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Much of the green movement surrounding the automotive industry today is based on ending our dependence on traditional hydrocarbons like gasoline and diesel. As we know, with millions upon millions of autos on the road all around the world spewing out emissions from these traditional fuels, our health and our planet’s health are in peril. But at the current rate, it will probably be a while before we completely rid ourselves of our hydrocarbon habit and switch to cleaner alternatives like hydrogen or algae, for example. In the meantime, we may actually benefit from mixing the two fuels together.
You didn’t misread that: it may be more environmentally and financially friendly to mix gasoline and diesel together and burn them together. How can that be?
How It Works
The idea of blending gasoline and diesel together for use in a single engine comes to us from Rolf Reitz of the University of Wisconsin. Reitz has managed to create a very feasible model that uses the best combustion properties of gasoline and diesel within a single vehicle. Usually when your vehicle is chugging away, it is releasing toxic emissions into the atmosphere, as well as releasing gasoline or diesel right out of the tailpipes. But what Reitz has done is design a fuel injection system that releases spot on mixtures of diesel and gasoline into an engine’s combustion chamber. You may be thinking that it is impossible for a diesel engine to burn gasoline because the properties of gasoline are not at all like diesel. You are correct in the sense that gasoline isn’t as reactive as diesel in a combustion chamber. A diesel engine runs hotter than a gasoline engine, which is why it doesn’t require spark plugs and because of this extraordinary amount of heat (1500+ degrees Fahrenheit), gasoline would not ignite if put in a diesel engine. But using Reitz’s design, the gasoline receives a bit of a “spark” from the diesel fuel if properly injected into the combustion chamber in the right mixture.
For example, if you are driving your big diesel truck down the road hauling a load of steel beams, the engine is obviously working hard and you are using a lot of diesel fuel, but if Reitz’s fuel system were in the truck, it would be injecting 85 per cent gasoline and 15 per cent diesel fuel to provide the necessary spark for the gasoline.
Thermal Efficiency
The secret behind the gasoline-diesel mixture is thermal efficiency. Thermal efficiency is the percentage of fuel used to power an engine. As mentioned above, not all fuel is used to power an engine and that remaining fuel is lost due to heat transfer, exhaust and other various natural inefficiencies. Regardless of whether your auto is a hybrid equipped with a small gasoline motor, a gasoline-based engine’s thermal efficiency is roughly 25 per cent, sometimes even lower. Diesel engines, on the other hand, have higher thermal efficiencies, but they aren’t significantly better than a gasoline motor. According to Reitz, the highest thermal efficiency rating can be found in the huge twin turbo diesel engines used to power ships. Reitz’s diesel-gasoline mixture design has a peak thermal efficiency rating of 53 per cent, which for an engine that has the potential to fit into a standard auto is absolutely incredible.
Benefits Over Practicality
If mixing diesel and gasoline together in a single vehicle ever becomes a reality, we will have to sacrifice some practicality. Unless the idea catches on with the major oil companies, we will not be able to pull up to the pump and fill up with a mixture of gasoline and diesel. Instead, an auto with this technology will have two fuel tanks: one for gasoline and one for diesel. It may take a bit more time at every fill-up, but it will be well worth it in terms of the benefits.
First, with smaller tanks for both diesel and gasoline in each vehicle, fuel costs will most likely be less (depending on the prices of each fuel). Second, the overall amount of pollution released by vehicles with the gasoline-diesel system will be considerably less than a standard gasoline or diesel vehicle. Remember, by using the optimal mixture of gasoline and diesel, far more thermal efficiency will be achieved, which in turn will cut down on emissions and wasted fuel. Finally, the total amount of fuel used would fall due to the increased efficiency. For example, the world’s largest consumer of fuel for automotive use, the United States uses roughly 13.5 million barrels of oil per day of fuel, but if everyone in the U.S. adopted this method, the total number of barrels used per day would fall by four million. Just imagine how much fuel would be saved if the whole world adopted autos that used gasoline-diesel mixtures.
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