Renewable Fuels

[Timerover51]

On page 246, Traveller 5.0.9 the following statement appears.

Renewables. Power is supplied by renewable fuels, most commonly organically-produced alcohol.

Then under technology, Renewables are listed at a Tech Level 8 development.

Alcohol was being distilled during the Middle Ages, and before, and was being used as a fuel and beverage.

However, exactly where does wood come into this? Are the following fuels considered renewable or not?

Wood
Lard
Olive Oil
Coconut Oil
Whale Oil (also seal oil, used a lot by the Eskimos, and walrus oil.)

During the Middle Ages, and with all likelihood, long before, trees in Europe were coppiced to allow for growth of new stems, which were allowed to grow for a while and then were harvested, to be used as fuel or building material. I have an ash tree in my yard that is doing precisely that.

Hog lard was used widely in the Colonial period and later for use in lamps, with some lamps being specifically designed to use lard as the source of oil. As for olive oil in lamps, that goes back into pre-history.

Alcohol is a comparatively recent development.

 

[aramis]

On page 246, Traveller 5.0.9 the following statement appears.



Then under technology, Renewables are listed at a Tech Level 8 development.

Alcohol was being distilled during the Middle Ages, and before, and was being used as a fuel and beverage.

However, exactly where does wood come into this? Are the following fuels considered renewable or not?

Wood
Lard
Olive Oil
Coconut Oil
Whale Oil (also seal oil, used a lot by the Eskimos, and walrus oil.)

During the Middle Ages, and with all likelihood, long before, trees in Europe were coppiced to allow for growth of new stems, which were allowed to grow for a while and then were harvested, to be used as fuel or building material. I have an ash tree in my yard that is doing precisely that.

Hog lard was used widely in the Colonial period and later for use in lamps, with some lamps being specifically designed to use lard as the source of oil. As for olive oil in lamps, that goes back into pre-history.

Alcohol is a comparatively recent development.

Wood's not likely to be used as a fuel in that form on vehicles. It can, however, be made into wood-alcohol (methanol). Or into charcoal.

Charcoal is great for external combustion - anthracite coal is a bit better. Easy to store, easy to handle...

Oil Boilers are kind of an oddity. They really only become common once fuel oil was becoming readily available.

wood: 16-21 MJ/kg
charcoal: ~30 MJ/kg
methanol: 19.9-22.7 MJ/kg
ethanol: 23.4 – 26.8 MJ/kg
coconut oil: 36 MJ/kg
olive oil: 36-39 MJ/kg
fat: ~37 MJ/kg

Coal: 29-33 MJ/kg
crude oil: ~41 MJ/kg
diesel oil: ~48 MJ/kg


The renewables tend to have significant processing and some energy costs in extracting them. Except wood and fat, both of which have competing uses...

Fat's a pretty good choice - but it doesn't burn all that hot. Oh, and it gets smelly pretty quick in warm climes. ('taint terrible pleasant coming out of a whale in the first place... sit it around for a couple weeks and it's no longer appetizing, so you may as well burn it in the lamp.)

Which reminds me - Wood can be milled to powder and compressed to make a faster burning fuel, same for charcoal. Lard and olive oil don't release their energy all that quickly - makes them GREAT lamp oils (long burning) but not so good for heating. Petrochems and alcohol release the energy pretty quick. (Light a shot of olive oil and a shot of everclear - the oil burns longer, the everclear brighter, IIRC.)

So Alcohol makes for good engine fuel for shorter duration higher energy uses - like IC engines - while petrochems can readily detonate.

 

[Timerover51]

Wood's not likely to be used as a fuel in that form on vehicles. It can, however, be made into wood-alcohol (methanol). Or into charcoal.

Charcoal is great for external combustion - anthracite coal is a bit better. Easy to store, easy to handle...

Oil Boilers are kind of an oddity. They really only become common once fuel oil was becoming readily available.

wood: 16-21 MJ/kg
charcoal: ~30 MJ/kg
methanol: 19.9-22.7 MJ/kg
ethanol: 23.4 – 26.8 MJ/kg
coconut oil: 36 MJ/kg
olive oil: 36-39 MJ/kg
fat: ~37 MJ/kg

Coal: 29-33 MJ/kg
crude oil: ~41 MJ/kg
diesel oil: ~48 MJ/kg


The renewables tend to have significant processing and some energy costs in extracting them. Except wood and fat, both of which have competing uses...

Fat's a pretty good choice - but it doesn't burn all that hot. Oh, and it gets smelly pretty quick in warm climes. ('taint terrible pleasant coming out of a whale in the first place... sit it around for a couple weeks and it's no longer appetizing, so you may as well burn it in the lamp.)

Which reminds me - Wood can be milled to powder and compressed to make a faster burning fuel, same for charcoal. Lard and olive oil don't release their energy all that quickly - makes them GREAT lamp oils (long burning) but not so good for heating. Petrochems and alcohol release the energy pretty quick. (Light a shot of olive oil and a shot of everclear - the oil burns longer, the everclear brighter, IIRC.)

So Alcohol makes for good engine fuel for shorter duration higher energy uses - like IC engines - while petrochems can readily detonate.

Have you ever heard of wood-burning locomotives or steam boats? Every locomotive used in the Confederacy during the Civil War burned wood, along with a lot of the Mississippi River steam boats prior to the Civil War. You can also use wood in steam traction engines, for either hauling goods or hauling people. More on that in another thread.

I am not thinking simply of motor fuels either. How did people heat their homes or cook their food for thousands of years prior to the use of either alcohol or petroleum? They used wood. A pastor friend of mine, who had a small church in Iowa, used a wood furnace for heat, with the congregation supplying the wood from their woodlots. How many people in Alaska use wood for furnace fuel and cooking?

As for alcohol not detonating, that is why the Germans used a water-alcohol mixture in World War 2 to boost engine performance. I do have, in hard copy, the US Navy's Technical Mission to Japan report on the use of alcohol as a substitute aviation fuel by the Japanese. It does make interesting reading.

 

[Reban]

There's a simple answer to this:


Assume that the modifiers Fossil, Powercell and Renewable can be stacked with the modifiers Prototype, Early, Standard, Improved and Advanced.

I can build a Standard Renewable (wood burning) locomotive/steamboat at TL5.

I can build a Prototype Renewable (wood burning) locomotivesteamboat at TL3.


The problem here is failure to read context.

Fuel is used in VehicleMaker in relation to vehicles to denote a fuel source capable of powering a vehicle.

Yes whale oil is a "fuel" but as a fuel source for illumination, not motive power.

 

[Timerover51]

There's a simple answer to this:


Assume that the modifiers Fossil, Powercell and Renewable can be stacked with the modifiers Prototype, Early, Standard, Improved and Advanced.

I can build a Standard Renewable (wood burning) locomotive/steamboat at TL5.

I can build a Prototype Renewable (wood burning) locomotivesteamboat at TL3.

The definition of Prototype from the Technology section on page 497.

Prototype is the first step before early mass production. There are perhaps a dozen examples of any one prototype.

There were a LOT more wood-burning locomotives and steam boats in about 1850 than a dozen. There were even wood-burning road locomotives being used in England in fair numbers by 1860.

The problem here is failure to read context.

Fuel is used in VehicleMaker in relation to vehicles to denote a fuel source capable of powering a vehicle.

Yes whale oil is a "fuel" but as a fuel source for illumination, not motive power.

The heading does not say, FUEL. The heading says, ENERGY. Water Power is listed as the energy source for Tech Level 1. I do not think that it would be easy to build a Water-Powered locomotive or ground car. I am not referring to Vehicle Maker, but to the Tech Level Chart on 502.

 

[aramis]

TR - you're coming at it looking for details well below T5 Vehicle Maker resolution. It's akin to looking at a map of company deployment zones at Division HQ, and expecting to find where the CO's tent is for each company - "somewhere in there" (points at a box covering 300x300m)...

Given the level of abstraction, and the way the fill-forms are set up, YES, wood is probably going to be a "prototype renewable" for those low TL things - it's inefficient storage-wise and energy wise - prototype is good enough for that. And it's renewable, so that also gets applied...

It gets the TL correct, and the system just doesn't do that level of detail - a level that (generally) seems to no longer be popular.

Also - remember that the definitions for the makers are not closed sets. They are inclusive of more than they say, because Marc runs to the laconic side of things.

 

[Reban]

The definition of Prototype from the Technology section on page 497.



There were a LOT more wood-burning locomotives and steam boats in about 1850 than a dozen. There were even wood-burning road locomotives being used in England in fair numbers by 1860.

Yet each was handmade. Mass production of traction engines, road roller, steam trucks in different models and brands from mid century onwards still had low production numbers.

But what you're doing here is taking a class of vehicles applying the Prototype modifier and assuming the suggestion that only dozens are built applies globally.

Actually it applies to the particular model being built. Professor A Builds a Prototype Model A. With available resources he can produce perhaps a dozen. Professor B constructs a Prototype Model B, (the Prototype Model B might be 5km faster or have a different QREBS). Professor B only build one example before moving on to other projects.

Say Professor A tries to mass produce his Prototype Model A, he'll find that the results are only reproducible for a handful of examples. The manufacturing technology just isn't there yet to allow mas or even low rate production.

The heading does not say, FUEL. The heading says, ENERGY. Water Power is listed as the energy source for Tech Level 1. I do not think that it would be easy to build a Water-Powered locomotive or ground car. I am not referring to Vehicle Maker, but to the Tech Level Chart on 502.

So reading back through your posts you're problem is that Renewables are considered to be Standard technology at TL8?

I thought there was a clear context for the Energy column on the chart as relating to people movers, vehicles and spacecraft.

While I can't think of an example of a water powered locomotive or car I can think of several hydraulically powered trams. And I think canal locks would fall into the category of water powered transporters as well.

 

[rancke]

Yet each was handmade. Mass production of traction engines, road roller, steam trucks in different models and brands from mid century onwards still had low production numbers.

The assembly line is an idea that can be applied at any tech level, regardless of when it was historically invented. Indeed, while it only became widespread with the industrial revolution, it was employed by the Chinese and the Venetians at a much earlier date. There's no reason why it couldn't be in widespread use on a TL1 or TL2 world.

Indeed, there's an aspect of Traveller tech levels that seems to me to be overlooked a lot (though I've no idea if it has been factored in with T5). That's the difference between discovery TL and application TL. Some inventions that historically weren't invented until a certain date can be applied at earlier tech levels than these dates imply. Invasive surgery, for example, became practical at TL4 because the germ theory of disease led to the practice of sterilizing surgical instruments, reducing the near-certainty of infection to an acceptable risk. But the idea of sterilizing instruments can be applied as soon as you're able to boil water, making invasive surgery a TL1 technique (or perhaps even a TL0 technique -- why shouldn't you be able to operate with sterilized flint knives?)

So what are those tech level charts showing? Discovery TLs or application TLs?


Hans

 

[McPerth]

Indeed, there's an aspect of Traveller tech levels that seems to me to be overlooked a lot (though I've no idea if it has been factored in with T5). That's the difference between discovery TL and application TL. Some inventions that historically weren't invented until a certain date can be applied at earlier tech levels than these dates imply. Invasive surgery, for example, became practical at TL4 because the germ theory of disease led to the practice of sterilizing surgical instruments, reducing the near-certainty of infection to an acceptable risk. But the idea of sterilizing instruments can be applied as soon as you're able to boil water, making invasive surgery a TL1 technique (or perhaps even a TL0 technique -- why shouldn't you be able to operate with sterilized flint knives?)

So what are those tech level charts showing? Discovery TLs or application TLs?


Hans

While this is true, it is usually discovered at this TL because something prevented it at lower TLs. To keep with your example, the germ theory needed for the micoroscopies to be fully developed, so it could hardly be developed before TL 4, while, once known, could be applied quite early, as you say.

So, if you're lead by someone that knows the involved theories, you can (as you say) apply some technologies before the TL required to discover them, but if you must discover the theories by yourself, things are not so easy.

So, to apply to the discussion about wood used as renewable power source, perhaps the protptypes in the 19th century for the Solomay were unreliable prototypes, but if someone had taught people how to build a boiler using wood as fuel, they would probably have been built quite more reliably.

Another matter about wood is that I'd expect quite soon (time permiting) first convert it to charcoal, mostly for mobile engine (locomoties, ships, etc), where space for fuel is limited and limits its authonomy.

 

[rancke]

While this is true, it is usually discovered at this TL because something prevented it at lower TLs. To keep with your example, the germ theory needed for the micoroscopies to be fully developed, so it could hardly be developed before TL 4, while, once known, could be applied quite early, as you say.

So, if you're lead by someone that knows the involved theories, you can (as you say) apply some technologies before the Tl required to discover them, but if you must discover the theories by yourself, things are not so easy.

While this is true, it is also precisely what I said.

There's a difference between discovery TL and application TL which Traveller rules seems to pretty much ignore. And IMO a Traveller universe, where the vast majority of worlds were colonized by someone with access to TL9 or better and most low- and mid-tech worlds are in contact with high-tech worlds right now, application TL is vastly more important than discovery TL. After all, most players and referees are a lot more interested in what sort of stuff people on a world is using on the day the PCs visit than in when one of the rare homeworlds invented what thousands of years ago.


Hans

 

[jcrocker]

...But the idea of sterilizing instruments can be applied as soon as you're able to boil water, making invasive surgery a TL1 technique (or perhaps even a TL0 technique -- why shouldn't you be able to operate with sterilized flint knives?)

Hans

Not necessarily flint:

"Even today the sharp, cutting edge of obsidian is utilized in precision scalpels for heart and eye surgery. Their sharpness is superior by many times that of surgical steel, as obsidian can be honed to near atomic levels of thinness."

Beginners Guide to Minerals & Rocks, Dr. Joel Grice, Fitzhenry & Whiteside, p. 267

 

[Timerover51]

So, to apply to the discussion about wood used as renewable power source, perhaps the protptypes in the 19th century for the Solomay were unreliable prototypes, but if someone had taught people how to build a boiler using wood as fuel, they would probably have been built quite more reliably.

Another matter about wood is that I'd expect quite soon (time permiting) first convert it to charcoal, mostly for mobile engine (locomoties, ships, etc), where space for fuel is limited and limits its authonomy.

Charcoal making dates back to somewhere before 3500BC, based on finds in Egypt. Charcoal fires were being used to smelt copper ore sometime in the 3rd Millennium BC, or prior to 3000 BC.

One of the big reasons for the jump in efficiency of Black Powder in the early 1800s was the discovery that by heating wood in closed cylinders and subjecting it to destructive distillation, it was possible to get a much purer form of charcoal that the previous way of simply making a very large pile of wood, then covering it with clay or earth while leaving some air vents, and then setting fire to the bottom of the pile.

 

[Timerover51]

Not necessarily flint:

"Even today the sharp, cutting edge of obsidian is utilized in precision scalpels for heart and eye surgery. Their sharpness is superior by many times that of surgical steel, as obsidian can be honed to near atomic levels of thinness."

Beginners Guide to Minerals & Rocks, Dr. Joel Grice, Fitzhenry & Whiteside, p. 267

Obsidian from the Aegean island of Melos was a very valuable commodity for trading during the period before the Bronze Age. It is found throughout Asia Minor and the Eastern Mediterranean area.

 

[aramis]

Charcoal making dates back to somewhere before 3500BC, based on finds in Egypt. Charcoal fires were being used to smelt copper ore sometime in the 3rd Millennium BC, or prior to 3000 BC.

One of the big reasons for the jump in efficiency of Black Powder in the early 1800s was the discovery that by heating wood in closed cylinders and subjecting it to destructive distillation, it was possible to get a much purer form of charcoal that the previous way of simply making a very large pile of wood, then covering it with clay or earth while leaving some air vents, and then setting fire to the bottom of the pile.

It's also worth noting that charcoal has a higher energy per liter and per kilogram than wood, and releases that energy slowly when in a pile, but really fast when air (or better, pure O2) is forced through it. Its ash is also a reasonable insulator. A friend left his forge loaded and burning overnight, and in the morning, 3 pumps of the bellows and it was back to forging. (He stopped early because he had to do SCA court...)

With a forced draft, smelting many base metals is readily doable.

 

[WistfulD]

If renewables are listed as a TL 8 technology, do you think it is possible that the designer simply wasn't thinking of/refering to wood and charcoal? I mean, Joe Newcastle in 1830 heating his home with charcoal and Joe Tesla in 2050turning (hopefully by then) switchgrass and waste wood pulp into m/ethanol for his automobile are by any technical argument using the same power source (wood, which is renewable), but the differences in what they are doing should mean that the two should have completely different metrics (I'm not sure what you are looking at, power plant performance?).

 

[McPerth]

Charcoal making dates back to somewhere before 3500BC, based on finds in Egypt. Charcoal fires were being used to smelt copper ore sometime in the 3rd Millennium BC, or prior to 3000 BC.

One of the big reasons for the jump in efficiency of Black Powder in the early 1800s was the discovery that by heating wood in closed cylinders and subjecting it to destructive distillation, it was possible to get a much purer form of charcoal that the previous way of simply making a very large pile of wood, then covering it with clay or earth while leaving some air vents, and then setting fire to the bottom of the pile.

TY for the information. I knew charcoal is old, but didn't know the specifics.

That's why I believe that, if you have time to convert Wood to charcoal, you'll use charcoal instead of wood for anything where weight/volume (or just reducing smoke) is of importance quite early.

 

[Reban]

If renewables are listed as a TL 8 technology, do you think it is possible that the designer simply wasn't thinking of/refering to wood and charcoal? I mean, Joe Newcastle in 1830 heating his home with charcoal and Joe Tesla in 2050turning (hopefully by then) switchgrass and waste wood pulp into m/ethanol for his automobile are by any technical argument using the same power source (wood, which is renewable), but the differences in what they are doing should mean that the two should have completely different metrics (I'm not sure what you are looking at, power plant performance?).

This is sort of how I see it. Of course if that is the case it needs clarification in the text.

I think by TL8 Renewables Marc may have had in mind the growth of argiculture dedicated to crops that provide fuel and energy sources such as oil-seed-rape for bio-diesel and elephant grass and willow for wood pellets.

This differs from charcoal and timber harvesting in the speed of the replacement cycle. Where as forests were managed and even harvested on an industrial scale, present day renewables are grown harvested and resown on a cycle much more like food crop production.