Engineers develop concept for hybrid heavy-duty trucks
https://news.mit.edu/2019/electric-hybrid-heavy-duty-trucks-0409Long-haul trucks with electric motors combined with gas-alcohol engines could slash pollution levels and greenhouse gases.
David L. Chandler | MIT News Office
April 9, 2019
Heavy-duty trucks, such as the 18-wheelers that transport many of the world’s goods from farm or factory to market, are virtually all powered by diesel engines. They account for a significant portion of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, but little has been done so far to curb their climate-change-inducing exhaust.
Now, researchers at MIT have devised a new way of powering these trucks that could drastically curb pollution, increase efficiency, and reduce or even eliminate their net greenhouse gas emissions.
The concept involves using a plug-in hybrid engine system, in which the truck would be primarily powered by batteries, but with a spark ignition engine (instead of a diesel engine). That engine, which would allow the trucks to conveniently travel the same distances as today’s conventional diesel trucks, would be a flex-fuel model that could run on pure gasoline, pure alcohol, or blends of these fuels.
While the ultimate goal would be to power trucks entirely with batteries, the researchers say, this flex-fuel hybrid option could provide a way for such trucks to gain early entry into the marketplace by overcoming concerns about limited range, cost, or the need for excessive battery weight to achieve longer range.
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...thermodynamics who have fixated on the obviously failed wind and solar fantasy, the idea of converting DME or methanol to gasoline is a terrible, terrible, terrible idea, almost as bad as pure Fisher Tropsch syn gas to gasoline, but not quite as bad as the the idea of batteries.
The people who prattle on about electric vehicles like to imagine that all the energy in the world comes from their idiotic solar and wind schemes which, after half a century of wild cheering and the squandering of trillions of dollars, didn't even produce 11 out of 584 exajoules humanity produced in 2017.
As for DME, it is so vastly superior to all liquid and gaseous fuels currently in use while we all wait for the grand renewable nirvana that never comes, this while millions of people die each year from air pollution, it is absolutely incredible that we don't get it. It can only be considered as pure generalized intellectual laziness.
Gasoline kills people, way more people than DME ever would. It is superior to and can replace gasoline, diesel fuel (FT or otherwise), dangerous natural gas, LPG, and as a refrigerant, superior to fluorohydrocarbons and carbon dioxide.
The critical temperature of DME is 401K (128C), meaning it can be liquified readily well above the boiling point of water.
In fact at 300K, more or less "room temperature" it's pressure is around 600 kPa, or roughly 6 atmospheres. It has a lower vapor pressure than LPG, and nobody is afraid of LPG tanks on their patios while they grill dead animals over open flames.
Saturated Pressure Measurements of Dimethyl Ether at Temperatures from (219 to 361) K (Di Nicola et al, J. Chem. Eng. Data, 2006, 51 (4), pp 1469–1472)
Unlike gasoline, DME is not toxic, and also unlike gasoline, it burns clean with only a slight risk of particulates from Boudouard chemistry.
It is easily removed from water simply by aeration, this in contrast to methanol and of course, crude oil and gasoline.
The purpose of a fuel injector in a diesel engine is to produce vapor, which is more problematic for liquid diesel fuel than it is for DME.
Liquid DME has a slightly lower energy to volume ratio, but given that it so vastly superior to everything else, this is a minor concern.
DME has an atmospheric half-life of about 5 days, compared to the atmospheric half life of gasoline which is on the order of decades for most compounds.
DME is easily accessible using nuclear energy, and any carbon source, including garbage, waste biomass, or carbon dioxide, all of which can be used as a starting material. (Nobel Laureate George Olah, showed that DME requires small amounts of carbon dioxide even for the more common hydrogen/carbon monoxide form of syn gas.
As for this shit for brains "batteries will save our cars and trucks" scam being run by dumb people, I recently discussed the manufacturing and thermodynamics carbon cost of this crap here: The External Cost, Including Climate Cost, of Stationary Batteries For Grid and Off Grid Power.
The paper from the primary scientific literature I discussed in that post is this one: Additional Emissions and Cost from Storing Electricity in Stationary Battery Systems (Schmidt et al Environ. Sci. Technol., 2019, 53 (7), pp 3379–3390)
Here is the relevant graphic showing both the thermodynamic and material losses of this crap we keep hearing while we burst well above 410 ppm after hearing decade after decade of this delusional crap, so delusional as to border on Trumpian criminality, about electric cars and now, electric trucks:
The caption:
One only needs to look at the picture to get it.
It is of course, less than surprising the obvious implications of this post - not even counting the moral cost of the materials - generated little comment here. We only hear what we want to hear, and are disinterested in reality.
We like to make fun of the Repukes for their climate denial, but we are pretty clueless as well, if one takes this battery crap even remotely seriously. We have latched on to lead weights to save ourselves from drowning, not a good idea, and not one which will work.
The ignorance of stating that the goal of humanity should be to make electric vehicles is ethically and scientifically appalling on a planet experiencing an environmental catastrophe. It is astounding that this has any credence whatsoever, but no so astounding one would suppose in a country where there is anyone who would believe that Donald Trump should be President. These two seemingly unrelated examples of delusion are equivalent at least inasmuch they both exhibit the extreme depth of the ignorance underlying them them.
