Vehicle makers say US fuel economy standards put a million jobs at risk

[oil pan 4]

I would like to see some one ruin a fuel cell by trying to run it on bio gas.
It can eat high silicon aluminum pistons.
What do you think it will do to a delicate fuel cell?

[sendler]

The silicates and sulfides are water washed.
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogas

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

I read that the Toyota Mirai, which was designed as a hydrogen car using fuel cells to convert that to electicity for its motors, can run on biogas as well.
That would be a win-win. Not only can it prevent letting all the animal waste go to waste, it can also put the hydrogen cars to good use. If affordable hydrogen never happens there is still biogas. Not enough to power a nation, but ample to fuel the few experimental showcase hydrogen cars.

I haven't seen anything about the Mirai being able to run on anything other than hydrogen, but Nissan is testing what they call "solid-oxide fuel cell" that is capable to use some hydrocarbons such as ethanol. It's even been reported to be able to operate with hydrated ethanol at a concentration of 45% by volume instead of the minimum 80% required for a piston engine to operate. In my country, the standard for hydrated ethanol is 96% by volume.

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

If natural gas was cost effective to run farm equipment they would already have been using it.

It's quite predictable that handling a gaseous fuel is going to be more difficult than a liquid fuel, but it's far from being impossible. Considering that some older tractors are currently running on LPG, a switch to natural gas doesn't sound so unlikely. Even forklifts have been converted to CNG in my country.

Bio gas is some pretty nasty stuff. You do not want to be putting that into a piston engine with out essentially refining it.

In my country, there are some equipments such as gensets that come from the factory already prepared to use biogas. They use some sort of filter to handle it, but I don't know exactly how that filter works. OTOH in countries like Germany and Sweden some fuel stations already sell biomethane, though I don't know what is the most common method to treat it for impurities. I've even been aware of a method that resorts to algae to provide the treatment to turn straight biogas into pure biomethane.

[oil pan 4]

I not as easy as just water washing it. Because then you have to get the water back out. In natural gas processing this is done with an ethylene glycol tower. Gas goes up, dehydrated glycol runs down picking up water.
Once you get out the water and all the corrosive stuff the best bio gas from herbivore poo still has around 25% CO2. Which burns meh.If the bio gas came from only decomposing vegetation then it could be anywhere from 50% to 75% CO2.
If bio methane is being used to power vehicles it's been heavily processed. All the stuff you don't want removed.

The idea of a farmer using it to power mobile machines is laughable. I'm sure they can make it and use it for heating but just try to talk a farmer into putting home made bio gas in his $250,000 tractor that has to be reliable. Good luck with that.

Where I work we use bio gas. One 1,500hp boiler runs 25% bio gas. It saves about $1,000 a day in natural gas. But this boiler is 11 or 12 years old and has been retubed 3 times. Because the bio gas is more corrosive. $25,000 to retube the boiler every few years is nothing.

[freebeard]

...just try to talk a farmer into putting home made bio gas in his $250,000 tractor that has to be reliable.

...That John Deere says he has no Right to Repair.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by freebeard

...That John Deere says he has no Right to Repair.

New Holland has been testing some tractors with biomethane from different sources.
New Holland tractor uses farm

At least one sugarcane farmer in my country is currently testing one of those biomethane-powered tractors, using fuel produced from a toxic byproduct of ethanol brewing that is often discarded irregularly on rivers.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Cummins has been making natural gas engines for decades.
Problem is all the nastys in bio gas will eat the pistons down to the ring groves. It has to be refined at least as much as natural gas.

Pistons can be designed for monoxide fueling, anything acid resistant from stainless to ceramic coatings.

Natural gas is cost effective in other countries where conversion costs are hundreds not thousands of dollars.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by rmay635703

Pistons can be designed for monoxide fueling, anything acid resistant from stainless to ceramic coatings.

Ceramic coating seems to be the way to go, at least until someone starts 3D-printing all-ceramic pistons

Natural gas is cost effective in other countries where conversion costs are hundreds not thousands of dollars.

Natural gas conversions are not exactly dirt-cheap in my country, but it's still cost-effective. Even my mom who is quite conservative when it comes to car mods and told me she never tried ethanol in her current flexfuel Toyota Etios had been more open-minded towards a natural gas conversion once the warranty expires.

[freebeard]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ump-touts-coal

Renewable energy provides five times more jobs than coal mines

The renewable-energy industry has a message for the Trump administration about bringing energy jobs to rural communities: get out of the coal mines and look to the sky.

U.S. wind-farm developers and suppliers had more than 100,000 workers at the end of the year and the solar industry had more than double that, and they’re a significant source of employment in many of the rural red states that supported Donald Trump’s campaign. That compares to 65,971 coal mining jobs at the start of last year, according to the U.S. Energy Department.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Apart from generating more skilled jobs, cleaner energy might generate economy for the health system since it overcomes some respiratory diseases that have plagued so many coal miners. Higher exposure to coal dust and some impurities often found on coal led to a high incidence of lung cancer among miners.