Soybean Powered Harley

westfirst writes "Harold Benich has refitted his Harley Davidson motorcycle to run on soybean oil, according to this article. It gets 100 miles per gallon and the exhaust smells like McDonald's fries. Soybean oil is, of course, a renewable energy source, but it still costs more to operate per mile. His bike costs about 4 cents per mile, but a gas powered bike costs 3 cents. " I cannot comment on the scientific validity of the story, but alternative energy sources are intrinsically interesting to me, at least.

Comments

Re:renewable ... but is it clean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most non-brazilians don't know that in Brazil we have been using renewable fuel ( alcohol ) on our cars for 22 years. And it is, in fact, cleaner than gasoline. I mean a lot cleaner.

A government program called proalcool was created after the first oil crisis. A good english written document about it can be found here but do scroll down or search for proalcool.

Alcohol is available in every gas station in Brazil to this date. In fact, our gasoline is mixed with 25% alcohol. And the alcohol comes from Sugar Cane produced in Brazil.

I use to have a alcohol car. It was cheaper then gasoline, but consumed more fuel. In the end, I guess, it kind of had the same cost. On very cold days, we had to inject gasoline on the engine to get it started ( a button on the console ). Newer cars have that automatically.

I remember that when it started, cars had sticker that said "Moved by alcohol". And as we brazilians love making fun of everything, we soon had stickers in our cars that said: "Moved by alcohol, but just the drivers". Any chance this would be legal in the States?

Another story, on the grim side, is when there was a lack of sugar cane production, Brazil imported Methanol from abroad, and a few people died from drinking the poisonous imported alcohol. People would drink the fuel, after all, at less than a dollar a liter...

No, it is pure

[oGMo]

Given this isn't a hoax (which is smells like, even though it's a little late for 4/1 stuff), he is using pure oil. Read what it says a little closer and you see "Usually, though, food oils are combined with diesel fuel, rather than used pure, as Benich is doing" (my emphasis of course). So usually it is mixed, but not in this case.

I'd love to see how it's done though. I don't think soybean oil is combustible, but if this isn't a hoax, I guess I'll be wrong. If it isn't, I wonder how fast it'll take the oil cartel lobbies to make soy products illegal (protect the children from Tofu, or something? ;-))

I wonder...

[verbatim]

I wonder if anyone has given any thought to the entre economy - not just saving the enviroment. Lots of people are shouting that the oil industry is too big and powerful - and will prevent any "eco-vehicle" from entering the market, but there are more insidious things going on here:

- Design and Mfg'ing: Someone has to design and manufacture these vehicles in a large enough quantity that they are affordable enough. Perhaps no one is willing to risk enough cash to get someone started. Could you design something to retro-fit existing assembly lines (= cheaper production / design).

- Consumer acceptance: not all consumers care about the environment. Will they accept a vehicle that costs more to own (assuming the next step)?

- Gas costs alot, but it's out there in brute force. Most cities have dozens of gas-stations already there. How would you get the fuel to the end user? Will they compete with the gas bars or will they work in their own market (eg. a gas/econ-fuel hybrid station, or something).

- How are you going to sell it. AFAIK, it's taken 10 years to market the electric cars and they still have a very low acceptance level.

Anyhow, I think it goes back to that old addage: you can have any two of: cost, quality, and time. I doubt it will be affordabe (at first), the quality will be questionable if it remains untested, and it certainly won't be out today or tomorrow. Perhaps in a year or two when people are tired of breathing in toxic fumes they'll quit smoking and think about this kind of car ;-).


---
Computer Science: solving today's problems tomorrow.

We need this in the UK

[hattig]

"His bike costs about 4 cents per mile, but a gas powered bike costs 3 cents"

Well, in the UK a gallon of petrol is about £4.00. That is $6.00. If a bike can do 100mpg (for arguments sake) then it costs 6cents a mile in the UK. A bike will probably do 50mpg, which is 12c per mile.

Yet this soyafuel can do 100mpg for 3 cents a mile. That is half to a quarter of the price of normal petrol in the UK.

Hey, forget fuel guzzling America, bring your technology over here where we need it. Please. Now. Not next month, tomorrow.

Now if a car could be made to do 100mpg from cheap soyaoil, then I will be a very happy man. Damn oil cartels.

Hmm..intresting...

[Chanc_Gorkon]

The idea is intersting to say the least. I have always wondered why we don't do things such as this. It makes perfect sense to me. Although then you'd get people protesting the killing of over 100 thousand soybean plants every month! :) They you'll see the tree huggers laying in fields of soybeans so the combines don't get the precious little soybeans. You'll see things such as biodiesel is murder! :)

Personally fully electric (with solar cell roofs) cars will be the best thing I think. Batteries are getting better it seems like every year and solar keeps getting more efficient over time too. Eventually your car will recharge during the day either by the solar cells or the free electric you get from your place of work(on cloudy days). For the meantime, cars like the Insight and the Prius are very interesting to me. I wish I could afford a Insight or Prius now. I also like the fully electric EV1 from GM but they still won't make those available here in Ohio (no way to heat the car good enoguh in the winter), and if I wanted to throw away 40,000 I'd buy a SUV (EV1's are leased only....once they are done being leased, GM takes them back....they don't even resell them, to my knowledge).

This story is a CENTURY old!

[kfg]

Newsflash: Slashdot sets new record for posting old technological news as new and awesome.

ANY diesel engine will run on vegetable oil, be it soy, corn, peanut, flax, etc.

I guess it's just "kewl" that someone did it with a Harley.

They've been doing it for over 100 years. Volvo even has a working prototype of a multi-oil car that they would love to produce but don't figure there's any market for. A Volvo executive has been driving it as a personal vehicle for 10 years now.

Hell, 15 years ago I used to run my Mercedes 240D on corn oil. Too bad for me there was no Slashdot at the time, I could have had my 15 minutes of fame.

KFG

Interest in Energy

[piecewise]

Of course, we'll only develop alternative energy platforms when it's absolutely necessary. God forbid we think ahead -- no no... we'll procratinate until we have even more major energy problems, and only then will we shift over toward newer technologies.

The thing is, the major energy and oil companies don't want any of this. A major car company figures out a way to have a car run at 150 miles per gallon. The U.S. Government says, No way, buddy!

Why? Because if everyone drove cars that got such incredible mileage, gas consumption goes WAY down, and therefore prices collapse. Commodity markets would anticipate this, and spot prices for gas and creud oil would drop off a cliff.

OPEC has a vested interest in making sure this does not happen, and so does the US Government -- to an extent.

So, new energy technology will be a long and tedious transition. But you can bet in 50 years, there will be a company greatly benefitting from it, and making billions.

Re:Interest in Energy

[Rasta Prefect]

Sheesh. Yeah, the Oil companies like a dependance on oil - but they know this is coming. You'll note that many of them have been restyling themselves as "energy" companies as opposed to oil companies. As for the US Government, I imagine there are few things they'd enjoy more than telling OPEC where they can stick it. OPEC is one of the few world powers that can cause the US really serious problems. And as an added bonus, we would no longer have a vested interest in the Middle East. We wouldn't have to care which tin pot dictator or religious leader had decided to declare a jihad against his neighbor, anymore than we bother with unrest in Africa now. How many of you are familar with whats going on in the Republic of the Congo vs the Israel/Palestinian mess? And we'd quit dumping money into the area for all of the above to buy and develop weapons. All in all, a reduced dependance on oil is a serious boon for the US government.

Corn?

[SlashGeek]

I worked with a guy a while back who had a diesel VW Rabbit that he ran that car off of some type of corn oil. He had a friend that, whatever he did, had an abundance of this oil as a by-product of his process. According to him, it ran just as good as with diesel, although yes, it did smell like McDonalds fries.

Re:smell

[fmaxwell]

You have to admit that the smell of french fries is usually a lot more appealing than the smell of a Harley rider.

Q: What's the difference between a Harley motorcycle and a Hoover vacuum cleaner? A: The Hoover has the dirtbag on the inside.

What about the big picture?

[Waffle Iron]

Before we get too excited, someone ought to check to find out if it doesn't take more than one gallon of petroleum to produce one gallon of food oil with today's agricultural technology. IIRC, it takes more energy than you'd think to fertilize, irrigate and harvest crops.

Re:What about the big picture?

[-Harlequin-]

like in this case the major problems our nations power grid is going to be facing in the next 20 years

The problems you cite don't really exist to the extend that they are a problem.

The power consumption of electric cars even when their numbers reaches CA target (which are higher than any other state AFAIK) is inconsequential - 0.02% of the power normally consumed via the grid.
It might be 0.06% - I can't remember but the "there won't be enough energy for people to switch" is another part of GM's lobbying package that is now widely and rightfully ignored.

The money saved on petroleum infrastructure would easily cover any expansion of electrical infrastructure - and the bottom line is that the grid needs to be (and will be) expanded, regardless of whether electric cars are adopted or not. Electric cars are a drop in the puddle. If people are worried about energy conservation, turning the lights off, etc when they're not in use will dwarf the energy needed to run cars, and as running an electric car obviously requires far less net energy than gas ones, even if they did strain the grid (which they won't) it would clearly be worth it.

That said, yeah, driving SUVs to the gym is stupid. IMO, using a gym at all is stupid if commuting to work each day by bike is feasible (and you'd probably be surprised at how much faster a bike usually gets you there - people think that cars are fast because on the open road they are, but in a city like where I live, even a half hour commute tends to be quicker by bike, as bikes don't get slowed by the traffic).

(Statistic suggest that biking is safer too, but I suspect they are heavily skewed by open road car crashes, which are frequently lethal. Statistics for city-only travel safety would be interesting)

Re:What about the big picture?

[-Harlequin-]

Like electric cars... sure, they may be 100% emissions free, but what about all the coal/oil/uranium that must be consumed to produce that energy.

In case you're not aware, only General Motors still tries to make out that that has any relevance, and only because they're trying to dissuade CA from requiring emissionless cars.

You note that powerplant filters make a difference, but there is more to it than that. Even an electric car that is recharged entirely from dirty coal power plants still produces ten to a hundred times less pollutants than a modern car at the end of the day.

You are probably forgetting how mind-numbingly crude and innefficient the combustion-engine vehicle is - every time the light goes green, you rip huge amounts of energy from storage and turn it into vast kinetic energy, then when the next light goes red you dump all of that energy, then burn up (ie waste) heaps more when the light goes green. Insane! Most technologies, including electric, allow two-way transfer of energy - when you stop for the red light, you do so by converting your kinetic energy back into storage.
Testiment to this is that many hybrid cars never need charging - the electric engine is powered entirely by the staggering wastage of the combustion engine.

Conbustion contraptions truly are a Victorian-age technology - wasteful and crude, requiring you to burn through ten times the energy you actually need to get from A to B. Hence another reason why electric cars powered by dirty generators are a non-issue. As I mentioned, General Motors still seems to be clinging to the line, but it's looking increasinly like this is because they have lagged behind other car makers in these technologies, and now don't want the consequences of a fair playing field, knowing they'll probably get their butts kicked :)

The real solution will come when an efficient, non impacting form of electrical generation is perfected.

Nope. No need to wait. The dirtiest of current electrical generation are still more than sufficiently clean to solve the pollution problems. Which is not to say they shouldn't be cleaned up, just that you shouldn't be distracted by the red-herring that GM is still trying to wave (a red-herring that has been largely discredited by the car industry itself).

renewable ... but is it clean?

[s20451]

Renewability is only one desirable trait of a fuel source. I wonder how cleanly this stuff burns, especially since (as the article states) the oil sometimes has to be combined with Diesel. I expect that hydrocarbon pollutants would be a major problem, along with possibly oxides of nitrogen, etc.

Can you imagine the majority of cars in Los Angeles (or some such city) converting to Soybean oil, and having the stench of McDonalds fries replace smog?

Re:renewable ... but is it clean?

[jscheib]

I live at an ecovillage in Missouri...we run a Ford pickup truck and VW Jetta on biodiesel and have been doing so for over two years. Don't believe the newspaper hype and start imagining the "stench of french fries" and whatnot. Not true. Every so often, a diesel vehicle (usually soon after startup or hard acceleration) emits a foul burst of diesel fumes. Except a biodiesel vehicle emits a french-fry smelling blast instead of a burnt petroleum smell. A vast improvement.

This is proven technology, lots of inner city bus lines use it, it cuts emissions of SOx and NOx by 80%, is available from producers all over the U.S.A., etc. etc. blah blah. More details available at http://www.dancingrabbit.org/biodiesel/.

Not the point ...

[s20451]

Read what it says a little closer and you see "Usually, though, food oils are combined with diesel fuel, rather than used pure, as Benich is doing"

My point is that I'm not sure the combustion process is clean, where I use the term "clean" to mean that the combustion products are free of pollutants (such as unburned hydrocarbons). The article is silent on this point (unless I have misread it?).

The fact that the fuel is pure doesn't matter. If the bike uses the Diesel cycle, the combustion products are likely to be dirty under heavy loads (such as during accelleration).

smells like McDonald's

[reverZe biaZ]

...and the exhaust smells like McDonald's fries.

Soon you'll not only see biker gangs riding around, but biker gangs being chased by the Hamburgler.

Or maybe Ronald McDonald will get himself a hog and join the Hell's Burgers?

-----------------------

Soy-burners vs. rice-burners...

[dstone]

As a sport biker, I love the irony. Harley riders enjoy deriding (Japanese) sport bikes, calling them "rice burners", among other things...

Now, really, how much better is a "soy burner"?!

Karma whoring.

[Denial of Service]

The Biodiesel web site has more information on renewable fuel sources.

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Bush on Biodiesel?

[mattkime]

When W Bush spouts about the impending energy crisis, I wish he'd fund programs that push alternative energy sources rather than building more refineries. After reading up on the www.biodiesel.org website, I'm quite convinced that we are not facing an energy crisis, but an inevitable energy industry shake up. (Which, for a former executive in the oil industry, is just as bad.)

If www.biodiesel.org is correct in its claims, then vegetable based energy sources solve MANY of our energy problems. They can be used in existing, unmodified diesel engines. It costs very little to make - a 1:3.24 energy production ratio. Its clean burning. Its safe.

The problems - not many people use diesel engines. But a significant amount of industrial equipment does. It would be a relatively easy conversion in the market place to produce more consumer diesel vehicles. It smells like McDonalds french fries. Annoying? Yes. Is regular exhaust particularly pleasant? No! Distribution - its hard to buy. But hasn't this been a problem with any other new type of fuel? We won't get past this until we're forced or someone invents a miracle fuel.

I'm not worried about the future supply of energy. If we run out of oil, we'll find something else. And I won't have pity for the oil industry either.

Don't forget

[Resident Geek]

...about the HempCar, and that hemp is another great biodiesel. These kinds of fuels, because they are infinitely renewable, are what the petroleum industry does not want to see in use until they can find a way to make money off of it.

Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.

Wake up and smell the sulfuric acid!

[Surak]

The thing is, the major energy and oil companies don't want any of this. A major car company figures out a way to have a car run at 150 miles per gallon. The U.S. Government says, No way, buddy!

I work for a major car company (GM) and I work in a position that is tightly coupled with the Vehicle Development Process (VDP). And I'm telling you now that GM will eventually have regular production gas/electric hybrids that get 150 miles per gallon! (The last prototype I saw gets around 90, so 150 is not far off)

Then there is the Toyota Prius, which currently gets 70 MPG, and a representative of Toyota claimed to me at the 2001 North American International Auto Show that next year, the vehicle will get 150 MPG.

Maybe your scenario was more on-mark 5 or so years ago, but with the rising fuel costs and OPEC's recent production cuts, believe me, the government is in our court on this one.

Re:How does it work?

[Mr. Slippery]

So how does it work?

Making biodiesel fuels usually involves some chemical processing of the oil.

From biodiesel.com, Pacific Biodiesel's website:

Technically, biodiesel is Vegetable Oil Methyl Ester. It is formed be removing the triglyceride molecule from vegetable oil in the form of glycerin (soap). Once the glycerin is removed from the oil, the remaining molecules are, to a diesel engine, similar to petroleum diesel fuel. There are some notable differences. The biodiesel molecules are very simple hydrocarbon chains, containing no sulfur, ring molecules or aromatics associated with fossil fuels. Biodiesel is made up of almost 10% oxygen, making it a naturally "oxygenated" fuel.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/