Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

SwiftFuel Alternative To Alternative Fuels

Posted by samzenpus on from the how-about-pedals dept.

TheDawgLives writes "PBS has an article by Bob Cringely about the best route to end our dependence on oil and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Instead of replacing all our expensive cars with even more expensive hybrids or electric cars, his suggestion is to use a cheap drop-in replacement for gasoline called Swift Fuel. It is derived from Ethanol, but doesn't require any modification to older cars to prevent corrosion. It can be mixed with gasoline in any amount and can even be distributed using the same network as gasoline, including being pumped in the same pipes and shipped in the same trucks. It is truly a drop-in replacement for gas, and it is real. It is being tested by the FAA for certification in propeller aircraft. It also happens to be about $2 a gallon cheaper than gasoline."

11 of 725 comments (clear)

  1. Correction by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It also happens to be about $2 a gallon cheaper than gasoline for the next five minutes."

    There. Fixed it for ya.

    --
    My blog
  2. Re:Food prices by sleigher · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Your right that it can be grown on land that is not used for food and grow very well there. I think the problem is that the people who do grow food might stand to make more money growing switchgrass so then the land for food will be used anyways. I know if I was a farmer and had a chance to make more money growing a weed I would be all over it. I might be wrong in that. It might not make them more money it is just the first thing that popped in my mind.

    --
    All points of time and space are connected.
  3. Re:Food prices by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Where are all of these nutrients and minerals going to come from to grow new plants?

    I don't know if switchgrass is a legume or not. Legumes make their own nitrogen fertilizer; and cellulosic ethanol could be made from some kind of leguminous grass. You wouldn't need much of the other nutrients (phosphorous, potassium, etc.)

    fertilizer is a safe, renewable source that is completely independent of petroleum...

    No more dependent on oil than other products. Ammonia for nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas; not oil. That stupid oil company TV ad that lumps the two together ("Two-thirds of the oil and natural gas consumed in the U.S. is produced in North America") is very misleading.

    The best alternative is to develope communities in a fashion that is conducive to both mass-transit as well as manual-transit (such as walking, biking, &c.)

    AC's Law of Real Estate: The housing you can afford is 50 miles from where the jobs are.

    Oh, and try walking or biking to work in Wisconsin in February.

  4. Actually you are both quite wrong. by Calledor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is based on an economic consequence. The infrastructure of America is built around the car, and not just any car, but a car that had 60 years of dirt cheap fuel. Our cities and towns are modeled around this. More importantly salaries are also adjusted for a much cheaper transportation cost. You have several options and none of them are particularly appetizing, and none of them have anything to do with global warming. You can produce your own fuel through biofuels, switch to electric cars, or produce more oil from costly hard to access oil reseviors which represent the last of your domestic supply. Nothing else is feasible despite all the fairy farts, adament denials, and heartfelt praying that might be offered. If you don't want to live where public transportation can be possible, then do not expect people to cry for you when something clearly predictable damages your ONLY source of personal transportation.

    1. Re:Actually you are both quite wrong. by sumdumass · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem with peak oil predictions is that it never takes into account for more efficient production advances. You can reverse the peak trends with technology and innovation.

      Peak oil doesn't mean that there is less and less oil, but that the cost of getting to it gets more and more expensive and at some point we end up producing as much as we can. Well, with technology innovations and advances, that peak can be moved to higher levels of production until a point where we actually run out. Canada is pulling bituminous oils for sand which was unheard of or highly impractical 20 years ago. And this totally negates the fact that we can make the fuels produced by oil from coal which means that peak oil is mitigated even more.

      The US is still the number 3 oil producer in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. We have fields not in production, one of which China has got a lease from Cuba on off the coast of Florida. New types of drilling technology and and processing has allowed us to tap into fields once thought to have been out of reach or too costly to use. Peak oil is a red herring of sorts.

    2. Re:Actually you are both quite wrong. by Alioth · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The significant thing isn't a reduction in the amount of oil that can be produced, it's the reduction in cheap oil that can be produced. Only the cheap oil has to run out for the US to be in a severe world of economic hurt.

      --
      Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
  5. Did you even read the article? by Fallen+Kell · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He talks EXACTLY WHY the solar power->electric->battery WON'T WORK! Because it will take over a decade for electric cars make it to most households even if we outlawed all non-electric car sales today! Cars have a life expectancy of 10 years or more, which means you will see that same 2007 car that was bought last year on the road until 2017 or later. The government could even outright outlaw all gas powered cars today and still you would not see a full uptake of electric or hybrid cars for several years because people can't afford to make the purchase. Again, it is usually every 3-4 years for someone to get a different car, but not necessarily a brand new car (usually a used one), and most cars will see at least 10 years and 3 owners. This means people expect to have 10 years to save up to purchase a brand new vehicle, or 3 years to save up for a several year old used one. Any change that would be significant would need to be able to affect ALL cars at the same time, not after 10 years. This is why a fuel change that can be used in existing cars is the method of choice to change our energy usage. Yes, keep the hybrids and electrics coming, but do the thing right now which can affect ALL cars right now! And let the 10+ year solution continue to work as well.

    --
    We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
  6. Which vehicles? by copponex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm sorry, hauling 3500 pounds of steel to carry one person and groceries using controlled explosions is monumentally stupid.

    We need to conserve energy dense fuels for situations where they are are truly needed (emergency vehicles, long-haul transportation through sparse landscapes, aviation).

    What people are upset about is that life is much less convenient when we're all not driving powerful vehicles than can carry 10 folks and tow a boat on a whim. Well, tough shit. You may have to carpool or take the bus. You may not be able to keep your own jetski in a garage a hundred miles from your lake house. These are privileges, not rights.

    Algae based biodiesel is interesting, but again, we need to get away from ICEs except where they are absolutely necessary. An electric car can receive power from any source - nuclear, coal, and even biodiesel through small on-board generators. ICEs will always be addicted to one type of depletable resource - that derived from dead organic material.

  7. Wait wait wait by Calledor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Are you actually advocating that brazil not mechanize the nearly 500 yearold process of sugar cane harvest? Are you nuts? Was industrialization something you found "quaint"?

    1. Re:Wait wait wait by Xenogyst · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "So yes, industrialisation made everyone better off"

      Some of that is because we just changed where our poor are. The minimum wage in the Guangdong province, China (2004) is about $50-100 dollars a month, assuming 40 hours a weeks, is about $0.63-0.31 an hour. Which is about 12% of the current US minimum wage; roughly 8 times less.

      The 3rd/2nd world is our real labor class.
  8. Re:Food prices by misanthrope101 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Yes, but moving to alternative fuels lowers your dependence on oil, and when it dries up:
    1. Everyone who didn't plan is screwed
    2. You are not
    If we don't plan ahead by investing heavily in alternatives, we'll have to figure it out at a time when resources are more scarce, energy is vastly more expensive, foreign firms have already patented things out the wazoo, and our society is struggling to reinvent itself on short notice.

    Surely it isn't controversial to say that you should generally plan ahead for a big, ugly change that you already know is coming. I'm not the smartest cookie, but even I know that.