Control Engineering

Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (0)

Farm Grown Diesel Fuel
April 30, 2008

Diesel Fuel that farmers can grow.

FUEL COSTS
With diesel fuel having passed the $4 mark quite some time ago, I am learning more about Oil Fuel crops that I ever thought I would as an engineer specializing in energy conversion.  It appears that if I want to have any energy (fuel) to convert, I may have to get involved with the process at its source.  My contribution to the movement toward National Energy Independance looks like it will be in the area of vegitable oils to be used as diesel fuel.  On behalf of the farmers in the area where I live, I am taking a look at what crops they can raise and what machinery I will need to process the crop into fuel oil.  This business could be a very profitable for everyone involved.  The Pioneer Seed Company http://www.pioneer.com/web/site/portal/ is providing me with oil crop data sheets and connections to grower information that I can pass on to the farmers who want to participate in the Michigan Fuel Oil Crop experiment.  The process starts with the feasibility study I am working on then will jump to signing up customers for the oil the crop will produce then working backward to the machinery to process the crop and then back to signing up farmers to grow the crop.  The profits from the milling and oil extraction operation are earmarked to help fund AIM's development of the driverless supply truck that US armed forces need.  We also hope to help the farmers participating to automate their agricultural machinery which should reduce their expenses, improve crop yield, and reduce their fuel needed to bring the fuel crop in.


Carlisle - Industrial Premium Wide Trac, Extra heavy duty sidewall, 14 ply.

TIRES
My work on the demonstration of an automatic guided truck the past few days has involved the many aspects of tires.  Part of that time was spent on the phone with the people at Carlisle Tire and Wheel http://www.carlisletire.com  one of which was Charles Morgan - Quality Engineer.  The conversation was interesting in that I was expecting him brag about how much testing every tire undergoes and the critical details of tire production that are closely controlled to insure a quality of the product, how reliable they are etc.  Instead I found out that he is not allowed to tell me anything about what they do at the factory to insure the quality of the tires that we are thinking of buying for our test vehicles because "it is an internal matter".  He couldn't tell me anything about the reliability of Carlisle tires, once again because "it is an internal matter".  He did say that if I got a tire that I thought was defective I should call the 800 number that is molded on the tire and that they would immediately UPS me a replacement tire and issue a call tag for the suspect tire to be picked up and returned to the factory.  How many products do you own that have an 800 number embossed on them that connects you to the factory for immediate replacement?  This is a remarkable warranty in this day and age.  Though I still would like to know what quality checks the tires go through at the factory, perhaps Charles is right, with a warranty this good, I really don't have to know what tests they go through.  The tires I am looking at for our US Army test vehicle are the ones more generally used for Material Handling, Mining, Compaction & Road Paving Equipment.

More later...

GO ROBOTS !

Paul F. Grayson - Chief Engineer
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC, LLC
Racing to build technology that saves soldier's lives.
390 4-Mile Rd. S.
Traverse City, MI 49686-8411
(231) 946-0187, (231) 883-4463 Cell
pgrayson@aimagic.org
AIM: http://aimagic.org
Robot Club: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/robotcluboftraversecitymi/
CE Magazine: http://www.controleng.com/blog/1180000318.html

Posted by Paul Grayson on April 30, 2008 | Comments (0)