World Trade - November 2008 - (Page 54)

Great Moments IN WORLD TRADE Keep on Compressing BY JEREMY N. SMITH R Rudolf Diesel udolf Diesel wanted to make his own name. In 1875, at the age of 17, against the advice of his parents, the poor tradesman’s son had enrolled in Munich’s Royal Bavarian Polytechnic, an engineering school. There he became the star pupil of Carl von Linde, one of the inventors of refrigeration. When Linde designed and constructed a modern refrigeration plant, Diesel, now 23 years old, served as director. So employed, however, Diesel knew the fame and ﬁnancial beneﬁts from his ideas accrued to his mentor. Determined to move out of refrigeration, Diesel turned to the machine that gave his profession its name: the engine. Early experiments with a steam engine powered by ammonia vapor ended in disaster. The device exploded, nearly blinding Diesel. By the time he returned to his research, countrymen Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz had invented the automobile. Diesel studied the vehicle as a colleague and critic. Good, he thought, but not nearly good enough. The year was now 1890. He would devote himself to improving—rather: reinventing—the source of power. In 1890, internal combustion meant a gasoline engine. Invented and patented by a German, Nikolaus August Otto in 1876, the four-stroke “Otto Cycle” employed a simple process. Pistons compressed a mixture of fuel and air ignited by a spark plug. The series of small explosions that followed converted the chemical energy in fuel to the mechanical energy necessary to cycle crankshafts and pistons. Along the way, though, 90 percent or more of the fuel was wasted, producing heat, not work. Diesel had a better idea. Begin with air alone, compress it mightily, and high pressure and temperature will be the product. Heavy fuel then injected into this environment will ignite immediately, no spark plug necessary. As well, higher compression meant greater efﬁciency and power, especially with the highest-energy heavy fuels. Gasoline engines compressed at a maximum ratio of 12-to-1. The redesign offered a ratio as high as 25-to-1. Implementing the idea in the ﬁeld took two decades plagued by patent disputes and manufacturing setbacks. Only in 1912, the year before Diesel’s death, the world saw the first ‘diesel’ ship, the MS Selandia, built in Copenhagen, soon followed by U.S. Navy submarines and, most famously, German U-Boats. In 1924, the first diesel truck appeared, and, in 1928, the ﬁrst diesel locomotive. Over the next ten years, Cummins, Caterpillar, Citroën, General Motors, and Mercedes-Benz all embarked on large-scale diesel vehicle manufacturing. A solid injection system invented by Englishman Herbert Akroyd Stuart improved on Diesel’s original design to produce the singlecylinder, four-stroke engine familiar today. First a downward-sliding piston sucks in, then compresses pure air, heating it to high temperatures. Next, an injection pump feeds the hot air heavy fuel ignited immediately by high pressure. The piston presses downward, powering the crankshaft. Lastly, the piston slides up again, ejecting burned gases—exhaust—from the cylinder. Hence the billowing black trails long-associated with a convoy of cross-country truckers. These days, however, diesel advocates highlight their engines’ environmental prowess and potential. Equipped with improved catalytic converters, exhaust gas re-circulators, and hightech particulate ﬁlters, so-called “clean diesel” power averages 30 percent better fuel efﬁciency and 25 percent fewer emissions than a typical gasoline power train—all with 50 percent more torque. “With clean diesel no longer are fuel economy and performance mutually exclusive,” Gale Banks, chief executive ofﬁcer of Gale Banks Engineering, a power system producer for gas and diesel trucks, says. By 2015, experts estimate, clean diesel vehicles will capture 15 percent of new North American vehicle sales. For truckers and shippers, that percentage will be much higher, much sooner. As is, Diesel United, Ltd. of Japan claims to make the world’s most powerful diesel engine: a 2,300-ton, 45-by90-foot, 14-cylinder behemoth built for container ships with a single engine propeller design. Maximum power: almost 110,000 horsepower, displacing more than 25,000 liters—an entire public aquarium tank—as it moves. Now the bad news: fuel consumption averages close to 2,000 gallons of heavy oil per hour. Solar anyone? WT 54 WORLD TRADE NOVEMBER 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of World Trade - November 2008

World Trade - November 2008 Contents Unexpected Responses to Unanticipated Change Reading the States of Risk in Today’s Global Economy Supply Chain Watch Tradewinds Failed Promise: Mexico and NAFTA, 15 Years Later The Short Tale Marrying Trade Finance and Transportation into a Single Transaction Trucking Gets a Double Whammy Are We Safe Yet? Logistics Resurrects the Rust Belt Keep on Compressing

World Trade - November 2008

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