Diesel vs EV vs Hydrogen vs LPG/CNG vs Biodiesel - Can We Ever Ditch Big Diesels?

Video Description

Diesel Engine: http://bit.ly/4m9mWK7 Discount Code: d4a Support the channel by shopping through this link: https://amzn.to/4fatbMb Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/d4a Become a member: https://www.youtube.com/@d4a/join What is the one thing humanity needs the most? Is it love? Or maybe understanding? Tolerance? Objectivity? Rationality? No. I mean, yes, those are certainly needed too. But there’s a thing permanently stuck at the top of the list of priorities. And that something is work. And there is nothing on this world that’s better at providing work than a diesel engine. You may think of diesel engines as mundane. Less exciting and less flamboyant than sporty and rev-happy gasoline engines. It’s like comparing a work-horse vs a purebred racing steed. But the fact is that gasoline engines are replaceable… diesel ones are not. Diesel engines are the atlas that holds our world. If we could somehow make diesel engines magically disappear, our world would fall apart instantly, and as I will prove with numbers in this video, there is no replacement for diesel engines. None of the propulsion technologies or fuels currently available to humanity is capable of replacing diesel engines. Nothing is capable of replacing them because the combination of diesel engine anatomy and diesel fuel creates something that is close to magic in terms of its capacity to deliver work. Diesel engines do not need spark plugs to ignite the fuel coming inside the combustion chamber. It is the mechanical motion of the piston, the compression of the air that actually ignites the fuel. The more we compress the air the hotter it gets and once it’s hot enough we inject the fuel and the fuel starts burning near instantly. Of course to compress the air enough a diesel engine needs to have a high compression ratio, and you can think of an engine’s compression ratio simply as “how much it squeezes the air and fuel mixture”. Of course the more your squeeze something before igniting it the closer your squeezing tools will be to the source of the energy. Now instead of my hands imagine a piston. The closer the piston to the combustion more of the combustion’s energy will be transferred onto the piston and the more work will be done by the engine. And then there’s the fuel itself. It’s very energy dense, both per unit of mass AND per unit of volume. A kilogram of diesel contains 45.5 MJ of energy. A liter of diesel fuel contains 37.7 MJ of energy. These two figures are different because diesel is less dense than water and therefore 1liter of diesel does not equal 1kg. 1 liter of diesel actually weighs 0.8 kilograms. Ok so gasoline will obviously never replace diesel, that’s nothing new. But even if gasoline could replace doesel it wouldn't fully address the elephant in the room. Emissions. Of course modern diesels have all sorts of acronyms like DPF and EGR and SCR to reduce emissions, but even an entire alphabet soup can’t make a combustion engine truly and completely clean. So let’s try something else. Something that can give us zero tailpipe emissions. Electric motors and batteries. Now electric motors are amazing in terms of delivering maximum torque at minimal rpm. They’re simple, proven and reliable. All great stuff for providing work. Unfortunately they need batteries if they want to be on a mobile vehicle and as we know the energy density of batteries sucks. If we convert battery specs from watt hours to mega joules we get that a modern lithium ion battery as found in a battery electric vehicle typically delivers around 0.9 MJ/kg or 2.5 mega joules per liter. Let’s use these numbers to try and electrify a large excavator, something in the 35-40 ton operating weight class. A 350 class excavator typically has an inline six diesel usually with 8-10 liters of displacement and a power output of around 250-400 horsepower and a realistic fuel consumption of 25l of diesel per hour of work. In other words it requires 942.5 MJ of energy /hour. At 0.9 MJ/kg we need 1047kg of batteries to do 1 hour of excavator work. If we want to do an 8 hour shift that’s 8377 kg of batteries or 8.3 tonnes of batteries. Currently 350 class excavators have diesel engines that weigh around 1.5 - 1.8 tonnes and they are usually equipped with 500l fuel tanks. This brings the total weight of the propulsion system with a full tank to around 2-2.5 tonnes. If we add electric motors to our 8.3 tonnes of batteries we will probably get around 9 tonnes. Which means that the weight of the propulsion system increases more than threefold which would probably lead to issues with balance or safety. A special thank you to my patrons: Daniel Zwoa Meda Beda valqk Toma Marini Cole Philips Allan Mackay RePeteAndMe Sam Lutfi Cakeskull 00:00 Diesel Anatomy 08:34 How Addicted Are We? 10:09 Diesel vs BEV 16:38 Diesel vs Hydrogen 19:08 Diesel vs CNG/LPG 21:22 Diesel vs Biodiesel 24:09 What's the point of this video? #d4a #diesel