World Record or just another average flight in a Mooney?

[N201MKTurbo]

  On 7/21/2016 at 3:46 PM, steingar said:

We're taking apples and oranges.  Think about it this way.  There are microbes that can eat oil spills.  In biochemistry, makings eating backwards.  That is, if microbes can eat oil, they can synthesize it.  Just a matter of genetic engineering.

The current crop of microbial biofuels are mostly from wild-type algae that just happen to be oil rich.  I sat in on a doctoral thesis where the young lady was trying to boost the amount of butanol made by a bacterium.  With one genetic modification she boosted the butane output of that bug by an order of magnitude.

Couple good oil producing microbes to passive heat from power plants and you've got an efficient production system.  It will never be as cheap as oil, nothing non-nuclear will.  But it is the only renewable that will come close and is anywhere near scalable.

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Sure, but as R2 says just because some PHD student does something in a lab doesn't mean it can be done at a large scale. Also, the microbes need to eat something, what is the feed stock? Microbes cannot create hydrocarbons out of thin air. Just counting carbon atoms there is not enough biomass produced each year to replace what is being pumped or dug out of the ground.

Besides, so far all biofuel production takes huge amounts of fossil fuels. Diesel tractors plow the fields, the crops are fed with fertilizer made from natural gas, diesel harvesters pick the crops, diesel trucks haul the feedstock to the production plants, the production plants are run by natural gas, the finished products are delivered to the distribution points by diesel trucks. If the fuel products produced by the plant was used by all those steps, there would be no fuel left.

While it would be great to use some of the waste heat from power plants and other industries, and recycle the CO2 they emit, it will never replace fossil fuels, when they are gone they are gone and whenever that happens humans will have to go back to a more agrarian lifestyle.  

As a side note, I used to ask people how much they would be willing to pay for a gallon of gas. They would always answer with a number that they didn't want to exceed. The real question was how expensive would gas get before you would stop buying it? They all cock their heads sideways and say "what do you mean, I have to buy gas"

[steingar]

  On 7/21/2016 at 8:19 PM, N201MKTurbo said:

Sure, but as R2 says just because some PHD student does something in a lab doesn't mean it can be done at a large scale. Also, the microbes need to eat something, what is the feed stock? Microbes cannot create hydrocarbons out of thin air. 

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I am afraid you are utterly incorrect.  Cyanobacteria can fix carbon right out of the air.  Moreover, lots of microbes can use carbon sources that are indigestible to humans.

  17 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

Besides, so far all biofuel production takes huge amounts of fossil fuels. Diesel tractors plow the fields, the crops are fed with fertilizer made from natural gas, diesel harvesters pick the crops, diesel trucks haul the feedstock to the production plants, the production plants are run by natural gas, the finished products are delivered to the distribution points by diesel trucks. If the fuel products produced by the plant was used by all those steps, there would be no fuel left.

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You don't need any of that to grow algae and microbes, and people have been growing them industrially for a century.

  17 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

While it would be great to use some of the waste heat from power plants and other industries, and recycle the CO2 they emit, it will never replace fossil fuels, when they are gone they are gone and whenever that happens humans will have to go back to a more agrarian lifestyle.  

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No need at all.  I admit, microbial biofuels will never be as parsimonious as fossil fuels.  But they'll easily be good enough.  And keep in mind American had a huge urban population shift that predated the internal combustion engine.

  17 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

As a side note, I used to ask people how much they would be willing to pay for a gallon of gas. They would always answer with a number that they didn't want to exceed. The real question was how expensive would gas get before you would stop buying it? They all cock their heads sideways and say "what do you mean, I have to buy gas"

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When the supply of petroleum and its products begin falling below the demand for such products it could be socially destabilizing.  I've seen the phenomenon called "Peak Oil".  My hope is that we as a people are wise enough not to let it come to that.

[N201MKTurbo]

  On 7/22/2016 at 1:34 PM, steingar said:

When the supply of petroleum and its products begin falling below the demand for such products it could be socially destabilizing.  I've seen the phenomenon called "Peak Oil".  My hope is that we as a people are wise enough not to let it come to that.

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People have been under the impression that some technological solution will replace fossil fuel and everything will go on as usual. All the critical analysis I have read has shown that that is impossible. Most people don't realize how much of the stuff is consumed.

If we could put in massive solar infrastructure, build about 10 times the nuclear plants we have now, we may be able to get by with electric transportation. Save the limited supply of liquid fuels for things like Mooneys! Not to mention how much fossil fuel is required to support the nuclear and solar industry.

The fact is, when the supply cannot keep up with demand, the price of liquid fuels will rise dramatically until some people stop buying it. At that point a lot of alternate fuels will become more viable. There will be no real money to build a bio fuel industry until this happens.

Probably won't happen in our lifetimes, but it will happen someday.

And all the global warming people that want us to just stop using it, are fools. Wars will be fought over who gets to burn the last drop of petroleum and the last lump of coal.

[steingar]

  On 7/22/2016 at 3:28 PM, N201MKTurbo said:

People have been under the impression that some technological solution will replace fossil fuel and everything will go on as usual. All the critical analysis I have read has shown that that is impossible. Most people don't realize how much of the stuff is consumed.

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I cannot disagree with your logic.

  17 minutes ago, N201MKTurbo said:

If we could put in massive solar infrastructure, build about 10 times the nuclear plants we have now, we may be able to get by with electric transportation. Save the limited supply of liquid fuels for things like Mooneys! Not to mention how much fossil fuel is required to support the nuclear and solar industry.

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I strongly doubt it.  Capture of solar power isn't all that terribly efficient or dependable.  I don't think we'll replace fossil fuels with non-biological renewables.  Fusion maybe, though I suspect the odds on successfully achieving it are quite long.

  17 minutes ago, N201MKTurbo said:

The fact is, when the supply cannot keep up with demand, the price of liquid fuels will rise dramatically until some people stop buying it. At that point a lot of alternate fuels will become more viable. There will be no real money to build a bio fuel industry until this happens.

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Yup.  and when that does happen you'll see the rise of microbial biofuels.

  17 minutes ago, N201MKTurbo said:

Probably won't happen in our lifetimes, but it will happen someday.

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I don't think it'll happen in my lifetime because of the new oil extraction technologies.

  17 minutes ago, N201MKTurbo said:

And all the global warming people that want us to just stop using it, are fools. Wars will be fought over who gets to burn the last drop of petroleum and the last lump of coal.

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The next big war will be over water, not oil.  It'll be fought after the Himalayan glaciers all melt.  Hopefully I won't live to see that either.

[N201MKTurbo]

  On 7/22/2016 at 3:55 PM, steingar said:

.The next big war will be over water, not oil.  It'll be fought after the Himalayan glaciers all melt.  Hopefully I won't live to see that either.

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So, in my estimation, the only meaningful mitigation for Global Warming would be the global elimination of personal transportation and air conditioning. Anything else is just window dressing!

So, buy a new pair of shorts and drive to the sunny beaches of Canada!

[steingar]

  On 7/22/2016 at 5:07 PM, N201MKTurbo said:

So, in my estimation, the only meaningful mitigation for Global Warming would be the global elimination of personal transportation and air conditioning. Anything else is just window dressing!

So, buy a new pair of shorts and drive to the sunny beaches of Canada!

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I think Hansen's right.  it too late now.

[carusoam]

The company down the street makes oil out of natural gas.  Made a lot of sense as the price of oil was hanging around 150/bbl.

Reverse osmosis and solar distillation are both low cost and available, as is rain collection.

The guy that owns the airport drives around in an electric car, solar panels on the building roof.

the future isn't that far away, but it is looking much brighter than you guys are letting on. 

Try not to let one bad flat tire ruin your thought processes.

 

Best regards,

-a-

[cnoe]

I apologize for reviving this thread but I had to express the extreme disappointment I have with my gas-hog M20J.

I just ran the numbers for my loaded-to-the-gills multiple-stop 2,078 nm round-trip to Oshkosh and I missed tying that diesel-burning C182's WORLD RECORD by only 0.34 nm/gallon!

Nevermind that I made a couple of stops along the way, and ALSO managed to throw in an 80 mile leg running well-ROP in formation with the Caravan.

Maybe someday I'll own a truly efficient plane like that 182. Sigh.

In the meantime I'll just have to live with the lousy 16.98 sm/gallon at 172 mph performance of my lowly Mooney.

 

[Jerry 5TJ]

17 statute miles per gallon is great going!

I see about 10.7 nautical miles per gallon  = 12.4 smpg in the Ovation at 170 KTAS running ROP.

If I slow it down to 140 KTAS it burns about 11 GPH at 50 ROP.  That's ~ 14.7 statute mpg while moving at C182 speeds.

Since the JetA is about 10% heavier per gallon (and I think contains about 10% more energy content per gallon) you could say that's 14.7 x 1.1 = 16.2  "equivalent mpg" as you are burning the lighter 100LL.  (or you can do all your calculations in pounds per hour and pounds per mile and skip the multiplier)

So, IF you got 16.98 mpg then by my stretching-the-back-of-the-envelope calculations you got 19.7  "equivalent mpg" and beat their "world record' figures easily.

The Cessna 182 does have two big doors, and you get to sit in the shade, you have to give it that advantage.   

[Bob_Belville]

Real world, on the way to KOSH we flew KMRN/KMSN on 7/22. 8000', 145 ktas, 8.3 gph LOP. That's 20.1 mpg. (As flown: ~ 600 nm, 4:45, ~ 15 k headwinds) Love my little ol' E.

[bonal]

works out for my C to 18.4mpg aggregate climb cruise descent on a 3 hour leg at 140 knots true

[Hank]

Last week, Flight Aware said i went 504 nm; then i added at least 35 sm more going for fuel. She took 38.6 gals, or 14 mpg. Maybe i should fly closer to peak or even LOP now that my C will run there.

[ArtVandelay]

  On 8/4/2016 at 10:35 PM, Hank said:

Last week, Flight Aware said i went 504 nm; then i added at least 35 sm more going for fuel. She took 38.6 gals, or 14 mpg. Maybe i should fly closer to peak or even LOP now that my C will run there.

Or fly with the wind at your back...