Henry Ford built a hemp-mobile and secretly grew fields of hemp to become independent of the oil industry. He could not keep it up long under the state and federal bans.
Posted on 11/03/2006 8:22:03 AM PST by fight_truth_decay
A simple, low-energy, and very fast way to transform crops into useful fuels and chemicals could help ease the United States' dependence on foreign oil. Now researchers at the University of Minnesota, reporting their work in the November 3 issue of Science, say they've done just this. They have developed a system that uses catalysts to transform soy oil and sugar water (which can be captured from corn) into syngas, a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can be burned as a fuel or transformed into synthetic gasoline. By adjusting the amount of oxygen fed to the catalyst, the researchers can increase the amount of hydrogen made or produce chemical precursors for plastics.
Although the method uses high temperatures, the process is self-heating and actually consumes low amounts of energy, the researchers say.
And because the method is simple and fast--100 times faster than current methods--the processing plants could be smaller. This would potentially allow farmers to process fuel for their vehicles on their farms, cutting down on the energy required to transport bulky biomass to processing plants.
Reports Renewable Hydrogen from Nonvolatile Fuels by Reactive Flash Volatilization J. R. Salge, B. J. Dreyer, P. J. Dauenhauer, L. D. Schmidt Droplets of nonvolatile fuels such as soy oil and glucose-water solutions can be flash evaporated by catalytic partial oxidation to produce hydrogen in high yields with a total time in the reactor of less than 50 milliseconds. Pyrolysis, coupled with catalytic oxidation of the fuels and their fragments upon impact with a hot rhodium-cerium catalyst surface, avoids the formation of deactivating carbon layers on the catalyst. The catalytic reactions of these products generate approximately 1 megawatt of heat per square meter, which maintains the catalyst surface above 800°C at high drop impact rates. At these temperatures, heavy fuels can be catalytically transformed directly into hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and other small molecules in very short contact times without the formation of carbon.
Department of Chemical Engineering and Material Science, University of Minnesota, 421 Washington Avenue SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.
ping.
Why mess with it? I can run my diesel car (any diesel) on soy oil as it is.
interesting, thanks
Synthetic gas or hydrogen from the same process. Sounds like a winner to me. I look forward to the day when the tables are turned on the middle east and they're unable to give away their oil.
There is not enough land mass to grow our way into another energy source. We will drill our way to independence , or we won't get there in two lifetimes. There may be a scientific energy breakthrough, but we aren't utilizing the present breakthroughs, so why should we be madly searching for more. Are any technologies sufficient to appease those who regard energy usage, especially ours to be waste, or selfish.
Sounds like we should all be switching from gas to diesel. But I note that diesel is $.75 higher than gas at the local station?
Good post! Hopefully, we are getting closer to the day when no one has us by the short hairs because of oil.
Now the article talks about taking soy oil at X dollars per gallon, which could be run in diesel engines as is, then put it through an expensive process to hake another fuel at twice the price.
Agreed on the VW Pickup - I've got an 82 VW pickup with a retrofit VW 1900cc hydraulic engine - now all I need is some "diesel trees" to drive for almost free. Google "diesel tree" for more info - apparently they will grow in California and Florida. Some farmer in Australia is planning to grow plantations of them there. FYI
So if I drive 10,000 miles per year at 43 mpg I would need 233 gallons (882 liters) of fuel. 22 trees and I'm all set!
Yeah, this little rabbit pickup has been fantastic. Does the 1.9 drop mileage much? The extra power would be nice. Or maybe change over to 1.6 turbo. It's ashame that VW doesn't start bringing the Caddy back to the states. I'd love to have a new one of these...
LOL!!! It's a shame that they put in the "I'm a nut job" statements.
http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/PR_supporting_docs/20061031_govs_grassroots.pdf
10.31.06 (Barely reported if at all)
Governors, Legislatures Pave Way for Greater Use of Biodiesel
Supporting a drive to boost the economy and promote cleaner-burning fuels, several governors have announced state energy initiatives this year that will likely increase biodiesel availability and use. Newly created incentives, grants and tax credits will help biodiesel enhance local economies while reducing pollution.
http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/PR_supporting_docs/20061031_govs_grassroots.pdf
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/212618_biodiesel18.html
However, not as easy to find pumps in some states as perhaps yours. It is not plentiful all over. There are 4-5 stations/pumps and/or stores in my entire state where one can purchase biodiesel for personal transportation consumption and they, unfortuanately, are not near me.
Yes...but I had to read the Willie Nelson crowd to get the information I needed. ;)
The 1.9 engine has lots of torque - gets between 37 and 40 mpg. I've had notes left on my windshield offering to buy it when the price of gas was high.
The only changes I would make to the Caddy is to have a King Cab so the seats would recline more and install cruise control for long trips. The main benefit I've seen for the 1.9 engine is that it provides extra power for the A/C - you can accelerate and have A/C on at the same time without the heavy vibrations of the 1.6 engine.
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