155 MPH Biofuel Truck Breaks Speed Record

An anonymous reader writes "A team of students from Boise University recently shattered the world land speed record for biofuel vehicles by traveling 155 mph in a vegetable oil-powered pick-up truck dubbed the Greenspeed. To achieve the speed record the vehicle was upgraded with a compound-turbocharged 5.9 liter Cummins straight-six diesel engine that produces 700 horsepower, and it ran on an oil mix consisting of cottonseed and sunflower oil."

Comments

155mph isn't green using any fuel

[Colin Smith]

The fertiliser used to grow the plants was created using the Haber-Bosch process which uses lots of natural gas.
The ploughing etc is all highly energy (oil) intensive.
The processing an transport use existing oil reserves.

Finally, the energy consumption of the vehicle increases with the square of the speed.

Who cares?

[fozzydabear]

So someone put a huge, guzzling turbo diesel into a truck to get it to go 155mph using vegetable oil which has the same carbon chain length as diesel except three of them are bonded as a triglyceride. Vegetable oil being a niche fuel and will never be able to scale up as a serious fossil fuel replacement. What a useless demonstration.

Re:I want one.

[jellomizer]

It is more of a So What. The BioFuel Truck can travel at 155MPH so what. That thing is puffing out carbon and smog there is no tomorrow . There isn't any words how many MilePerGallon. Yea yea you can regrow the plants and they will take the carbon back... But how much extra carbon will we produce to make the oil. How many Carbon Eating trees will we need to cut down to grow this material.

Our Roads cannot handle 155MPH anyways. Even where there is no speed limit most people don't go that fast.

Re:Grandfather told me: Eat everything on your pla

[The Creator]

Food cannot stop starvation in a growing population, only family planning can do that. Family planning comes with education.

Trying to stop starvation with food is like trying to put out a fire with fuel.

Re:I want one.

[migla]

And what about the burning of food stuffs in cars?!? That sounds totally insane, when there are people about that rather eat those sunflowers. It would be as crazy as if we based the entire economy on lying and greed!