Free diesel for engine tests
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CHALLENGING OPEC to do their worst, which in any event they will, Volvo Truck Corporation has found a way of getting free dery for engine tests. Waste heat generated by the engine development laboratories at Lundby, Gothenburg, is already supplying almost a quarter of the plant's space heating. The process was planned nearly 20 years ago but it was not until the oil sheiks obligingly began to bleed their customers dry that the project became economic.
Even more of the energy normally used in engine development will be recycled next year when generators will be connected to the test engines to produce about a fifth of the electricity used in Volvo's main plant during the daytime. It will then be possible to save up to 82 per cent of the energy content of the dery used in tests, providing a system with the energy efficiency of an ordinary oil-fired boiler.
"In other words," says Ernst Holmer, Volvo Truck's engine laboratory manager, "the diesel fuel for our tests will be free." It also advises the driver not tc drink and the drinker not tc drive, adding that "the accuratc prediction of blood alcoho levels and their effect on any individual driver is virtually impossible ..."
Why then, you may ask, should you spend £1.50 on something so apparently unreliable, even if it does come in a protective pvc wallet?