On Sat, 12 Apr 2008 10:23:05 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"DanG" wrote in message
...
Ed. as always, I appreciate your response. I used to run a bit of diesel
in old gasoline engines before computers and what not. I'm sure it was as
ignorant as adding gasoline to diesel fuel.

I was believing your frank, honest style, but the technical article just
made it dance. Thanks. I wish more people would limit their comments to
facts, not hyperbola.

Thanks for your kind comments, Dan.

Regarding that article, I thought it was very good but I think I spotted one
error. He says that gasoline burns hotter than diesel. He apparently wrote
that article sometime in the mid- or late-'90s, and he may not have had easy
access to the nifty engineering Java appletts available to us today. I just
scrounged one up --

http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~allan...Flamemain.html

-- and checked the flame temperatures of diesel and gasoline at one
atmosphere (101 kPa) and ten atmospheres of pressure. The program indicates
that diesel burns around 130 deg. C hotter in both cases.

The article had a number of misconceptions in it. As mentioned above
diesel fuel has a higher burning temperature. The guy says that
compounds of carbon and hydrogen are called paraffine while actually
in the trade they are called hydro-carbons. He seemed to say that
because gasoline had a high octane number it wouldn't ignite in a
compression ignition engine. I can tell you that for sure it will, In
fact it will ignite so fiercely it will even break piston rings (ask
me how I discovered this).

Bruce-in-Bangkok
(correct email address for reply)