Diesel

Weird Harold wrote:
Isn't "bunker oil" for steamships basically just straight crude? There's no reason crude oil has to be refined in any way to fire steam boilers. Refining, especially detailed refinement into the various fuel grades used in the modern world, is a requirement for fueling ICE based infrastructure, not for steam.

I think you misunderstand. Some degree of refining is highly preferable, unless you score a jackpot on the oilfield you´re taking it from, as some places have such good quality it doesn´t even need refining to run well even in petrol engines.

So, it´s bullshit to try to separate it into "ICE needs refining, steam doesn´t".
That depends completely on what kind of oil sources you can find. If they´re sucktastic for quality, you will be forced to use refining even to get minimum quality suitable heavy bunker oil.

If the quality is excellent, you can bottle it and run any modern or ancient ICE on it without problems. This was how real world cars were originally powered, by buying small glassbottles of high quality oil from the few sources that produced such high quality.


HOWEVER, my real point was that mining coal is a relatively simple work, it´s heavy work, but almost anyone can learn it and there is already an infrastructure ready.

Drilling for oil however requires a completely new industrial infrastructure for support and people with a mix of skills, including some brand new skills that needs to be figured out, that isn´t all that common.

In short, you need more "advanced" equipment and a better trained workforce to work sources of oil.

And if the oil available isn´t near the surface? Then the difficulty just jumped at least one magnitude. On earth, many early sources of oil were places were the oil was so close to the surface that it bubbled up on its own.

Does Safehold have that at all? If not, it´s going to take quite a lot more effort to get anywhere.


And in regards to biobased oil, that is simply very workintensive in a 19th century kind of civilisation, the low output will hamper production a lot. Those firevines and oil trees will help a bit but the problem wont go away.

Tenshinai wrote:I think you misunderstand. Some degree of refining is highly preferable, unless you score a jackpot on the oilfield you´re taking it from, as some places have such good quality it doesn´t even need refining to run well even in petrol engines.

I don't misunderstand, I oversimplify.

If crude oil -- or Fire Vine oil or Oil Tree oil -- will burn, it will fire a boiler. Unless you get very lucky, the same is not true for ICEs.

Refining is highly preferable because there are useful fractions to extract for other purposes, no matter where you burn the remainder. Refining is necessary for efficient ICE operation.

iranuke wrote:Bunker C is not crude oil! Bunker C was used in US naval vessels thru the 70's to power its steam plants. Originally it was used because it was cheap. Oil is refined to get the real useful stuff out of it. Originally oil was refined to get kerosene out of it for things like lighting and cooking. This was done long before the widespread adoption of the internal combustion engine for transportation.

So what you're saying is that "Bunker C" is crude oil with all of the easily flammable and volatile fractions removed -- that it is less flammable than pure crude?

Weird Harold wrote:(SNIP)

As for manpower requirements for Coal vs Oil, if the distribution network is initially the same -- dragon-wagons with loose coal or barrels of oil -- the ten-to-twenty man drilling crew trumps the 100-200 man mining crew.

True - but as Tenshinai pointed out, the mineral oil production network has to be set up from scratch.

While the fire vine oil plantations already exist, it will take time to establish new plantations to increase the production.

Similarly kraken oil, you will need more kraken hunting ships (or shore stations) - where you will be competing with the navy for sailors....

Weird Harold wrote:Pipelines present most of the same problems as railroads, but once built require far fewer people and animals to maintain.

Finally, Merlin, Nimue, and OWL have the resources to advise the inner-circle on the long-term effects and cost of coal vs oil and drive a push to develop the oil industries at the expense of the coal industries.

Oh I agree - long term steam is NOT the answer.

But for the next book (or two) I would expect there to be a big push into steam, while the supporting infrastructures for diesels are developed.....

MWadwell wrote:Oh I agree - long term steam is NOT the answer.

I'm not sure what you're agreeing to. My comments were directed at changing the way steam is fired, not producing ICE fuels. In the very long term, I'd like to see Safehold completely bypass an ICE/Fossil Fuels economy.

Note to all, please be careful when discussing EFFICIENY of various power systems. Efficiency can be, and is, based on different methods of comparison. During my training in Thermodynamics in Navy Nuclear Power School, the efficiency of gasoline ICS was given as 18%, and Steam power plants was a maximum of 30%. Granted I went through that school almost 30 years ago, and things have changed, but those numbers are what I remember and were given as best values in theory, not practice.

What I am considering about the EoC Technology advancement is that Merlin is not so much concerned with WHAT tech He introduces, as to Introducing the Habit of Innovation, He does not care to GIVE the formula for smokeless powder as much as giving the mindset to notice the result of cotton treated with nitric acid flashing to vapor without smoke, and how that can be used to replace Black Powder.

The term "Bunker C" as related to fuels was explained to me as that part of Crude Oil that was left after the basic distillation of gasoline and heating/diesel oils, minus the lubricating oils. Bunker C has to be heated even to pump it, much less burn it because at room temperatures it is basically tar. And when used for seagoing diesels it is absolutely an environmental disaster.

Also, I have developed the impression from the books that Merlin is forcing the COGA to "Violate" the Proscriptions in order to try and destroy the EoC as the ground work to PROVE that the proscriptions are false. After all, even after the Go4 is killed off, the vast majority of the population of Safehold needs to be educated away from the acceptance of the Word of the Writ to thinking independently.

I have also found myself wondering if the "Key" left to the "Wilson" (Sorry, I only listen to the books so I don't know the spelling MWW used) to be placed on the Alter below the temple in time of Crisis is not the true OBS monitoring system. and that if/when used, would result in a visit from the Archangels that would denounce the COGA and admit to how false the Writ truly is.

Tenshinai wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
Isn't "bunker oil" for steamships basically just straight crude? There's no reason crude oil has to be refined in any way to fire steam boilers. Refining, especially detailed refinement into the various fuel grades used in the modern world, is a requirement for fueling ICE based infrastructure, not for steam.

I think you misunderstand. Some degree of refining is highly preferable, unless you score a jackpot on the oilfield you´re taking it from, as some places have such good quality it doesn´t even need refining to run well even in petrol engines.

So, it´s bullshit to try to separate it into "ICE needs refining, steam doesn´t".
That depends completely on what kind of oil sources you can find. If they´re sucktastic for quality, you will be forced to use refining even to get minimum quality suitable heavy bunker oil.

If the quality is excellent, you can bottle it and run any modern or ancient ICE on it without problems. This was how real world cars were originally powered, by buying small glassbottles of high quality oil from the few sources that produced such high quality.


HOWEVER, my real point was that mining coal is a relatively simple work, it´s heavy work, but almost anyone can learn it and there is already an infrastructure ready.

Drilling for oil however requires a completely new industrial infrastructure for support and people with a mix of skills, including some brand new skills that needs to be figured out, that isn´t all that common.

In short, you need more "advanced" equipment and a better trained workforce to work sources of oil.

And if the oil available isn´t near the surface? Then the difficulty just jumped at least one magnitude. On earth, many early sources of oil were places were the oil was so close to the surface that it bubbled up on its own.

Does Safehold have that at all? If not, it´s going to take quite a lot more effort to get anywhere.


And in regards to biobased oil, that is simply very workintensive in a 19th century kind of civilisation, the low output will hamper production a lot. Those firevines and oil trees will help a bit but the problem wont go away.

That drilling is already happening, as the empire needs to increase the production of petroleum jelly for use in making smokeless powder. Since petroleum jelly is a rather minor component of crude oil, it would be sort of nice to find a use the rest of the crude oil.

Using oil burners for navy ships has many benefits. Oil is more energy dense than coal so for the same weight of fuel the ship can travel further. Oil is more compact than coal so the same weight takes up less space. Oil is easier to load and it is far easier to refuel at sea with oil than with coal. Crew sizes are smaller than wit cola as fuel pumps take the place of crewmen shoveling coal. Oil tanks can be placed far lower in the ship than coal bunkers can, thereby improving the seaworthiness and safety of the ship.

Easternmystic wrote:
That drilling is already happening, as the empire needs to increase the production of petroleum jelly for use in making smokeless powder. Since petroleum jelly is a rather minor component of crude oil, it would be sort of nice to find a use the rest of the crude oil.

Using oil burners for navy ships has many benefits. Oil is more energy dense than coal so for the same weight of fuel the ship can travel further. Oil is more compact than coal so the same weight takes up less space. Oil is easier to load and it is far easier to refuel at sea with oil than with coal. Crew sizes are smaller than wit cola as fuel pumps take the place of crewmen shoveling coal. Oil tanks can be placed far lower in the ship than coal bunkers can, thereby improving the seaworthiness and safety of the ship.

Both nitrocelluose and -glycerine are unstable substances. The decomposition products are positive catalysts which accelerate the rate of decomposition. Stabilizers such a mineral jelly are substances which will combine with and so render inactive these decomposition products. Mineral jelly only absorbs oxides of nitrogen and is also inert towards the NC and NG, also with the compounds formed by the mix of decomposition products and the jelly.

Much better stabilizers, which also are capable of neutralizing acids in the propellant and forming colloidal solutions with it, are Diphenylamine, Carbamite and Metyl Centralite. The earlier varities of cordite (Mk.1, M.D., M.C., R.D.B) employed mineral jelly as a stabilizer, while the more modern "solventless" types (S.C., H.S.C., W, N and NQ) used carbamite. Cordite W.M employed both. Most of the advanced stabilizers were the result of coal tar chemistry.

Centralites, for example, were made from monoethylaniline, a dye intermediate in the dye-making process. Diphenylamine was made by heating aniline whith aniline hydrochloride and N-methylaniline, the outcomes of dye-making process, which in turn was based on by-products (tar, light oil, ammonium sulphates) of the coke industry.

Weird Harold wrote:

MWadwell wrote:Oh I agree - long term steam is NOT the answer.

I'm not sure what you're agreeing to. My comments were directed at changing the way steam is fired, not producing ICE fuels. In the very long term, I'd like to see Safehold completely bypass an ICE/Fossil Fuels economy.

G'Day Weird Harold,

I'm agreeing with the line that I've emphasised in bold.

I see steam/ICE as a small step to higher tech alternatives.

Captain Igloo wrote:

Easternmystic wrote:
That drilling is already happening, as the empire needs to increase the production of petroleum jelly for use in making smokeless powder. Since petroleum jelly is a rather minor component of crude oil, it would be sort of nice to find a use the rest of the crude oil.

Using oil burners for navy ships has many benefits. Oil is more energy dense than coal so for the same weight of fuel the ship can travel further. Oil is more compact than coal so the same weight takes up less space. Oil is easier to load and it is far easier to refuel at sea with oil than with coal. Crew sizes are smaller than wit cola as fuel pumps take the place of crewmen shoveling coal. Oil tanks can be placed far lower in the ship than coal bunkers can, thereby improving the seaworthiness and safety of the ship.

Both nitrocelluose and -glycerine are unstable substances. The decomposition products are positive catalysts which accelerate the rate of decomposition. Stabilizers such a mineral jelly are substances which will combine with and so render inactive these decomposition products. Mineral jelly only absorbs oxides of nitrogen and is also inert towards the NC and NG, also with the compounds formed by the mix of decomposition products and the jelly.

Much better stabilizers, which also are capable of neutralizing acids in the propellant and forming colloidal solutions with it, are Diphenylamine, Carbamite and Metyl Centralite. The earlier varities of cordite (Mk.1, M.D., M.C., R.D.B) employed mineral jelly as a stabilizer, while the more modern "solventless" types (S.C., H.S.C., W, N and NQ) used carbamite. Cordite W.M employed both. Most of the advanced stabilizers were the result of coal tar chemistry.

Centralites, for example, were made from monoethylaniline, a dye intermediate in the dye-making process. Diphenylamine was made by heating aniline whith aniline hydrochloride and N-methylaniline, the outcomes of dye-making process, which in turn was based on by-products (tar, light oil, ammonium sulphates) of the coke industry.

It doesn't matter that that there are better stabilizers, since petroleum jelly is the one that they are using, as it is the most readily available at the moment. It's entirely possible that some of the other stabilizers don't even have a current usage on Safehold and will have to be rediscovered.

I am not a techy, so I tend to get in trouble when discussions get too technical...

But...could someone explain why diesel explodes under pressure? I kow there is heat involved, but where does it come from? How hot does it have to get in a cylinder with pressurized diesel before it explodes? I've looked it up, but so far none of the discussions have explained this...

Don