The Diesel MJ met a friend!

[Automan2164]

Lately, I've been trying to hit up the cruise nights and the car shows with The Diesel MJ. It gets a lot of passers, but the people that stop and talk are usually enamored with it, and will talk for 30 minutes. I've met a ton of previous MJ owners, from those who say it was the greatest truck ever, to the ones who said that it was the biggest pile of excrement outside of the local wastewater plant. Good mix. Lots of inquiries. I was a town over on Monday night, when I saw a little white pickup, and heard an all too suspicious clatter as it passed by. Be still my beating heart.

 

 

 

 

 

A brother cut from the same awkward cloth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An '85 S-10 with the factory installed 2.2L Isuzu diesel.

 

I scampered over to it as soon as he locked down a spot, and started the chit chat. He had just picked it up from the local swap meet this summer, and was enjoying it. His 2.2 is naturally aspirated (non-turbo), and he says it shows on the road. He was thinking that the stock numbers were in the neighborhood of 50HP, and 70TQ. He was still getting used to the quirks, but loving the economy. He was claiming 37 MPG, although very slowly. He got a kick out of the MJ, and was jealous of my bucket seats, longbed, and especially the turbo. Good guy. He kept saying how at the end of the world, it would be him and me, with our fuel sipping pickups ruling the ruins and skipping from town to town on scavenged fuel.

 

If only we could have parked next to each other, and really freaked people out.

Rob :cheers:

[mpace6a]

Thats pretty awesome.

Though just because your diesels sip fuel doesnt mean us carb guys won't be there, we can run straight alcohol no problemo!

[Sir Sam]

Thats pretty awesome.

Though just because your diesels sip fuel doesnt mean us carb guys won't be there, we can run straight alcohol no problemo!

 

It takes lots of sugar to make alcohol...........LOTS

[Zenobian_84]

Wow, am pretty impressed. I've only seen a handful of those down in the south; and most of them were NOWHERE near as nice as that one is. :cheers: Sounds like you had a good time. :yes:

[mpace6a]

Thats pretty awesome.

Though just because your diesels sip fuel doesnt mean us carb guys won't be there, we can run straight alcohol no problemo!

 

It takes lots of sugar to make alcohol...........LOTS

 

Lucky for us, sugar is not too hard to acquire. its in every fruit we eat, vegetables, grains, etc.

[Sir Sam]

Thats pretty awesome.

Though just because your diesels sip fuel doesnt mean us carb guys won't be there, we can run straight alcohol no problemo!

 

It takes lots of sugar to make alcohol...........LOTS

 

Lucky for us, sugar is not too hard to acquire. its in every fruit we eat, vegetables, grains, etc.

 

Did I mention lots of sugar? Not sure how you plan to harvest enough sugar to make any appreciable amounts of alcohol without using a bunch of fuel in the first place.

[mpace6a]

plenty of fruit trees round here. Plus we have a 3 acre garden about a 5 minute walk up the road we tend by hand. use the diesel kubota for plowing and thats it

[Sir Sam]

plenty of fruit trees round here. Plus we have a 3 acre garden about a 5 minute walk up the road we tend by hand. use the diesel kubota for plowing and thats it

 

Fruit trees just don't produce fruit sugar to make an appreciable dent.

 

Sugar beets would be one of the better sources for you.

 

Under ideal farm conditions sugar beets will produce about 40 tons/acre/year.

 

Thats with petrochemical fertilzers and pesticides, lets assume you have neither since after all we are talking about the end of the world as we know it.

 

Second, lets assume you are not a professional farmer who knows exactly how to farm to get the best yield. I'm going to round off those factors and say under the best conditions you get a 25 ton/acre/year yield.

 

Sugar beets typically have a sugar content around 17%, the problem comes in efficiently extracting the sugar from the beets. If you were just to mash them up and ferment them you would not get all the sugar out in suspension where the yeast can eat away at it.

 

One such method to extract sugar is to use alcohol, sugar is highly soluble in alcohol, so mash your beets up and run the mash through an alcohol wash. Run the sugar alcohol wash through some sort of still (a passive solar condensation still would be ideal here so you can reuse that alcohol. But again, there will be loose here as well. I suspect you will not get the full 17% as under ideal conditions, in fact I think you will be lucky to hit 10%. Getting higher yields is the sort of thing companies like Cargill pay PHd Chemists and Engineers 100k + a year salaries for.

 

So far we have 25 tons/acre, 3 acres, 10% yield of sugar. That gives us about 15000 pounds of sugar........thats an appreciable amount of sugar, but we still need to convert that to alcohol.

 

Wild yeasts will have a very low yield, bakers yeast are better, and distillers yeast is best, however without a continual supply of fresh yeast it will be difficult to keep high yeilds up. So we will assume under ideal conditions you can keep a bakers strain of yeast propagated.

 

Now the next issue you will run into is having the proper nutrients for a high yield wash, with a good source of phospate(DAP etc) you will run into a wall real quick. All said and done without proper nutrient washes you will hit about 9-10% yield at the highest.

 

Now what that means is that you will have a low alcohol wash that is going to take more energy to distill than a higher % wash.

 

The Enthalpy of vaporization for ethanol is 0.841 KJ/gram.

The Enthalpy of vaporization for water is 2.23 kJ/gram.

The energy density of ethanol is 26.8 kJ/gram

 

At a 10% wash:

2.23 * .90 + .841 * .10 = 2.1 kJ/gram

 

2.1/26.8 = 8% of your product that will need to be burned to produced the heat required to distill your product at the bare minimum. Thats not counting any other thermal efficiency losses.....even a 20% figure is realistic and damm near as good as you could get.

 

so you have 15,000 lbs of sugar.....you ferment that, make a bunch of low % wash, and then distill that.

 

Assume you are not doing a vacuum distillation you are going to hit about 95% output with a reflux still, that equates to about 1040 gallons of 95% alcohol. Assuming a 20% efficacy loss you have 832 gallons of fuel.

 

Now compare to gasoline, gasoline is about 48.1 kJ/g compared to 26.8 kJ/gram. That means the pure alcohol has 55% less energy than non ethanol gasoline.

 

Lets look at it another way, that 832 gallons of pure alcohol is more like 458 gallons of gasoline.

 

Thats not even looking at how much of that fuel you will need to use to plant/grow/harvest and transport the sugar beets to make the fuel.

 

You need lots of sugar.

 

Source: ME with a background in alternative fuels and a distiller.

[Blue88Comanche]

plenty of fruit trees round here. Plus we have a 3 acre garden about a 5 minute walk up the road we tend by hand. use the diesel kubota for plowing and thats it

 

Fruit trees just don't produce fruit sugar to make an appreciable dent.

 

Sugar beets would be one of the better sources for you.

 

Under ideal farm conditions sugar beets will produce about 40 tons/acre/year.

 

Thats with petrochemical fertilzers and pesticides, lets assume you have neither since after all we are talking about the end of the world as we know it.

 

Second, lets assume you are not a professional farmer who knows exactly how to farm to get the best yield. I'm going to round off those factors and say under the best conditions you get a 25 ton/acre/year yield.

 

Sugar beets typically have a sugar content around 17%, the problem comes in efficiently extracting the sugar from the beets. If you were just to mash them up and ferment them you would not get all the sugar out in suspension where the yeast can eat away at it.

 

One such method to extract sugar is to use alcohol, sugar is highly soluble in alcohol, so mash your beets up and run the mash through an alcohol wash. Run the sugar alcohol wash through some sort of still (a passive solar condensation still would be ideal here so you can reuse that alcohol. But again, there will be loose here as well. I suspect you will not get the full 17% as under ideal conditions, in fact I think you will be lucky to hit 10%. Getting higher yields is the sort of thing companies like Cargill pay PHd Chemists and Engineers 100k + a year salaries for.

 

So far we have 25 tons/acre, 3 acres, 10% yield of sugar. That gives us about 15000 pounds of sugar........thats an appreciable amount of sugar, but we still need to convert that to alcohol.

 

Wild yeasts will have a very low yield, bakers yeast are better, and distillers yeast is best, however without a continual supply of fresh yeast it will be difficult to keep high yeilds up. So we will assume under ideal conditions you can keep a bakers strain of yeast propagated.

 

Now the next issue you will run into is having the proper nutrients for a high yield wash, with a good source of phospate(DAP etc) you will run into a wall real quick. All said and done without proper nutrient washes you will hit about 9-10% yield at the highest.

 

Now what that means is that you will have a low alcohol wash that is going to take more energy to distill than a higher % wash.

 

The Enthalpy of vaporization for ethanol is 0.841 KJ/gram.

The Enthalpy of vaporization for water is 2.23 kJ/gram.

The energy density of ethanol is 26.8 kJ/gram

 

At a 10% wash:

2.23 * .90 + .841 * .10 = 2.1 kJ/gram

 

2.1/26.8 = 8% of your product that will need to be burned to produced the heat required to distill your product at the bare minimum. Thats not counting any other thermal efficiency losses.....even a 20% figure is realistic and damm near as good as you could get.

 

so you have 15,000 lbs of sugar.....you ferment that, make a bunch of low % wash, and then distill that.

 

Assume you are not doing a vacuum distillation you are going to hit about 95% output with a reflux still, that equates to about 1040 gallons of 95% alcohol. Assuming a 20% efficacy loss you have 832 gallons of fuel.

 

Now compare to gasoline, gasoline is about 48.1 kJ/g compared to 26.8 kJ/gram. That means the pure alcohol has 55% less energy than non ethanol gasoline.

 

Lets look at it another way, that 832 gallons of pure alcohol is more like 458 gallons of gasoline.

 

Thats not even looking at how much of that fuel you will need to use to plant/grow/harvest and transport the sugar beets to make the fuel.

 

You need lots of sugar.

 

Source: ME with a background in alternative fuels and a distiller.

 

 

:hmm: I think my headache got worse trying to understand what was just said... lol

[mpace6a]

plenty of fruit trees round here. Plus we have a 3 acre garden about a 5 minute walk up the road we tend by hand. use the diesel kubota for plowing and thats it

 

Fruit trees just don't produce fruit sugar to make an appreciable dent.

 

Sugar beets would be one of the better sources for you.

 

Under ideal farm conditions sugar beets will produce about 40 tons/acre/year.

 

Thats with petrochemical fertilzers and pesticides, lets assume you have neither since after all we are talking about the end of the world as we know it.

 

Second, lets assume you are not a professional farmer who knows exactly how to farm to get the best yield. I'm going to round off those factors and say under the best conditions you get a 25 ton/acre/year yield.

 

Sugar beets typically have a sugar content around 17%, the problem comes in efficiently extracting the sugar from the beets. If you were just to mash them up and ferment them you would not get all the sugar out in suspension where the yeast can eat away at it.

 

One such method to extract sugar is to use alcohol, sugar is highly soluble in alcohol, so mash your beets up and run the mash through an alcohol wash. Run the sugar alcohol wash through some sort of still (a passive solar condensation still would be ideal here so you can reuse that alcohol. But again, there will be loose here as well. I suspect you will not get the full 17% as under ideal conditions, in fact I think you will be lucky to hit 10%. Getting higher yields is the sort of thing companies like Cargill pay PHd Chemists and Engineers 100k + a year salaries for.

 

So far we have 25 tons/acre, 3 acres, 10% yield of sugar. That gives us about 15000 pounds of sugar........thats an appreciable amount of sugar, but we still need to convert that to alcohol.

 

Wild yeasts will have a very low yield, bakers yeast are better, and distillers yeast is best, however without a continual supply of fresh yeast it will be difficult to keep high yeilds up. So we will assume under ideal conditions you can keep a bakers strain of yeast propagated.

 

Now the next issue you will run into is having the proper nutrients for a high yield wash, with a good source of phospate(DAP etc) you will run into a wall real quick. All said and done without proper nutrient washes you will hit about 9-10% yield at the highest.

 

Now what that means is that you will have a low alcohol wash that is going to take more energy to distill than a higher % wash.

 

The Enthalpy of vaporization for ethanol is 0.841 KJ/gram.

The Enthalpy of vaporization for water is 2.23 kJ/gram.

The energy density of ethanol is 26.8 kJ/gram

 

At a 10% wash:

2.23 * .90 + .841 * .10 = 2.1 kJ/gram

 

2.1/26.8 = 8% of your product that will need to be burned to produced the heat required to distill your product at the bare minimum. Thats not counting any other thermal efficiency losses.....even a 20% figure is realistic and damm near as good as you could get.

 

so you have 15,000 lbs of sugar.....you ferment that, make a bunch of low % wash, and then distill that.

 

Assume you are not doing a vacuum distillation you are going to hit about 95% output with a reflux still, that equates to about 1040 gallons of 95% alcohol. Assuming a 20% efficacy loss you have 832 gallons of fuel.

 

Now compare to gasoline, gasoline is about 48.1 kJ/g compared to 26.8 kJ/gram. That means the pure alcohol has 55% less energy than non ethanol gasoline.

 

Lets look at it another way, that 832 gallons of pure alcohol is more like 458 gallons of gasoline.

 

Thats not even looking at how much of that fuel you will need to use to plant/grow/harvest and transport the sugar beets to make the fuel.

 

You need lots of sugar.

 

Source: ME with a background in alternative fuels and a distiller.

 

well then. Back to the drawing board to fit a 4bt in the manche.

[Zenobian_84]

plenty of fruit trees round here. Plus we have a 3 acre garden about a 5 minute walk up the road we tend by hand. use the diesel kubota for plowing and thats it

 

*Sam's extremely long informative post* (Don't want to clog the thread up)

 

Source: ME with a background in alternative fuels and a distiller.

 

well then. Back to the drawing board to fit a 4bt in the manche.

Jesus Sam. That's was quite the rebuttle. Methinks you're quite ready for the end of the world. Makes pretty good sense to me, and I don't even have a background in distilling OR alternative fuels.

[opsled]

My, how we digress.

 

opsled

 

PS, Cool little S-Diesel Rob.

 

Thanks fer posting.

[HOrnbrod]

I had the Isuzu version of this S10 for a couple of years in the Philippines, a local 1985 Isuzu P'up w. the 2.2. Super reliable rig, ecnomical, but it was a real oinker on the road. But I liked it. Looked similar to this one HERE.

 

The average local couldn't afford gasoline, so the Isuzu diesels were transplanted into about everything. I once went to look at a gorgeous 65 factory GT Mustang in Manila. Opened the hood and there was an Isuzu diesel sitting there. :ack: Dayem!