Alternative Fuels
 

Hey, never thought of it but as many cars over Europe are diesel, regular vegetable oil (olive, wheat, peannuts...) would be used more often than alcohol. In some regions that is easier to make.

With the oil price today, people are already using this (illegaly) here in France. Moreover, my wife's father used it as a lubricant and would tell you that it works better than petroleum.

Thinks about the general smell in T2K. Each time you fry something you fill up your tank;) .

Given methanol production as described in the rules is nearly impossible, and reworking a diesel engine for alcohol is very difficult, this is very likely. I hope to have some sort of realistic organic fuel production rules/equipment list ready by the spring.

Uffff...
 

That's a good point Mohoender! After the last and demoralizing post of Kato about methanol production ;) I was near to tell to my players: "Ok, everybody out that Hum-Vee. This thing no longer works. I know,...I know, but rules has changed. Chemistry is Chemistry..."

My original methanol post

I don't want to ruin anyone's game with science :(

You could say that in the T2k timeline, cellulose (wood) processing yeast or bacterium was developed to make ethanol (not methanol). IIRC there were over 300 collegiate papers on Ecoli producing ethanol from wood published before 1995. A similar number for yeast were also published.

In reality we are just getting to that point now with yeast and 3 different bacterium. If you want to keep the current rules (doubling the fermentation time however) you could say that specially bred yeast or bacterium are available. Since it is a biological it could be reproduced and distributed quickly.

I defiantly do that in my Morrow game but advanced tech is commonplace there. The HMMWV would have needed a tremendously overhaul, most likely an engine swap to run on ethanol as it cannot run on Gasoline. The source books made another error on that fact.

I am going to look for a morrow project post i made on this a while ago. It was removed from rpghost in the great purge.

My ethanol post from the morrow yahoo group
 

But here comes the good news. Ethanol.

Ethanol is produced naturally by many biological organisms. Its production is probably one of the most well documented chemical processes man has ever performed. The biggest problem is that natural ethanol production uses up raw materials (sugar) which could otherwise be used as food. The goal is production of ethanol from wood or agricultural waste (cellulose), this happens naturally on a small scale, but not at levels desired by industry. That is where scientists come in.

Through the use of genetic manipulation yeast and at least 3 bacterium have been shown to be able to produce significant amounts ethanol from cellulose. In case anyone wants to do any research they are Zymomonas mobilis, Clostridium thermocellum, Saccharomyces cerevisiae (bakers yeast), and Escherichia coli.


In my game Morrow scientists have developed what are considered to be the 2 Holy grails of ethanol production.

Species
Saccharomyces morrowis (ethanol resistant yeast used for sugar based ethanol production)
Able to survive up to a 25% ethanol solution.
Able to ferment to a 18% solution in 24 hours.
Minimal genetic Drift (this is important as yeast can mutate quickly)


Zymomonas morrowis (bacterium capable of processing both sugars and cellulose)
Able to survive up to a 15% ethanol solution.
Able to ferment to a 10% solution in 48 hours.
Able to enzymatically initiate Cellulose hydrolysis

The last note means the cellulose will require minimal pretreatment. Normally pretreatment requires sulfuric acid, which can be reused but complicates things, or an enzymatic solution which requires a constant supply of enzymes unless managed very carefully.

Both of these organisms would be fantastic for trade with any brewers. The Zymomonas would probably be the most valuable as only the largest or technologically advanced cities would have the infrastructure to process cellulose into ethanol, and if they were doing so it would be at great cost.

On to stills.

If you are using normal world technology T2K vastly overestimated the weight of an empty still IMHO. They are closer when compared to the weight of a still while in production.

A minimal still consists of the following
55 gal (208 L) steel drums. 31.8 kg empty (2)
fermentation lock (pressure valve) 4 kg
multi fuel barrel boiling units. 15kg
barrel bands, heating, electric 3kg
Mixing centrifugal pump 6kg
Ethanol Refining Tower 50 kg. (takes to 96% pure)
Molecular Sieve Ethanol Dehydrator w/ zeolite 50kg (takes to 100%)
Metal Piping 10kg
PVC piping 8kg
Hand Pump 8kg
Barrel Cooling Coil 5kg

Regular non genetic engineered yeast can reach a 8-10% alcohol solution in 40 hours. So theoretically in 2 days with just 2 drums (to allow transfer and collection) you could produce 10 liters a day (with morrow yeast you could triple that). At a weight under 250kg empty, 500kg full. And you can scale barrels up to about 15 before you need a another dehydrator and up to 50 before you need another Refinery tower and efficiency only goes up with larger scale.

Other equipment is needed for the material preparation (seed grinders, wood chippers, mashers etc) but I don't consider that to be the weight of the still.

I know that the T2k people wanted to keep things simple. and make a still a tough choice weight wise, but the real world numbers don't add up even when you factor in the ad hoc nature of most still construction in that world. They should have at least made quality options where price goes up as weight goes down.

Someday I will make a full document with stills and bio-diesel production kits with high/medium/low tech options but I have too much on my plate at the moment and as you can see I sometimes get trapped in the minutia and I still have a ton of research to do.

Everyone seem to have forgotten another point ;) . Spain has plenty of vineyards, not to talk about France, Italy, California, Hungary, Chile, Australia (even Vermont as some and the guy makes a failry good ice wine) ...

That will produce a lot of ethanol and actually it already does. However, much less than 50 years ago as it has become a great sin to be drunk.:D

People are currently talking about second generation bioethanol gas using waste parts of the plants. I found that funny, as the industry with which I was working 15 years ago was already producing ethanol from the parts of grapes that remains when you are making wine. of course it was not fuel but still it was ethanol. Building what you need to do it is not that difficult getting a pure product is a little harder, then. The smell is hard too as the decaying process is fairly long but, after armageddon, who cares? Personnaly, I find insane to grow corn to make fuel; who is the jerk who came up with that idea.

Russia will be fine, tanks will run on vodka, and that won't change much for the crew.:D

For oil, you just need a stone basket and a round stone press :). Every little village in the Douro Valley of Portugal still has one of these things.

In my own village of the south of France, I know at least 5 or 6 people who could produce one or another (in small quantity but they still can).:D I also bet that people living in some remote places of the US retain such capacity.

By the way, I'm not sure if it is the case with the Leclerc, but the AMX-30s were known to run on about anything but water.

I forgot one, I met an old man (probably dead by now) who whas making a terrific 78% calva from apple. That was not his strongest and trust me he didn't know anything about technology.

That stuff stinks, stinkier when it goes bad, stinkiest if it is being reused.

I can see that you already experienced this.:D

All males have left the cooking pan filled with that stuff for a tad too long after cooking, only to come home one day going "wtf is that smell?"

And lets not forget methane. Today they have vehicles that are powered by compressed natural gas and propane. Well, they also have methane digesters for some communities, and hog, cattle and dairy farms.

The animal waste is washed into a tank or pool that is covered and the methane that bubbles up is collected and used to fuel the generators making the farm self sufficient with their own generator, some of the power is actualy fed back into the power grid.

Now, imagine the collection continues, it fills removable tanks that are then installed in vehicles <it is pretty easy to alter vehicles to run on such gas and the effiency is more or less the same> Then you can run your gasoline powered vehicles at a normal rate. with less wear since gasoline is a caustic substance as well. And really swapping out a empty fuel tank for a full one, well, you just need a means of lifting it into the bracket and disconnect the coupling and change. The only downside of course is you have a volitile gas that is compressed that could be problematic if its used as a combat vehicle, but then just add a little extra armor. But, I would take my chances as the speed and manuverability would be much better than a vehicle running on alcohol.

Mo, yes most American vehicles now are called "multi fuel" so the swap over would be easier as I understand.

True for methane. I don't know the name of these things in english but cars in WWII were running on "Gazogène". Actually I'm not sure there is a translation for it.

http://www.historycooperative.org/jo...4/pearson.html

The previous website was put on only for the picture (didn't really looked at the content), that one is better i think. I had trouble finding one in english.

http://www.citroenmodelcars.nl/html/...3_gazogene.htm

Gotcha, makes sense. The flamible gases are given off durring the cooking process which is similiar to charcoaling. And the same thing that procudes methanol turns into methane, makes alot of sense. One is in liquoid form, the other is in gas form both with a little help from man.

*Dumb question from a non-T2Ker*
Aren't most NATO military vehicles diesel powered anyway? So why is everyone desperate for an alcohol fuel that works best in petrol engines?


Look up biodiesel on Wikipedia (as long as you have a free few hours). You can make it from all sorts of plants and oils, and its only the really modern hi-tech diesels that get finicky about fuel quality. The sort of low-stressed old fashioned engines most military vehicles have shouldn't have any trouble.

There's a fair amount of Rapeseed grown in Europe (least around my part of the UK there is) as its used for animal feed, but can be used for biodiesel quite effectively.

Of course, there's always the algae farm...

that is the thing, most American vehicles these days are "multi fueled" so they burn on kerosen, diesel, gasoline etc.

As for the whole diesel, I know, we actualy brought this up on the yahoo discussion group and even Loren chimed in.

However, for gasoline powered vehicles, I again ask <since I learned about it in the last few years> methane/propane as fuel. With the bonuses I already wrote.

But, yeah, oil from all manner of plants and seeds and such is easily found from so many sources and it is more effieicnet than the alcohol fuel in the campaign.

Vast amounts of canola grown in Australia, canola oil is very much suitable for creating biodiesel. If you were in an area with lots of wild or cultivated cannabis you could extract hemp oil with equipment as simple as a cold press and use that to make biodiesel (and some medicinal cookies while you're at it).

Also as I've said in a post ages ago on the RPGHost forums, if you were really hard core (and probably homicidal and dangerously insane) you could rend the fat from the corpses of your vanquished enemies and make biodiesel out of the tallow. The more enemy you kill the further you can drive, to find more enemy to kill. And so on.

Hello everyone, I'm going back on an already old topic: gazogène. I found that nice drawing of one put on an older land rover.

It seems that someone in France has made a RPG very similar to T2K. Something funny about it is that in their game earth is plunged in darkness. That means no more plants which will make the use of this device quite complicated.

crazy froggies
 

A few more info on that subject. It takes 3 to 4 minutes to start the vehicle and you can drive about 150 miles without refill (wood or coal). I haven't found anything on speed but as soon as I do I'll modify this.

Here is a picture of a true one. Thanks the Swiss, what would we do without them.:D

Ok I go for the last mod. I found that guy driving one nowadays (2nd picture with the Peugeot 504). it drives 300km (more or less 200 miles) with 60kg of wood and his car got a speeding ticket for driving above 90km/h.

this thread
 

should be renamed the FUEL THREAD

seeing as fuel is a scarce commodity in T2k ,getting it is a priority .

gazogene or wood gas generator

A "wood gas" generator was used on Norwegian vehicles during the occupation 1940-45.

Its principle is simple :

wooden chips or specially kerosene impregnated wood blocks are burned slowly in an oven /combustion chamber with insufficient oxygen supply for full combustion.

This generates CO - carbonmonoxide- a gas that if mixed is volatile (!)

The gas must be cooled on its way to the combustionchamber in the engine to disperse its water content , and cleaned through a filter for soot particles etc .The gas is then let into the cylinder by a special valve and ignited through running a little bit of ordinary gasoline and starting the engine or if it is already hot - or already running smoothly on the gas/wood gas .So some gas/petrol or other more energy dense fuel is necessary.

hard woods like birch are best,all wood can be used though .They must be stripped of all the bark and be 100% dry as possible .Old drivers state that they could stop and cut dry wood in the forrest and add to the special kerosene/wood chip blocks to run the car .It really can run almost entirely on wood !

the oven needs an hour or two to heat up /produce gas before starting the drive -i.e starting the engine with petrol to get the cycle going .Also stopping once in a while and cleaning the oven with brooms etc for the excessive soot build up is necessary.Depending on the combustion rate maybe once every 100-200 km. The heat up etc would have to begin anew after this .

Some busdrivers talk about needing app 1 liter of gas pr 3 kg wood -but this could be less with more modern engines.

Speed and power is adversly affected -40 km /h seem to be common operating speed -but some cars could go faster-alot faster.

Also the vehicle gets very sooty and driver and passengers too.

here is a picture of a wood gas generator ona bus in eastern Norway during the war.Notice the wood piles left out to dry.

making a wood gas generator was mainly done as cottage industry in Norway ,but parts like the filter and the special valve were normally factory made in France,Belgium and other occupied countries as well as in local factories. It would seem that the fitting and modification could be done locally ,but that the parts were somewhat harder to make . (As anafterthought for the GM who now gets questions about making one from his players)

Note:Thread Renamed Alternative Fuels.

Good idea. I can rename or split drifting threads pretty easily so if anyone feels that either process is necessary just give a shout out.
I will probably leave the "(was OLD THREAD NAME) portion of the thread name up for a week so people don't get confused.

Definitely a good idea. Thanks HQ for the speed estimation I had not found anything on it.

bon soir !French post apoc rpg
 

what is that french game called ? mayb ethere are images etc that I can use on the net ?

great
 

thanks .

you ar edoing a great job with this forum -just as good as the old one or better maybe !!

please keep it up .

Thank you for the complement. I only gave you guys the canvas, all of you make the artwork.

Remember I am open to any suggestion for improvements so feel free to let me know your thoughts.

Hello

Here is the link to it

http://solsys-ap.ifrance.com/

I think they have done a great job but saddly it's only in French. I prefer T2K but they have an interesting different approach. I haven't read everything but they seem to be somewhere between T2K and a french novel (about 40 books or so) called "la compagnie des glaces". I haven't found a translation of the title.

Ran it through Google translation

http://translate.google.com/translat...um=1&ct=result

Appears to have some Morrow Project commonality as well as there seems to be quite a focus on underground bases and caches.

Moved from Motoring after the Apocalypse 2; other Alternate Fuels - kato 13

Coal gas generation, right out of WW2 Germany (and other places) IS viable.

Another alternative fuel source is METHANE from composting all the latrines and manure you can aquire, as well as garbage. If for nothing more than to provide cooking gas and lighting, whether to run generator or burn in open flame. (TODAY it is criminal to me that EVERY municipal sewage system in the US does NOT have methane converters for thier system. "Too expensive". I say not smart enough. I recall many cities in Germay with them in the 70's-80's.)

BioDiesel as they wish to call it is what 'ole Ruddie used when he developed his engine in Germany (Diesel's engine). Straight run vegetable oil, perhaps filtered, but unprocessed. In the mid-80's when I went back to college I took and alternative fuels class. We went to an operating farm where the farmer was crushing his own unshelled sunflowers through an extruder screw. There naturally was some oil loss in the process, but that was ok to as the meal was fed to cattle, and the oil helped them. The sunoil however was only filtered through what was about the coursenss if a a bandana and placed into the tank of a diesel tractor (that has been emptied of diesel fuel). We dyno'd the tractor on diesel and sunoil. We observed it plowing heavy soil. Pleaseant smoke. NO significant difference in horsepower or performance was noted. Now the drawback to straight run is it WILL solidify under colder conditions, but so will biodiesel and genuine diesel fuels without additives.

The processing used in commercial production calls for methanol and potassium hydroxide, though I don't know why ethanol and sodium hydroxide would not work. What they are doing is called soaponification, which is partially making soap, to remove the heavy fats, leaving a gylcerol. My idea would be to sort of bypass this and not let the mix get super cold. If it does, heat it someway, perhaps steam?

AN acre of soybeans producing 20 bushels of seed (less than half the now common yield) will yield about 112 gallons (based on 25% oil, which is less than common as well). The problem arises in post-apoc is where do you get the seeds? What is grown today is hybrid. No true reproduction if you can even get it to germinate due to genetic engineering. Still a VERY good idea. Other crops to consider besides soybeans are sunflowers, rapeseed/canola, safflower, peanuts, cottonseed. This is not an all inclusive list, and YES, before I'm unindated, HEMP can be used as well.

As for alcohol production, any plant starchy/sugary or cellulose plant material can be used. Generally you get methanol from cellulose heavy material such as grass/straw/wood, while starchy/sugary yeild methanol. You need the starter yeasts and bacterias to make the transformations, at least in a more timely manner. It takes longer to breakdown the celluloses than convert the starch to sugars, but IMO alot of the starches would be divereted to much needed human consumption, and livestock would be back on grass post-apoc.

Don't mean to be critical to the ideas, as they ARE bonified. I always had problems of running a diesel engine with alcohol. IF it can, it would not do well as it burns too hot I think and the engine would burn up pretty fast.

ANY petroleum would be used for lubricants (motor oil and greases) first, then avgas and jet fuels. Just some input.

Grae

:eek: :( I SOULD READ ALL POSTS BEFORE REPLYING ANYWHERE, ESPECIALLY WHEN I PARROT SOMEONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't worry. We are a very forgiving group ;) I'll move your post to this thread.

It is hard to know what to reply to. I usually start from the bottom up (chronologically) when I go to a forum and that means that redundant posts are bound to happen.

Another nice thing about having a live in moderator.

great info
 

thanks -lots of useful info here -for RL and ingame.

Theres a differance? :eek: :) I have found a LOT of useful RL information doing game research. I'm STILL trying to find consumptions for steam trains. I have some but again, lost them. (I HATE moving around!) Anyone have some sources I would love to have them. I realize there are numerous variable when it comes to that, more than with internal combustion, but relevance is the name. I do know it takes from 2-4 times as much water as fuel, and water sources are sometimes more difficult to get than the solid fuel, since you need CLEAN water, with LOW mineral content or your going to spend more time cleaning the boiler from buildup than running.

(some more useful trivia?) :)

Grae

As for Gasogene

I used to be a blacksmith, but I didn't have a good supply of blacksmith coal and I was too poor to have it shipped to me. I tried using other types of coals but with poor results. However my now ex-girlfriends father had a saw mill with lots of wood scraps from the process, so I built a charcoal maker.

Very primitive in design..but it was a 55 gallon drum with a bunch of holes shot through it for air. It also had a old wheel hub from a truck in the center of it which the fire was built around. I built the fire using the waste slab wood from the mill, old news papers for kindling and spoiled heating oil from a freind who was a furnace repair man. while the fire was going I would pack more wood tightly into a 30 gallon grease drum (which had been power washed). Once the fire was going well I would place a 30 gallon grease drum on the fire and it sat on top of the old truck wheel hub. The grease drum had no holes except for it had a nail hole in its tightly sealing top. I would continue to add slabs into the oil drum as the fire burned down. As the wood in the grease drum was burned without allowing oxygen (or destructively distilled) it turned the wood into charcoal. All the while dark brownish to greenish grey smoke would pour out the hole in the lid. If the lid was actually airtight it would have blown off. However if you took a burning splint and put it to the smoke it would ignite and burn about 3 inches off the top of the hole in the barrel like a propane gas pilot.

My ex's dad was a small engine repair man and he always wanted to try to trap and pressurize the gas much like they do with methane gas using an inverted cone in a concrete tube with water above it. As the gas pressure increases the cone rises and eventually the gas will condensate at the right pressure into a liquid where it can be tapped off much like LNG.

However it never got more advanced than a simple charcoal maker.

Brother in Arms

Great info Bro,
Necessity works wonders for ingenuity. Thinking on that project for charcoal, it makes wonderful sense, and simplicity is awesome. As fro trapping the gas, a copper line from the hole to the storage unit. If your doing pine, you can also distill the gas for wood spirits (turpintine), or so I've heard.

Sounds like a realatively quick set up too after scrounging the materials. Hard part is chopping the wood. And for practical purposes your smithing fuel becomes free.

BTW how long would it take to char a can of wood? And how much fuel was used to char the can?

You also realize other than for smithing, this is the first step for black powder production. ;)

Grae
(a guy who admires primative and obsolete technology)

Great point Grae.

Grae
it was relatively easy to get set up my ex's dad had everything I needtd on site of course he did live in a junk yard.

As for time it took several hours to char a 30 gallon can completely. There is a lot of moisture, wood alcohol ect. that has to be burned off in a piece of wood to turn it into charcoal. As for how much charcoal it made, it made a full 50 lbs grain bag. I can't really say how much is weighed because it was very light for the volume of charcoal you obtained. One thing to note is the fire had to be completely burned out cold before you could open the charcoal barrel. In fact I would let the fire in the drum burn out completely then remove the char coal barrel from it and make sure it was completely cold before opening which took several hours. The reason for this is I had made char cloth before (for catching sparks when making flint and steel fires) and if you open the tin or in this case the barrel too soon the charcoal is still super heated and exposure to air would cause it to burst into flame!

I tried several woods, pine burned very hot but cracked and snapped relentlessly. Hard wood didn't snap or and was denser charcoal so I think it put out more BTU overall but the pine put out heat faster so I would use the pine to get the hardwood charcoal going in my forge. As for gunpowder I thought about making it but the best charcoal for that is willow or alder wood and I didn't have any of that around.

I also bought manufactured natural charcoal at the hardware store and it coast about $15 per 25 lbs bag. But since I had all the free wood scraps around and my ex's dad was a bit of a tinkerer it worked out great.

I am now thinking of making a new blacksmith shop after a long hiatus in blacksmithing but instead of charcoal make a Natural gas forge and convert it to methane! Many blacksmiths now use propane forges but as I might be living on a farm soon and I thought building a methane digester for horse waste would be a great idea and convert a propane forge to methane. The major difference is the size of the gas apertures.

But we shall see I am not sure where I am going to end up at this point.

Brother in Arms

Are there electronic versions? If so, there may be hope of using a computer program to have them translated, at least to the point where one gets the gist of it.

actually ..yes
 

since there is a char in our campaign who controls an armoured train this is rather interesting news.For the moment he is in the northwest ,but should he decide to travel to a drier spot hehehe..

Thanks for the info Bro. I'll be interested in hearing how the methane forge goes. I would think it would work for heating as well as, or nearly so, as propane. We used propane for most of our hot iron work, but because it was quick to get going and shut down for smaller projects. IF we had a bigger one, we called my uncle to do it on his forge. That man was very good with metals. He welded a broken head off a cast iron hydraulic ram on. Took him almost two weeks I guess, and he slept by the forge between jobs. Saved the county big bugs, it was in the 30's. Don't know if you've worked cast iron, but he knew the heating tricks. If I could be 10th as good as he was.. ah well.


And for the train water. I helped demolish a water purification plant on the Great Northern (no BNSF) back in summer of 66. The had to treat all the water for the steam engines. It was an interesting job. I recall 'collecting' some interesting maps and papers from the office. The place hadn't been used in over ten years when we went into tear it down, board by board. HARDWOOD T&G walls and floors, with TWO tanks that held 30000 gallons each easy made from T&G redwood. The RR spared no expense when the plant was built back sometime before WW1. But like I said, water is the key element to steam operations. Good water, which is hard to find. I do know enough chemistry to know the minerals can be percolated off with addition of other chemicals, but dang if I can remember what those other chemicals are.

Head scratching,
later,
Grae

I haven't read everything again on this post. Sorry if I'm giving a bad type of info or repeating someone else saying.

However, I have seen Grae talking about diesel and alcohol and that interested me: it can't work. However, diesel engine were designed for heavy oil and they would work on any type of oil (from arachid to olive). You can put about 50% of vegetable oil in any diesel engine and 100% if you can attached some eating device on it.

About Gazogene, the last info I had is that are used again. Older model type are still workable and they would use coal, wood, or anything that can burnt. However, you need some time to start the engine. Newer models are fun so; they use specific type of wood and are more expensive to run than gas vehicles.:D

Nice point about Methane, every town and city could burry their trashes and get some.

Polish Steam train operation
 

http://www.krykiet.com/polish_steam.htm

This is a link I stumbled across in my quest to find the fuel consumption data for steam trains (yes Virginia I love steam operations, be they rail, water (though I prefer sail on water) or tractive motors (tractors as used in agriculture and lumbering)). Anyway it brought to mind the Going Home module where they have a train in it. It is now 2008 RL and they are still using steam power on this section of rail in northwestern Poland. What a grand scheme I can think of for playing that our.

Grae
lover of 'obsolete' technology

PS. didn't know where to put this, didn't think it really deserved a new thread.