The future of diesel inboards in an all electric future

[purvisgs]

an elegant solution for long distance sailors could be a very small, quiet, petroleum-fueled engine. Something elegant. 3 to 10 hp could be plenty with a battery-electric drive. Something is amiss with the marine diesel generator offerings as they tend to be complicated, noisy, and expensive. Think a “Honda” generator but without the volatile gasoline.

Kubota's Z 'super mini series' & related horizontal thermosiphon engines (2cy is a sweet spot but there are other 1 and 3cyl kubota options outside of this range also) are nice, simple and very lightweight for the small diesel ~10-15hp water cooled genset option. I don't know what specific models of gensets these engines are put in currently but there are many. I'd much prefer that to any gasser. The noise factor can be mitigated with a quality installation in a lot of cases. Any decent diesel gen options do tend to be expensive unless used/surplus. 1cyl might have slightly better efficiency & lightest weight but usually 2cyl diesel is a better overall option noise/vibration wise.

 

[Talchotali]

How do you measure efficiency? Convert the energy of sail power with a hydro turbine into gasoline and your efficiency is below 0.1% and requires special catalysts. gasoline is not an efficient way to store energy, it may be an efficient carrier.

Responding to:​

Talchotali said:​

A gallon of diesel is one of the most efficient ways to store energy, and you can carry only the amount you need. ​

"...Convert the energy of sail power with a hydro turbine into gasoline and your efficiency is below 0.1% and requires special catalysts..."​

1) Thank you! I've applied for a patent for a 'sail power powered hydro turbine into gasoline machine', but can you send a diagram so I can complete the application? The Patent Office folks are getting persnickety after my recent 'seawater in to gold machine' design submittal.

"...gasoline is not an efficient way to store energy..."​

Weren't we talking about diesel in this thread? Is this a plug for Atomic 4s?

"...How do you measure efficiency?..."​

The statement: "...A gallon of diesel is one of the most efficient ways to store energy, and you can carry only the amount you need". If not clear, how about this: the weight of the medium (e.g. diesel) per energy stored by volume, held in a Jerry can that can be carried down the dock to my boat.

This can be expressed in say, BTUs per Imperial gallon, ERGs per drachmn, or any relevant combination of measurements from the chart below:

Args per fignewtons perhaps?
..

 

[a8b]

Bullshit.

Lets start here with deshitting this thread.

Yes anything can happen. Laws dont make sense. It make more sense to tax fuels to oblivion.

Why are you rude? I think you just sit around and read biased second and third hand reports online and you have zero actual experience with anything we are talking about here.

Of course it is lighter if it is only hydrogen. Storing mixed with oxygen is dangerous. there is no pressure, pressure leads to lower round trip efficiency and complications.

I use aluminized mylar bags. These store hydrogen for months without leaking (much) and I paid $3 to be able to store 250 liters of hydrogen.

There has to fucking be pressure. Or nothing will flow.

How do you fill your 3$ 66 gallon mylar trash bag?

As I see it, your 66 gal trash bag at 1psi (filled to bursting) gives 14.fuckall BTU's.

If it takes an hour (if you can do 4.2l/min, which you can't) for your amonia/urine/bacteria (passangers will be begging for diesel fumes I imagine) generator to fill it, ignoring pumping costs, it costs you ~680 BTU.

That is a hell of a negative energy ratio. At a 'few liters per minute' you can never reach positive energy

But that high tech mylar hydrogen containment device probably wont leak and mix with the air in the enclosed ama. Mylar trash bags are super durable rubbing on the inside of a fibergass ama, right?

Curious how you store 16kw high explosive hydrogen in 3$ trash bags solution. That you use as an open flame. To cook.

Like, from a distance, curious.

The volume in trimaran hull in uncompressed hydrogen is significant, in my case about 16kwh. I am not using all this, only a few small bags (one escaped and floated away already lol)

I think what you "know" is not from actual experience so you just have negative comments biased by a small imagination and zero experience.

Feel free to check my math. I used @slap's link above for the data.

Voltage. It takes significantly less energy to split ammonia which has 3 hydrogen per molecule rather than 2.

That is what you guys seem like as you have not actually done anything with hydrogen yet seem to have strong views against it. I have built my electrolyzer.

I built an electrolizer from a model train transformer in 6th grade. Blowing up test tubes of hydrogen was a hit.

The electrolyzer uses about 200 watts and produce a few liters of hydrogen per minute.

There are no metals besides the electrolyzer plates, and the catalyst in the burner element. The cost is all very very low compared to a battery system.

It does scale. It does work. it is unreasonable to use a fuel cell here.

Like all hydrogen soluitions it is negative energy.

Using the hydrogen for cooking or even a cutting torch is reasonable, and works and well within reach.

You would be better using lead acid.

Trying to run your electric drive off it is in serious question and probably not practical in most

In any case. Ever. At all.

cases. I am not even attempting this. Don't knock hydrogen for what it isnt, consider what it can do.

Why dont you do some work.

Done

Calculate the joules hydrogen stores, based on volume. Calculate what is needed to power a cooking stove. Consider most gas stoves are 15% efficient but could be much much higher, its just that the heat is mostly wasted, so consider an 80% efficient catalytic hydrogen stove.

You will find.. running a stove for 5 minutes on hydrogen using 5 hours of power from a 50 watt solar panel is actually possible and doesnt degrade battery from high discharge or require a large expensive battery bank.

No, it is not.

 

[El Borracho]

Mother nature’s trick of densely storing hydrogen on long chains of carbon was unbeatable tech until the crush of humanity exploited it in a unthinking frenzy. Hydrogen will not be a viable fuel, ever, as a pressurized gas. Some brilliant chemist may someday create a way to deliver hydrogen in something other than a hydrocarbon. Until then...

 

[El Borracho]

somebody upthread posted that sailboat engines are just tractor hand-me-downs. I wonder if this is true...

Yes, perhaps not so obvious in the West, but here in Asia the very same engines are everywhere pumping water, cultivating rice paddys, etc. Probably delivered at one quarter of the yacht price.

A real head scratcher is the $300 7hp diesel on my cement mixer. Seems to have the same function as the Beta in the yacht. Runs great. Starts first pull every time.

 

[Zonker]

Yes, perhaps not so obvious in the West, but here in Asia the very same engines are everywhere pumping water, cultivating rice paddys, etc. Probably delivered at one quarter of the yacht price.

A real head scratcher is the $300 7hp diesel on my cement mixer. Seems to have the same function as the Beta in the yacht. Runs great. Starts first pull every time.

Beta, Nanni, Vetus and others all start with basic Kubota or Mitsubishi industrial diesel blocks and marinize them (add basically water injection exhaust, water cooled exhaust manifold, a sea water pump and other minor modifications). Bigger Nanni are Toyota blocks.

Yanmar does make their own blocks.

However I don't think you can confuse these engines with the $300 7 HP air cooled diesel on a cement mixer. They are designed with a much shorter lifespan (in the several hundreds of hours) because nobody expects them to last 5000 or 10,000 hours like a small marine diesel.

 

[Fah Kiew Tu]

Bullshit.

Lets start here with deshitting this thread.




There has to fucking be pressure. Or nothing will flow.

How do you fill your 3$ 66 gallon mylar trash bag?

This.

All I can say is, you've a lot more patience than I do with someone who's either trolling or a total idiot.

I don't believe he actually HAS any of that stuff installed let alone working anyway and absent DETAILED pictures of all the components actually installed in his boat, with vids of the H2 flow from piss to storage and back to being burnt, I never will believe him.

He's just full of shit and a fantasist.

FKT

 

[Boathavn]

---

When I was a young whippersnapper engineering student, I remember going to SAE meetings because we would get comped a free dinner in a snappy restaurant and occasionally free drinks.

One of the best talks was given by a Cummins engineer who described this program - the Cummins Adiabatic Diesel Engine.

It was the next big thing is diesel - all ceramic components or coated components, no cooling, no lubricating oil. The goal was no wasted heat entered or left the engine.

The result was an energy efficiency of 50% and beyond over a conventional diesel engine. The Cummins guy claimed that Cummins production would be half Adiabatic in five years (mid 1980s).

So what happened?

The romantic in me would like to think that a Black Mercedes 600 Pullman pulled up to Cummins Columbus, Ohio headquarters and two Arab Shaiks with a large Gucci leather suitcase hopped out. A short meeting and the rest is history. Trucks pull up a week later and plans, drawings, tooling and all prototypes are spirited away for a long ride on a tramp freighter. Cut to an obscure warehouse, and all is soon unloaded in a spot between piled pallets of boxes stenciled with "TWO HUNDRED MILE PER GALLON CARBURATOR" and "ARK OF THE COVENANT ."

Well, likely other commercial reasons interveined.

I don't think the Internal Combustion Engine will go away without a fight. So perhaps the small displacement diesel industrial engine (of which sailboat applications are a small subset) will look like something built under Adiabatic principles described here, brought up to 2025-era technology.

Didn't we begin talking about small-displacement diesel industrial engines for sailboats in this tread? I can't remember.

The writings are all lost in time.

ZARDOZ




From Hemmings:

By Daniel Strohl on May 14th, 2019 at 4:00 pm

In 1975, the U.S. Army's Tank Automotive Command and Cummins began a joint development program focused on adiabatic diesel engines, which they termed Low-Heat Rejection engines. Fred Crismon, in his book U.S. Military Wheeled Vehicles, implied that the main goal of the program was to reduce vehicle failures by eliminating the cooling system.

The Army has found that historically, 60 percent of the failures which occur in their vehicles relate to problems with the cooling system. Theoretically, at least, if the cooling requirement could be eliminated, there would be 60 percent fewer vehicle failures."

While that may have proven a side benefit (along with the 338 pounds the engine shed in cooling system components), the actual aim of the program was to increase fuel efficiency. Or, as Cummins and TACOM engineers wrote,

to take a giant step toward improving the energy and material conservation efforts of the future vehicular power plants. These efforts were not to compromise with engine emissions characteristics.

Thus, Cummins modified its NHC 250 855-cu.in. six-cylinder engine with ceramic-metallic components (head, cylinder liners, pistons, valves, and exhaust ports -- anything that encountered the combustion chamber) to handle temperatures of up to 2,000-degrees Fahrenheit. Heavy insulation of the intake path helped direct that heat to the fuel/air mixture.

In 1981, TACOM then placed the engine in an M813 5-ton six-wheeled truck with a special hood touting the adiabatic engine underneath and put about 10,000 miles on the truck. Over that time period, TACOM and Cummins noted a 38 percent increase in fuel economy over a stock M813. According to a TACOM/Cummins SAE paper, that testing program "has repeatedly demonstrated the Adiabatic Engine to be the most fuel efficient engine in the world" with fuel consumption numbers that indicated 50-percent thermal efficiency. Crismon didn't offer any hard numbers on thermal efficiency but noted that it improved on the NHC 250's efficiency by 100 percent.

The adiabatic M813's success led to a number of other TACOM experimental engines, including a turbocharged adiabatic V-8 medium-duty truck engine reportedly good for 600 to 750 horsepower, larger adiabatic tank engines reportedly good for 1,200 to 1,500 horsepower, and a fully ceramicized Minimum Friction Engine designed to use no lubricants at all and still reduce by half the amount of friction in the engine.

 

[MiddayGun]

This.

All I can say is, you've a lot more patience than I do with someone who's either trolling or a total idiot.

I don't believe he actually HAS any of that stuff installed let alone working anyway and absent DETAILED pictures of all the components actually installed in his boat, with vids of the H2 flow from piss to storage and back to being burnt, I never will believe him.

He's just full of shit and a fantasist.

FKT

I'm regretting typing out my rant now. Some people just get my back up.

I did manage to find a picture of his trimaran though.

 

[slap]

I'm regretting typing out my rant now. Some people just get my back up.

I did manage to find a picture of his trimaran though.
View attachment 527825

If boat_alexandra wants to store hydrogen at atmospheric presssure he'd need amas that big to store the equivalent of a cubic foot ( 7.48 US gallons) of diesel. Of course he would need the tanks to be huge bladders the size of the amas - otherwise how would you keep the air and hydrogen separate as you fill and empty the ama tank at near atmospheric pressure?

 

[a8b]

Mother nature’s trick of densely storing hydrogen on long chains of carbon was unbeatable tech until the crush of humanity exploited it in a unthinking frenzy. Hydrogen will not be a viable fuel, ever, as a pressurized gas. Some brilliant chemist may someday create a way to deliver hydrogen in something other than a hydrocarbon. Until then...

Funny. I look at that entirely the opposite. To me, it was the storage of long chains of carbon, with little bits of hydrogen filling the empty spots.

The whole IDEA of hydrogen as a FUEL was a fossil fuel peddlers scam. You can cook your food with bottles of expensive scotch too! There is just no way BURNING of hydrogen makes sense, and currently, the only real use for hydrogen is as a type of battery, called a fuel cell, which is objectively beat all to hell by other batteries.

---

When I was a young whippersnapper engineering student, I remember going to SAE meetings because we would get comped a free dinner in a snappy restaurant and occasionally free drinks.

I think there are plenty of opportunities to save fuel/carbon production.

Switching to diesel engines in cars could save 20-30% off the top.
The idea of using a 5000# vehicle to move a 200# human to anywhere is insane on it's face.

If we are gonna dream...

Rail is way cheaper per mile and way less carbon per mile to lay than roads. It also uses a small fraction of the fuel roads need to move along. and can handle way more capacity per lane. Automating self driving is a fraction of the difficulty with rail. We could literally have self driving personal rail carriages that pick you up and drop you off automagically.

 

[seandepagnier]

As I see it, your 66 gal trash bag at 1psi (filled to bursting) gives 14.fuckall BTU's.

Try again. 66 gallons is 250 liters. hydrogen has 9 btu per liter uncompressed. This is 2250 btu.

If it takes an hour (if you can do 4.2l/min, which you can't) for your amonia/urine/bacteria (passangers will be begging for diesel fumes I imagine) generator to fill it, ignoring pumping costs, it costs you ~680 BTU.

You should show your math. Because it is wrong. Have you ever built an electrolyzer? They produce pressurized output.

That is a hell of a negative energy ratio. At a 'few liters per minute' you can never reach positive energy

Again.. using water has a negative energy, but electrolysis is ~ 70% efficient here. There are more efficient electrolysis. Please research PEM vs alkaline electrolysis to learn more.

ive energy.

You would be better using lead acid.

Not from a cost or weight standpoint. lead is very heavy. It also cannot completely discharge from full in 5 minutes. Few batteries can.

 

[seandepagnier]

Pot calling the kettle black.
You come across as a proper tosser.

So would be anyone who disagrees with you it seems.

This is a political issue like it or not. Some people view you as a criminal for using an engine on your boat in anything but a life or death emergency. Face this fact. If you are seen using one out of lazy ness or impatience when it is absolutely clear that continued emissions are harmful to everyone: then what do you think is eventually going to happen?

You can say whatever rude thing you want on the internet, this is fine, but it doesn't change the fact that you make enemies with the best sailors by using diesel. It is cheating plain and simple, and if you do it you are a cheater. It's my opinion I am free to express it.

And watching boats motoring is boring? Who cares? They aren't there for your gratification.

This is a perfect example. I have absolutely no reason to support the continued use of diesel for recreational purposes like this. Why should I? Do we still have slaves? no. it was morally wrong. So is this. The richest people who can afford to cause the least problem continue to cause the most.

Will diesel be possible in 5000 years from now? Not by fossil sources. It should therefore not be allowed today either, reserve it for actual emergencies, not for people who dont want to tack or wait for a tide.

Needs citation.
In fact, lets see some proof of your sailing ability.



Speak for yourself mate.
Plenty of us sail and race on estuaries with shifting sand / mud banks, complex and hard running tides. And many are ex dinghy sailors, which is about a pure a sailing experience as you can get.
Turning on the engine to get home when there's no wind hardly negates that. But it doesn't sound like you have anywhere to be... good for you.

Its not worth saving you an hour here and there to sabotage the future of humanity and everything we have here. We are in a state of emergency from too many co2 emissions. This means its for sure wrong for you to cause them when you dont at all need to. It is obscene really that you think it is at all reasonable to "turn on the engine" just because the wind "died" It is also a theft against the people who are not making completely selfish decisions like that.

I feel like I'm definitely being trolled at this point.

You're right, I will never be much of a sailor compared to the people who died long ago (many of them at sea, the 'good old days'), but you're delusional if you think that not having an engine (even though you do, its just electric) means you are.


Your argument was based on the fact that sailing is a recreational activity and not necessary.
So it still applies, you're happy to take part in the system when it suits you and try and claim some moral high ground, when you could have far less impact by staying at home.

I am not sure what you mean by staying home? How would that cause less impact?

This.

All I can say is, you've a lot more patience than I do with someone who's either trolling or a total idiot.

I don't believe he actually HAS any of that stuff installed let alone working anyway and absent DETAILED pictures of all the components actually installed in his boat, with vids of the H2 flow from piss to storage and back to being burnt, I never will believe him.

I dont want to make 20 videos. I will get it refined completely first. It needs to be in a state worth copying and it isn't yet. I disassembled it to change the design, and also I need to get the catalytic burner working as you cant burn straight h2 in an enclosed space.

He's just full of shit and a fantasist.

FKT

I dont really think you have contributed anything; not even a single idea. From my perspective you are brainwashed into thinking no one can do anything extraordinary despite history showing this to be false. Why? I can only speculate from jealousy as you yourself are lacking in imagination and can only mimic others?

What thing did you try first on your boat that works well and now other people copied it?

 

[a8b]

Try again. 66 gallons is 250 liters. hydrogen has 9 btu per liter uncompressed. This is 2250 btu.

it seems a math error here. it would be easy if you just gave a link to state it, but after searching a bit, i'll agree to your 9btu/l.

So now you got an explosive bag of 2250 btu in your ama. how do you get your electricity back?

You should show your math. Because it is wrong. Have you ever built an electrolyzer? They produce pressurized output.

Your point? Efficiency drops as it gets pressure resistance, and you still have to get it out of the bag.

Again.. using water has a negative energy, but electrolysis is ~ 70% efficient here. There are more efficient electrolysis. Please research PEM vs alkaline electrolysis to learn more.

Nope.
How much piss and bacteria does it take to fill a bag of gas? And how long?

Not from a cost or weight standpoint. lead is very heavy. It also cannot completely discharge from full in 5 minutes. Few batteries can.

I note you do not in any way address any of the key/explosive/scale issues in your reply.

Would not a methane digester be a literal order of magnitude more productive. And you have a lot more shit than piss.

 

[MiddayGun]

So would be anyone who disagrees with you it seems.

This is a political issue like it or not. Some people view you as a criminal for using an engine on your boat in anything but a life or death emergency. Face this fact. If you are seen using one out of lazy ness or impatience when it is absolutely clear that continued emissions are harmful to everyone: then what do you think is eventually going to happen?

There is disagreement & being an arsehole when you're screaming at people for being criminals because they don't agree with you then it makes you the latter.
By "some people" you mean almost no one.

You can say whatever rude thing you want on the internet, this is fine, but it doesn't change the fact that you make enemies with the best sailors by using diesel. It is cheating plain and simple, and if you do it you are a cheater. It's my opinion I am free to express it.

You're free to express it. I'm free to express that you're delusional. (at best)

This is a perfect example. I have absolutely no reason to support the continued use of diesel for recreational purposes like this. Why should I? Do we still have slaves? no. it was morally wrong. So is this. The richest people who can afford to cause the least problem continue to cause the most.

Will diesel be possible in 5000 years from now? Not by fossil sources. It should therefore not be allowed today either, reserve it for actual emergencies, not for people who dont want to tack or wait for a tide.

Didn't we cover this already, you have a boat built from oil by products, sails made from oil by products, lithium extracted from around the world, solar panels, electric motors, various bits of equipment onboard all of which come from oil. Some sort of device to write your post on.
All of this stuff comes from a global supply chain powered by oil, with a huge carbon cost attached to it. And you're going to criticise my use of 50l of fuel in a season? That's less that most use commuting to work in one week.

In fact given the environmental cost of lithium / solar and the rest, I'll bet that keeping this engine going at 50-100l of diesel per year will have less impact.

Its not worth saving you an hour here and there to sabotage the future of humanity and everything we have here. We are in a state of emergency from too many co2 emissions. This means its for sure wrong for you to cause them when you dont at all need to. It is obscene really that you think it is at all reasonable to "turn on the engine" just because the wind "died" It is also a theft against the people who are not making completely selfish decisions like that.

Bums like you love to drift from place to place, claiming you have no impact, despite the fact that you rely on the rest of the world to provide you with food, equipment, clean drinking water, waste disposal, repair facilities and materials all the while criticising them for doing it, so who's the selfish one here.

Ironically I've spent the last 12 years working in the offshore renewables industry, so I'm actually working to try and improve the availability of clean(er) energy, and unlike your tin pot home brew system, we are delivering actual power generating projects that are making a real difference to the net energy balance of the country.
Fun fact, a CTV can use 2000 litres of diesel a day servicing an offshore windfarm. After 2 days they've used more than my boat has in 35 years.

 

[Fah Kiew Tu]

Bums like you love to drift from place to place, claiming you have no impact, despite the fact that you rely on the rest of the world to provide you with food, equipment, clean drinking water, waste disposal, repair facilities and materials all the while criticising them for doing it, so who's the selfish one here.

Yeah we've had this sort of argument before - it's why I reckon he's either a troll or an idiot, not that those categories are mutually exclusive.

And he's a bum, just a parasite on society, at best living off of the leavings and waste products of the society he decries.

Whatever - what's he going to do to me for burning diesel? Nothing except make anonymous whines on an obscure and irrelevant sailing forum. I don't believe he's ever actually gone anywhere so for sure he'll never get to where I live.

How's those pictures of the H2 system on his boat coming along? Probably like Trump's wonderful, never to be bettered health care plan - be out in 2 weeks (after the 12th of Never)....

FKT

 

[Arch_Stenton]

I believe the future is about reducing weight, having lighter vessels (as in cars) that need less fuel rather than switching to electric endings.
Keep the diesel engines but make them (or many parts) of plastic instead of metal. They already exist in car racing and they are designed to reduce weight, which is the big issue in terms of sustainability. Thermoplastic composites...

 

[slap]

I believe the future is about reducing weight, having lighter vessels (as in cars) that need less fuel rather than switching to electric endings.
Keep the diesel engines but make them (or many parts) of plastic instead of metal. They already exist in car racing and they are designed to reduce weight, which is the big issue in terms of sustainability. Thermoplastic composites...

Top level race car engines are often torn apart, inspected, and rebuilt as needed after races. Most passenger car engines aren't touched other than fluids, filters, belts, and spark plugs. Now some engines already have plastic parts on them - one of my cars has an engine with a plastic oil pan. Good thing the car has a skid plate protecting the engine. The latest generation of that engine VW went back to metal oil pans.

 

[Israel Hands]

The latest generation of that engine VW went back to metal oil pans.

Good reality check. A lot of this thread is pie-in-the-sky, IMO. Sure, it's exciting and great that we have some pioneers in our sport, small as it is in terms of fuel consumption. Electric makes sense for inshore and probably a lot of coastal settings. But all this nonsense about our diesel engines soon being "illegal" and the other virtue signaling is just bullshit. You aren't going to see ocean sailors rushing to convert their engines to electric for the same reason that you aren't going to climb aboard electric airplanes anytime soon. Two words: energy density. We are nowhere near producing the same watts per kg with electric + batteries as with liquid fuel in IC engines, at least not yet. Those of you who want to sail off across the ocean with a 60-mile range on your backup source of motility are free to do so. But I think many of us old farts are happy to putt-putt in and out of port (or divert out of doldrums or away from storms or deliver our boats) with our reliable diesels. At least until that energy density gap closes by an order of magnitude.

 

[floater]

I thought for sure we would all have cold fusion reactors in the bilge by now..