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123 comments on DrumBeat: February 25, 2007
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123 comments on DrumBeat: February 25, 2007
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One radical increase in efficiency. Transfer freight from heavy trucks to electrified rail. 20 BTUa diesel > 1` BTU electricity (joules for y'all metric folk).
Best Hopes,
Alan
If the semis burned natural gas, you might be on-point there....
The #1 source of home heating in the US is natural gas. #2 is heating oil. Heating oil is just diesel without controls on cetane and higher sulfur.
Many industries can switch between natural gas & oil, depending upon price. A number of city buses burn NG, but most burn diesel.
Although a number of small islands burn diesel, it seems unlikely that diesel would become a major source of anything other than emergency power in North America. However, shortfalls of NG will result in more blackouts and much more emergency generation, see China in 2005 as an example. The demand for diesel for on-site generation during blackouts affected world markets.
With some friction, NG & diesel are fungible within a range.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Again, let's double the efficiency of use (for those things we cannot convert). Replace oil furnaces with diesel-driven heat pumps. A Lister-type is about 30% efficient, and a heat pump with an EER of 12 has a coefficient of performance of about 3.5. If heat losses amount to 10%, the net CoP is 0.3*3.5 + 0.6 = 1.65. This is around double the efficiency of the typical oil furnace, cutting fuel requirements in half.
If the coupling between the engine and the heat pump compressor is electric, the system can run on the grid when it is available and use the diesel for backup. The potential for DSM (utility switches the diesels on and off to shave peak loads) ought to have grid managers salivating.