Summing up the green trucker ideas

The main idea is to improve upon the costs of operating a truck in a delivery business by switching to another source of fuel.

I started with a methane generating system.  The conclusion there was that it would be better to just buying the methane and making the hydrogen yourself, but that requires a fuel cell system and an electric conversion.  The methane could be cracked using a reformer.

I ended up the research with a the sawdust idea just described.  It would run on biocrude and batteries.  I didn't finish up that system though.  So, let's do so here.  Thus, we need to recharge the batteries at night.  You'd do that with the syngas.  The biochar could be sold off as a soil conditioner, or it could also be burned for energy, perhaps for the household.  For $45 a ton for sawdust, it would seem to meet the requirements.

Both systems would require an electric conversion.  Let's look at that for a moment.  Perhaps it would be better to use the Stirling engine to provide energy directly, as opposed to running it to produce electricity.  The wheels could be used to recapture energy from braking and also to recharge the batteries while cruising.  That is, while cruising, the wheels could be constantly supplying energy in the form of electricity to the batteries and keeping them fully charged.  Hence, the Stirling engine would be producing electricity after all.  Just not primarily for charging the battery or running an electric motor.

What about the electric motor?  Most likely it would need to be made of one of those pesky rare earth elements--- neodymium.  The same with the wheels.  By the way, the wheels will charge not only batteries, but also ultracapacitors.  The reason for using a rare earth is to cut down on weight.  By doing this, an impressive amount of power could be packed in a small electric motor ( and generator ).  The ultracapacitors could be used for heavy acceleration, as in a passing maneuver.

So, you'd need an electric motor to replace the gasoline engine.  You'd need a Stirling engine too, but it would be a smaller engine than the gasoline engine because it is only used for cruising.  The electric motor is used for acceleration.  You'd need a battery pack too, but not too big of one.  Most of your driving is going to be in cruising.  So you'd have to have a sophisticated control system that can route power from one motor to another depending upon driving conditions.  Finally, you'd need a fuel tank for the biocrude that runs the Stirling engine.

Quite a project to do such a conversion.  Also, you'd have to procure a sawdust source that is reliable.

Is it worth fooling with?  I'd have to do another economic analysis for that.  Perhaps some other time.  It's getting late.  I've got to work tomorrow and so I'll need to buy more of that expensive gas, darn it.