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A steam comeback?
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[quote]QUOTE: <i>Originally posted by arbfbe</i> <br /><br />rdganthracite, <br /> <br />You could say the same thing about steam. A steam engine can run on coal, crude oil, vegetable oil, lpg, hydrogen, diesel fuel, gasoline or kerosene. Additionally, they beat out the diesels since they can also run on wood , straw or sugar cane stalks. <br /> <br /> Alan <br />[/quote] <br /> <br />That statement is not correct. Some diesel engines and many gasoline engines were run on wood, straw, lignite and the like by the Germans during WWII when we kept destroying their oilfields and synth crude plants. All you need is a simple gasifier, like most cities in the United States had to supply lighting and heating gas before natural gas became widely distributed. Of course the gassifiers that were installed on the trucks were much smaller than the cities used. A small compressor for the gas and changes to the injectors for diesels or carborators for otto cycle engines to provide the larger volume of fuel needed and you are good to go. <br /> <br />Any fuel that can be liquified, gasified or pulverized can be used successfully in a diesel. And the diesel would still retain its thermal advantages and maintenace advantages. <br /> <br />On the idea of using condensers to recycle the water. That is very old technology. The South African Railway used whole classes of condensing steamers to travel through a desert region. They were such a huge maintenance problem that just as soon as diesels became available to the railway the condensing tenders were discarded and the more modern steamers reassigned.
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