Truck and Harvester efficiency & design?

[Eclipse Now]

Hi all,

1. I'm after the average fuel use per 100 km of various types of "Road Train".

 

2. Harvesters into biomass collectors?

Also, if combine harvesters are currently configured to mainly collect the grain and leave the stalk (of the corn, rice, wheat, etc), what is the best way to pick it up? EG: Would we redesign the harvester to harvest both the grain and biomass, dumping them simultaneously into different trailers, or just run over the farm once harvesting and again baling in a more traditional way?

 

It's for the Terra Preta thread where I'm trying to figure out how a Biochar system would work without any actual petroleum.

 

The ultimate question is can Biochar really make at least farming self-sufficient in fuel?

 

(As well as potentially SOLVING Global warming and preparing the soil for less fertiliser).

 

If the following quote is true, then it seems there is ground for hope.

10 tons of any woody or plant biomass and turns it into 1 ton of charcoal and 3.2 tons of diesel.

 

3. I guess the last question is how much biomass is in the agriwaste that would be economically harvested? For instance, there is about 2.2 trillion tons of grain grown annually worldwide. Is the stalk, leaves, and husk usually half the weight of the plant or more? I'm trying to work out if a farm produces X amount of grain, and Y amount of biomass for Biochar cookers, then what is Z, the fuel to be returned to that farm... and how far away can a Biochar plant be before it's taking too much fuel energy just to get the biomass there?

[goku]

some of the wheat straw is bailed and used for bedding and to prevent land washing.

checkout Dairy Today Sunbelt Ag Expo in Moultrie, GA***::***North America's Premier Farm Show http://www.progressivefarmer.com

[Eclipse Now]

Yes, but we harvest 2.2 trillion tons of the major grains. If we assume about 50% weight of grain-to-harvestable-agriwaste ratio, that's still 1 trillion tons of biomass to play with.

 

10 tons biomass through pyrolysis plant = 3.2 tons diesel equivalent and 1 ton char.

EPRIDA - too good to be true? Transition Culture

 

So even if we used 10% of our agriwaste, that's 100 billion tons of agriwaste, or 10 billion tons of char, or GLOBAL WARMING SOLVED and plenty of farmlands rehabilitated requiring far less oil.

 

Farms can have a little biochar cooker each, or transport the biomass to a central biochar plant which can produce syngas or synfuel.

 

We are running out of cheap oil, so that's why I wanted to get my head around trucking efficiencies, to try and answer some of the Life Cycle Analysis questions about gathering agriwaste, trucking it to a central plant, creating biochar and fuel, and trucking it back to the farms.

[Flying Binghi]

My gut feeling is it may be 'mineing' the soil a little by taking near all the grain waste (plant stalks etc) zero till technics put a lot of that 'waste' back into the soil. I'm no expert on this though - just spent the odd hour or two on the back of a tractor when I was younger.

[Eclipse Now]

So even if we used 10% of our agriwaste, that's 100 billion tons of agriwaste, or 10 billion tons of char, or GLOBAL WARMING SOLVED and plenty of farmlands rehabilitated requiring far less oil.

 

BTW all, you should have spanked me for this. I'm disappointed that no-one told me off. Just testing...

 

... but the reality is I agree with this uber-coalition of climate warriors, based in Melbourne, that basically say we need to:-

Zero Emissions Climate Change Global Warming Solution | Beyond Zero Emissions is the solution

 

1. Wean off oil because we are at peak oil and soon won't be able to afford it.

2. Rush headlong into solar thermal and other baseload renewable electricity to create a carbon neutral civilization.

3. Use the Biochar to draw down on the 200 gigatons of Carbon stored in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.

 

For a home grown climate network, they have a surprisingly good line up of cast including Tim Flannery, James Hansen, Biochar experts, local campaigners and international celebrities.

 

So, sorry about the "test" above... I guess that could be seen as trolling but I was hoping for a reaction. :)

 

Anyway, FB, I don't think mining the soil is a good idea. We've got to close the nutrient gaps. Sustainable agriculture seems almost in our grasp, as long as we can stop flushing all those nutrients down the toilets and out to sea. Biochar can drastically reduce the amount of nutrients we require, with nitrogen up to 30 to 50% reduction, etc. Add some processed sewer nutrients etc and we're home! (But just saying that flippantly discounts the enormous infrastructure changes and difficulties in doing so, and I don't want to underestimate the cost of all these changes! Yet civilization does have to come to terms with the fact that we are about to hit 'peak everything'.)

[Roadam]

According to Bunker freight lines publication: http://www.energyefficiencyopportunities.gov.au/assets/documents/energyefficiencyopps/bunker_web20080702155954.pdf

 

According to Bunker, its fleet has an average mileage of 1.8 km/l. That translates to 55 l/100km. As I guess the most up-to-date vehicles are likely to consume less, lets say that they may be 10% more efficient. So 50l/100km.

 

Another thing I notice is that It doesnt matter much how much does a truck weight. On the page 4 there is a graph which tells that single trucks, B-doubles and Road trains have the same mileage. Although I guess B-doubles weigh about 80 tons, singles about 40 and who knows how long road trains are.

 

So it would seem that the length and the weight of the vehicle doesn't affect efficiency.:hyper:

 

For a B-double consuming 50l/100km and weighing 80 tons you get a fuel consumption of 0.625 l/100km for each tone. My car consuming 5l/100km would have figure about 2.5 to 3.:eek2:

 

http://www.easts.info/on-line/journal_06/278.pdf According to this the average consumption for trains is 3.5 kwh/100km for each tone. This translates into about 0.3l/100km/tone. But these are electric trains with efficiency of about 90%.

 

I wonder how much would an electric road train consume. :hyper:

 

Edit: I translated the efficiency of those trucks using 45% efficiency. I get 0.28 l/100km/tone, which nicely backs up to 0.3 when using 90% efficiency of el. trains. :)

[Moontanman]

According to Bunker freight lines publication: http://www.energyefficiencyopportunities.gov.au/assets/documents/energyefficiencyopps/bunker_web20080702155954.pdf

 

According to Bunker, its fleet has an average mileage of 1.8 km/l. That translates to 55 l/100km. As I guess the most up-to-date vehicles are likely to consume less, lets say that they may be 10% more efficient. So 50l/100km.

 

Another thing I notice is that It doesnt matter much how much does a truck weight. On the page 4 there is a graph which tells that single trucks, B-doubles and Road trains have the same mileage. Although I guess B-doubles weigh about 80 tons, singles about 40 and who knows how long road trains are.

 

So it would seem that the length and the weight of the vehicle doesn't affect efficiency.:hyper:

 

For a B-double consuming 50l/100km and weighing 80 tons you get a fuel consumption of 0.625 l/100km for each tone. My car consuming 5l/100km would have figure about 2.5 to 3.:eek2:

 

http://www.easts.info/on-line/journal_06/278.pdf According to this the average consumption for trains is 3.5 kwh/100km for each tone. This translates into about 0.3l/100km/tone. But these are electric trains with efficiency of about 90%.

 

I wonder how much would an electric road train consume. :hyper:

 

Edit: I translated the efficiency of those trucks using 45% efficiency. I get 0.28 l/100km/tone, which nicely backs up to 0.3 when using 90% efficiency of el. trains. :)

 

I'm not sure if this figures in but the better efficiency of trains has a lot to do with their iron wheels on iron tracks. A road train would have to run on rubber wheels and asphalt, right?

[Roadam]

Who knows.:shrug: I used data from a freight business in Australia, and some research done in China. I will have to get more accurate data.

[goku]

Who knows.:shrug:

 

i do

actually its metal wheels and rubber tires

 

my preacher has a trucking business, to the best of my memory he said his trucks got 6 to 7 mpg

[Roadam]

Damn, there are hundreds of links about more efficient trucks or trains. But they don't ever report how much fuel they actually consume. Much less the number given per tone kilometre.

 

And truck manufacturers are also claiming their trucks are more efficient. But they also don't state any number of how much they actually consume.

 

my preacher has a trucking business, to the best of my memory he said his trucks got 6 to 7 mpg

How much does his trucks weigh?

[goku]

How much does his trucks weigh?

 

the gross weight can not be more than 40 tons, D.O.T. regulations

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

Another thing I notice is that It doesnt matter much how much does a truck weight. On the page 4 there is a graph which tells that single trucks, B-doubles and Road trains have the same mileage. Although I guess B-doubles weigh about 80 tons,

I think a lot of this would have to do with terrain...If they are running primarily on flat terrain once the rig is up to speed inertia would make rolling weight fairly irrelevant.

 

The rest probably has everything to do with the rigs primarily being geared for the heavier loads, reducing efficiency by forcing the engine to run faster than it needs to to haul the lighter loads. Which (unless they primarily haul the heavier loads and rarely haul the lighter) makes about as much sense as gearing a 1/2 ton pickup with the same ratios as a 2 ton commercial hauler. (assuming the same size, same output engine in both)

[Roadam]

I wonder how much difference does it make to attach another trailer to a road train. Of course hills ruin economics of road trains, but on flat terrain I wonder.

 

Each semi trailer would weight about 20-40 tons. So each section on road gives about 2kN of additional rolling resistance. But since it doesn't change frontal area and only some additional turbulence below and along it, I guess rolling resistance is major factor.

Hmm, road train pulling additional trailer with 3kN resistance at the speed of 80kmh would need additional 90 hp. But these trucks come in 500hp range.

 

7 miles per gallon is about 3km per liter. With 40 ton truck you get 0.08l per tone km, well 0.12 if just a truck weights 15 tons.

 

I am sure I did miscalculate something. As trucks surely have 30 times the rolling of trains of the same weight. But at speeds, aerodynamics prevail. So a good road train shouldn't have more than a few times more fuel consumption.

US gov article linked at wikipedia cites average train fuel usage of 0.25 MJ per tone km and heavy trucks at 2.4MJ. Australian truck association claims articulated trucks use 0.9 MJ and smaller rigid trucks 2.4MJ.

 

//PS I found a recent publication citing fuel consumption of harvesters, well its from Bulgaria :D. Average consumption is about 4.5 kg/tone of harvested grain. That nets to 220 MJ per tone.

 

http://www.eau.ee/~agronomy/vol022/p2207.pdf

[Eclipse Now]

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for trains for intercity transport and trams and trolley buses for intracity transport. Once transport goes electric, we have some hope of getting through peak oil.

 

But an electric train network may not be economically viable for Australian farmlands. Sure SOME train networks will move freight and passengers between our towns, but I'm talking about the vast wheat belts that just will not make a freight line economically viable for transporting agriwaste to a biochar factory. So the energy economics of the system become important, conserving liquid fuels for our most important sectors such as farming and construction of new rail and renewables, etc.

 

The next 20 years are going to be VERY interesting!