Fuel consumption

“ Total consumption of motor fuel experienced an equally rapid growth, rising from the depression low in 1933 of approximately 141⁄4 billion gallons to nearly 24 billion gallons in 1941, an increase of 68 percent in the 8 years. ”

“ In short, the advantages of natural gas as a fuel are so obvious to those who have given it a trial, that the prediction is made that, should the supply fail, many who are now using it will never return to the consumption of crude coal in factories, but, if necessary, convert it or petroleum into gas at their own works. ”

“ A ship of, say, eight or ten thousand tons, making fourteen knots an hour, could often in fair weather do fifteen knots, but that extra mile an hour would probably cost in coal or oil consumption, $150 or $200 more in the twenty-four hours. Oil makes very little smoke when intelligently "fired." If you want to make a chief-engineer of an oil-burner jump, point out the volume of black smoke coming out of the steamer's smokestacks. He will make for the fire-room and raise Cain. A big volume of smoke shows waste of oil and bad combustion. ”

“ When we consider, however, that the cost should only embrace attendance, fuel, wear and tear, and a little lime and soda for the purifiers, that the consumption of fuel is small, the wear and tear light, and that the raw material—air—is obtained for nothing, it ought to be possible to produce the gas for a third or fourth of this amount in most of our great manufacturing centers, where the price of fuel is but a third of that demanded in London, and where provision could be made for economizing the waste heat, which is entirely lost in the Westminster installation. ”

“ The advantages which the coal trade must reap from the introduction of the gas-light must be very considerable. There is already less waste, but a greater consumption of coal than formerly. The lower classes of the community are scantily supplied with firing; and nothing but a reduction of [24] price is necessary to increase to a very large amount the average quantity of fuel consumed in the country. ”

“ By economy it is meant that, while all necessary operations of warming and cooking continue to be performed, the fuel employed should be utilized to the utmost. In the kitchen, the daily consumption of fuel, in small establishments, should not exceed half a pound of coal for each person cooked for, and in large establishments the proportion should be smaller. ”

“ The fact that the consumption of coal in London during the first four months of 1873 has, in spite of increasing population, amounted to 49,707 tons less than the corresponding period of 1872, shows that some feeble attempts have been made to economize the domestic consumption of fuel. ”

“ Perhaps the most challenging task contemplated for the fuel cell is to bring about the consumption of raw or slightly processed coal, gas, and oil fuels with atmospheric oxygen. If fuel cells can be made to use these abundant fuels, then the high natural conversion efficiency of the fuel cells will make them economically superior to the lower efficiency steam-electric plants now in commercial service. ”

“ Fuel is used mainly as a means for obtaining light, heat and power. It may be used primarily for the generation of power and then the power itself may be employed for lighting and heating. A considerable proportion of coal consumption is for the production of illuminating gas, in which form it is used directly for lighting. A portion of the coal consumption is for still another use, viz. ”

“ With fuel oil weighing 71⁄2 pounds per gallon, an engine consuming .65 pounds per horse-power hour (a usual guarantee) at full load, the cost of a horse-power hour delivered at the shaft will be .26 cent with fuel at 3 cents per gallon. This the lowest fuel expense of any prime mover even with steam or gas units of great power. In a twenty-four hour test of a 185De La Vergne oil engine running on 19° Beaumé oil, the consumption was considerably below the figure assumed above, being .508 pounds per horse-power hour. ”

“ In point of fact the mechanical stoker has been recently tried with success, and this will probably help in solving the problem. But there is also the strong probability that the use of liquid fuel will become more and more popular. At the present time many locomotives in the West and Southwest, as well as in Europe and in Asia, have been equipped with burners for the consumption of crude petroleum. ”

“ And after three decades of inaction, we raised fuel economy standards so that by the middle of the next decade, our cars will average nearly 55 miles per gallon. That’s nearly double what they get today. ”

“ The reason why we use petrol to drive our motor-cars is because petrol (and certain other liquid fuels such as benzol, etc.) contains within itself a store of energy which can be liberated as heat when the fuel is burnt or exploded in the presence of air in the engine cylinder. ”

“ Of the other fuels available, petroleum takes the leading place, but we are hardly more economical in our use of this fuel and our oil supplies are diminishing much more rapidly than the stores of coal. ”

“ We're raising fuel economy standards for sport utility vehicles and vans and pickup trucks, starting with model year 2005. When these reasonable increases in mileage standards take full effect, they will save American drivers about 340,000 barrels of gasoline a day. ”

“ Petroleum products are also largely utilized in gas manufacture for, (1) the production of “air-gas,” (2) the manufacture of oil-gas, and (3) the enrichment of coal-gas. For heating purposes, the stoves employed are practically kerosene lamps of suitable construction, though gasoline is used as a domestic fuel in the United States. The use of petroleum as liquid fuel is dealt with under Fuel, as is the employment of its products in motors, which has greatly increased the demand for petroleum spirit. ”

“ Steaming and Combustion Tests.—The investigations included under the term, fuel efficiency, relate to the utilization of the various types of fuels found in the coal and oil fields, and deal primarily with the combustion of such fuels in gas producers, in the furnaces of steam boilers, in locomotives, etc., and with the efficiency and utilization of petroleum, kerosene, gasoline, etc., in internal-combustion engines. ”

“ For illuminating purposes it is the cheapest form of artificial light; as a fuel it is supplanting coal, where the latter is dear or its cost of carriage high, as on ocean steamers. Finally, the construction of light and convenient gasoline motors has given it great importance as a source of motive power. Natural gas is closely related to petroleum, but the supply has been so reduced by rapid and reckless use that it has but a limited economic outlook and is of local significance only. ”

“ If water is not available, and wind is considered too unreliable, pumping must be accomplished by using an engine which, no matter of what form or type, derives its energy from the combustion of fuel, be the same coal, wood, charcoal, petroleum or kerosene, gas, gasoline, or naphtha. ”

“ A wide range of fuels may be used in an internal-combustion engine. They may be either gaseous, liquid, or even solid. In stationary engines hydrogen, coal gas, natural gas, blast-furnace gas, and [156] producer gas are employed to advantage. Volatile fuels, such as alcohol, bensol, gasoline, and kerosene, are turned into a mist or vapor and then burned as a gas. In engines of the Diesel type any liquid fuel ranging down to thick crude oils may be employed, and in one type of engine, which, however, has not proved commercially practicable, coal dust is burned in the cylinder. ”

“ We are apt to ignore the greatness of this loss because the gas escapes into the air and we can not see it, or it burns and we see only its effect, not the loss of fuel, but if we could see it in the form of oil we should find that a billion feet of gas is equal to more than a hundred and sixty thousand barrels of petroleum. ”

“ Thus gas used for firing crockery will not be suitable for use in open hearth steel furnaces, as the impurities in the various fuels may have an injurious effect on the manufactured product. The cost of the fuel, cost of transportation, heat value, purity, and ease of handling are all factors in the selection of a fuel. ”

“ Already, there are hundreds of fueling stations that use a blend of ethanol and gasoline known as E85, and there are millions of cars on the road with the flexible-fuel tanks necessary to use this fuel - including my own right here in Illinois. ”

“ As petroleum is being used as a substitute for coal—and inasmuch as the whole problem of fuel supply is one—we are ultimately compelled to an investigation of the ability of our petroleum supply to meet its present drain and to meet the expansion in its use, which is the most surprising development of our day in the study of power creation. ”

“ Other researches have resulted in the acquirement of valuable information regarding the distribution of temperature in the fuel bed of gas producers and furnaces, showing a range of from 400° to 1,300° cent., and have thus furnished data indicating specific difficulties to be overcome in gas-producer improvements for greater fuel efficiency. ”

“ Of late years, and especially since the introduction of the motor-car, great progress has been made in the construction of light but powerful engines, or motors, and the employment of petrol vapour instead of coal or oil has very greatly lessened the weight of the fuel which has to be carried. ”

“ These engines have the advantage of being a self-contained [111] power, requiring neither chimney nor steam boiler, and may be said to be a waterless power. The objection is the necessity to rely upon oil as fuel, and the dangers attending the storage of oil. A good oil engine should not require to use more than a pint of refined petroleum per indicated horse-power working for one hour. ”

“ When but moderate temperatures are desired, as in warming a house, exhaust steam serves admirably, and so might the exhausts from gas engines. Indeed we here strike the key-note of modern fuel economy which is that wherever possible fuel should first deliver all the motive power that can be squeezed out of it, when and only when the remainder of its heat, much the larger part of the whole, should be used for warming. ”

“ Petroleum engines are now gaining favour, as they are equal to gas engines in cleanliness and results, and need as little attention, and they can be used anywhere, as a supply of fuel is so easily attainable. The ordinary and common petroleum of commerce is the fuel used, and the various makers contend that these motors are more economical than gas engines, the cost of fuel varying from 3⁄4d. ”

“ The manufacturing industries of the country waste a large amount of fuel annually, but here the waste is mostly due to expensive methods of producing power, and to careless stoking, and is largely preventable. As we have shown, gas-engines are a far more economical form of producing power than are steam-engines. Steam uses from five to ten per cent. of the heat-units of coal, gas-producer engines use fifty per cent. and burn a lower grade of coal. ”

“ In some cases the work done in a steam-engine by 2 tons of coal has been performed by 1 ton of oil fuel, but in others the proportions have been as 3 to 2, and these latter can be safely relied on in practice as a minimum. This saving, combined with the savings of labour and transit already explained, will in the near future make the use of liquid fuel compulsory, except in places so near to coal-fields that the cost of coal becomes sufficiently low to counterbalance the savings in weight of fuel consumed and in labour in handling it. ”

“ They had some emergency fuel, but they didn't want to use it. Like having a can of kerosene in the car when the tank runs dry, I suppose. It will work, but it messes up the engine. You understand so far? ”

“ We have not yet taken full advantage of the laws of combustion, or adapted our apparatus to the peculiarities of the best and cheapest fuel. Nature manages more wisely in her machinery. Combustion, the union of fuel with oxygen, ceases for want of air as well as for want of fuel. In the case of fuels compounded of carbon and hydrogen, if the air be withheld when the mass is in rapid combustion, the heat will cause a portion of the fuel to pass off by distillation, unconsumed, and this portion will be lost. ”

“ Notwithstanding this guarded announcement, it is evident that the discovery of natural gas has begun a revolution in fuel, which will have permanent and far-reaching economic and social consequences, whether the supply of gas is limited or inexhaustible. ”

“ Further, a very decided saving of fuel may be effected by this combination of oil-gas producer with the internal-combustion engine, in place of the boiler and steam-engine, in many places where suitable oil is cheap or plentiful, or where intermittent work is required. On the other hand, more heat may be produced by the direct combustion of liquid fuel with dry steam and air than by converting the oil into gas before using it as a fuel. Oil-gas is a safe, rich, permanent gas made from petroleum oil, and burned with excellent results in the gas-engine cylinder. ”

“ On the other hand, within living memory, new sources of fuel, such as petroleum, have been made available, and old varieties of fuel have been used to better advantage, as witness the internal-combustion engine driven by smoke from sawdust. Moreover, in the ocean tides is a vast energy that one day may take the place of fuel. ”

“ While the fuel most commonly used is coal, straw and wood, crude oil is often used, the fuel being determined principally by the location of the engine, and by its cost on the job. The matter of fuel should be taken into consideration when the engine is purchased as the different grades demand different fire box and boiler construction. When it is possible to obtain crude oil at a reasonable figure, it certainly should be used in preference to all others as liquid fuel is the most compact, most easily controlled, and efficient of any. ”