Thanks to all of you for the responses to my query about Natural Gas conversions on cars. FR has the smartest people in the world, at least IMO, for members.
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/methane_bate.html
CHICKEN MANURE FUEL: “Put a chicken in your tank” may never match the zap of Esso’s “Put a tiger in your tank” slogan. But British inventor, Harold Bate, will tell you you that chicken power will run a car faster, cleaner, and better than gasoline.
Bate has found a way of converting chicken droppings to gas — and runs his automobile on it.
By processing methane gas from rotted chicken manure and feeding it to the engine through a special device he invented, Bate says, he has managed to drive his 1953 Hillman at speeds up to 75 m.p.h. without the use of gasoline.
At his farmhouse in Devon, Bate, 62, told an ENQUIRER reporter:
“This is the thing of the future... all you need is a couple of buckets of manure, a tin drum and my carburetor conversion device, and you’re in business.”
Bate’s “chicken coupe” has been investigated and upheld by the British Ministry of Transport.
“We’ve looked into it,” Frank Standing, information officer for the ministry told the ENQUIRER, “and the device works perfectly.
“However, as to mass use, that seems doubtful. There is simply not enough of a supply of chicken manure to provide fuel for autos on a mass basis.”
Bate says he has been running his car and five-ton truck on the methane gas - as well as heating his home with it - for years.
“The method is really very simple,” Bate, said. “You just put about three buckets of manure into a sealed oil drum. Put a small oil heater under the drum to keep the manure at a steady 80 degrees.
“There are two microbes in the manure which, when heated, eat each other - this produces the gas.
“You can collect the gas in bottles or in plastic balloons for storage. Then all you do is feed the methane through an adapter into your carburetor - and you’ve got chicken power.
“I keep replenishing my manure supply. I run my car for about six months before I clean out the tank and start with fresh dung.”
Bate said the conversion from gasoline to methane power can be made in two hours and requires no special tools. The only engine alteration required is the installation of Bate’s patented device which feeds the methane from the bottle to the carburetor.
The gas, sucked into the engine by the cylinders, is ignited in the usual manner by the spark plugs to produce power.
Methane is not only cheap and efficient, said the inventor, but it is better for your car - no carbon deposit on your cylinders and no engine wear and no poisonous carbon monoxide fumes.
(From NATIONAL ENQUIRER June 1970)