I know, I have used a trite, populist headline to get your attention and hope I succeeded. After all in my abysmally short avatar as an automotive writer, the question popped at me at every step was how to get better fuel economy from a car, motorcycle or even a lorry; not that many bothered to listen to my reply or ever tried out what I suggested. Everyone wanted a magic-wand solution, but I usually started out with “when did you last check your tire pressure?”
I entered the automotive press with travelogues, motorcycling ones. Soon came an offer to write a monthly column for a now defunct Automotive publication. Though it was India's first, it had by then already changed numerous publishers and the incumbent editor informed me that he was publishing it for the last 9 months, without any of his staff having a driving license.
Nine months later after penning a monthly motorcycling column along with a series of travel and general automotive articles and falling six months behind on my receviable payments, I walked off (or was junked, depending on who you ask). Anyway the magazine folded 3 months later. My subsequent efforts in making way to other auto publications reached nowhere with one pompous Parsi Bawa editor refusing to even acknowledge my existence, while another took a few of my articles and never printed them. The auto editor of a business daily where I was a regular contributor, never turned up for any of the appointments set up by a supportive colleague. Meanwhile the so-called father of Indian automotive press, in his 3rd avatar as an editor of a yet another new Auto journal, made me write an elaborate proposal for sponsorship for a biking travelogue from a motorcycle manufacturer. And once it came through, conveniently made one of his servile minions do the job( read about it in Screening out the Shylocks). They too folded in 3 or 4 months. So much for my Auto journalism career, though no one can refute that it was I who wrote the first motorcycle-lifestyle column in the country and both brought in and ended the “Ganja & Gears” genre of travel journalism.
Coming back to subject of fuel saving, my query about when they last checked their tire pressure, rarely elicited an honest reply. Some claimed ever week, others muttered, last week. However the truth is, most people usually check their tire pressure only when they see it deflating or if the car starts wobbling or rides hard.
With commercial vehicles (to be read as lorries) owners and drivers too always want to know how to extend the mileage of a litre of diesel (the former to increase profitability, the latter to pocket the difference), but neither are ready to stop overloading of their vehicles. Frankly, from what I have learned in my few years of fooling around with automobiles as a car sales executive and as a journalist, and now with over a decade in the world of manufacturing and industrial fuels, is that there is not much differing the two of them.
When the second European truck manufacturer entered the Indian market, their domestic partner released lovely brochures proudly mentioning that their trucks can be “easily overloaded.” I pointed it out to their marketing manager, who grinned and said, “well everyone does it in India”.
“Sure they do it, but being a manufacturer and boldly printing this on your brochure is liable to be interpreted that you are abetting truck overloading and consequently endangering lives, you can even be dragged to court,” I replied. His grin disappeared.
Its not difficult to draw correlates between the world of Industrial Furnaces and Boilers with that of the Automotive, when it concerns Fuel economy as the same principles apply for both as doing the same things would improve the economy in both the spheres, that is of course provided one is ready to judiciously keep an eye on the mundane and not search for a magic wand.
Fuel Quality: Fuel economy starts with fuel quality. Skip the “wink, wink” special deals on fuel of doubtful origin but at a great price. When you don't drive your Merc on fuel that arrives in a shady tanker from a source unknown, why expose your truck fleet, generator furnace or boiler to such. Do regular fuel quality checks, make it a habit. Invest in basic test equipment like a calorie meter or even better an online BSW( Bottom Sediment Water) meter. Make sure that sampling is done randomly and from different points. And more importantly that the testing is done a person from a completely unrelated department. Believe me, fuel adulteration is far more prevalent than adultery at least in this country.
Metering: Keep an eagle's eye on the fuel dispenser meter in case of vehicles and invest in a fuel flowmeter with a totalizer for measuring industrial fuel consumption in your factory. Also make it a point to regularly clean, service and calibrate it. Dipsticks for measuring fuel consumption are really not cool and prone to serious errors in readings and easy to manipulate. There should be absolutely no scope for nebulousness in fuel stock and consumption records. If it is the cost factor that is keeping you from acquiring one, stop counting pennies as a flow meter would would provide you with accurate consumption figures and lay a firm ground for improving further economy. But, if you shy away from accurate metering just to conceal actual figures from authorities, you really shouldn't be asking about fuel saving either.
Servicing: Taking the car to a service station and then plonking down on the waiting room sofa to watch a movie doesn't guarantee that a good job would be done. I had witnessed numerous instances where Authorised Service Stations didn't do much beyond giving a wash and changing the oil and claimed that a full service has been completed. Make it a point to check whether everything had been done as per the job card, if needed get a second opinion, get educated, use your common sense. Similarly, swiping an industrial burner with a diesel soaked rag once a week doesn't constitute proper servicing of the burner and fuel system. Use proper solvent for cleaning the burners, fuel lines and fuel filters, insure that it is done properly on a regular basis. Ignorance is not bliss, its costly!
Overloading: Its not only trucks and cars that get overloaded. On a number of occasions after I or my team had judiciously adjusted industrial burners to bright flames, with no smoke, perfect flue gas ratios and optimum fuel consumption levels, we are told that the heating process is too slow and that they are loosing out on production. This my friends is also overloading: of the Furnaces of Boilers. Overloading a furnace to make it deliver more than its calculated capacity, you destroy refractory lining, deform the metallic shell, burn excess fuel and form costly and useless noxious oxides. Doing the same with Boilers may also result in loss of life. Here the fault equally lies with half baked suppliers who over-state the capacity of their under-engineered furnaces and later their clients flog the horse to death trying to make it achieve the promised capacity. Sometimes its just plain greed.
Pressure: Just like tire air pressure plays a key role in determining the fuel efficiency of a car due to directly impacting the wheels rolling resistance, in the case of an industrial burner it is the pressure of both the fuel and the air that determines the efficiency of the combustion and the resultant fuel economy. I have seen plants with fuel pumps as old as the factory itself, never once serviced, pressure gauges stuck, busted or just non existing, but working day in and day out supplying fuel to the burners. Doesn't take a genius to conclude that most of the burners don't deliver the recommended pressure for optimum atomization and that the resulting flame is often of poor quality. And bad flames mean poor heating and wastage of fuel. Meanwhile, where it concerns the air there is often a disproportional generosity of over supplying it to the burners because of over-sized blowers of poor settings which ends with boilers having 50% and some furnaces having as much as 150% excess air.
Ravi Deka is an energy management adviser and one of the pioneers in introducing Fuel Emulsification concepts in the country.
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