Kitson-Still: still obsolete

One of the favorite hobby-horses of a regular GCC commenter is the Kitson-Still locomotive (here's the Wikipedia page).  Built by Kitson and Company in 1926, it used the Still double-acting steam/diesel engine.  One major advantage was the ability of the steam section to apply full torque at zero speed; this allowed the designers to avoid a multi-speed gearbox and clutch, which made the system simpler, cheaper and more rugged.

In normal use, steam was applied to start the locomotive and bring it to a speed of 5 MPH (30 engine RPM).  At 30 RPM steam was turned off and the diesel injection system was activated, which brought the much greater thermal efficiency of the diesel engine to bear.  Exhaust from the diesel engine ran through fire tubes in the boiler, maintaining a head of steam for auxiliary loads and heating of the train in cold weather.  Steam could be applied together with diesel operation for maximum performance.

Despite its mechanical and thermodynamic merits, the Kitson-Still locomotive was not a commercial success.  Some of this may have been due to the design compromises required by the dual-cycle engine (the diesel would probably have operated better at 500-600 RPM instead of the 30-360 RPM set by the single gear ratio), but it doesn't appear to me that this was a major factor.  Kitson and Company went bust in 1934, and the Kitson-Still locomotive was scrapped by the company's receivers.

It is worth taking a look at the problems the Kitson-Still aimed to solve, and why they did not make it successful even at the time:

1. The thermal efficiency of the diesel system was balanced by the cheapness of coal in pure steam locomotives.
2. Starting a locomotive under diesel power became easier as transmissions improved.
3. Eliminating the steam cycle gave operational advantages; it removed the requirement to warm up the boiler and pre-heat the cylinders before starting.
4. The advent of diesel-electric locomotives also eliminated clutches and multi-speed gearboxes, but did not add the mechanical and operational complexity of an additional steam cycle.  Diesel-electrics are now almost universal.

Adding a bottoming cycle (e.g. exhaust-heat recovery making steam for a combined-cycle system) is a proven way to increase thermal efficiency, but it runs into diminishing returns.  If the bottoming cycle forces design compromises in the engine itself, most of the advantages can be lost while adding difficulties in manufacture, operations and maintenance.  The steam cycles in combined-cycle powerplants restrict the control and lose some gas-turbine efficiency due to increased back pressure, but overall they are well-suited to base-load operation.  Organic Rankine turbines for marine diesels don't alter the main engine and appear to be suitable for automated control; further, the working fluids aren't susceptible to freezing.  Thermoelectric mufflers will need attention to air flow and heat shielding, but the engine won't notice them.  The compromises forced on the Kitson-Still were much larger, and remain roughly the same while the rest of the world has moved on.  It's the past, not the future.

Postscript Monday 4/12:  Somehow, 2 days after I wrote it, this post is now the SIXTH in Google's list of results for "kitson still engine".  I'm not quite sure what to think about this; either it means that posts on the subject are few and far between (the "small pond" effect), or Pagerank's results can be very capricious.

Labels: energy, fuel economy, history, obsolescence

  ¶ 4/10/2010 10:03:00 AM 3 comments

 

The 2012 oil crunch vs. Cash for Clunkers

Via the UAE comes a warning from Saudi Arabia:  crude oil prices are likely to spike above last year's record high.  "If others do not begin to invest similarly in new capacity expansion projects, we could see within two to three years another price spike similar to, or worse than, what we witnessed in 2008."

This is no surprise to anyone who's been following the peak oil news, and it seems very unlikely that anything can be done on the supply side.  If oil production is to keep pace with the historically rising consumption curve, we'll need 20-30 million barrels per day of new production by 2030 just to keep pace with depletion elsewhere.  That's several new Saudi Arabias.

Where would this capacity come from?  Not Mexico; its fields are sliding fast (Cantarell at 30%/year) and Pemex has neither the capability to develop difficult new resources nor the legal ability to partner with private oil companies.  Not Venezuela; Chavez steals anything that comes into his country.  Not Canada; the tar sands are terribly expensive to develop and are unlikely to hit 3 million bbl/day.  Not Russia, which is past peak and following the same route as the USA's lower 48.  Not Brazil; even if the 8 billion barrels in Tupi can be pumped at an initial 10%/year, that is only about 2 million bbl/day.  And certainly not ANWR or the Bakken shale, which are good for perhaps 2 mmbbl/day total.

Non-solutions = we're screwed

There is NO solution to this problem on the supply side.  The supply needed to continue BAU does not exist; oil prices high enough to expand supply will instead collapse the economy before that supply can be brought to market.  The only way this challenge will be met is on the demand side, by shifting to other energy sources where it is feasible and aggressive economizing where it is not.

What's depressing is the utter inadequacy of our government response.  Let's take this "Cash for Clunkers" bill (HR2751).  It would give a $3500 rebate for the purchase of a vehicle achieving as little as two miles per gallon more than the one traded in.  A five MPG increase nets $4500.

This will help clear dealer lots, but it won't do squat for our real problems:

• It will not significantly reduce our fuel consumption; we will still be burning far too much to accomplish too little.
• It will not fix the bad production mix of the auto companies; it adds demand for guzzlers only slightly less thirsty than the ones they'd replace.  But worst of all,
• It will leave us with a brand-new fleet of guzzlers which will not be paid off for years at the exact time when we are facing radical increases in the cost of oil.

It's almost as if this bill was intended to screw the country.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation

Let's try an example here.  Suppose that Joe Sixpack has a 10-year-old pickup that's EPA rated at 17 MPG combined, which he drives 20 miles one-way to work 250 days a year plus 50 miles each weekend.  His fuel consumption is 741 gallons per year.  He has a choice of trading it for a Model X achieving 19 MPG plus $3500, a Model Y achieving 22 MPG plus $4500, or a Prius netting 50 MPG plus $4500.

At historical gasoline prices of perhaps $1.50/gallon, his fuel expenses were around $1100/year or under $100/month; this is quite bearable.  But at today's local price of about $2.80/gallon, this jumps to $2075/year or $173/month; the extra $80/month has to come from somewhere, which is either his non-existent savings or the consumer economy.  This is a substantial hit; if Joe makes $40,000/year, the increase is roughly 2% of his income.  Things aren't much better with the trade-ins.  The Model X's thirst costs $1857 ($155/month) to slake today, and the Model Y costs $1604/year ($134/month).  Only the Prius gets costs down into the realm of reason, at a mere $59/month.  Joe could pay off some debt and take his lady out for a night on the town now and then.

It will get worse. Much, much worse.

But we're not done yet.  If crude prices head toward $200/bbl in 2012, gasoline will be above $5/gallon.  At $5/gallon, feeding the 17 MPG monster costs $3706/year ($309/mo), which is over 9% of Joe's gross income.  The Model X takes $3316/$276 (over 8%) and the Model Y $2864/$239 (over 7%).  Only the cost of the Prius remains in sane territory, at $1260/year or $105/month—roughly 3% of Joe's income, or about what the old pickup cost at $1.50/gallon.  The Prius, or something like it, is the only vehicle that Joe can afford to keep driving at that point.

You may have noticed that I ignored the rebates in the cost calculations.  They barely matter.  If Joe banks $3500 on the Model X and gas goes to $5, his fuel costs will eat those savings in about 16 months; if he buys the Model Y, the $4500 in the bank will pay his increased fuel bills for about two and a half years.  Joe will be out of savings while he's still upside-down on his new car loan.  Again, only a Prius-class car can save his budget.

Of course, this is in addition to the credit crunch.  The USA needs to be paying its debts off, not adding to them.  Are we going to be able to finance a whole new fleet of guzzlers, and then the crude to run them?  Or will we face a surge of business failures, credit-card defaults and mortgage foreclosures which make the last two years look like a corner lemonade stand on a rainy weekend?  My money (what's left of it) is on the latter, and building another fleet 3 years from now when this year's becomes unaffordable to run is out of the question.

The yawning gap between the crisis and the response

If our government was attuned to the looming problem, we would be seeing some real action on these problems.  Nothing like HR2751 would receive a committee hearing, let alone House passage.  We would be closing truck production lines and converting them to non-automotive products, while pushing to get Fiat's and other manufacturers' high-economy products into the remaining plants as rapidly as possible.  US auto suppliers would be paid to re-tool for the new models, and Toyota's US Prius production line would be opened ahead of schedule.  We'd be settting a high and steadily increasing floor on fuel prices, to keep that money inside the country instead of flowing out to oil producers.

Congress won't even think about anything like that.

Can we stop the Guzzler Subsidy Bill of 2009?  Perhaps not.  But if I was going to try, I'd call my congresscritters and Senators and tell them something like this:

• By 2012 at the latest, we will be facing fuel prices even higher than 2008.
• Paying people to buy inefficient vehicles is insane, no matter what they drive now.
• If we are going to survive the next oil-price surge, we need a fleet which gets closer to 50 MPG than 20.  Anything less puts the economy at great risk.
• Achieving that fleet means Detroit has to build it, and the public has to buy it... and that means Congress cannot waste our money promoting anything less.

At this point it's up to you.  Can you stop this runaway train before it runs off the collapsed bridge?  I'm not sanguine, but I can hope.

Labels: Cash for Clunkers, fuel economy, peak oil, subsidies

  ¶ 6/15/2009 02:38:00 PM 5 comments