Environmentalists are the worst people on earth.

[Piotrsko]

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

The concept of a turbine is pretty much fuel-agnostic. Anything that can vaporize will be burned by a turbine.

Not so much. It will run, but not efficient. Bunch of tweaks needed between fuels types to get it outputting the correct torque and hp. Could be a look up table or done by assorted sensors .

Huge difference between the BTU's contained in methyl alky and diesel

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by Piotrsko

Not so much. It will run, but not efficient. Bunch of tweaks needed between fuels types to get it outputting the correct torque and hp. Could be a look up table or done by assorted sensors .

Huge difference between the BTU's contained in methyl alky and diesel

* Straight gasoline has a specific heat of 126,000-Btu/gallon.
* Methyl alcohol has about half of that.
* Diesel is 136,775-Btu/ gallon.
So, a turbine fueled with alcohol would require 2.17X as many gallons, as that required for Diesel at the same shaft-horsepower.

[Piotrsko]

Not to mention that diesel and alky in the same fuel tank is going to be rather unsatiffactory. Recall in the 2nd fuel crisis when alky doctored gas was first available, sometimes all you got was a tank of alky, sometimes with a slug of water from the tank bottom. Non computer cars often didn't run out of the parking lot. So in addition to lousy btu specifics, gonna need more and bigger tanks.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Piotrsko

Bunch of tweaks needed between fuels types to get it outputting the correct torque and hp.

Of course. But it's still easier to set up a gas turbine to operate on both heavy and volatile fuels than a conventional spark-ignited engine. Unless the Hesselman engines made a comeback...