Shox Dr
Chief Engineer to Carlos Fandango
- Messages
- 17,986
- Location
- East Yorkshire
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Didn't the germans make diesel from air and water + electricity....or did I make that up! Ultimately the fuel is hydro carbons..
Sasol were world leaders in it during Apartheid as they couldn’t get hold of oil from elsewhere (or at least as much as they needed). They also used to produce gas from it, but it was incredibly “dirty” - it used to leave oily residues and crystal type deposits in the gas filters of the industrial dryers when I used to go over there to work on them, you never used to see anything on uk/European machines.The South Africans made oil from coal, they have no oil of there own, but massive reserves of coal.
So why isnt this done on a large scale.
In fact why isnt everyone doing it
It costs more to get oil from plastic than it does to get it out of the ground.
I wonder though whether they count just the cost of processing and not the cost saved in having to dispose of the plastic.
I suspect that would produce ammonia rather than diesel.
Here it is....I wasn't going mad!
I think basically they just need the raw ingredients...carbon from carbon dioxide and hydrogen from water + energy.
I often wonder what Rudolf Diesel would think about what happened to his engine design which was originally designed to run on nut oil!
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If I remember the first "D" engine ran on coal dust.....then the oil came after.....
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