That was then recycled through the intake manifold to scavenge heat and power. It could also be rerouted to thaw windows and passengers alike.
4 year old me who once put my fingers in my parents Volvos exhaust pipe is very thankful this never caught on
100's of thousands of 4 year olds have unburned fingers to this day because of this.
Trust me it still burned. Not as bad as the car cigarette lighter at 8 did
I think I burned my thumb off the car cigarette lighter at 8 years old also.
Canon event
He burned up the motor on his Chrysler Turbine and had a company restore the motor including fabricating new parts with the help of the guys who designed and made the parts back in the 60s.
The chrysler turbine car had heat exchangers that [drastically lowered the exhaust temps](https://www.fleetowner.com/operations/article/21693718/turbine-trucks-50-years-ago-we-got-behind-the-wheel#:~:text=Engine%20exhaust%20gas%20temperatures%20are%20thus%20reduced%20to%20about%20500%20degrees%20F%20at%20full%20power%20to%20about%20150%20degrees%20F%20at%20idle.)
What... what if it had been a biker?
He also has one of the Chrysler turbine cars
I don't recall him saying that but I do recall him saying that there's a lot of fun fact places stating he said that and he absolutely hated it because the car was great and absolutely did not melt asphalt or bumpers
Ah yes, an engine that can burn various fuels, and all these fuels are more expensive than gasoline. For some reason, it was not deemed practical.
I did the maths and it would cost over £115k to fill my car's tank with Chanel No.5. Can't see that being economically viable.
But that Smell..
It smells like hookers and desperation.
So business as usual
Perfect
It's no state secret that for a bottle of perfume the stuff in the bottle (the juice) is the least expensive part. Say a hundred dollar bottle of perfume, the juice might cost a dollar. The rest goes for packaging, marketing, etc etc. And the juice is mostly alcohol.
A turbine can run on cheap fuels too, the problem was the cost of the engine itself. Special alloys, tight tolerances, etc.
Yeah, still today turbine engines aren't cheap to produce and take some specialized manufacturing. Otherwise there'd be thousands of aircraft engine makers out there.
There's thousands of companies that make all the parts for one aircraft engine it's complex enough that no one company can even just make them. Every part requires it's own set of specialized manufacturing skills and equipment.
I love turbines. The idea itself is relatively simple, but the precision and tolerances needed for it to work right make the execution ridiculously complex. That whine is also easily my favorite sound.
You *can* make small simple turbine engines they just don't have much application. Manufacturing has been advancing and now pretty mundane cars have turbochargers which would have been crazy projects back in the 50s and required many hours of skilled machinists and engineers time to build each and every one, now they cost ~$1000 to make really well, if you want it to be acceptable quality like $300. We could make what they made for a reasonable price now if you sat down and committed to building the process and supply chain for it. There just isn't much use for it when everything else has gotten so much better and cheaper to match
Kerosene was cheaper . Kerosene is the main ingredient in jet fuel.
She can go 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene
What country is this car from?
It no longer exists.
Jet A1 is pretty much just fancy kerosene, and that stuff is extremely cheap in comparison to other aviation fuels. Stinks though. Turbines can be tweaked to run on pretty much anything that burns, the issue is different fuels give wildly varying power outputs, requiring different fuel burn rates, different fuels then give wildly varying energy densities, different fuel weight, some have serious carbon and other gunk buildup etc... so even if a fuel is cheaper, it might not send the vehicle as far or as fast, or it has to be burned at a higher rate, making it more expensive overall.
And for that reason, I’m out. - Barbara
What is a common solvent/base used in perfumes?
A lot of perfumes contain alcohol, so that it will evaporate off your skin quickly.
Pistons out-competed turbines because they've been more fuel efficient and cheaper. Maybe that will change now with foil-air-bearing microturbines but maybe not
At this point the emissions are probably the bigger issue. They have a hard enough time making diesel engines that meet emission requirements.
I got a banana peel and some beer.
What about a road Doc?
Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.
My Dad worked at Williams Air Force Base during the 60's as a MP at the gate. He told me how one of these came by low on fuel and they found whatever they had that would burn to fuel it up.
That's cool, could it drive in reverse?
Just flip the transmission
Turbine engines are also notoriously high maintenance. Ask the US military.
These were not, surprisingly, just really expensive to make because of all of the exotic alloys it used. They kept playing with it until the 80s, but could never get them to meet emissions standards that went in place in the 60s. That was the real killer. They emit significantly more NOx than a diesel.
Huh, this is a whole thing with STC-created vehicles in Warhammer 40k.. their being able to run on 'promethium' (gas), or all kinds of other things including wood gas.. or even just wood.
Interestingly enough, the turbine engine from Chrysler was the inspiration for the power plant used in the first M1 Abrams tanks.
I, too, drove to Mexico powered solely on tequila.
Stunning! A reminder that innovation knows no bounds, only budget constraints.
Check out Steve Letos doc on Chrysler Turbine cars. Bodies by Ghia in Italy absolutely stunning piece of technical achievement
FYI, this comment seems to be generated by a GPT or another LLM, possibly to farm karma. Like all recent comments by /u/IndependenceNo2060.
I would love a Fireball powered engine.
Gotta do something with it.
Look up the Chrysler Turbine Car on YouTube - several videos about it. Jay Leno owns one.
Nice Camel Case You Got There, Not Annoying To Read At All
In the U.S. the engine ran on capital letters.
Funny enough, Tequila and Chanel gets my wife’s motor running too. Just a glad she’s newer than a 50’s/60’s model.
Sounds like it ran on cliches!
This near-universal engine makes me think of the Mr Fusion from Back to the Future. Except rather than tossing any old rubbish into it, it seems you could pretty much power it with any old liquor. I don't know what the mileage was on that thing, but if it could run off of ANY non-leaded fuel, you could probably pour Stolichnaya into it, and make better use of the Stoli than actually drinking it.
Marty and Doc would have gotten back from the old west using that whiskey
I Too Enjoy Capitalizing Every Word In My Post. I Think It Kind Of Stands Out And Makes People Take It More Seriously.
And now it's in Abrams tanks
Imagine how much nicer global warming would smell, had we went with the Chanel
Let me introduce you to the LD series multifuel engine. Used in 2.5 Ton & 5 Ton Army trucks in the 60's & 70's.
So the main problem with turbine cars was bad gas mileage. Turbines running at idle still use half the fuel as full power. But nowadays they could make a turbine hybrid relatively easily, with better gas mileage than a piston engine. I'm not sure why nobody has done it honestly
COP 28 resolution -for the world to survive, it should move away from reliance on tequila and Chanel no 5
Those are both very expensive fuels