Alright, Dad has a new idea about diesel's. He just got back from out west and brought back a ton of coal in the back of his truck. The new idea is injecting a very fine coal dust into the engine. I told him the engine won't like it, but he is curious what you guys think, so have at it!

 

There has been experiments with coal slurry as an alternate fuel. Union Pacific experimented with a turbine powered locomotive that ran on coal slurry. Only one prototype was built and had major issues with blade erosion.http://utahrails.net/up/diesels/up-d...p#coal-turbine

MikeyB

 

In a new 600

 

He says he won't do it, he's just curious what the EXPERTS think...

 

Is all that coal sittin on a concrete bedliner?

 

coal dust is extremely abrasive. I work in a coal fired power plant and we have to line the coal pipes with ceramic tile or the coal dust will erode through the pipes in short order....along the same lines, it would wear your rings / cylinder walls even quicker.

 

A side note. The first diesel ran on coal dust

 

The question is...how much hp and how long did it last??. Doubt it was towing 16 000 lbs...

 

Rudolph Diesel was our founding father experimenting with the coal dust. Those Germans sure are smart.

 

Our company had a contract with DOE to develop a coal-slurry fueled diesel engine back in the late 1980's and early 1990's. We utilized a single cylinder R&D lab version of the Cooper-Bessemer LSB/LSVB diesel engine line which we manufactured for this R&D work. Injector tip erosion as well as ring and liner wear were a couple of the primary challenges we faced. Eventually, we wound up using ruby injector tips and some tricky, expensive liner and piston ring coating technology to make it work.

As a side note, a lot of this coal slurry development work carried over in an R&D effort to run a diesel on Orimulsion, a mixture of heavy crude oil from the Orinoco basin in Venezuela and water.

Rusty

 

Errm...... did it run on the actual dust or a byproduct of "cooking" the dust. I thought the first diesel ran on something derrived from coal and not coal itself....

 

It's called coal liquefaction, the German Army ran all their thanks on a coal derived fuel during the war.

I did a paper on this in college relating to the "alternative energy sources" craze of the period, it was to long ago to remember the specifics of the process, but I know that there is a group in Pennsylvania now that is trying to get funding to build a plant to convert the huge piles of coal slurry that are left over from the anthricite mining operations of the coal era into a diesel grade fuel.

 

When I worked for Tampa Electric Company, they had an experimental generating plant which used coal gassification. They used a catalyst with steam to produce what they called Syngas. It was highly toxic and they burned it in a gas turbine to produce electricity. I don't know if they are still using it or not.

TECO has coal mines and a transportation subsidary to use coal to generate a huge part of Florida's electricity.

When oil gets more scarce and expensive I expect to see coal being liquefied more as a replacement for Diesel fuel. Gasoline is much more difficult to produce this way which makes Diesel engines more desireable.

Edwin

 

Rudolph Diesel's first engine ran on peanut oil, not coal dust. It wouldn't last long on dust.

When they ran out of fuel for the panzers, Germany turned to coal for fuel. Didn't work too well for them, thank goodness.

 

http://www.dakotagas.com/

they make alot of synfuel and byproducts, but nothing a diesel would run on easily.