Fuel desperation. Is it possible to run on wood during the gasoline shortage in Russia?
The Juche-mobile as the future of the Russian auto industry
Author: Andrey Filimonov
The long-range "sanctions" against Ukrainian drones have done their job. In Russia, tensions are growing. gasolineBy the end of August, high-octane fuel was available at only one in five gas stations in Moscow, one in ten outside the Moscow Ring Road, and simply unavailable in remote and hard-to-reach areas like Sakhalin or Crimea. The market reacted hysterically to the sudden fuel shortage. In the Krasnodar Territory, AI-92 is selected To 200 rubles per liter. Its high-octane counterpart, AI-95, costs almost 300 rubles in the same southern latitudes.
In order to somehow get out of the difficult situation with the gasoline shortage in Russia and not bring the matter to a revolutionary situation, Putin officially declared back in July allowed Gas station attendants were allowed to "mix straight-run gasoline with other components," and also allowed the import of low-grade fuel from the beloved "Global South" countries, the so-called "Euro-2" and "Euro-3," which Russia had supposedly abandoned in 2016. But—never say never. Ten years later, Russian motorists unexpectedly received gasoline from their president as a gift. India Perhaps this is Putin's plan. The country is experiencing a decline in Western-made cars. Delicate BMWs and Land Cruisers refuse to run on the fluid their owners are forced to pour into their gas tanks.
Yesterday, an old friend called from Russia and sadly informed me that his jeep's engine had "knocked" after filling it with something substandard, and now he's facing a "major overhaul"—not reading Marx, but a major engine overhaul.
“Bad luck,” my friend stated, “it would have been better if they had filled it with air.”
It turns out that urban legends are currently popular in Russia about salespeople who supposedly dilute gasoline with water (thankfully not with donkey urine, as one of the characters in the Soviet film "Gentlemen of Fortune" did) and even pump air into the tank to trick the meter at the pump. This is a literal scam. The legend is beautiful, but physically untenable, since the meter at the pump can only count what has passed through it, not what ends up in the customer's tank. And you can't dilute gasoline with water either. The real schemes, however, are far more prosaic, but no less offensive: rigged pump controllers that display more liters than actually dispensed, and the fuel itself being diluted at the gas station tank.
Amid the gasoline shortage this summer, Russian owners of inexpensive diesel cars weren't expecting any favors from Gazprom and were stocking up on kerosene at hardware stores. At least they know exactly what their cars are filled with. Kerosene has a lower cetane number (a measure of a fuel's ability to ignite spontaneously under compression) (35-40 versus 45-50 for diesel fuel), which makes engines harder to start, runs rougher, and wears out faster. But what can they do? The war isn't over yet. Just recently, the Russian Foreign Minister stated that truce With Ukraine, it would be a betrayal of the memory of their ancestors. This means that their descendants will have to drive for a long time like they did in the last century, at the dawn of the automobile, when drivers went to the pharmacy for kerosene.
NeMoscow has compiled a historical collection of useful tips for using ersatz fuel, which have been tested in practice and could be useful to the Russian auto industry in the face of the shutdown of most oil refineries.
200 Pines – 1 hour flight
One of the most striking technological life hacks was used in Japan at the end of World War II. In 1944–45, a government campaign to extract "pine oil" was launched.松根油, shokonyu). Across the country, from Okinawa to Sakhalin, elderly people, women, and schoolchildren were mobilized to uproot pine stumps, from which resinous oil was distilled for mixing into aviation gasoline. Propaganda claimed that 200 pine trees gave an airplane an hour of flight time. In reality, the resulting fuel was so poor that it was only suitable for kamikaze missions. In one air force unit in the Pacific, pilots were officially forbidden from banking steeper than 15 degrees, otherwise the engine would become clogged with carbon deposits and stall.
But ultimately, all efforts were in vain. The war ended before the Japanese pines could produce any significant amount of fuel.
In Nazi Germany, improvisation by enthusiasts and campaigning were not welcome. A solid state infrastructure for the production and consumption of ersatz fuel was created. By the end of the war, the country had approximately 500,000 gas generator vehicles—cars, trucks, buses, tractors, and even tanks.
Around 3000 "fueling stations" were built specifically for gas-powered vehicles, dispensing firewood and charcoal instead of gasoline. 12 kg of firewood or 6 kg of coal replaced 5 liters of fuel.
At the same time, the Wehrmacht did not run on wood; Germany was simultaneously developing the production of synthetic liquid fuel from coal for its military equipment.
For occupied France, the "stove in the trunk" became one of the symbols of wartime hardship. Gasoline was requisitioned by the German army and police, and the French were not allowed any. Unemployed taxi drivers resorted to food smuggling, carrying suitcases of meat through the city on foot, a commodity the Nazis had banned along with gasoline. This dangerous nighttime work is depicted in the film "Via Paris," starring Jean Gabin.
During the day, cars with smokestacks that filled the sky with smoke, fueled by wood, coal, and even straw, drove along the streets of Paris.
France hadn't invented anything new here—the gas generator was invented back in 1920 by engineer Georges Hembert, whose biography deserves a separate account. Demobilized from the German army in 1918 (Alsace-Lorraine was then German territory, and he served on the other side of the front), he first took up soap making in his uncle's mill, and simultaneously began producing synthetic gasoline directly from coal. He succeeded, but gasoline was so expensive that it was easier to burn coal directly, without any chemicals. Abandoning the idea of liquid fuel, Hembert switched to a gas generator, figuring that turning wood into combustible gas was cheaper than turning coal into gasoline.
The French army, eager for energy independence, quickly appreciated the invention, and in 1922, the National Bureau of Research and Invention, together with the Automobile Club of France, organized the first gas generator vehicle competition—though only for trucks: Imbert's device was two meters high and half a meter in diameter, making it impossible to fit such a design into a passenger car. Twenty trucks traveled 120 kilometers in two days, a result that exceeded all expectations, and the following year the distance was extended to 1200 kilometers, which the convoy of trucks covered in 12 days. And in 1925, participants in the gas generator vehicle rally covered 2100 kilometers in three weeks along the route Paris - Douai - Bruges - Brussels - Liège - Sedan - Verdun - Strasbourg - Mulhouse. Practically across half of Europe on wood. The Ministry of War joined the project. Major manufacturers like Berliet staged showcase runs across the country using only wood-fueled vehicles. Thus, long before the German occupation, the French turned wood-sledding has become a national sport.
"Not only spectators gathered on both sides of the border, but also major automakers joined this adventure: Panhard entered two cars, Renault three, equipped with their own gas generators, and Berliet four. They were the ones who showed the best results. And what results! Since 1922, fuel consumption has been halved, and pollutant emissions from gas generators have virtually disappeared," the newspapers enthusiastically wrote.
Then the Germans came, and the occupation made the French pre-war pastime a harsh norm of life for the entire country for four long years, until the Americans brought in real fuel.
The downsides of running on wood: what the engine pays for
Before the discovery of Siberian oil fields, the USSR suffered a constant shortage of gasoline. In 1938, the Soviet government adopted a special program to expand the production of gas generator machines. Because, thanks to the eastward expansion of the Gulag, the country had plenty of wood.
"For mass-produced Soviet gas generator vehicles, the primary fuel is wood cut into small pieces called logs, with sides ranging from 40 to 80 mm (approximately the size of two to four stacked matchboxes). The shape of the logs is unimportant," it was explained in "Textbook "driver of a gas generator vehicle", released in 1943.
By 1950, the Gorky plant had produced almost 32 thousand GAZ gas generator trucks, and the Moscow ZIS plant had produced another fifteen and a half thousand.
In fact, a gas-powered vehicle differs fundamentally from a conventional one only in the absence of a gas tank, which is replaced by a metal stove the size of a good barrel, mounted in the trunk, either on the side of the truck bed, or on a trailer. The stove was loaded with wood logs, which smoldered in the lack of air, releasing flammable gas—a process familiar to anyone who has handled wet firewood—a lot of smoke and virtually no fire.
The gas, purified by the filter, entered the engine through the intake manifold in the same way as in a conventional car the gasoline-air mixture is injected from the carburetor.
The downsides of driving on logs were noticeable: the stove had to be pre-heated before the trip (10-15 minutes to light it), the engine power dropped by a third, and the engine had to be regularly cleaned of ash and resin.
Nevertheless, this means of transportation operated and was quite inexpensive. A fact that perfectly suited the socialist economy, which had existed under conditions of total shortages from its inception. "Whatever you need, you have nothing," Woland marveled at Patriarch's Ponds. He didn't know what exactly nothing It was the Soviet Union's main resource, its primary source of hope. "Who was nothing will become everything!" sang the first Soviet anthem. In accordance with this principle, the socialist economy existed contrary to common sense, giving rise to the Stakhanovite movement, 500 percent plan overfulfillment, and other miracles.
Soviet people were taught that hardships strengthen people, and that scarcity stimulates resourcefulness.
What did this mean in practice? Take 1918. The Civil War. The Bolsheviks lost the Baku oil wells—and with them, any hope of filling planes with anything even remotely resembling aviation fuel. A solution was quickly found: they mixed kerosene, gasoline, alcohol, and ether and proudly called it "Kazan mixture." Engines didn't handle this mixture well, stalling mid-air, and the pilot was forced to land in enemy territory, clean out the carburetor with a penknife, and take off again. If he had time.
When the "Kazanka" runs out, pure alcohol and ether are used—a fuel that in military folklore was called "aviation cognac." However, real cognac is also was usedWhen the Red Army captured the winery in the village of Tsimlyanskaya, the division commander sent his "flyers" a whole tanker of cognac spirit. The engines actually started. The pilots, however, also managed to "refuel" before takeoff—in 1919, the Red Army recorded about a hundred flight accidents that could be explained by nothing other than the effects of ether and alcohol vapors. One crew, heading to Mogilev, missed its target by 300 kilometers and landed in Bryansk. This is a rather significant margin of error, even for the Red Air Force.
The drunkenness of Soviet pilots remained a myth even after the end of the Civil War. They truly did drink what they flew, and they flew what they drank. My grandfather, Dmitry Filimonov, who served in the air force from the Finnish War until 1946, said that drinking "Three Bones" liqueur was considered particularly chic in his squadron. Technical mixtureThe fluid poured into the landing gear struts was 30% alcohol, and unlike modern antifreeze, its consumption was not immediately fatal. The remainder was removed, as much as possible, using gas mask filters.
To the future on a "Juche-mobile"?
In other countries, the gas generator has become a museum piece of a bygone era. But in North Korea, this technology is still very much alive. From the 1950s to the present day, they have been used there. trucks With a stove in the back, they run on wood chips or coal instead of diesel. This type of transport was particularly popular in the 1990s, during the worst economic crisis, when North Korea's main breadwinner, the Soviet Union, suddenly collapsed, and oil supplies stopped flowing into the country.
Even relatively recently, in the 1910s, travelers to North Korea were able to photograph trucks and buses smoking from wood-burning chimneys on the country's roads. Then, Russia began actively supplying its strategic ally with petroleum products, and the North Korean fleet underwent some modernization.
And now, it's unclear how things will go. Perhaps the trend will reverse, and North Korea will export its "Juche-mobiles" to Russia to offset the consequences of Ukrainian airstrikes on Russian oil refineries.
Surely some patriotic, uplifting explanation will be found for this fact. They'll talk on TV about a healthy "birch energy" that will bring ruin to the decaying West and unprecedented prosperity to Russia.
You just have to be patient for a little while...
