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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 11, 1975)
Weather Partly cloudy and mild Wed nesday and Thursday. North erly winds 7-10 mph. High today 84; low tonight 66; high Thursday 86. Che Battalion Inside Traffic Panel p. 2 Baseball 11 Fem Sports p. 16 Vol. 68 No. 122 College Station, Texas Wednesday, June 11,1975 TAMU engineers drive alcohol truck The July 1975 issue of a popu lar auto magazine says that Euro pean researchers hope by 1980 to produce a car that can switch at will from gasoline to pure methyl alcohol as a fuel. A pair of Texas A&M Univer sity chemical engineering profes sors have been chuckling and showing the article as they roar around the countryside in their Datsun pickup that sports a sign on the door reading “Experi mental Vehicle Methanol Fueled.” Drs. Bill Harris and Richard Davison realized years ago that al ternate fuels were going to be needed as the gasoline shortage developed. “But we also realized that you couldn’t just walk out one day and junk all the gas-powered autos,” Davison reasoned. “This called for the development of a conversion system for an auto that would be cheap and could be put on by a reasonably mechani cally minded person.” “The exciting aspect of using methanol is that it can conve niently be produced from coal,” he said. “Synthetic gasoline can also be made, but the methanol production will possibly be cheap er and it is a superior fuel in many respects.” The current coal reserves in the U. S. are variously estimated 200 billion and 2 trillion tons — enough to supply the energy needs of the country for hundreds of years. “Methanol — what used to be called wood alcohol — could be the new source of energy we need to help us through the oil shortage and at the same time cut pollu tion,” Davison added. “It is a common substance made by the millions of gallons for use in in dustry and it is the only real alter nate fuel that you can pour into your gas tank.” “Improved economy, lower ex haust temperatures, lower emis sions and improved engine per City Briefs Street improvements The Texas Highway Commission recently adopted improvement plans amounting to $489,400 for the Bryan- College Station Metropolitan Area. The approved work directly affecting College Station includes the construction of a four lane section on Old College Road from the FM 60 (University Drive) inter change to the F&B Road intersection (where Pinfeather Road almost meets with Old College Road). Last year the Highway Commission approved an extension of the road from the F&B Road north to Villa Maria Road. Storm sewers, curbs, and gutters will be paid for by the cities of Bryan and College Station. Spending questioned The question of how to spend 105,206 dollars will be considered by the College Station City Council when it meets Thursday night. However, the answer to that question will not be the councils’ alone. A public hearing on the issue will be held at the meeting to provide the council with input on the matter. Among those present will be TAMU student body president Jeff Dunn and graduate student council president, Joe Marcello, who will present several specific recommenda tions to the council on how the money should be spent. “There are areas of College Station that we as stu dents of TAMU would like to see renovated,” Dunn has said. Also, Dunn has expressed a desire to see the money spent on street repair and installation of traffic lights at dangerous intersections. formance are some of the advan tages,” noted Harris. “Methanol is easier to store, pour, pipe, and pump than hydrogen, natural gas, ammonia, or other proposed alter nate fuels. It could be sold at your neighborhood filling station with out too much fuss. Even better, methanol can be made from re newable sources like garbage, saw dust, or anything organic in addi tion to the more finite source of coal.” Methanol is high-octane, clean- burning, and has at least as much power as gas even though con sumption is higher. However, the problem that has stumped other researchers is that methanol re quires about seven times as much heat at the intake manifold to ob tain complete vaporization as does gasoline. This means that at tem peratures in the 40s or below a straight methanol engine just wouldn’t start. This is where the Davison- Harris breakthrough came in. “The engine is started on gaso line,” Harris pointed out. “As the exhaust heats, it operates a boiler around the exhaust pipe. The boil er heats the methanol to the re quired temperature, vaporizes it within a few miles and with the flip of a switch, the methanol is fed through a demand regulator to a venturi mounted below the air cleaner at the intake of the con ventional carburetor.” “This eliminates the problems of vaporization and carburetion,” Davis explained. “The gasoline system is left intact. One has a dual fuel capability which leaves the gasoline system unchanged and allows the driver to use whichever fuel is available.” The Davison-Harris rig has been in operation for about a month and has logged several thousand miles. This includes a journey from College Station to Harlingen where a standing joke developed that “We made an 800 mile trip on less than a gallon of gasoline.” Funding for the project is com ing from several contributors who, as Davison and Harris are fond of saying, are interested in actively doing something to modify the energy crisis. Among them is John Hawley of the Northern Pump Company who gave a grant to the Chemical Engineering Department at TAMU, the Celanese Chemical Company which is furnishing the methanol, and Borg Warner Corp. which contributed the parts for the conversion system. Pictured above is the control room of the TAMU Physical Plant power operation. The plant is capable of producing more than 35,000 kilowatts of power, enough to supply the power needs of a city one third the size of Bryan. TAMU Utilities Physical plant efficient The largest business and money-producing agent in Brazos County is the Texas A&M Univer sity System. The backbone of the $200,000,000 University is the utility plant. From a meager beginning of two brick buildings and five cot tages, the University has blos somed into a complex of more than 500 major buildings. When Texas A&M was opened in 1876, there were no adjacent cities large enough to provide mu nicipal services. Consequently, a utility system was established which has grown with the univer sity. This has proved to be a wise economic investment although there was no choice in the begin ning. Remembrances and records of the original physical plant seem to be buried in forgotten places, but by the early 1900’s, the power plant was fueled by lignite coal. This practice continued until 1928. The lignite was brought to the physical plant by railroad from the Rockdale Mining Operations in Rockdale, Texas. At that time a spur of the railroad tracks termi nated on the campus and coal could be unloaded directly at the physical plant. The physical plant was then located on what is now a parking lot across from the old Student Exchange Store. Students could work part-time shoveling coal to help pay their $ 10 tuition fees. In 1928 the system changed over to natural gas as a boiler fuel because it was cheaper, cleaner and easier to handle. With the installation of a steam turbine generator in 1930, TAMU was well on its way to a total energy system. Total energy sim ply means getting the most for your money through efficient pro duction procedures. In this case, total energy is gained by using steam extracted from turbine gen erators to produce heating, water and chilled water for air condi tioning. A total energy system uses one initial energy source. The steam produced by the initial source is used more than once to satisfy other energy needs. The TAMU central power plant uses natural gas or fuel oil as the original ener gy source to fire boilers which produce steam to drive turbines that generate electricity. Lower pressure steam is then extracted form the turbines to produce chilled water, heating water and domestic hot water. In the next step, all of the utili ties are distributed to the campus and some are returned to the cen tral plant through a massive dis tribution system. The heating water and chilled water is then recycled through the plant and re distributed. This total energy con cept provides a closed system and increases efficiency. Through this total energy system the university saves money and helps to conserve the nation’s natural resources. The university’s electrical plant was capable of producing 10,000 kilowatts of power in 1962. The plant is capable of producing 3 7,500 kilowatts today. This 37,500 kilowatt capacity is equiv alent to the power requirements of a city about one-third the size of Bryan. In addition, an agree ment with the City of Bryan and the Brazos Electric Coop, both members of the Texas Municipal Power Pool, entitles TAMU to draw up to 20,000 kilowatts in case of failure of one or several of the generators. Electricity use on the campus recently peaked at 24.000 kilowatts so the present capacity should be sufficient for several years. The power plant, valued in ex cess of $31,000,000, has two steam boilers which can produce 100.000 lbs. of steam per hour and two which can produce 175.000 lbs. of steam per hour. The steam from these boilers is used to power four steam turbine generators. The steam turbine gen erators vary in capacity from 1,000 to 12,000 kilowatts. The plant also has a gas turbine genera tor producing 14,900 kilowatts and reusing the heat in a waste heat boiler (again, the total energy concept). Extracted steam at the lower pressure of twenty lbs. per square inch is then sent to the absorption chillers. These chillers provide air- conditioning for the university’s buildings. There are eight 1,000 ton absorption chillers and three 3,350 ton centrifugal chillers and all use lithium bromide as a cool ant. The three centrifugal chillers are powered by steam driven tur bines producing 600 lbs. pressure. The concept of using waste steam to cool buildings at TAMU began in the early 1960’s. Some of the low-pressure waste steam leaving the generators is channeled into heat exchangers to satisfy heating requirements. The six heat exchangers have the abil ity to produce 260,000,000 BTU’s per hour. Natural gas for the plant is ob tained through a contract with Lone Star Gas Co. In addition, as an emergency source, the univer sity owns two 1,000,000 gallon storage tanks and two 150,000 gallon tanks full of fuel oil. In the event of a natural gas curtailment, this fuel oil supply would last ap proximately forty days. See POWER, p. 2 Russian auto, highway engineer ends TAMU, USA exchange visit flifc n -M Heather Sturdy (left) takes instruction from Bruce Woodfin on the finer points of pottery making. Both are taking part in the Memorial Student Center’s summer arts and crafts workshop. Russian engineer Yurii S. Stel’- Makhovskii is completing a six- day visit at Texas A&M University this week. The dean of faculty at Kiev Motor Car and Highway Engineer ing Institute is in the U. S. on a mutual exchange package. It is conducted by the U. S. and U.S.S.R. governments on an agreed equal exchange basis. The basic purpose of his visit here is to acquire information on freeways operation and control through the Texas Transportation Institute. Stel’Makhovskii visits Wednes day with Engineering Dean Fred J. Benson. He also has conferred with TTI Director Charles Keese and several TTI research person nel. Hosting him at Texas A&M is Dr. Don Woods, TTI associate re search engineer. Stel’Makhovskii departs Thursday for Houston and two days at the TTI office there. It is the control site of accident investigation, motorist aid and control systems research on Hous ton freeways. “He has seen everything ima ginable in the last four days,” Woods said Tuesday. “There is no way to show him all facets of TTI in this time span. But Yurii has seen those of greatest interest to him.” At TTI facilities at the Re search Annex, they included all traffic operations and administra tive areas and crash test facilities. Methods used by TTI to film and document research were exam ined. Tuesday and Wednesday were devoted to scanning reference ma terials and “deciding what he wants to take back with him,” Woods related. The Tuesday lunch hour, with sack lunches in the Civil Engineer ing Building, was spent discussing operation of the stock market and credit cards. Woods and his asso ciates took part. “SterMakhovskii also is inter ested in American culture and life,” his host remarked. “Things were arranged to give him as much a view of our lifestyle as possi ble.” The Russian transportation re search agency official dined with the Woods family one evening. They also visited Winedale Inn and lunched at the Roundtop Cafe. Stel’Makhovskii, 52, heads an agency that is a close equivalent of TTI. Where TTI works for Texas and U. S. governmental agencies on a contract basis, the Kiev institute has a direct aca demic and research responsibility to the state of Ukraine. The visi tor has written a textbook and several scholarly articles. Woods observed that Soviet Russia and American transporta tion systems have many similari ties, and differ widely at other points. Rural highways have the same standard cross-sections. Conges tion is.a morning and afternoon problem in both countries. “But where our congestion is 97 percent auto and three to four percent public transportation,” Woods related, “their’s is 80 per cent buses and 20 percent cars.” He noted that in the Moscow and Kiev areas, the U.S.S.R. has some freeway mileage. Apparently to be expanded, the Russian free way construction will use technol ogy from Stel’Makhovskii’s visit “trying to avoid making the mis takes we made,” Woods said. The visiting official earlier spent several days in New York, two weeks and more each in Los Angeles and San Francisco and two days in Dallas. “Driving down from Dallas on Interstate 35, we stopped for his first close look at mobile homes,” Woods related. “He also had ques tions about utilities buildings, which he thought at first were homes.” “He is a fascinating fellow,” Woods added. “And he asked some questions that turned me upside down.”