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Weather:Mostly sunny with a chance of rain. A slight chance of thunderstorms in the morning, then a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 80s. East winds 10 to 15 mph with gusts up to 25 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent. Wednesday Night: Partly cloudy with a chance of rain and thunderstorms. Lows in the lower 70s. East winds 10 to 15 mph with gusts up to 25 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Flagler Beach here.
- tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
County and Palm Coast offices are closed in observance of Juneteenth, but courts are in session.
Flagler County’s Technical Review Committee Meeting at 9 a.m. has been cancelled.
The Flagler County Contractor Review Board has been cancelled.
Separation Chat, Open Discussion: The Atlantic Chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State hosts an open, freewheeling discussion on the topic here in our community, around Florida and throughout the United States, noon to 1 p.m. at Pine Lakes Golf Club Clubhouse Pub & Grillroom (no purchase is necessary), 400 Pine Lakes Pkwy, Palm Coast (0.7 miles from Belle Terre Parkway). Call (386) 445-0852 for best directions. All are welcome! Everyone’s voice is important. For further information email [email protected] or call Merrill at 804-914-4460.
The Circle of Light Course in Miracles study group meets at a private residence in Palm Coast every Wednesday at 1:20 PM. There is a $2 love donation that goes to the store for the use of their room. If you have your own book, please bring it. All students of the Course are welcome. There is also an introductory group at 1:00 PM. The group is facilitated by Aynne McAvoy, who can be reached at [email protected] for location and information.
 Keep Their Lights On Over the Holidays: Flagler Cares, the social service non-profit celebrating its 10th anniversary, is marking the occasion with a fund-raiser to "Keep the Holiday Lights On" by encouraging people to sponsor one or more struggling household's electric bill for a month over the Christmas season. Each sponsorship amounts to $100 donation, with every cent going toward payment of a local power bill. See the donation page here. Every time another household is sponsored, a light goes on on top of a house at Flagler Cares' fundraising page. The goal of the fun-raiser, which Flagler Cares would happily exceed, is to support at least 100 families (10 households for each of the 10 years that Flagler Cares has been in existence). Flagler Cares will start taking applications for the utility fund later this month. Because of its existing programs, the organization already has procedures in place to vet people for this type of assistance, ensuring that only the needy qualify. |
Notably: Here’s a little-talked about fact of the Charlie Hebdo massacre by two Algerian brothers on Jan. 7, 2015, a massacre that took the lives of 12 people and wounded 11. Most of those killed and wounded were in an editorial meeting together. And in that meeting was the editor, Charb (Stephane Charbonnier), and Franck Brinsolaro. Who was Franck Brinsolaro? He was from France’s Protection Service, Service de la protection. He was a bodyguard. He was assigned to Charb, since Charb and others often got death threats. They’d been firebombed out of their previous offices. They’d been working from an unmarked office at 10 Rue Nicolas-Appert. Brinsolaro was armed. Brinsolaro took out his gun as the two brothers started shooting. And Brinsolaro was killed, as was Charb. Here was a trained bodyguard whose only job was to protect the man he was assigned to, who was trained to handle firearms, to shoot in high-stress situations. And he was killed. I am not being critical of Brinsolaro. Hell no. But I am thinking of all those smug, right-thinking people who thinking arming school employees can make a difference–who think even armed deputies inside a school can make a difference. You’ll never hear the name of Franck Brinsolaro at an NRA rave or anywhere two or more gun fetishists are gathered in ammo’s name because Franck Brinsolaro demolishes everything they stand for, starting with that obscenity they still love to peddle, the good guy with a gun myth. There’s no such thing. There are only bad guys, and bad guns.
—P.T.
Now this: The Larry david Fatwa (because Charlie Hebdo is all about satire).
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The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Scenic A1A Pride Meeting
Blue 24 Forum
Acoustic Jam Circle At The Community Center In The Hammock
Flagler County’s Cold-Weather Shelter Opens
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
Sitting behind him, Laurent Léger, whose tall figure and discreet smile masked worry about a new crusade against an abuse of power or a corrupt practice. Franck Brinsolaro, Charb’s bodyguard, seemed to be listening distractedly to the words and tirades, and looking at his face I wondered once again what he must think of all the bullshit flying around the table, since that was what we were there for: to bullshit. To say whatever came into our heads, to yell at each other and have fun without worrying about propriety or competence, without being reasonable or knowledgeable, not to mention wise. We talked to wake ourselves up. […] In the distance, framed by the door through which Franck Brinsolaro had disappeared, his gun in his hand, I saw Patrick Pelloux appear. He was our editorial companion and an emergency physician. He looked at me and said: “Here’s Philippe. He’s wounded in the jaw!” I no longer know, to tell the truth, whether he said my name. But I remember that I clung like an anchor to his familiar face, tense with the need to act and already crumpled by the rise of sorrow; he too seemed to me already to come from another world, that of people who could stand and who hadn’t undergone, as I had, something that they would have to live with from now on.
–From Philippe Lançon, Disturbance: Surviving Charlie Hebdo (2018).
Ray W. says
On the climate science front, I stumbled across a 2020 press release.
“OptiFuel Systems, LLC, with the support of Cummins Inc., recently secured U.S. EPA, Tier 4 Rail Certification for the first ever rail internal combustion engine to emit 0.00 g/bhp-hr NOx and PM. This revolutionary breakthrough for the rail industry will simultaneously deliver the lowest California Tier 5 emissions objectives while providing customers a greater than 50% fuel expense reduction.”
Apparently, the conversion from diesel locomotives to natural gas is feasible and relatively inexpensive. If diesel fuel constitutes a large portion of a rail freight company’s overall expenses (my younger son told me once that BNSF devoted 24% of its operating costs to diesel fuel), then the savings from switching to this new fuel injection system and type of fuel can save much in the costs of transporting goods by rail around the nation. In another part of the press release, the company announced that it had contracted with UPS to deliver 6000 natural gas-powered trucks using their technology by the end of 2022.
Ray W. says
To continue with the theme of improvements in locomotive technologies, on January 12, 2024, Railway Gazette International published an article about OptiFuel Systems, LLC.
The company unveiled plans to test its newly designed renewable natural gas (RNG) powered locomotive. Renewable natural gas is captured at landfills where biogas is created as biomass breaks down. The captured gas can be pressurized or liquified and tenders that accompany locomotives can be filled.
The engines, developed in part by Cummins, are modular. The 5,100-horsepower engine package uses 10 510-horsepower modular engines that are mounted on the locomotive frame. A battery pack that captures electricity from the locomotive’s regenerative braking system can provide a short-term boost of 500 horsepower. The engines drive generators that provide electricity to the motors that drive the wheels.
Cummins has also developed a 530-horsepower modular engine, if use specifications call for more power.
If one of the 10 engines needs maintenance or repair, it can be pulled out and a new one plugged in. Maintenance and repair costs are expected to be lower than that for traditional diesel locomotive engines and the engines are expected to last longer. The engines are rated to last 30 years.
Each tender that carries the fuel for the locomotive also has a Cummins engine package that provide another 2,500 horsepower.
OptiFuel expects that if its locomotive achieves the necessary ratings approvals, the production locomotive will sell for around $5.5 million dollars. With the expected 50% savings on fuel expenses and lower repair and maintenance costs, the locomotives should be cost-beneficial for rail freight carriers.
In addition, the engines produce zero NOx emissions and zero particulate emissions.
Initial year-long testing of the prototype is to begin in January 2025 at the Federal Railroad Administration’s Transportation Technology Center. After this, 10 locomotives and five tenders will be tested in real-world conditions in different areas of the country for two years over 1.6 million miles. Full-scale production can begin as early as 2028.
Ray W. says
OptiFuel Systems, LLC, in a June 13, 2024, press release, published the following:
“By assessing natural efficiencies unique to the rail network and utilizing existing resources and tools, a clear path to decarbonizing rail with revolutionary optimization emerges. Post-World War II, the US developed a 3-million-mile natural gas network alongside railways, establishing the most efficient fuel distribution system conceivable for railway operations … With pipeline transport, refueling locomotives and tenders with RNG (renewable natural gas) is actually more straightforward than refueling with diesel.”
If I read the paragraph correctly, after WWII, the US allowed natural gas pipeline companies to bury natural gas pipelines alongside rail lines in the railway rights-of-way beside the tracks. Three million miles of natural gas pipelines. Pipeline spurs can be tapped into the existing pipeline network at every marshalling yard, where natural gas can be diverted to be liquified and loaded onto tenders. When a locomotive pulls into a marshalling yard to drop off or pick up freight cars, it can drop off an empty tender and pick up a full tender to seamlessly go on with its travels.
The press release continues:
“Society will always produce waste, which naturally emits surface-level methane into the atmosphere as it decomposes. This organic waste can be used as feedstock to produce renewable natural gas. RNG is NOT a fossil-based fuel and is the only renewable fuel with a negative carbon intensity. RNG takes a product that is negatively impacting the environment — organic waste — and creates a clean, reliable energy resource that is fully compatible with our current rail infrastructure and operations, serving a productive role in the clean energy transition. Readily available RNG from landfill sites with a CI (carbon intensity) of +40 can easily be blended with 400 million DGEs (diesel gallon equivalencies) of RNG with a CI of -350 from agriculture waste to provide 3 billion DGEs of final locomotive fuel with a CI of 0 or less for all 25,000 line haul locomotives in the Class 1 fleet.”
If I read this correctly, using current freight rail traffic numbers, there exists enough renewable natural gas that can be captured at landfills all across the nation to be mixed with renewable natural gas captured from currently existing agriculture waste to provide clean non-fossil fuels sufficient to power the entire national fleet of Class 1 locomotives (3 billion gallons of diesel fuel equivalencies per year), and there are pipelines already in place to transport that mixed non-fossil fuel to locations that are advantageous to refueling the tenders that accompany the locomotives.
In summary, if today’s fleet of 25,000 Class 1 locomotives consume 3 billion gallons of diesel fuel per year, and if the national average price of subsidized diesel fuel for rail companies is $3 per gallon, we are talking about $9 billion already being spent by rail companies each year. If the infrastructure to capture the naturally produced methane from landfills and from agriculture waste can be constructed for less than $9 billion per year, then it becomes a simple question of how fast the rail companies can switch over to the new generation locomotives. All other things being equal, if fuel costs can be cut by half, the answer is simple. Change over. Locomotives age out all the time anyway. Old-style diesel-powered locomotives are already being built to replace the worn-out locomotives. The company is proposing that it bear the costs of delivering the fuel and providing the updates to the marshalling yards to fuel the new tenders as a package deal. It offers to deliver a package of 250 locomotives at one time, complete with tenders. Even if the company sells four such packages per year, the transition would tae 25 years, which means the transition would be gradual. Assuming the transition occurs at a pace of 1000 locomotives and tenders to accompany them, then the plan might make sense. 25 years to shift over to locomotives that cost less to operate and are less expensive to repair and maintain. We might have a winner here.
The company claims that with currently existing incentives, such as EPA RIN credits to offset transition costs, it can sell a $5.5 million 5,600 horsepower “RNG Hybrid Line Haul Locomotive” for as little as $1.1 million if bought in batches of 250 locomotives. That might be just the enticement for those rail companies that buy locomotives in buk each year to replenish that portion of their stock that ages out each year after 20 or 25 years of service. There are four national rail companies that fit that description.
As an aside, my younger son who used to work for BNSF once told me of a recurring problem. If a freight company, for whatever reason, needs a locomotive, it is a common practice among all freight companies to rent a locomotive to another company. Suppose a train out of Los Angeles uses two new locomotives to pull the train over the mountains. Engineers know the weight of the entire train and they know the horsepower of the locomotive. Simple math tells them how many new locomotives they need to pull a train up the steepest grade. If one of the two locomotives breaks down near a BNSF marshalling yard, the company will contact BNSF to rent a locomotive from BNSF in order for the train to continue to its destination. It will drop off the rented locomotive later and pay BNSF for the rental. My son told me that Union Pacific had a propensity to try to save money by renting the oldest locomotive it could find. BNSF engineers would repeatedly tell Union Pacific engineers that the old locomotive, rated at 8,500 horsepower when new, did not produce near that much horsepower when old. They would tell Union Pacific that it would need to rent two of the older locomotives to pull the train up the mountains ahead. Union Pacific would insist on renting one locomotive anyway and the train would stall in the mountains, blocking all rail traffic until a second locomotive could be sent to the stalled train. The three locomotives would then pull the train over the mountain passes. My son said it happened over and over again, yet Union Pacific kept renting underpowered trains in hopes it would all work out and the cheaper rate. BNSF engineers knew which locomotives were worn out. They would use three on their own trains where three were needed. If they had two brand-new locomotives, they would use two.
This press release language all seems a little fantastic to me. Pipelines would still have to be built from each landfill to nearby rail rights-of-way to hook into the existing natural gas pipelines. On the other hand, anyone who has every dropped off trailerfuls of trash and yard waste at a landfill has seen the large numbers of metal pipes sticking up into the air from the landfill trash mountains. The methane generated by decaying waste, therefore, does exist, so that part seems feasible to me. But the imagined piles of agricultural waste needed to produce other types of methane is not yet collected from where the produce is grown and transported to locations where the methane can be biologically generated and harvested and sent to blending points where it can be mixed with the landfill-generated methane. I see problems there. But if enough of the agricultural waste fuel can be produced and if the renewable landfill fuel can be produced, both at a price point of less than half the cost of diesel fuel, you are talking about billions of dollars of potential profit each year by the company and billions of dollars in fuel savings for freight rail companies.
Laurel says
Ray W.: I have had a lifelong love of trains, from my Lionel set, with the locomotive that puffed out smoke, to the actual rides I took myself, like the eighth grade trip to Washington D.C. and the numerous trips to Grand Central and back home again. I doubt I’ll ever let go of my love of the rocking sounds and the back roads of America going by. So, I will continue to invest, and believe! Thanks for the info.
Ray W. says
Hello Laurel,
I anticipate significant changes in the near-term for the rail industry. Capitalism commands such changes.
For decades, locomotives were built with large diesel engines that generate the electricity needed to drive motors that power the locomotive drive wheels. Repairs and ordinary maintenance on such huge engines are relatively time-intensive and relatively expensive. The military knew in WWII that it was both faster and cost-efficient to swap out aircraft engines when major problems occurred. My father was a nose-gunner in a heavy bomber based in Italy. I appreciated the fact when I read of it that repairing mounted aircraft engines out in the weather was dangerous and inefficient. Engines were shipped to the base in crates. When uncrated, the mechanics simply unbolted damaged or worn-out engines and replaced them with new ones. Salvageable engines were rebuilt indoors in shops and warehouses set up for the process. The bombers could be sent back out on new missions while the damaged or worn-out engines were being repaired or rebuilt. Finally, it looks like someone took advantage of the old idea and designed a modular locomotive engine package that can be easily swapped out, modular unit by modular unit, if any one of the 10 modules were to fail for whatever reason. Less time need be lost if one module fails, and locomotive-use efficiencies can be improved.
In the current rail world, tenders filled with diesel fuel are dropped off at marshalling yards. Filled tenders are then attached to the locomotives and the trains went on their way. Certain efficiencies are achieved based on a diesel fuel distribution system that was set up decades ago, but relatively little of the distribution system utilizes diesel fuel pipelines direct to the marshalling yards. While pipelines are one of the cheapest ways to move diesel fuel from refineries to the rest of the nation, the pipelines go to major distribution points, not to every possible remote distribution point. Semi-truck transport is the backbone of the so-called “last mile” delivery of fuel to gas stations at the consumer level. Rail car transport of diesel fuel is the most efficient way to distribute diesel fuel to marshalling yards, unless the marshalling yard is close to a major distribution point.
All these many years, a more efficient fuel delivery system, if the press releases are true and accurate, lay under the ground near the many marshalling yards. Compressed natural gas pipelines, three million miles of them, are buried alongside tracks; all the natural gas that the modular-engine locomotives would need can be delivered to marshalling yards cheaply via pipeline, were someone to simply design a new style of locomotive that takes advantage of technological developments.
Under the current system, diesel fuel is cracked at refineries; it is sent out via pipelines or ships to major distribution points. In Florida, Tampa is one such point. Jacksonville another. Rail tank cars can then take the fuel to other smaller distribution points. Transport by rail costs, on average, three times as much as transport by pipeline per mile. I don’t know the cost ratios for fuel transported via ship compared to rail transport costs, but shipping is even cheaper than pipeline, if great distances are involved. So, to get diesel fuel to the railroad marshalling yards that are far from refineries requires the use of tank cars at some point in the system to deliver it directly to the marshalling yards, unless a diesel fuel pipeline is also underground next to the tracks. Most diesel fuel pipelines are not underground next to tracks because it would be cost inefficient to use such small pipelines, much less build millions of miles of them. Large pipelines deliver the fuel to major distribution hubs and a web of rail tank cars and semi-trucks fans out from the major hubs to deliver to gas stations or marshalling yards.
As an example, there is a current political squabble in Volusia County over plans submitted by a Jacksonville gasoline and diesel fuel tank farm company to build a smaller gasoline and tank farm base in north Ormond Beach. Right now, ships carry diesel fuel and gasoline from Houston area refineries to Tampa and a pipeline carries fuels to Jacksonville. Other refineries in Louisiana use large pipelines to send fuels to Jacksonville. The fuels are off-loaded into a huge tank farm near Jacksonville. Semi-trucks filled with gasoline and diesel fuel fan out every day all throughout the region to supply our gasoline and diesel fuel needs. The company wants to build an even smaller tank farm with capacity to meet our smaller regional needs. If it is built, rail cars will carry the gasoline and diesel fuel we use from Jacksonville to the new tank farm. Trucks will fan out over our smaller region to supply our smallest distribution point: gas stations. Distribution efficiencies should lower our local fuel prices, as transport costs via semi-truck all the way from Jacksonville are far higher than rail car transport to Ormond and truck transport a few miles to Flagler County.
It has long been known that diesel engines can be converted to run on natural gas. Today’s converted engines still use a 10% diesel fuel to 90% natural gas ratio, because diesel fuel carries a natural lubricating quality that coats cylinder walls during the intake and compression strokes. Waste Management trucks often use natural gas mixed with diesel to travel our roadways. Even with the 10% mixture, natural gas-powered engines are far less pollutive and cost significantly less to operate, so long as America continues to produce vast quantities of natural gas through the fracking process.
So here seems to be the breakthrough. OptiFuel Systems, LLC, in conjunction with Cummins, has apparently designed an engine that doesn’t need the 10% diesel fuel mixture. OptiFuel Systems, LLC, claims that its engine consumes natural gas at half the cost of diesel fuel. And pollutants are reduced even further with this new design. If renewable natural gas from ever expanding landfills that will never go away can be efficiently captured, and if renewable natural gas can be created from an emerging technological option called “agriculture waste”, also a source that will be never go away so long as we grow crops, at the same cost as extracting natural gas from the ground, then I accept the possibility that someday a significant proportion of our natural gas needs can be furnished by renewable options, not from natural gas extracted from far beneath the surface of the earth. All at a significant cost savings.
As I stated above, my younger son once told me that at one time diesel fuel was 24% of BNSF’s operating costs. At the time, as I recall, diesel fuel was selling locally for over $4 per gallon. If that percentage remains even remotely accurate, then any rail company that ignores a potential savings of up to 12% of operating costs will soon be at a competitive disadvantage to those companies that embrace the new engine technology.
This may turn out to be pie in the sky, but I can see a day when much of our food will be grown locally in renovated old warehouses using emerging vertical farming techniques. The LED-farming movement is not going away. If organic tomatoes can be grown in an old Bunnel warehouse and trucked a few miles to Publix stores in the area, Publix saves on paying shipping costs from tomato fields in the Panhandle. Hopefully, we would save, too. Crop waste could easily be gathered from these sites and shipped to locations that can produce renewable natural gas from the “agriculture waste.” I recently watched a short documentary on an enterprise that uses, in part, crop waste to generate the black dirt we buy to use in planters and gardens, but the process as depicted did not make any attempt to capture the biogas that is generated from the lengthy time period required for the biodegrading of the waste materials.
At the heart of capitalism is the concept of “creative destruction.” If new technologies emerge that are more efficient and less expensive, then, ideally, the old technology is to be abandoned. My first car was a 1974 Ford Pinto four-cylinder, with the engine being manufactured in Germany by Ford’s German brand, Merkur. I received a letter from Ford stating the I could be reimbursed for engine rebuild if I could prove that the rebuild occurred before the 36,000-mile point. I took the engine apart myself, had it rebored, and sent out the crankshaft and camshaft to be slightly turned down, all at a local machine shop, and I rebuilt it, but at the 46k mile mark. Oh, well. The letter detailed that due to incorrect manufacturing tolerances adopted by Merker management, engines had failed with less than 200 miles on them due to partially blocked oil orifices throughout the engine. Oil feed lines just didn’t line up as they should. Bearings failed. Poorly lubricated rings wore grooves in cylinder walls. No one would ever buy a Pinto today. Capitalist thought, at the very least, demands that outcome.
People in a capitalist economy act in their selfish perceived economic best interest. This is the invisible hand of the marketplace. All advertising is designed to persuade us that it is in our selfish perceived economic best interest to buy a certain product over a competing product, i.e., to deceive us. All political speech is designed to deceive us into believing that one party is best, when in truth, the issue is which party is less bad than the other. One of our founding fathers described members of all political parties as “pestilential.”
We have four more months of JimboXYZ and Dennis C. Rathsam’s never-ending pestilential attempts to deceive us all. It seems unlikely that they will ever become less than pestilential in their nature, but their extremism may fade after the election. Please be patient. This, too, might pass.
Laurel says
Ray W.: So many things!
I appreciate the info on the locomotive engines, very interesting and I will now watch them more closely. However, I have never understood why diesel is more expensive than the more, highly processed gasoline.
Personally, I think price gouging, (when in Publix, I tend to stand and just stare) price fixing (algorithms setting prices for apartments) and monopolies (MicroSoft, etc.), all supposedly illegal, are alive and well. Screw “We the people.”
My first car was a 1970 Mustang Grande, which I adored even though it was in the shop a lot. I changed my oil myself, and once fixed my brakes, but that behavior ended quickly.
I (IMO) see a difference in Dennis and Jimbo. Dennis really believes the MAGA stuff, whereas Jimbo does not. Jimbo wants us to change our minds through the same sort of repetition that Trump uses, without mentioning his name.
Well, I hope to hell it does pass. Project 2025, and Mudsill Theory are very frightening prospects for our country. I portion of me cannot believe such things could happen to us. Much larger portions of individual folks (MAGA people) cannot believe someone would lie so often and so severely, that they will vote for him no matter what. No facts or proof needed. I do hope it passes, and that they don’t have to learn the hard way.
Ray W. says
Hello Laurel,
Picture in your mind a tire pump. If one fills a tire with a hand pump, the base of the pump immediately heats up. The temperature can get quite high if the pump is used for a long time. This is so because the act of compressing any gaseous compound, such as air, heats the mixture.
The same thing happens in a combustion chamber of an engine. Combustion chamber temperatures in racing engines commonly exceed 1000 degrees. It is not uncommon for temperatures in a racing engine, if a fuel-air mixture becomes too lean, to melt the dome of the piston, causing engine failure. There was a time when NASCAR engines on the superspeedways were jetted so lean that when a driver let off the throttle momentarily, the piston dome would immediately fail. It only took a moment of time to cause engine heat to rise beyond the limits of the metal. I have seen a number of pistons with holes in the dome; the metal simply melted from excessive heat. Those who raced two-strike motorcycles are familiar with the concept of collapsed piston domes. In a carbureted engine, letting off the throttle suddenly can cut down on the amount of fuel entering into the intake tract.
Why does this matter to your question?
Racing fuel is energy dense compared to regular gasoline. More long-chain molecules, when mixed with air under high pressures and temperatures extracts more energy from the same amount of fuel. Racing fuel, for a number of reasons, costs far more than gasoline to produce.
Likewise, diesel fuel is more energy dense compared to regular gasoline. The mixture of long-chain hydrocarbon molecules to short-chain hydrocarbon molecules in diesel fuel is relatively high. Long-chain hydrocarbon molecules are more expensive to crack at a refinery from crude oil.
Racing engines, like diesel engines, are relatively hard to start when cold. They run best at higher temperatures. Higher compression ratios in both racing engines and diesel engines allow for hotter combustion chambers, in pursuit of the goal of extracting as much energy as possible from the highly compressed and ignited fuel-air mixture. Racing engines use spark plugs. Diesel engines use glow plugs.
One gallon of diesel fuel will drive a truck further than will one gallon of gas. When hot, a diesel engine no longer needs a glow plug to ignite the fuel-air mixture. There is enough residual heat in the combustion chamber from the previous combustion cycle to more easily ignite a fresh fuel charge when the fresh mixture is compressed. Diesel engines operate best at far higher compression ratios and combustion chamber temperatures than are normal in gasoline engines. They need larger radiators to deal with the extra heat.