2015年考研英语阅读理解精选20篇(第七篇)

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考研英语中阅读理解是重头戏，所占比例较大，考生在复习提高的过程中需要多付出精力。可是对于阅读理解来说，要提高并不是一蹴而就的事情，阅读能力需要日积月累，才能够提高速度和做题的技巧效率。为此，新东方在线小编为广大考生奉上20篇阅读理解，希望大家通过积累来最终提升综合阅读能力。
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    山珍海味
    DIESEL engines are famously unfussy about what they burn in their
cylinders. Indeed, Rudolf Diesel’s original design ran on powdered coal. But
even he might have been taken aback by the recipe concocted by Peter Ferlow. Mr
Ferlow, who lives in a suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia, is one of the
leaders of a growing band of enthusiasts who brew their own car fuel. His diesel
engine runs on oil collected from the kitchen of a local pub.
    The recipe starts by filtering the breadcrumbs out with a mesh screen.
After that you warm the oil up and add sodium hydroxide and methanol. The sodium
hydroxide (known as “lye”, in the trade) breaks the oil molecules into fatty
acids and glycerol. The methanol reacts with the fatty acids to form esters.
Drain away the glycerol. Wash the remainder with water to remove impurities and
surplus lye. Drain that water. Then aerate what is left with an aquarium bubbler
to drive off the last traces of moisture. The result is 175 litres of finest
home-brewed biodiesel—enough to drive Mr Ferlow’s pickup truck for 1,200km (750
miles). And the cost, he reckons, is a mere C$45 (about $44, south of the
border) plus two hours of his labour. The oil itself is free. Restaurants are
glad to give it away, to avoid the cost of disposal.
    That may change. According to Miles Phillips, the head of the Cowichan
Energy Alternatives Society, based in Duncan, British Columbia, local demand for
veggie-oil fuel is already outstripping supply. Moreover, biodiesel made from
restaurant oil can be sold for a tidy profit. On the other side of North
America, the Baltimore Biodiesel Co-op, in Maryland, says green-minded drivers
are prepared to pay a premium of about 30% over the cost of petroleum-based
diesel to fill their cars with biodiesel. The co-operative reports that its
sales are up by 20% this year. Eventually, presumably, restaurant owners will
want a slice of the action, too. At the moment, though, they seem glad to
collaborate for nothing. The co-op can rely on an industrial producer—a
so-called “grease puller”—driving a lorry around the area’s restaurants to
collect its raw material free. And it plans, starting next year, to buy
biodiesel from home producers as well.
    Some of these producers rely, like Mr Ferlow, on Heath Robinson lash-ups of
their own devising to make their motoring equivalent of hooch. Others use
off-the-shelf reactors. Oilybits, a British company, will, for £395 ($620), sell
you a device that produces batches of 120 litres of biodiesel—and the firm’s
owner, Adrian Henson, is modest enough to admit that many other firms do
likewise. The process is not particularly hazardous. Biodiesel esters are not so
volatile that they form an explosive vapour (which is why they can be used only
in diesel engines, not petrol ones), and though the methanol and sodium
hydroxide need careful handling (they are unpleasant by themselves, and truly
noxious if allowed to react together), so far the health-and-safety authorities
in countries where home-brewed biodiesel is taking off have not stepped in to
interfere. Even the taxman generally turns a blind eye. In Britain, which once
tried to fine people for failing to pay duty on home-brewed fuel, the tax-free
manufacture of up to 2,500 litres a year is now permitted.
    Brewing up nicely
    If the authorities did ban home esterification, though, enthusiasts who
wished to declare independence from the oil companies could go down another
route. The advantage of esters is that they substitute directly for
petroleum-based diesel fuel. But, with a bit of modification, many diesel
engines will run on unesterified vegetable oil, too.
    The main reason raw vegetable oils do not normally work in diesel engines
is that they are more viscous than standard diesel oil, and thus clog the
engine’s fuel-delivery system. Heat them, and that problem goes away—at least in
older engines (modern, “common-rail” motors, with high-tech fuel-injection
systems, are less forgiving).
    A common way of converting a vehicle to run on unprocessed vegetable oil is
therefore to fit it with two fuel tanks. A small one filled with petroleum-based
diesel keeps the engine running until the car’s radiator has heated up. At that
point water is diverted from the radiator into pipes that run through a larger
tank filled with vegetable oil. Once this is nicely warm and runny, the driver
flicks a switch and the engine starts burning the vegetable oil.
    Last year John Shepley, a member of the Baltimore co-operative, converted
his 12-year-old sports-utility vehicle to work this way. That cost him about
$1,500. But prices are falling as such conversions become more popular. An
Oilybits conversion kit costs about $315.
    To Greece on grease
    Once the conversion is made, the world is your oyster. In August 2008, for
example, eight teams set out on a car rally from London. Their intention was to
drive across Europe fuelled only by oil scavenged from restaurants. All made it
to Athens, the destination, without buying fuel.
    Even now, three years later, getting waste oil free is still easy,
according to Andy Pag, the rally’s organiser. He has driven more than 30,000km
on vegetable oil, in countries as far afield as Mauritania, without once paying
for the stuff. There are wrinkles, of course. In place of the screen used by Mr
Ferlow, Mr Pag carries a centrifuge (solar powered, naturally) around with him.
Before filling up, he puts the oil he has scrounged through this. Food particles
and water are spun off as a creamy gunk that he removes with a rag. It takes him
about half an hour to purify a tank’s worth of fuel in this way. The chief
difficulty, he claims, is keeping his clothes clean.
    That, though, is a small price to pay for the warm, virtuous glow which
comes from converting waste into motive power. It is cheap, environmentally
friendly and, according to Mr Ferlow, even the exhaust gases smell sweeter.
    付出会有回报，提高需要努力，小编希望每一位决定了考研的考生都能够坚定自己的目标，并为实现目标努力奋斗，坚持不懈，只有这样才能收获丰厚的果实。2015年考研圆梦，大家一起努力。
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