OOPSY seens the other not Gas fossil fuel is nixed...
at least they are going to have to start all over...

By Jeff Hecht ENGINEERS have been barking up the wrong tree in their efforts to make diesel engines run cleaner and more efficiently.
A new X-ray study has revealed a type of supersonic shock wave that no one has seen before in the high-speed fuel jets used in diesel cars. "Nobody had any idea this was going on," says Jin Wang of the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. Engine designers will now have to scrap their old models of fuel mixing and combustion.
In a diesel, fuel ignites spontaneously when it is injected into the combustion chambers. The way the fuel mixes with air is crucial to how it burns, so knowing how the fuel sprays out is important for boosting efficiency and reducing pollution.
Researchers use light scattering from fuel droplets to profile the shape of the injected fuel jet. However, droplets in the jet scatter light many times, obscuring what's going on.
To see through the haze, Wang and his colleagues tried using a single-wavelength X-ray source and a high-speed detector that recorded an image every 5 microseconds. They sprayed standard diesel fuel, mixed with a caesium compound to enhance its X-ray contrast, into a chamber containing the inert gas sulphur hexafluoride to stop it combusting. As the jet moved through the gas, they took a series of pictures.
The team's research was funded by the automotive systems company Robert Bosch in Stuttgart. To simplify measurements, they used a modified version of a standard fuel-injector nozzle that had only one hole rather than the usual five or six.
They found that 90 per cent of the fuel was concentrated in a thin jet behind the V-shaped shock wave, with the densest concentration of fuel right behind the shock front. And while the gas in the chamber slowed down the leading edge of the fuel jet, the trailing edge moved several times faster, at supersonic velocity. As the tail end of the fuel jet caught up with the leading edge, most of the fuel became concentrated in a blob just behind the point of the shock cone. "Nobody knows why that should be, but we're going to try and find out," Wang told New Scientist.
The finding will send fuel efficiency researchers back to their drawing boards, says Oleg Vasilyev, a fluid dynamics specialist at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Fuel distribution in the initial jet is critical to how the fuel spreads through the chamber to be burnt. A better understanding could lead to new injector nozzle and chamber designs that improve fuel efficiency and reduce pollution, says Vasilyev.

on another note:

By Max Glaskin A chemical originally obtained from urine might be able to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides from diesel engines by up to 80 per cent. A diesel truck has set off from a lab in the Netherlands to test the idea as it trundles around Europe's roads.

ack who came up with this and what were they smoking when they thought of it?

now a link from the same site about Hdro...

http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/cars/article.jsp?id=99992230&sub=Alternative%20fuels

seems it isn't so a negative after all....

kona0197: yeah but if you (Karmagirl) had to pay over $2 dollars a gallon (When 5 months ago it cost only $1.20)

Think yourself fortunate. Here the equivalent price is about $6 per gallon and rising.

And I thought we had it bad. WOW!

dang Fuzzy! ouch.. whats the online time costing now? is it still by the minute on the connection after a certain time passes or is that only at university?

I'm on DSL which is always on. The cost of that is just under £30 per month. Goodbye dial-up

cool I had a couple of riends at Nottingham who would say BYE and poof, cause of the costs of the dial up

kinda freaked me out a bit when they explained it to me, we really don't hae much complaining room over here is the states on bunchs of things, like oh, gas... for one thing

"f"riends

kona0197, you *do* need to do some research. Diesels have the same emissions standards as gas engines. You are comparing a semi to a gas engine. How many semis have gas engines in them? (Go find that one out) What are the 2003 EPA emissions standards? My husband works at a very large diesel engineering company, he works on engines that are used by buses, ambulances, semis, and other large uses. Trust me, each year the emissions standards get tighter and tighter (a few diesel manufacturers are still not able to get all their engine line up to emissions this year). And, they are always engineering for the future (they are already working on 2007 standards). The problem is, and I will state this again- the higher the emissions standards, the less fuel efficient the vehicle. So, you cut down on the emissions per gallon of fuel used, but you then need to use more fuel to accomplish the same horsepower. Diesel *is* more efficient. That is why big trucks, buses and large use vehicles use diesel.

And, nobody needs to tell me about the cost of gas. My husband and I spend around $250 a month in gas just to get back and forth to work. We also commute together. But, it is a fact of life. You have to get to work to pay your bills, and even fuel efficient vehicles still cost a lot to run. Even if gas was $4.00 a gallon, I would still have to get back and forth to work.

Fuel cell technology is still the most logical choice at this time. Please look into it. It makes a lot of sense, and it is getting close to being feasible. (Yes, they *do* have some hybrids out there right now, but they really aren't to the standards that they should be). Bush has also been pushing alternate fuel technology research. He has been pushing bills to get funding for the next 10 years.

On the other side of pollution, vehicles are only a portion of the problem. We need to look at the whole issue and make improvements on many things to reduce pollution. Yes, vehicles do need improvement, but we need to improve other things as well.

I have been looking into it. In fact, if you ask anyone I know they would tell you I hate cars, gasoline, diesel, and anything else except nuclear power because it is all hurting the world. The reason my name is Kona is because I ride a Kona bicycle. takes me 20 minutes to get to work, and I stay in shape to. I have 2 cars and they sit around alot. My vehicles only cost me maybe $50 dollars a month. Maybe. My bicycle costs nothing.

So why don't you hate all that radioactive waste that nuclear plants produce that will last for tens (or hundreds) of thousands of years?

On the other hand, pollution from internal combustion engines is cleaned by the normal environment every day. The pollution controls simply allow us to use more vehicles before we overload the cleaning capability of the environment.

As for riding to work, I'd hate to ride a bicycle 36 miles to work and back again every day, rain, snow, cold, etc. Bikes may be great for short distances such as what you have to go, but not for most of us.

We'll just have to store our nuclear waste in kona's backyard then?

you know, actually Helium 3 would be the best source of power, burns clean and the energy return is leaps and bounds beyond anything on this planet and it is all through space, but they would have to structure a collection system and storage process... It is actually one of the sources of deep space exploration fuels they have and are looking at with ram jets...

I take the train to work. I walk 15 minutes to get to the train station, ride 1 hour in the train, and 15 more minutes from the train station downtown to the office. Total 1 hour and a half each way. I could probably save half that time if I took the car, but it would be a lot more expensive.

Helium 3... isn't that the fuel for those fusion reactors that scientists can't keep running for more than .3 seconds?

I agree that it could be a good fuel, but that's for the distant future, not as a solution for immediate problems.

yes it is, but it is more that there is a limited supply of it...

yes, future for sure...

but it is something they wshould be funding in a serious way now...
along with other things

paxx, I would *love* to do that. But, it's not an option. there is *no* public transportation where I live. That's one of the problems that a lot of people over look. Not everywhere has those resources.

Same problem here as KarmaGirl. There are city busses, but they only go from downtown, to the mall area, to the poorest neighborhoods. It's basically there so that the poor people can get to work, but it's not a transportation system for the entire city.

However, when I lived in State College (Penn State Univ.), there was a very comprehensive bus system and I used it all the time. There were only a few places I needed a car to get to during the work week (the bus routes and times changed and reduced drastically on weekends, making you need a car then).

Just want to put in my input... diesel engines and gas engines run very differently... and reason (I beilieve) that diesel gets better gas mileage is the ay the engine works, when diesel gas burns, diesel engines don't have spark plugs, and compress the gas until it explodes... with a few strange tradeoffs compared to a gasoline engine... like higher levels of torque, in comparison to the horsepower... it's a much smoother engine...

But I would love to see the hydrogen car, over time people would find easier ways to produce hydrogen I believe... GM has a an awesome car out right now... with a digital display instead of a stearing wheel (that's what got me).. and the display switches from left to right for people driving in different countries (whooo hooo, not that I've ever left California) it looks awesome... also... Ford has several Natural Gas powered cars... they actually converted the Mustang 4.6l engine to work off of Natural gas... what a project! but it works, i've driven it... I drove a propane powered Crown Victoria, felt like any normal car... but I don't know how it will do on the market... the car only gets 80 miles on a full tank of propane right now... so we'll see how things develop... The idea of electric cars has always sounded good to me... but well... no one seems to like that idea anymore...

I've driven some of the newer gas/electric hybrids. I actually like them more than regular cars [smile] MUCH quieter and *surprise* they actually accelerated harder from a stop than my regular car can. The guy said something about electrically augmented acceleration.

I may be a GrandPrix/MotoGP/Superbike nut but I currently have 10 bicycles....2 of which are my own design/construction...of the 32 wheels in the house, 3 were not built by me, and only two of the remainder did not need custom spoke cutting/rolling.
I work one room down the hall from where I sleep....and can cycle into the heart of Melbourne in less than 15 minutes.
My car is lucky to make 6000km per year, but when it does it's a little '87 Corolla 1600, not a V10 Dodge Viper. I once managed an average of 44mpg out of my old 1340cc Triump Spitfire, though I must admit at one stage I had a Valiant [Chrysler] Charger...which was a wee bit thirstier...

BTW...there's a 'h' in 'Triumph'....

In response to post #37

Hey Aqua do you really think nature cleans the crap that we spew out of our tailpipes and our factories everday? Is that why we have the greenhouse effect and why the ozone layer is being depleted?

Ever watched the matrix?

Well aqua (or should I call you neo) wake up and look around you. We are destroying this planet in the name of progress and money.

Wake up Neo...