Re: Re: Brisbane trams, and "Windsplitters" and gas powered heavy vehicles
IS Edit
Sunday, September 9, 2001 9:26 PM
Peter,
You're coming over onto my turf here.
Australia has sufficient natural gas deposits to last it several hundred
years.
We also get quite a lot of Liquid Petroleum Gas both from our oilfields and
as a by-product of petroleum refining.
As for gas powered buses, we have a lot of them here, mostly European.
There have been some recent developments in gas systems which should take
many of the hassles out of CNG, LNG and LPG bus operation.
The main hassle in converting diesel engines to run on gas is spark. Diesel
engines, of course, are compression ignition. Most conversions have
converted them to spark ignition which changes their power and torque curves
quite a bit.
I have no experience with driving gas conversion buses but have played with
trucks which have been so converted.
There is also a dual fuel system from Cat which uses just enough diesel to
keep the engine on compression ignition but most of the fire in the hole
comes from gas. As I understand it, the gas gets into the cylinders through
the intake manifold. There are still some practical problems with it,
including driver acceptance.
Cummins, however, has just come up with an interesting new injector which
injects the pilot shot of diesel fuel followed by an injection of gas. This
makes it much easier to precisely meter the amount and timing of the gas
(not petrol) injection and should lead to huge improvements in efficiency.
I think Cummins is really onto something here. The biggest threat is that
Cummins itself is not in good shape financially and could well be a takeover
target.
If the Cummins system fulfils its promise, I'd expect Caterpillar and the
Europeans to get onto it quickly.
Just as an aside, US and European/UN ECE diesel emission standards are now
rapidly converging. There are huge changes afoot. DaimlerChrysler has bought
Detroit Diesel and is starting to market a new straight six cylinder, 12
litre engine through its Freightliner subsidiary, Volvo has announced it is
developing a new big engine (15 or 16 litre) which is likely to get huge
exposure in the US since Volvo now owns Mack as well as selling its own
badged trucks and there are some interesting deals brewing between IVECO and
International trucks which could see yet more European engines working their
way towards the US.
They are still playing catch-up as the US engines have been ahead of them
for years in efficiency and high torque.
The bus side of things has been much more primitive engine-wise than trucks
both in Australia and the US with both industries staying with Detroit
two-strokes long after the trucking industries gave them away because they
were far too thirsty.
And, by the way, Australia is really pushing the envelope on high power
automotive diesels. Our normal six-axle articulated vehicle here now has a
maximum operating weight of 45.5 metric tonnes compared with 36.5 for the
US. And our almost standard nine axle B-trains now operate at 68 tonnes all
over the relatively high population eastern seaboard. We have gone to
tri-drive prime-movers for some of our heaviest applications and have quite
a few units in remote areas operating on the road at over 200 tonnes. Even
more common are road-train "quads" which consist of a prime-mover (tractor
to you, Peter), two road-train trailers (the second one has a tandem or
tri-axle dolly) and a B-train set of trailers with another tandem or
tri-dolly at the front. They operate at between 140 and 170 tonnes depending
on where they are. And of course, our more traditional road-train triples
are up to 142 tonnes now.
We really use big power down here in our trucks, Peter.
The US is so locked into political correctness and so full of pressure
groups including quite a few bankrolled by the rail lobby that there have
been no increases in weights allowed on trucks in more than 20 years. 36.5
tonnes was the weight back then and still is. During that time our semis
have gone up from 38 to 45.5 tonnes and we have introduced much bigger
vehicles like B-trains.
We have reduced truck numbers by more than 20% by those gains in efficiency
and saved hundreds of lives in road fatalities simple because there are
fewer trucks out there to be involved.
Cheers,
Bob Murphy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter D. Ehrlich" <[email protected]>
To: "TramsDownUnder" <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2001 6:52 AM
Subject: [TramsDownUnder] Re: Brisbane trams, and "Windsplitters"
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You're coming over onto my turf here.
Australia has sufficient natural gas deposits to last it several hundred
years.
We also get quite a lot of Liquid Petroleum Gas both from our oilfields and
as a by-product of petroleum refining.
As for gas powered buses, we have a lot of them here, mostly European.
There have been some recent developments in gas systems which should take
many of the hassles out of CNG, LNG and LPG bus operation.
The main hassle in converting diesel engines to run on gas is spark. Diesel
engines, of course, are compression ignition. Most conversions have
converted them to spark ignition which changes their power and torque curves
quite a bit.
I have no experience with driving gas conversion buses but have played with
trucks which have been so converted.
There is also a dual fuel system from Cat which uses just enough diesel to
keep the engine on compression ignition but most of the fire in the hole
comes from gas. As I understand it, the gas gets into the cylinders through
the intake manifold. There are still some practical problems with it,
including driver acceptance.
Cummins, however, has just come up with an interesting new injector which
injects the pilot shot of diesel fuel followed by an injection of gas. This
makes it much easier to precisely meter the amount and timing of the gas
(not petrol) injection and should lead to huge improvements in efficiency.
I think Cummins is really onto something here. The biggest threat is that
Cummins itself is not in good shape financially and could well be a takeover
target.
If the Cummins system fulfils its promise, I'd expect Caterpillar and the
Europeans to get onto it quickly.
Just as an aside, US and European/UN ECE diesel emission standards are now
rapidly converging. There are huge changes afoot. DaimlerChrysler has bought
Detroit Diesel and is starting to market a new straight six cylinder, 12
litre engine through its Freightliner subsidiary, Volvo has announced it is
developing a new big engine (15 or 16 litre) which is likely to get huge
exposure in the US since Volvo now owns Mack as well as selling its own
badged trucks and there are some interesting deals brewing between IVECO and
International trucks which could see yet more European engines working their
way towards the US.
They are still playing catch-up as the US engines have been ahead of them
for years in efficiency and high torque.
The bus side of things has been much more primitive engine-wise than trucks
both in Australia and the US with both industries staying with Detroit
two-strokes long after the trucking industries gave them away because they
were far too thirsty.
And, by the way, Australia is really pushing the envelope on high power
automotive diesels. Our normal six-axle articulated vehicle here now has a
maximum operating weight of 45.5 metric tonnes compared with 36.5 for the
US. And our almost standard nine axle B-trains now operate at 68 tonnes all
over the relatively high population eastern seaboard. We have gone to
tri-drive prime-movers for some of our heaviest applications and have quite
a few units in remote areas operating on the road at over 200 tonnes. Even
more common are road-train "quads" which consist of a prime-mover (tractor
to you, Peter), two road-train trailers (the second one has a tandem or
tri-axle dolly) and a B-train set of trailers with another tandem or
tri-dolly at the front. They operate at between 140 and 170 tonnes depending
on where they are. And of course, our more traditional road-train triples
are up to 142 tonnes now.
We really use big power down here in our trucks, Peter.
The US is so locked into political correctness and so full of pressure
groups including quite a few bankrolled by the rail lobby that there have
been no increases in weights allowed on trucks in more than 20 years. 36.5
tonnes was the weight back then and still is. During that time our semis
have gone up from 38 to 45.5 tonnes and we have introduced much bigger
vehicles like B-trains.
We have reduced truck numbers by more than 20% by those gains in efficiency
and saved hundreds of lives in road fatalities simple because there are
fewer trucks out there to be involved.
Cheers,
Bob Murphy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter D. Ehrlich" <[email protected]>
To: "TramsDownUnder" <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2001 6:52 AM
Subject: [TramsDownUnder] Re: Brisbane trams, and "Windsplitters"
In a message dated 9 Sept 2001 @ 1325 PDT, "Bruce" <[email protected]>lightly
wrote (responding to Bill Bolton):
Does that mean "petrol-electric"? Or was some equivalent to CNG or
LPG available then? BruceIf my memory serves me correctly, at least one of the state rail
systems (VR or QR, maybe both?) imported a single McKeen gas-
electric cars here as part of early experiments with railcars for
vehicle.trafficed rural braches.
I was nearly right, but it was gas-mechanical, not a gas-
electric.
The writer here was referring to the American nomenclature for the
Gas, of course, is what we Yanks call "petrol". CNG and LPG hadn't beenfor
invented yet, to my knowledge. Ain't that a gas?
CNG is something some American transit systems are using to power their
buses. It's a pain in the [g]as...I hope Oz systems don't ever have to go
that route.
There are those in San Francisco who want to get Muni to go CNG. The only
problem is where do we fuel them and how much more running time do we have
to add with CNG buses. The pro-CNG-at-any-cost types don't have answers
that one...
Milantram
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