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Kids Build Soybean Fueled Sports Car
Sterling D. Allan writes "High school students from West Philadelphia High School have designed a sports car that can go from zero to 60 in four seconds and get more than 50 miles to the gallon on soy bean oil. CBS News reports that this unlikely car was the star last week at the Philadelphia Auto Show. Once again, are we seeing the fabled instance of revolutionary technology coming not from the big corporations, but from some unlikely garage. Maybe these guys will open source their design."
I hope that car doesn't have smelly gas like I do from soybeans
and suggest continued research into alternative fuels. While soybeans are a good renewable source of fuel, it is unlikely we could power enough automobiles for the population of the US or the world for that matter. There just isn't enough farmland to produce the crop needed for this kind of fuel source. Perhaps a combination of fuel cell/bio could be developed for reduced consumption.
No. While this is an amazing thing for these kids to do, I'm sure it's far from revolutionary. The article is pretty sparse on details, but it sounds like they just pieced it together. So probably the reason for the great acceleration and fuel mileage is that it's super light from missing a bunch of important things, such as safety.
Those solar powered vehicles are great, infinite mpg, but if you turn too sharply you're sure to splatter yourself on the pavement which is one of the reasons everybody isn't driving one, not because the big oil companies won't let you (although I'm sure they prefer that you don't)
This is a cute story, but really.. o Will this car pass crash testing? o Will this car pass emissions? If you don't need to pass crash test and emissions, heck...you can just put an engine on a go-kart and do 0-60mph in 4 seconds. This story is only a half-step above the recent perpetual motion machine stories.
I hate to sound like a World Vision commercial, but how the hell can we justify trying to use food as a fuel for our cars when there are millions of people in the world starving?
'Biofuels' are not only an incredibly inefficient use of farming land promoted largely by farmers eager to drive up the price of their produce, they are also a startling example of just how completely oblivious we are to the needs of human beings unfortunate enough not to live in modern technologically advanced nations.
I say, screw the car. Send the soybeans to Africa where they would quite literally and without any doubt whatsoever save lives.
Cue vitriolic abuse from 'realists'...
Read Pynchon.
If the "50 mpg" estimate is based on actual real life road testing, rather than the artificially inflated numbers that hybrid cars carry, it's not that bad. This is roughly twice the mileage that most cars get, so either soybean oil would have to drop to "price of gas times 2" or the price of gas would have to rise to "price of soybean oil divided by 2". I rather think that both will happen, both because of economies of scale and because soybean oil is a renewable resource whereas petroleum isn't.
Now I also wonder what the emissions are like on these things... That is after all the other big concern.
Not really. The main reason that burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment is that the CO2 that's released during combustion has been locked in the earth in the form of petroleum for millions of years. It hasn't been a part of our ecosystem for a very long time, so burning fossil fuels actually constitutes a net increase in CO2. Burning soybean oil, on the other hand, may release CO2 and other harmful gases, but the point is that the CO2 released was scrubbed out of the atmosphere by the soybean plant when it was growing.
it should also be noted that their car is getting 50-miles-to-the-gallon with an engine big enough to do 0-60 in 4 seconds. cut that engine down for 80mpg, then hybridize it for 120mpg, and $9 a gallon for oil suddenly sounds a lot less (7.5 cents a mile as opposed to 8.3 cents for a 30mpg car at $2.50 a gallon for gas)
I have a plan for a truck that can drive thousands of miles on less then one gallon! Granted, it is a gallon of plutonium, but less then one gallon!
While it is commendable that these kids put together a working car that runs off soybean oil, this isn't a case of "the man" ((TM)) ignoring innovation for evil gasoline powered cars. Soybeans just are not competitive with gasoline. In fact, the entire idea of using crop land to meet our energy issues is a horrible idea in general.
Don't take me for a tree hugging hippy when I say this, but farming is a necessary evil. Don't get me wrong, I love farmed foods. I merrily buy my vegetables without bothering to glance if it is organic or not. I do recognize though that there is a price that comes with this. Very little land in the world can renew itself year after year. Farming by its very definition sucks up nutrients from the ground to be hauled off. Even organic farming is grossly destructive to the ground. More then one civilization in the world has simply collapsed because the soil died. There are entire continents, namely Australia, where there is absolutely no natural soil renewal. Farming almost always has a very high ecological cost. This isn't a trivial cost that we associated with other renewable energies like windmills where a handful of birds die. These are very serious nation threatening costs.
Certainly you can use fertilizers to keep the soil alive. With good farming practices like what are seen in the US and much of the first world you can keep the land fertile almost indifferently. Even so, these nations pay a heavy cost to keep their farmland fertile and watered. The environmental damage outside of the farm can be serious. When lesser educated farms in third world nations use these methods to keep the soil alive the result can be catastrophe for the environment.
We don't want more land to go to farming. We don't want more third world nations to burn down their trees to try and feed the agro business. Resorting to farming as a source of energy should be the last resort we fall back on, not the first. Algae, solar collector making, and wind power to make more fuel? Great. Creating a greater demand for farm land to make more fuel? Terrible idea.
So, congratulations to these kids for making a fun proof of concept, but this isn't the future of fuel.
But modern diesel cars do take a conversion because they need to have synthetic tubing.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
also, the engine needs to be primed and heated, otherwise the oil is too dense.
It is a "glue" until alternative means (solar,nuclear,hydrogen,whatever..) can be built into the econemy. If we were to go completley (fossil)oil free today, there are so many cars and other machines that would be useless our econemy and possibly civilization would colapse. Soy oil and ethyl alcohols could keep these machines going until we can replace them with differently fueled vehicle or machines. The average car will last around 15+ years. After about 5 the first owner usualy gets rid of it and it changes hands until some poor sap gets it and it is the best they can afford and the cycle continues. After about 25 years, the car is probably scraped, recycled or preserved in some fasion were the transition from one type fuel to another totaly non dependent oil could be resonably done.
One of the most interesting parts of this article is the mention of sportscar and 50 mpg in the same sentence. Most if not all production diesel (soy bean oil's substitute)powered cars get less then 46 mpg. Some don't even get 25mpg if you count the trucks. Diesel fuel is said to have a higher amount of stored energy and is considered more efficient then soy oil. This same system getting 50mpg in soy might lend diesel fueled car the ability to get 60+mpg while still retaining performance.
I'm sure in about a week we'll see something like "Kids who made soybean powered car exposed as hoax." (this message paid for by the Oil Producing Companies of America)
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
You simply don't get it, do you?! Bio-diesel is not about how much you spend on gas.
...) plant through the process called photosynthesis emits O2 (oxygen) and collects the CO2 (carbon-dioxide) in exchange. When you burn the bio-diesel in your engine, the SAME amount of CO2 gets back to the atmosphere, not more! It's a closed cycle. No harm done.
BIO-DIESEL IS ABOUT CLEAN ENERGY!
While petro-diesel adds extra amount of CO2 (carbon-dioxide) to the atmosphere it causes the green-house effect that heats up the Earth, melts the glaciers, the icecap on the poles, dries out lakes, kills species. Yes, the green-house effect is caused by YOU, too!
Bio-diesel is clean. The soy (peanut, canola,
Bio-diesel has other advantages, as well. It's non-toxic. It's non-flamable, ie. does not explode during an accident. Get yourself educated about this matter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel
In Europe there are already many gas stations that sell bio-diesel. And is cheaper, too! But the USA... Come on! Have you heard of the Kyoto pact? Countries by signing that pact made a promise that they will reduce their CO2-emission. Your president did not sign that pact (it was during his first mandate). Because he did not want to tell to his "fellow americans" - to YOU - to get your fat ass out of your car, while he knew, if he does that, he does not get re-ellected. Many lives would have been spared in Iraq... And while YOU can drive your car and have your daily road-rage YOU don't give a shit, that the 4 giants: your Government, the Car builders, the Oil Companies and Weapon Manufacturers go happily hand-in-hand. Ever wondered how come no american company builds hybrids? (Except for those couple of thousand pick-ups GM built for Mimami)...
(No, I don't own a car, I ride each day 10 miles on my bycicle to get to work and I'm healty and have a beautyful body and no overweight. When I rent a car I rent a diesel and I tank bio-diesel only.)
that sounds just wonderful. off you go. bye :)
But these are all petrol powered super cars. The fastest accelerating diesel I know of is the VW Touareg which reaches 60 in 7.5 seconds. Thats a big heavy 4 wheel drive, maybe if you took its V10 and dropped it into a light weight kit car it could do it in 4 seconds
If you try to build something idiot proof, someone builds a better idiot.
Incase you guys missed it http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/13796737.htm this isn't the first car like this and it's not a completely new or radical design.. it's just not popular yet
For various reasons, diesels do not have nearly the efficiency penalty that gasoline engines do when operating at low loads. As a result, resizing the engine to be smaller won't really help that much. Plus most of the acceleration comes from the electric motor I suspect, just as it does with most other hybrids.
BTW, the main reason diesels are so much more efficient than gasoline engines is the way they are throttled. In a gasoline engine (Otto or Atkinson cycle), if the fuel burns too lean (too much air), the combustion temperature increases significantly and increases NOx emissions, and more importantly, tends to melt parts of the engine. The result is that to throttle down a gasoline engine, you can't just remove fuel - you need to remove AIR and adjust fuel delivery as appropriate, by essentially choking the engine's air supply. Thus at low loads the engine is essentially breathing through a tiny straw, and paying penalties in pumping losses.
Diesels, on the other hand, usually do not have any throttles in their air intake, they CAN be throttled simply by adjusting fuel supply. (I'm not sure why it is that they don't have to deal with lean burning, I'm guessing that one reason is that fuel is injected during the combustion cycle, rather than being premixed prior to ignition.) Since the engine never has to breathe through a straw (Although I think some large trucks do have options for switching a restrictor into the exhaust to allow for engine breaking), it can operate much more efficiently at low loads.
Diesels also happen to have higher peak efficiencies, but that doesn't affect choice of engine sizing nearly as much as the lack of pumping losses at low loads.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
This is why if the USA is going to produce biodiesel on a large scale, it cannot rely on plants such as corn, peanuts, soybeans, sugar cane/beet, or plant waste.
The best solution is to use oil-laden algae, which can create biodiesel fuel and heating oil several hundred times more on a per pound basis than from plant sources. A company called GreenFuel Technologies is looking at using the exhaust emissions from coal-fired and natural gas-fired plants to "feed" vertical tubes of oil-laden algae, which can grow these algae at very fast rates. Also, the "waste" from the processing can be used to make animal feed, plant fertilizer and/or ethanol fuel!
Interesting.... sounds a lot like this vehicle by San Diego State University Department of Mechanical Engineering HEV (hybrid electric vehicle) Team.
It also uses a AC Propulsions electric motor (200hp) (which is what the kids used) and a Volkswagon turbo-charged direct-injection diesel engine.
The SDSU site goes into great detail about other engine considerations and why they decided on what they chose based on scientific data and research.
The Internet Archive shows the site has been http://www.engineering.sdsu.edu/~hev/index.htm">ma inly unchanged since 2000, long before the kids started their project in 2003.
Did the kids give any credit to San Diego State University for pretty much stealing their entire concept?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone