Posted on 08/19/2006 7:56:28 PM PDT by nicollo
As the Auto Age Dawned, Gasoline Wasn't King
By Steven Levingston Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, August 13, 2006; F01
D.H. Killeffer had a dire warning for gasoline-greedy Americans. The chemical engineer had crunched the numbers -- he compared the country's production of crude oil with its thirst for gasoline. "Estimates based on the most complete data now available place the end of our gasoline supply between ten and twenty years, with the odds in favor of ten rather than twenty," Killeffer, secretary of the New York division of the American Chemical Society, wrote in the New York Times.
The year was 1925.
Gasoline-powered travel was still new enough, Killeffer thought, that it was possible to break an incipient addiction to the fuel. "The general public is not necessarily committed to the gasoline-operated automobile for its transportation," he wrote. "It need not worry if it should become more economical in the future to fall back on steam or on electricity to get itself and its goods from one place to another. Even horses might again come into use in such a way as to supply the necessary transportation."
As a first recourse, Killeffer urged the auto industry to improve the efficiency of its engines. But because, as he said, "the end of petroleum and of gasoline as we now know them is imminent," he also encouraged a wide-ranging exploration for the best alternative fuel. He placed his bet on alcohol-powered engines.
Killeffer, obviously, was no prophet. But he stands as a telling symbol of where we have been and, it seems, where we will always be: fretting about the supply of gasoline and which fuel, if any, can provide a cheaper and more plentiful alternative.
... snip ....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
So he sought me out, and I assisted with the article, but not so as to correct some of the problems in it. (Basically, my ideas didn't jibe with his thesis.) Nevertheless, the writer was earnest and honest, and it's a good article. It shows, however, how quick looks at history can be misleading. He came up with the idea for the article after discovering in the historical newspaper databases a 1925 pronouncement of the coming end of petroleum fields. Not knowing the context of 1925, he made some poor assumptions. In 1924, for example, the government announced that national oil production was down from the previous year. This alarmed many into thinking the oil had run out, whereas the real cause was lower prices following the 1920 depression and the introduction of cheap CA oil, both of which suppressed extraction in the East and Midwest.
As for why gasoline, the Post writer set it straight with this, coming from me:
"Against competing technologies, gasoline ultimately won because it was inherently a more useful form of storing energy," said Michael L. Bromley, a automobile historian in Bethesda.
Freepers will note that the (com)Post article does not mention the, perhaps, greatest oil-running-out prediction, Hubbert's 1956 "peak oil" theory. The Post writer deliberately limited his discussion to the 1920s and before. We've had plenty enough discussions of peak oil here, so Freepers ought to be plenty familiar with that theory.
One comment about it: peak oil does not accommodate price reactions to/from supply, so it serves no other purpose than, right or wrong, to define when a particular oil field has "peaked." It says nothing about the usefulness of petroleum or its alternatives. For that, see my blog, as per the above link.
Come October, watch for Diesel cars to get a big push. And watch for Honda's diesel. They could possibly change how history looks at diesel engines; as being clean burning and better than gasoline engines.
If they had, we'd have run out much sooner and would now be back to the horse and buggy.9?Luddite)
The enviros will kill it, just like they kill any other diesel out there. About 15 years ago the ford ranger was available with a diesel. Got 55mpg on the highway and 40 around town. Environazis killed it off quick.
What is the supposed advantage with diesel? Does it take less crude to make a gallon?
No they won't. New EPA rules regarding the formulation for diesel take effect. Many car companies, including Honda, have ultra clean burning diesel engines that you won't even know are running diesel (no smog or clanking diesel sounds that we associate with diesel engines).
That's because THEY didn't need it.
ADvantages include better gas mileage( 20-30% better than gas), no additives like gas (ethanol) and much better torque than gas. Honda says that their diesel will comply with Cali's strict requirements. It's my hope that diesel makes hybrids obsolete.
All I remember about the Olds Cutlass diesel I bought from my folks in 1983 was that is was useless in Detroit in January unless I could garage it or park near an electrical outlet. Is climate still an issue with the current generation of diesels?
I do remember that it was otherwise largely maintenance free as long as you changed the oil regularly.
I don't know about extreme weather...i am sure with really cold weather it could but that's the same with gas engines (hence why they sell heater blocks). But, you'll save fuel when you drive to AA during the Winter to get deli at Zingermans.
And may U of Mi actually win more than 7 games this year and win their bowl game.
Innerestin'
Making a note to check it out next time.
Diesel was king in 1979/80, but only because gasoline was artificially expensive then. It wasn't just the enviros that killed it. The technology, the distribution, the makers... it just wasn't its time.
As you say, small diesel engines are now more efficient and clean, but they can only displace gasoline in part and cannot replace gasoline entirely. Diesle's a good and getting better alternative for gasoline, but it's not a replacement for it, and not anymore than hybrids pretend to be.
As in politics and love, with motor fuel it's never enough to be the "alternative." Gasoline is still it.
I don't expect Diesel to over take gasoline. The gas engine still has a long way to go. It's just not as efficient as a diesel engine. Like I said, keep a watch for Honda, which happens to be the cleanest and largest engine manufacturer in the world.
The important thing is that reserves only extend 20 years ahead of time. There is no incentive to spend money now to find oil that you will need 21 years in the future. There is an incentive to spend money to find oil that you will need 10 years from now.
That is why for the last 80 years we have between 10 and 20 years of proven oil reserves, and will probably have 10 to 20 years of reserves for the next 80 years.
Coal can be hydrogenated to produce oil, but that doesn't count towards oil reserves.
The good ole New York Times, always incorrect, inconsequential, but not often informative.
I had a neighbor who had 2 of those olds diesels, they were insanely loud
Honda has done it before: the 1974 CVCC engine was truly revolutionary, and proved that emmission rules could be met by a standard gasoline engine. A truly remarkable engine.
I'm not convinced by diesel, however.
And if I have my facts right, Honda's VTEC has not failed once. NOT ONCE! (according to Jeremy Clarckson from Top Gear).
It's a great show...you can see clips from it on YOUTUBE.
(And that's pretty bad!)
I was talking to a friend last night, just came back from a vacation in Vietnam (Saigon area) visiting someone. She said her friend's driver told my friend that their car ran on oil, because of the scarcity of gasoline in Vietnam. She claims it's regular motor oil. I told my friend that's unlikely, perhaps it's a vegetable oil of some kind. She also said vegetables were scarce, she was having a tough time finding them from vendors there. Hmmmn.
More Oil Than We ThinkThe Times was conservative up until the early 1970s.
(**warning: pdf file!)
Steam powered automobiles would probably be a LOT cheaper to manufacture as the tolerances required are not nearly as fine. Plus they could use crude oil directly in the boilers .. or anything else liquid that burned.
I didn't know Larry was in AA.
< }B^)
As mentioned previously, this is exactly what happened during the oil shocks of the 1970s - shortfalls in supply as little as 5% drove the price of oil up near 400%. Demand did not fall until the world was mired in the most severe economic slowdown since the Great Depression.Utter crap: 1970s offer no demonstration of "classical economic" theory, as the price of both gasoline and crude were stupidly constrained by U.S. government price controls and import quotas (which in turn impacted worldwide prices). The 1973 and 1979 "shocks" followed lesser worldwide shortages than came in the '56 Suez Crisis '67 Arab/Israeli war. But only '73 and '79/80 brought lines and only in the U.S.: a direct result of U.S. price controls.
While many analysts claim the market will take care of this for us, they forget that neoclassic economic theory is besieged by several fundamental flaws that will prevent the market from appropriately reacting to Peak Oil until it is too late. To illustrate, as of April 2005, a barrel of oil costs about $55. The amount of energy contained in that barrel of oil would cost between $100-$250* dollars to derive from alternative sources of energy. Thus, the market won't signal energy companies to begin aggressively pursuing alternative sources of energy until oil reaches the $100-$250 mark.
That the "amount of energy contained in that barrel of oil would cost between $100-$250* dollars to derive from alternative sources of energy" merely justifies the current reliance on petroleum. But that's ridiculous, as $70/ barrel justifies shale extraction, ethynol, etc. What's keeping it away is that no one is willing to invest in those alternatives because they don't believe that current prices of crude will be sustained.
So, the need and possibility for bio-diesel and other alternatives depends entirely upon the continuing high price of crude. It won't.
I don't think so.
bttt
Dr. Z, that German doofus on the new Chrysler commercials, is advertising a new clean-buring diesel Jeep Cherokee for 2007, as well.
Quieter, clean diesel engines sound really good to me, and I'll definitely look into it the next time I go pickup shopping. (Not a Chrysler though, I've owned one too many of them and will never own another. I'm a GMC man these days, but I'm leaning toward Toyota for my next truck. It's been so long since I've shopped for a vehicle, I don't even know if Toyota offers a diesel pickup.)
What would be even better is if someone with some money would start mining all that coal in North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming and start turning it into diesel fuel.
I had a big Dark Blue Olds 98 Diesel, the biggest car I ever owned. It sounded like a Semi but got 35 mpg on the road. The down side was that it ate transmissions, guess they couldn't handle the torque.
OTOH my brother had a little Nissan (I believe) station wagon that was powered by a diesel boat engine. car went 300,000 miles without any problem and got close to 50 MPG on the road. That was a great car!
It takes more oil to make a gallon of diesel than a gallon of gasoline. Per pound diesel and gasoline have about the same amount of energy. It's just that diesel is a heavier fraction of oil and is denser. It would be foolish to use MPG as a basis for comparing diesel and gasoline vehicles.
This information is not correct. In 1980 the world's oil reserves were 28 years of the consumption at the time. In 1985 it was 32 years. In 1990 it was 41 years. And it has stayed between 36 and 42 years since then.
Why not use what most people are actually interested in? Dollars per mile.
Gasoline and diesel engines benefit considerably from using the fuel as the working fluid. On the other hand, having the combustion take place in the propulsion cylinder poses some problems of its own.
One idea I've wondered about would be designing a motor with piston pumps to put fuel and air into a combustion chamber, and a piston engine to get energy from the combustion products. If one used multi-stage pumps, it would theoretically possible to usefully recover a lot of the waste heat from the exhaust and impart it to the fuel. Of course, getting all this in a practical automotive-sized package might be another matter...
Absolutely!
The present design of gasoline engines, even in the complete absense of frictional losses, would be less than 50% efficient; in any engine where the expansion ratio is no greater than the expansion ratio, more than half the energy of the fuel will either be lost as friction or waste heat to the engine block, or will else go out the tailpipe.
There are many techniques that could overcome the theoretical efficiency limitations of the Otto Cycle engine. I wonder which ones will end up being practical? A few I like:
Very interesting about the amount of energy expended. I used to know how a gasoline engine worked. Diesel has a higher compression with no spark plugs?
What ever happened to the hydrogen fuel cell technology rage?
This is the point everyone seems to miss. Feedback in a dynamic system makes static predictions virtually useless. Price changes are feedback.
How would you calculate that?
(Price / gallon) (Gallon / mile) + (maintenance cost / mile) + (capital cost / mile)
If miles per unit volume is a foolish standard, why are you worried that it takes "more oil" to make a gallon of diesel than a gallon of gasoline? ("More" in volume or mass?)
Okay, a gallon of diesel is denser than a gallon of gasoline. It also contains more BTU's per unit mass, so significantly more BTU's per unit of volume.
But diesel engines are also inherently more efficient than spark-ignition engines, no matter what they burn. Diesels can run at lean fuel-air mixture ratios, even shutting their fuel off entirely to coast. Spark engines can't do that.
A diesel's compression ratio is limited by what the engine can take, structurally, and how much air you can pack into the cylinder. A gas engine's compression ratio is limited by the octane of the fuel; too much compression results in predetonation or "knock". And compression ratio is absolutely related to efficiency.
If diesel efficiency were imaginary, you would see a lot more heavy trucks with gasoline engines. Instead, you see none.
Compare the mileage for my turbo-diesel VW Jetta with its gas engine cousins. The diesel wins every time, and not by a little bit, either. (And it's even fun to drive; I can leave a lot of gas cars in my dust.)
The final win is that diesel engines today can burn biodiesel fuel derived from soybean oil or other vegetable or animal fats. They can burn it in any ratio with petro-diesel up to 100%.
I was just wondering because the electric car was considered to cost so little to run, but if you consider its entire life cycle, it costs more to build and then costs more to dispose of the batteries at the end of its life.
Either way you want to quantify it. When you do fractional distillation of crude oil, gasoline is one of the first products to condense. Later fractions are kerosene, then diesel, heating oil, then tar or paraffin. Due to the high demand for gasoline, the amount of natural gasoline is not enough to supply it. Refiners use catalytic cracking to make shorter hydrocarbon molecules out of the longer molecules in the heavier ends of the refined oil. You can get more gallons of gasoline out of a barrel of crude oil than you can get gallons of diesel fuel. If the purpose is to decrease oil dependency, it is foolish for government regulations to treat MPGGasoline the same as MPGDiesel. Such regulations would cause consumers to increase purchases of diesel powered cars without actually decreasing crude oil consumption.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.