DV8 2XL

Also you must understand that the thermal profile of a fire like this cannot be simplified to the flash-points and open air combustion temps of the fuel. Heat can be focused by air-shafts and other features raising the temperature in some zones far above the source temp. As for fuel - you would be surprised how much there is, particularly at elevated temps. Synergy's abound in these situations

Thing is that once you get even a bit of off-center plastic deformation at one area on a structure like those towers past a critical point catastrophic failure (in the engineering sense) soon follows.

Well it wasn't just the Jet A burning. Also temperatures in a fire depend on any number of things, not just the open-cup burning temperature of the excelerant.

Well the mechanic you alluded too above probably thinks the world is full of idiots because most haven't bothered to find out where the dipstick for the transmission in their cars is. My sister-in-law the accountant can't believe how clueless everyone she deals with is about personal finances. My MD, who I've known since we were kids, tells me 80% of his patents are killing themselves with their forks. And I could go on. He tells me the only thing he knows about cars is, "when I step on the slanty pedal it goes;" and guess who does his taxes?

We all have holes because it's gotten impossible to know enough about everything anymore and cover your own field in detail as well.

This bunch here, probably is as close as it comes.

From that aspect we have many components in society that are elitist. Mechanics are elitist because they know how to fix my car' date=' which is now too complicated for me to fix.

 

But where is the burden? In an apathetic society, you are putting too much on the shoulders of the scientists and not enough on the rest. I think a lot of scientists are willing to explain what they do, but they are not willing to grind the information into mush and spoon-feed.[/quote']

 

The problem is not so much spoon-feeding as it is the level of complexity that makes it an almost impossible (or at least a highly time consuming task) to bring the non-specialist up to speed.

 

I recall 35 years ago at the end of my freshman chemistry course, the prof telling the class, "Now you covered all the chemistry required to earn a masters degree here at McGill - if this was the year 1900."

 

Now when somebody asks me how my handheld beta-backscatter unit works, I have to answer that it PFM - Pure Frelling Magic, because nether of us have all day.

No question woelen. That's why it's called 'Brown gas'

The Fischer-Tropsch process is a catalyzed chemical reaction in which carbon monoxide and hydrogen are converted into liquid hydrocarbons of various forms. Typical catalysts used are based on iron and cobalt. The principal purpose of this process is to produce a synthetic petroleum substitute for use as synthetic lubrication oil or as synthetic fuel.

Methanol can be cheaply fabricated from hydrogen electrolyzed from water and atmospheric carbon dioxide. Johnson Matthey Catalysts invented the Low Pressure Methanol (LPM) process in the 1960s and is now used to manufacture over 60% of the world’s methanol.

The clasic crank idea

Your probably right, but scholarly reporting and public communications are two separate things.

The issue isn't helped by the fact that the public is constantly bombarded by reports of studies apparently showing one thing and a month later another saying the exact opposite. This generates a lot of scar tissue in the public mind. Makes the job of talking to them a lot harder.

Wasn't there some method of measuring the EEG response to a flashing light in the subjects mind that was supposed to correlate with intelligence? As I recall the lower the latency of the response the more powerful the intellect. I remember this getting a lot of discussion about twenty-five years ago.

Ya, well if that's the object, and you crave the magic perfume of flux and solder the best answer is to build a receiver from scratch.

Try here:

http://www.web-ee.com/Schematics/Simple%20Superhet/simple_het.htm

How any one can claim to quantify a property for which there isn't a universally established definition of, is beyond me.

Even Gardner's categories are loosely and, in my opinion, arbitrarily defined and incomplete.

On the otherhand it kind of begs the question of why you would want to go this route, when reasonably selectve/sensitive recivers that cover up to +30Mhz and have AM/SSB/FM detector-discriminators can be had for cheap.

Probably the simplest thing to do is build a converter that will tune the frequencies of interest and output a signal somewhere in the radios normal band. These used to be very popular in the old days, and many hams used to use such devices to get started in the hobby.

Check out the kit:

http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce.exe?preadd=action&key=SC1C

Klaynos hits the nail on the head. Give the man a cigar!

Specialization of this nature is for insects. We're heading down the merry road to hell with this attitude. Skills once lost by a field are damnably hard to replace as much of the craft-technique is empirical and is rarely recorded.

This is part of a broader issue that began when the apprenticeship system (that had only worked for the past 1000 years) was dumped in favor of trade schools. While it is true that some trades have gotten so complex that a good grounding in the classroom is needed, there is no way that this can replace shop floor training.

The problem has been compounded by a number of other factors as well, in particular a general belief that the trades are a dumping ground for those that can't cut it academically. Problem is that due to the rising complexity I alluded to above, marginally literate, and marginal numerate people are poor candidates for the skilled trades ether anymore.

Unless we find and train new skills before the Boomers (the last group to get a traditional apprenticeship) retire, we are going to be in a world of hurt.

Replace "programmers" with mechanics, or any number of skilled tradesmen that are being replaced by "standard processes and procedures" and join the club. The idea that skilled people, trained and then developed under the watchful eye of an experienced practitioner for several years, can be replaced by any random sod working from a three-ring binder is not just endemic to programming.

Don't worry - short, light weight folk don't shrink as much a the tall and heavy ones do. I've lost an inch and a half (I'm 55) mostly due to a collapsing spine. I was six-two once and 180lbs, now I'm shorter and 220.

'Corse the biggest issue is that none of these will ever beat liquid fuel made from coal price-wise and coal is big enough to invest in the fixed plants to make syn-fuels before anyone else can get their (competitive) feet on the ground.

Well the good news is at 1800RPM you can probably set the high-idle control to that value and let the engines own regulator deal with it. The bad news is that frequency control is not that easy to maintain unless you have a good spinning reserve, which is to say that you have to run the alternator such that you always have 20% more power available than what you are actually loading at any given time. This is not a trivial problem.

Watt-hours of usage you should be able to find from the existing meterage on you house - graphic display devices are on the market and some utilities will install one on your line as a service - check with your power company.

Buda-bing, buda-bang, buda-boom

Those big sets use a rotating field type of alternator with an auxiliary DC exciter controlling the flux. Also, as I said these sacrifice voltage stability for frequency stability, which is why you sometimes see the lights dim occationaly on these circuits.

even so, at some point there will be a mechanical interface, even if it`s only a potentiometer linked to the accelerator pedal

You might be surprised. My old Delta 88 had the accelerator cable pulling three separate actuators. Nevertheless, I still think an all electronic control will be necessary in this case because of the load profile, regardless if it just pulls the rods. In the long run it may be better to use the motor to run a DC generator rather than an alternator and use an inverter to get the AC. That would solve a lot of problems right there.

As far as I know the shaft RPM and the AC frequency are directly proportional to each other; governing one should govern the other too. I’m assuming the electronic governor will have a fast enough response time. I would like to add a massive flywheel to it, but I think it might add too much complexity. The engine is oversized, so that should help.

The electronics may be fast enough - the response of the engine may not be. In most A/C systems, controllers trade voltage for frequency - that is they give up the former to protect the latter. this is because many reactive loads can stand more variation in voltage than frequency. With all the reactive loads you are planning to have, you have to consider the fact that they will be switching on and off in an uncoordinated way and this will play havoc with your system if you don't have the controller to deal with it. Unfortunately for you, this is not a trivial issue.

I’m not sure what you mean by “electronic fuel control unit”, as far as I know the engine is totally un-computerized, as it is fairly old. I don’t know for sure, because I haven’t had the vehicle apart yet, but I assume the accelerator is connected with a cable to a mechanical device on the engine that regulates the amount of fuel pumped into the cylinders. I’m hoping I can attach some sort of actuator to the linkage on the engine, but I’ll have to wait and see.

Most automobile Diesels made in the last twenty years use an electronic FCU (fuel control unit) to manage the engine, as injection-types require a bit more finesse than just opening a butterfly valve to change RPMs. All mechanical systems exist, but I would be very surprised to find that this is the case here

Currently we have a 5kW air cooled gas gen set for emergency use (a few times a year at least' date=' we get a few hurricanes) I want a generator that can handle 4 room air conditioners and 3 fridges, not to mention the heat pump and water heater, plus a whole bunch of intermittent loads, like the water pump, toaster, microwave, etc. we use about 40kWh/day on average.[/quote']

 

With a bunch of reactive loads like that you are going to have to make frequency discipline your priority. I suspect also that you will need a rather big flywheel to make up for the lack of spinning reserve.

 

Am I right in assuming that this engine has some sort of electronic fuel control unit already in place? If so then this would change the problem considerably.