Slashdot Mirror
Zero to Rutabaga in 6 Seconds
DarkenWood writes: "I found an interesting article over at BBC SciTech about a sports car that runs on rotting organic waste. 0-60 in under 6 sec. Very cool."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
The hemp car website, along with pretty much every hemp enthusiest, touts the benefits of biodiesel, but conviently forgets that hemp is not the best biodiesel producing plant, no matter what metric you use (production/acre, pound of crop, price per gallon produced, etc.) -- soybeans are. Last I checked, soybeans were legal in the U.S., and mysteriously we're still using dead dinosaur diesel. Ergo, laws aren't an inherent barrier.
Promoting hemp is just a tactic to get pot legalized. I know hemp != pot, but continuing enforcement after hemp legalization would be kind of tough, and the hippies know it.
Don't buy the hype.
I heard that the reason some car mfgrs are making sportscars (or powerful luxury sedans - BMW) that run on alternative fuels is as a confidence thing. I guess that makes sense: if an alternative fuel can make a sportscar go very fast or a BMW 7 series drive like normal, people might expect it to be OK for their minivans, sport utes, light trucks, and hondas. And besides, if you were on a car mfgr's alternative fuels proof-of-concept team, making only a handful of cars, wouldn't you want to make it a cool car?
Well, one important difference between bio fuels and fossil fuels has to do with the carbon cycle. When you burn fossil fuels, you are essentialy taking carbon that has been burried for millions of years and releasing it into the atmosphere in the form of CO2. Now, about the only way to get that carbon back out of the air is for some photosynthetic organism to use it to make more complicated carbon-containing compounds such as sugars, starches, proteins, cellulose, etc.
When you burn a bio fuel, on the other hand, you are releasing carbon into the atmosphere in the form of CO2, but it is carbon which was just recently removed from the atmosphere by the photosynthetic plant you used to make your fuel. For example, when you burn enough ethanol derived from corn to release 1kg of carbon into the atmosphere in the form of CO2, you can be sure that at least that much CO2 was removed by your corn plants when they were growing.
This is why, even though the 6000000000 people on the planet exhale a lot of CO2 everyday, one is not contributing to global warming simply by breathing: all the carbon you are exhaling was just recently removed from the atmosphere by whatever plants you ate, or by the plants the animalls you just ate ate (sic).
Of course, there is more to worry about than just CO2, but it is a huge concern.
The city of Linköping Sweden (pop. about 132 000) and has been running a large part of their urban buses (57 in 1998) on biogas.
The biogas is produced from waste and wastewater from the local slaugherhouses and manure. The factory processes 24000 ton of slaugher refuse, 50000 tons of slaughterhouse process-water and 25000 ton of manure per year (the manure is apparently used to "slow down the digestion process"). The process-water from the slaughterhouse was previously directed to the sewage plant. The resulting methane gas is cleaned from carbon dioxide, vapor and small levels of hydrogen sulphide before it's used.
These 'carcass-gas' buses have worked pretty well and even if there's been some minor problems with overheating probably because these are converted diesel buses.
The NO emissions are 25% to 50% lower than diesel buses (depending on what grade of diesel is used) and the CO2 emissions are somewhere between 5-15% compared with diesel.
I used to work in a biology lab where we were working on genetically engineering some bacteria or fungus (I dont know most of the details... I was just an assistant- washing test tubes, making the swill to grow that crap in) Anyway, the microorganism would eat all the agricultural wastes that would normally be thrown away (corn stalks and husks, that sort of thing) and turn it into methanol. I guess the scientists working on it were making some good progress; they won some awards for it. I havent worked there for years though so I dont know what's been going on with it lately. But, it would get methanol out of stuff that would normally be burned or tossed out, while leaving the corn itself availible for other uses, instead of being 'wasted' on methanol production.
it just sits there till its all done with its vegetables, mister!
The fundamental problem with biomass is the sheer amount of land needed to grow the vegetable matter to produce it. Plants are at best perhaps 5% efficient at turning the sunlight that hits them into energy. And then you have to turn the plant energy into fuel, which is likewise lossy. Now, if the biomass is pre-existing and would be landfilled or burned (sawmill sawdust and so on), these aren't big problems, the only issue is the cost per unit of energy. But growing crops specifically for energy may not be as efficient as other forms of energy manufacture, such as wind, solar, tidal, salinity gradient, etc.
What is really needed is a realistic appraisal of the costs and benefits of various forms of energy, and taxation/subsidies so the price reflects the true cost of each form. But this is a massively political thing, and if we didn't get it with eight years of Clinton, there's no hope with Bush in the Oval Office.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Yeah...you're correct- it's the 2000's...your lucky that the .com is still in business by the time you get to the bottom of the hill :)
Buy a house on top of the hill, find a job on the bottom. If it's an .com job you'll never get to go back home anyway. :)
Thank you! I totally agree that Americans (and Canadians) are way too in love with their cars, and this results in a lot of stuff being fucked up.
:)
Think about this: Lots of companies are spending time developing stuff that lets you browse the web, check your email, or do whatever you want, while you're driving. This is ridiculous. To drive safely, you need to pay attention to the road. Lots of people try to do other stuff during their commute, because it's so long that it would be a huge waste of time otherwise. If they weren't so stubborn about using cars, they could just take public transportation, and do all that stuff they want to get done, and leave the driving to someone who will do a good job. Obviously, a bus crowded to standing-room-only capacity is not great for getting work done with your laptop, but if people designed public transportation so that useful work could be done while travelling, things would be a whole lot better.
I'm a big fan of bicycles myself, BTW. You can't exactly do a lot of work while on a bike, but it's fun and it keeps me in shape
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
Jesus, it takes 220lbs of vegetables to power the car for 62 miles? Thats a little inefficient for practical use. 220lbs of roitting cabbage, where is someone going to run up on that much? Thats like an extra passenger and a half. Not a very viable sports car, if you ask me.
But, the future may improve things...
--
Dave Brooks (db@amorphous.org)
http://www.amorphous.org
But the only thing I wish I knew about it if it is as dirty as gasoline, how much does it cost to convert the fuel and the miles per hour. If these are answered then we can see if it would really be a good solution.
You can read more about the Advantige R at Rinspeed's web site.
Apparently they are using Kompogas for their bio fuel.
Or gas from a shitload....
In fact, in some cities (San Francisco), you can get across town far faster by bike than any other way!
There is, however, this little issue of all those steep hills in San Francisco. I'm not sure if those messenger bicyclists are willing to go up and down Nob and Russian Hills.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Based on that BBC online article, that's still not a good idea.
A much better solution is diesel fuel derived from plant sources (biodiesel). Already, BMW is selling the BMW 330d turbodiesel coupe/sedan, which has a top speed of 143 mph and does 0-60 in six seconds--with vastly superior driver comfort. And the 330d could probably be made to run on biodiesel with only some minor engine modifications with no loss in performance.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Sure this thing runs off rotting organic waste but a tank full of a certain ex-girlfriend's hash brown casserole would kill it like sugar in the tank of a gas powered car.
Yes Susan, I only said I liked it to get you in the sack :)
Gord
Trolling is a art,
Swivels as you turn, and sinks down into the car at high speeds. All that, and it's fairly light.
The 500k pound price tag is probably half due to that.
Well, it seems like it could be more efficient. Considering a person who would buy a car like this, is probably more concerned about the environment than going Really Fast(TM). The car is designed obviously to get the most power out of the biomass. If you had a city car, the requirements would be different. Also, one could probably improve the effiency by using a high quality biomass, it doesn't say specifically what it runs on, but some vegetation that has a high concentration of.. uhh.. Chemical X would definately help.
---
--
Insert Witty Sig Here
Because that's what you bought, thereby keeping the market for gas guzzlers nice 'n' healthy.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
In an exclusive deal with ShitCar Inc., Recaro has developed the new SportShitter 2000 drivers toilet. It features a 5 point harness, carbon fiber tank, and plush leather seat to prevent ass-chaffing. In a related deal, owners of the ShitCar who eat at Taco Bell will get a 10% tax break for using more efficient fuel.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
"But mommy, if I eat my limabeans we can't drive to see grandma!"
;-)
Dang, in my house that would have been enough to get my brother to eat _all_ our vegies
(Hoping the old bat doesn't take up slashdot).
--Gfunk
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
That's what i love about slashdot... People who don't feel the need for anonymity, engaging in meaningful, on-topic discussion.
Oh wait, never mind.
--Gfunk
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
The car: http://www.rinspeed.com/pages/press/pre-r_one.htm
The Fuel: http://www.kompogas.ch/e/index.html
copy and paste the link text for the goatsex-wary...
"The automobile, while a blessing for many, has also become a curse, especially when our cities are designed around its use. In some cities in America, for example, people sit around in traffic jams for hours because of the fact that they, along with most others in the metro area, need to travel across the freeways or highways to get to work."
Most cities WERENT designed for cars. Hence the traffic problem.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
When you can't get ahold of those libyans!
Too bad it stinks like crazy... and having dozens of those together in one small area would, well, smell a lot worse then it does now..... *shrug*
The StinkyMeat Project won't be around for much longer...
Wouldn't be too bad - a carrot isn't shaped too much different from an Indy car, really... imagine the big green downforce wing :)
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Ok, Ok, I know it's not using the same tech, but does this remind anyone else of the scene from Back to the Future when Doc picks through Marty's trash can to power his Delorean?
--
This message brought to you by Colin Davis
Colin Davis
Ok, say lettuce is roughly $0.89/lb and according to the article the car will travel roughly 62 miles on 220lbs of garbage. From what I can tell you would have to spend $195.80.
My car gets about 22mpg (the way I drive) and it costs (even at the broom stick up your ass price of $2.00 per gallon) about 30 bucks to fill it up. And with a full tank I get about 300 miles.
IANAM but from what I can tell it would cost you about $979 bucks worth of lettuce to go 300 miles, that is about $3.26 per mile or (using my car's fuel economy) roughly $71 a gallon! Even with our completely fucked up gas prices (thats Bill, and Gray, and OPEC, George is in there too, the finger to you all!!!) it's still a better deal to get raped at the pump.
Although this does give a new meaning to dumpster diving
BTW Offtopic, but oh well, my plan against the gas companies is to get my self a box of hotel card keys, a shitload of super glue, and one night were I insert superglued cards into all of the pumps at several local gas stations.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
They say "environmentally friendly", but mention nothing about emissions. I'm skeptical that those cars won't stink really badly. ... What's STL?
------
I'm a C++ guru
Which isn't news, really, whether you call it "kompagas" or anything else. However, it does give me an idea.
There currently being a problem with an excess of liquid hog manure in parts of the United States and the pollution it causes, why not adapt the vehicle to this obvious source of organic fuel, and address this issue as well as fuel shortages? Kill two turds with one stone, so to speak.
The article was unclear as to whether the fermentation took place on the car itself, but obviously the equipment used in gasoline stations could be adapted to store and pump (what would no doubt be) the newly valuable fluid. People would eventually get used to the smell, for the privilege of pulling up to the self-serve pump and topping off their tank with a few gallons of good old #2.
but smoking several acres of the stuff per joint.. well.. you'll have lung cancer before you're high.
I'll stick to good old Cannabis Sativa Hollandica, or nederwiet. (no points for that quote)
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
In a sense, this car is reminiscent of a title from the Dead Kennedys, "Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables" (where the provision of power to a vehicle is the fresh fruit... but I guess "for" should be "from"... ah, whatever).
No Laughing Allowed!
FYI my chemistry professor in High School was a real weird bird... not necessarily because he powered his car with chicken crap but that didn't help. He picked up chicken crap from the local chicken farm and let the crap ferment in a big washtub in the back of his car. He used a small charcoal fire under the washtub to heat up the crap and speed up the fermentation process while he was driving and he snuffed out he fire when he got to school by cutting off it's oxygen supply.
He said sometimes when going up a big hill he'd have to pull over and let the methane collect a bit to have enough power to make it up the hill. Now this was back in the early 80s when the environment wasn't a big issue and he was mostly trying to save a buck. The car was an old little import like maybe a 75ish Opal. He had a coil of copper tubing mounted on top of the washtub which piped the gas to the carb. It looked like a still on wheels. He was also a radical Jehova's Witness who didn't believe in deoderant but that's another story. Anyone going to my high school in the 80s will recognize this story.
That is all.
I'd take that over the hemp powered car. Not only would I save money, but I could turn over any hemp to friends since I don't smoke
Is Blogger secure?
Want Root?
If they could make garbage trucks that use that kind of engine...
AccountKiller
Now most school kids have a valid way to get rid of their lunch if they don't like it.
Also, school bus drivers will not have to spend a cent on fuel ever again!
Runs on gasoline or "the product of rotting vegetable matter." (Does giving methane a new name make it a new fuel source?) Hmmm. Ok. So they took a Ford "Flexible Fuel" motor or one of it's kin (something that will run or gasoline or natural gas), stuck it in a light weight body so it's got enough power to weight to be quick, and wrapped exotic sheetmetal around it.
This is news?
This is almost as exciting as sticking a small industrial diesel in a Harley frame and running it on vegetable oil...
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
Er, i hope you're not serious. I don't see this anywhere.
Because there's no way this things fuel consumption exceeds the waste produced by your average child during a long car trip
:wq
Looks to me like they are producing ethanol from garbage. Big deal. Much cheaper to ferment corn, sugar beets, and anything else that has a higher content of fruitrose.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
would SOMEONE tell this guy to REMOVE THE LARGE STICK FROM HIS ASS.
I found this pretty funny, BTW.
"Dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire" --Robert Frost
I've been around diesel vehicles of one sort or another for quite some time and have never been bothered by the smell. In fact, I dislike the smell of gasoline exhaust more than diesel. But in either case, unless you plaster your nose right to the tailpipe, it's not that noticable.
The car runs on rotting organic waste AND gasoline. I'd imagine that when you're accelerating to 60mph in 6 seconds it's running primarily off of the gasoline.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
The first thing I thought when I read your post was, 'My ass - I'll bet the engine is in the back'. Turns out I would have won.
Can't be bothered looking at the web site? I quote 'The rear-mounted bivalent 1.8-liter four-cylinder engine (16V) produces 120 hp at 5,500 rpm and delivers its maximum torque of 165 Nm at 3,000 rpm.
Hey, since the good 'ol USA is one of the worlds leading producers of garbage, wouldn't this make us the next OPEC? Huh, we're going to be a superpower forever! (Sarcasm intended for the slow at humour)
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
mmmm.... rutabaga
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
This car uses a shitload of gas.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
Now I can stop killing my pets with my mother's food that isn't fit to feed a fly. That stuff has a use after all.
For a couple months in '92 the city (Madison WI) was running 4 of their older busses on soy oil. The curbside tables at the State Street restaurants and coffeshops have never since been as busy.
The experiment ended when the new busses were delivered, and the fleet could be held under Federal pollution limits with cheaper diesel.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
hey we are runing out of fuel! - ok just hit those two pedestrians!
Thanks to my straight diet of sloppy joes and chili dogs the world's energy problems will finally be saved!!!!!
Its purely just a concept car made to show that its possible. Same with the hemp car and used french fry grease car.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
This is an interesting technology but it seems unlikely this could be the solution to all our fuel problems. It takes 100kg of organic waste to generate enough gas to go 62 miles. Personally I don't think I generate anywhere near that much waste over the 2 days it takes me to drive 60 miles to and from work. So this could be a good way to power some cars, but it couldn't replace all the gas in all the cars. Also the article says nothing about the emissions from burning this gas. Are they any better than the emissions that come from fossil fuels? Maybe kompagas is suitable for usage in fuel cells though. Then I could power my laptop with it -- say sometime around 2005 if we're lucky!
Since I've seen this post several times on several threads over the last few weeks, I strongly doubt he is serious.
Although, in a sick but desperate attempt to bring this post back on topic, I guess if he was he could power the car...
sorry. If I hadn't checked for a lack of confirmation on news sites I wouldn't have said that.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
And right now, useless for normal driving. However, considering this is the only the first, I would say there is a lot of leeway to learn how to develop such a vehicle. I do wonder what the exhaust gasses are tho. What byproducs? What wastes? I also dont think it will be great in Western countires. However, in third world countries (sorry if this appears to be flamebait, but it's an observation of present situations in such countires) there is a great deal of waste that isn't disposed of well. I see there could be potential in say India. Not only using up wastes, but even helping to clean up the enviroment. A neat transportand also garbage disposal. Could be a real winner if done right.
"Old Rallydrivers never die - they just fail to book in on time"
Fuel cells are indeed an excellent mobile power source, but take off your green colored glasses for just a minute. It's true that water + electricity = hydrogen (the process is called electrolysis). And solar is by far one of the most expensive sources of electricity. Even with cheaper coal or oil generated electricity, electrolysis is not cost effective. Think about it. You're putting in the same amount of electrical energy back into the water that was released when the hydrogen and oxygen burned. The most commonly used process to generate hydrogen today is to crack it from hydrocarbons, usually natural gas.
If you're building a fuel cell car, I'd say the best bet is to use a mini chemical plant, called a reformer, to crack gasoline into hydrogen. Fill it up at any corner station and drive a 1000 miles on a tank.
Not much detail in the article, but it doesn't sound like there's a compost heap INSIDE the car. Probably a compressed gas tank that you fill up from your compost heap at home. It all sounds like useless hype anyway. Biogas is mostly methane and other hydrocarbons. This car could just as easily fill up from your natural gas line at home, but CNG cars are old news. So let's call it "kompagas"! and all you'd have to do it collect 800lbs of vegetable waste a week instead of filling up 10 gallons of gas. I don't think an elephant even eats 800lbs a week.
No, with methanol you fill it up and drive 150 mi per tank. It has about 60% the energy per volume of gasoline.
When they reported on the vegetable oil car they were reporting on 100 year old tech.
This is only 60 year old tech.
Running cars on gas produced by rotting organic waste was fairly common in Europe during WWII.
If you find a copy of the Bosch book of the Motor Car in it you will find an illustration of a common rig, a complete gas producing 'still' in a trailer towed behind the car burning the methane gas.
KFG
There is only one in the world and it comes with a half-a-million-pound price tag.
i hate it when they bundle cars with 250-ton price tags. its really annoying. why can't they just make the material lighter?
Since when did Slashdot become Popular Mechanics?
The Concept car page is here (broken out of the frame).
Photos too. very much worth checking out.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
but jigga is spelled wit a J
JIGGA
Humans are slow, innaccurate, and brilliant; computers are fast, acurrate, and dumb; together they are unbeatable
...not to finish your vegetables!
"But mommy, if I eat my limabeans we can't drive to see grandma!"
They did say it takes 220 pounds of fuel to go 62 miles, right? Think about 62 miles as one moderately long commute, round trip. A bit inefficient, eh? Though I suppose they could make garbage trucks which were powered this technology...
you're going to see some serious shit.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Does the car have to take a shit every few miles?
Would you have to pull over to a rest stop, because your car couldn't hold it?
How fast could it run powered by the decaying heart of a shortsighted vice-president?
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
The Sydney Morning Herald posted a very good story about Biodiesel last week.
*** I am the real stylewagon
So, If the greengrocer 50 metres from my house produces 20kg of rotting trash everyday (coz he sells most of it anyway) after closing, he'll have to store 5 days worth of rotting veggies just for me to travel 100km. Now how many greengrocers will it take to produce the rot-for-gas for a couple of hundred thousand cars? let alone a few million cars....I'll never power it with my own veggie scrap becoz the veggies I buy are usually fresh and eaten in this state. The only solid waste I produce comes from my backside and I'm NOT storing my own *hit to run a car! Now what's the next idea for alternative fuel pleaaaaseee.....
Big deal. I saw a discovery channel show about turbine powered cars developed in the 1950's. Basically, the concept was to put a jet engine down the length of the car (!)
Not only did they build them, they started handing out the prototypes to random families. People liked driving them. The acceleration was poor, but they were working on that. The exhaust wasn't even hot. And of course, with almost no moving parts, they had no good reason to break down.
The kicker is that they would run on *any* flammable liquid. They had video of the president of south africa incredulously pouring cognac into the gas tank.
I saw this on tv three years ago, and my jaw was on the floor for the duration of the program.
Why didn't they go into mass production? Good question. From what I remember, the car companies simply lost interest in the project.
However, is it really what is best for society?
The automobile, while a blessing for many, has also become a curse, especially when our cities are designed around its use. In some cities in America, for example, people sit around in traffic jams for hours because of the fact that they, along with most others in the metro area, need to travel across the freeways or highways to get to work. If, say, a million people need to get to work in the space of an hour, and they all drive their own cars across the roadway, there are bound to be traffic problems. Millions of man-hours are lost that could've been spent doing other things rather than commuting.
Furthermore, the millions of people commuting using automobiles takes up lots of space. Automobile-oriented cities eventually wind up sprawling across the countryside, replacing lots of important open space near the city with highways, strip malls, and tract housing. Among other effects of widespread automobile dominance are the death of a lot of social aspects of the city (people need the automobile to get anywhere, and thus it becomes expensive and troublesome, not to mention time-consuming, to travel between cities), smog (a la Los Angeles or Houston, though this may not be as much of a problem with an alternative-energy car), unnecessary expense on the individual (if everyone needs a car to get around, they need to pay for the car, gas, insurance, etc) and as a result is discriminatory (not to mention age discrimination, as people younger than driving age or too old to drive are effectively confined to the home without means to go anywhere). The list can go further, but I ramble, and the basic point is that the automobile-oriented city is inefficient. The low-density development provided thus is incongruous with a city (which is what the majority of the people still function in). Perhaps mass transit and 'walkable' cities are better.
At any rate...the point of this whole argument is, when viewed in the grand scheme of things, is this really better? The problem of needing lots of gasoline is solved, but this is only a surface problem - lots of energy is still required to operate these things, and the automobiles still affect their surroundings negatively when there are too many. The only thing that's changed is the fact that a different type of energy runs the car. So, in the long run, would it perhaps be better that it were more expensive to operate a car? The eventual result would be that fewer people would use them (they are more difficult to afford, and thus less widely used), and the structure of the city would change accordingly to one more beneficial to human interaction and transport. We'd also have less energy needed to power our cars, and more energy could then go to preventing rolling blackouts and other fun things. ;-)
OTOH, would IT be a good fix as well? With more telecommuters, this means fewer commuters, and thus less of a need for massive highways and traffic jams and the like, and also preserves more energy for more important things.
Of course, this is a neat technology...I wouldn't mind powering things off of my garbage :-)
No e... there is one in French, sorry.
That's what I meant, that it comes from the same source...
Morphine is also highly addictive.
And pot is a cure for some things. Glocome for example, is a pressure on the optic nerve, which builds with time and can cut it completely, making you blind. Mari reduces this pressure and prevents this.
But that's a non-issue: most legal drugs only treat the symptoms and not the disease itself anyway.
I know some people who brew alcohol, but it's really not as easy as growing mari. And cost/trouble isn't worth it so much, so most people won't do it. Most mari smokers would grow it if it were legal.
Grass, ash, or trash. Nobody rides for free.
What we all want is an environment friendly high-performance car. So I went looking on the web for environment friendly power sources. And guess what I found! A completely clean powersource which can give me 22g of acceleration!! YES FOLKS, IT'S THE SCRAMJET POWERED CAR!
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
You Sir, are very funny.
Will code a sig generator for food
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Having learned of the new vehicle, the American government has entered into a plan to purchase trash from an undisclosed Middle Eastern nation, at a current average rate of 2 dollars per gallon of refuse. President Bush, on an unrelated note, has declared war on several Russian landfill sites, stating that, "We, the American people, must protect our vital energy resources."
---
~
Biogas has long been a popular fuel, but it's better suited to stationary applications. Methane is effectively 120 octane, you can replace the injectors in a big diesel with spark plugs and use a simple mixing valve for a carburator. Many sewage tratment plants are powered this way.
That's got to be an awful smelling vehicle.
Not necessarily. I've read that vehicles run on biodiesel (see the National Biodiesel Board and the Veggie Van for more info) have exhaust that smell like french fries. I'd take a wild and crazy guess that this car's exhaust smell more like wet leaves than anything. But then again, I'm an optimist.
I wonder how long it will be before this type of thing is econically viable.
A hybrid version of the Dodge Durango is only a $3000 tax credit away from costing the same as a normal-fuel Durango (see here)
Unfortunately I don't think that's the kind of thing Cheney (who is the one actually controlling things), with is interest in the oil industry, would let slip.
Gas-electric hybrids don't need any additional infrastructure. They use what exists, ie. gasoline, but in a far more efficient manner than traditional cars through things like regenerative braking and more efficient (but still powerful, think VTEC) engines.
...is someone to invent the flux capacitor, and then we can go back and prevent Gates from being born!
~Philly
And I thought my car ran on shit now.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
Remember Super Dave Osborne ? Garbane - rocket fuel from garbage
Remember that thing they just dumped garbage into at the end of the movie to fuel the car? I wondered if we'd ever see something like that. Now we will!
-
From the BBC website:
The car was unveiled on BBC Television's Tomorrow's World.
"Unveiled" is a bit over the top, I think. Did anyone else see the section? It must have lasted about 15-20 seconds (if that) and consisted of various shots of the car ponceing about some racetrack.
Barely any technical details (in fact the website has more, and that's saying something!). Lots of long shots of the car approaching from the distance & zooming past the camera. No interior shots as far as I recall. Certainly no engine shots. Occasional soft-focus/blur - a marketing executive's wet-dream.
Now ok, I'm not expecting miracles from Tomorrow's World - it's transmitted in the early evening just after the news, so it's aimed at the majority of viewers - by definition it can't be too technical. But this was just bubblegum, pure & simple.
Matt
about a sports car that runs on rotting organic waste. 0-60 in under 6 sec.
Of course, because it's so slippy.
Wait a minute, you meant runs on gas given off by fermenting organic household waste, as one of its fuel supplies?
oops.
To bad they didn't convert a DeLorean.
That would be ~$717,783 or so US. ;)
The BBC article claims it will cost half a million pounds...
That's a lot of money for an experimental car that only gets 62 miles on a tank of "gas."
Speaking of gas, I'm waiting for the obvious slashdot jokes...
Do you like German cars?
I bet it will take a long time. They'll have to stop to get potato chips and Oreos every couple of blocks.
"Hey, man, can we, like, stop for some munchies again?"
I just farted.
- Anyone wanna go for a drive?
I do! I have a whole dance called the Jigawatt dedicated to it!
Dancin Santa
I believe that this thing could possibly run on hot grits. If that's what you were asking.
Dancin Santa
Does it travel through time when it hits 88mph?
Back to the Dancin Santa
A use for my college cafeteria!
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
That is one badly written article. The Kompogas website was so badly slashdotted it took me a couple of hours to look at 3 pages -- but it's quite clear this car does not carry fermenting compost. (You couldn't get anything to ferment fast enough to handle the autobahn.) Kompogas collects the methane from big compost tanks at fixed sites and compress it at 250 bar. (I didn't find anything about how or whether they filter out the other gases produced -- most of these gases would burn too, and if your fuel doesn't leak, you won't care whether it smells like garbage.)
The bulk of the compost winds up as fertilizer. Methane is sort of a byproduct. It's certainly better than filling up landfills and letting the methane burp into the atmosphere. However, Kompogas's web site is so perky and technical specification-free that it pretty much qualifies as fertilizer to begin with...
...it looks cool, too!
It's all Hood
Now if they can just make a veggie-powered computer, coders will be set for life. With all the organic waste stacked around the average programmer's comp (day old pizza, last week's coffee, doritos) he could power the thing for a year!
When I first saw the story on the main page, I was like "YES! i'll be able to make the BTTF2 reference!" Curse you Dancin_Santa!!
Then I thought, "well, maybe it has to take a dump every couple of hours" Goddammit if vectus didn't have the same idea.
And so I wonder: Is slashdot moving beyond "Gee, imagine Natalie Portman driving a beowulf cluster of these!!"
Paizurishitetai desu ka?
Many sewage tratment plants are powered this way.
In Boise, Idaho we have a large pipe in front of one of our treatment plants. The light methane on fire in the bottom and leat the heat/expansion turn turbins going up the pipe.. It is then released at the top of the pipe system.. They did this so they wouldn't have to pay to get rid of methane. It turns out that this system is so efficient that they are installing it all across the country.. (Not that Boise was the first.. but it was installed before it was realized how efficient the system was)
On the same note, there are several systems that pump methane from land fills and burn them. Ney York city has one of these if I remember corectly.
Big thing is retooling the gas stations, etc, though, I'd think. Getting customers to buy some silly newfangled gizmo == profit, replacing all your infrastructure is mostly expenditure.
The energy crisis isn't going away, I wonder how long it will be before this type of thing is econically viable. I have the feeling things will suddenly switch the day that gas prices finally top the total prices of rutabega's and retooling... and not a second before.
Companies have to have some sort of contingency plans, don't they?
Would this be some sort of ethanol hybrid engine?
How much does Kompgas cost to produce? If it is cheaper than ethanol to manufacture?
Is the company that makes it called RinSpeed, or RINDspeed?
Second one sounds more appropriate, doesn't it?
-Scott
And I thought a highway full of gas fume-spewing cars smelled bad enough, now we can all smell organic waste...
http://almostsmart.com
This article was listed along the sidelines in ones of those 'slashboxes' for a day or so now, so why is this news here? I've submitted several good news stories that have all been rejected (even a few that someone else submitted after mine were rejected and theirs got on, and yet this gets in? (grumble)
If God gave us curiosity
and farting could be like a nitro boost?
:)
obviously, large farts...
Expensive today, yes. But solar has a great deal of potential for the future. I'm not an expert in solar power, but I understand that there are approximately 8000 people living off the grid in California. Here's a popular site which is really the front for a subscription magazine which explains how you can get your house off the grid.
However, I'm not sure how well that would work were I live: Seattle.
I take it you're refering to methanol. Question: what is the best way to produce methanol? Is there an environmentally friendly way to produce methanol?
"The only rights you have are the rights you are willing to fight for."
I still think that hydrogen fuel cells are the way to go. This thing requires 220 pounds of stuff so that it can travel 62 miles? That just doesn't cut it.
You can produce hydrogen from water and sun light. Hydogen fuel cells have vastly greater power per pound yeilds than this lame power system, and the exhaust is pure water vapor.
Here's an article about the Mercedes-Benz NEBUS.
"The only rights you have are the rights you are willing to fight for."
Soon I'll use trash to power my overclocked Athlon (1.33gigaHz @ 1.5gigaHz) and I won't have to always jack it up to a short circuit off of my block's power lines. GO SCIENCE!!!
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
I wonder how much cleaner thing really is than other ``alternative energy'' sources. For one it needs also to burn gasoline along with composted sludge gasses. For two I have no reason to believe that the methane and other gasses produced by the decomposition of veggies produce signifigantly less pollutants than say, a very fuel efficient gasoline engine. Maybe if the composting was done in bulk at a local center for purposes of fertilization, and gasses were collected and distrubuted, this would be more viable.
The state is the great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everybody else. ~F. Bastiat
"there would be immediate and dier consequences"
What kind of consequences ?
"After many such attempts by Altec Int. to fight them on this and many other technologies, they eventually had to give in."
Why ?
The only way liberals win national elections is by pretending they're not liberals.
Some DeLorean I heard of that ran on organic matter...used some device called a "Mr. Fusion..."
Think the Mafia would like this car?
I wonder if they built this just for the hell of it or if they actually see there as being a market for this kind of car. I would presume the former, but you never know. 220 lbs of rotting vegetables for every 62 miles seems like a lot of vegatables, especially if you want to go driving more than once a month. (or if more than one person has a car like this)
That's got to be an awful smelling vehicle.
I prefer my rice-burner Honda, frankly.
and why wasn't this put in the humour section? :) Blah, that is alot fo freakin' veggies to go 65 miles.
I agree that this will not solve any energy problem at all, but maybe vehicles that have any combination of this and gasoline, it sure can't hurt. I would more rather throw my table scraps in my "second gas tank" and know that i went that much farther without buying gas.
I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows - Bart Simpson