During the last month the price of diesel fuel has increased 10%. This is making it very difficult for long haulers to make a living and the higher fuel prices are increasing the prices of our food and all of the other commodities that we are dependent on.
Higher transportation costs increase the cost of everything, fuels inflation and hinders the economic recovery, because people can't afford to buy as much.
T.Boon Pickens and Warren Buffet have a plan to wean America off from our dependence on foreign oil, and to cut transportation costs, by converting our truck fleet to natural gas.
Recent discoveries reveal that America has enough natural gas to meet our energy needs for a hundred years but we only have about a six year supply of oil.
According to T.Boon Pickens: "About 70% of the oil we import is used as fuel for America's 250 million cars and light trucks and 6.5 million heavy trucks. Nearly half of the oil used for transportation is used as diesel fuel to power 18-wheelers. Natural gas is the only alternative. It is not only more abundant; it costs half as much and emits almost 30% less carbon dioxide."
"If, in the normal course of replacements, we exchanged those 6.5 million heavy trucks running on largely imported diesel for new ones running on domestic natural gas, we could reduce our imports by 2.5 million barrels per day. We would be able to reduce our dependence on oil from the Middle East by half in only seven years."
"Ultimately, if given the choice between spending $100 on a barrel of oil versus $23 on the equivalent energy provided by natural gas, a rational individual would favor natural gas purely based on the economics of the situation. When one adds in the fact that natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel and is available in abundance from domestic sources, it is surprising that broader political support does not exist for wider use."
http://www.smartplanet.com/people/blog/p...The video shows that if we improved the aerodynamics of our trucks, we could cut the fuel use in half. If we used natural gas, which costs half what diesel does, that fuel would be half the cost, so right there we could cut shipping fuel costs 75%.
We could place a lot of CNG tanks in the aerodynamic fairings. The engines don't need much modification to switch to natural gas, and the cleaner fuel would make the engines last twice as long. This would be an easy and efficient upgrade for our existing trucking fleet.
What happens if we make the trucks hybrids? Most of the energy used in trucks is to get them up to speed. On flat land a truck needs only about 35% of the energy to overcome dynamic rolling and aerodynamic friction.
What would happen if we put electric motors on all of the trailer wheels, and the steering wheels of the tractor? It would also be more energy efficient to get rid of the dual wheels and put larger high capacity single wheels with less rolling resistance. With all wheel drive, the trucks would handle much better in rain, snow, and ice. The electric wheels could also make the trucks much safer going down steep grades by using regenerative braking. There would be much less maintenance because brake shoes would last twice as long too.
If we could charge the batteries up going down the hills, and use the electric drive to help go up hills, and to get the rig up to speed, we could cut the size of the engine in half.
The tops of the trailers have a lot of area that could be covered with photovoltaic cells. They might even generate enough energy on a sunny day to provide all of the driving power. This power could also be used to refrigerate trailers so trucks wouldn't have to be kept idling when the drivers are sleeping or eating.
The only part of the system that is missing is the battery packs. Big rigs could probably carry a rack with a hundred lead acid batteries without too much strain. That would be the cheapest. If we combined a capacitor bank with the batteries, they would be much more efficient and last twice as long.
http://www.supercapacitors.org/But what about a new cheaper more efficient battery system? The Lithium Ion batteries that will be in our hybrid cars cut the weight down a lot, but they are very expensive.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/adva...A better battery for big trucks might be Sodium Sulfur batteries. Liquid Sulfur Sodium batteries have much better energy densities and longer lives and yet are inexpensive. Thus far they have been very large and can be used to even out the power distribution for solar and wind plants. It shouldn't be too hard to size a unit for a big rig truck.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/en...If we could cut our dependence on foreign oil in 7 years just by converting to natural gas, we could cut our foreign oil dependence altogether by switching to more efficient hybrid trucks.