"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:52:07 -0800, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:



NG isn't going to happen? Why?

It isn't any better than diesel.
The hot ticket for long haul big rigs is gas turbines. Ford or GM came
out
with one years back but it was expensive up front and people were leary
of
technology more so than today. The damned things burn about anything.



Only problem is, like jets, there thermal efficiency is DISMALL.

Not over the road.
That's the only applicatoin where they make sense.
They were actually pretty good ( about equally efficient) and I've got
to believe with the advances in techno;ogy over the last thirty years
someone could come up with something spiffy.

JC

With turbines, it's all about operating temperature. No ceramic turbines
yet; I predicted them 25 years ago after researching and writing about
new ceramic technologies, but fortunately I didn't put any money on it.

As a Pratt & Whitney Aircraft engineer once said to me, "son, there are
engineers here who would sell their mothers for another 200 degrees."
d8-)

They should have been paying better attention then Ed.
I did the first ceramic stators for the F-22 in 1998/99.
Honeywell, and they are still a customer, has had them in production in
Mesa Arizona for several years now.

I should have pointed out I was talking about automotive turbines, and
rotors are the hard part because there's no practical way to cool them in
very small turbines. The P&W reference was an aside about operating
temperature of gas turbines in general.

The hope for automobile/truck turbines was for Norton's polymer-mixed
injection-molding method for silicon nitride. They could make them fairly
cheap, and they did have some good prototypes they made for the driven
turbines in turbochargers. But there was enough diamond grinding involved to
bring them to finished dimensions that they never got the car makers
interested. The aircraft turbine people showed some interest but it never
caught on, for reasons I never tracked down.

What you don't want to ask is the price but the latest production versions
of the plane have about 40 percent more thrust.
I think if you can find an on lone history somewhere you'll see the jump
in the spec. for the system.
LOL

See me later, I really have to boogie.

OK.

--
Ed Huntress