Q- Fuel & Resources: After all these years, has no one invented some...

[battleknight24]

... of artificial fuel that can effectively power automobiles and machines? Why are there no cars that run on 90-99% solar power or electricity? Aren't there powerful machines that run on some type of magnetic power?

Is it the entire oil industry, through lobbying and contributions, that has prevented the research and development for these kinds of things?

Peace,

[dcfirefighter]

1. A little

but mostly it's because there's a natural, but limited source of high-energy density liquid fuel available at little financial cost.

[jobycom]

2. Diesel engines can run easily on vegetable oil

Though most in cars these days won't without some modifications.

Mine will. When diesel costs more than vegetable oil, I'm set.

[woodsprite]

4. Dh and I were talking about that tonight. Would

they still tow as much as whatever the vehicle was rated for? We're looking for a new tow vehicle sometime after the first of the year and we were discussing a biodiesel model.

[jobycom]

10. Biodiesel and vegetable oil are not the same thing. But, yes, they should

biodiesel is actual diesel fuel, made by a chemical reaction involving lye, vegetable oil, and (usually) methanol. There's a chemical name I don't remember. I'm running my car on that now. It requires no conversion whatsoever. In fact, biodiesel is not only a fuel, but a solvent, and will burn cleaner in your engine, and has a higher level of lubricity than diesel, so your engine will run smoother. Emissions are much cleaner than even a hybrid. You can switch back and forth between diesel and biodiesel without a care in the world.

You can buy biodiesel in some places, or you can make your own, if you have a source for methanol and vegetable oil--either new or used.

You can also run a diesel engine off vegetable oil, either clean or used. For used oil, you have to filter it, and you have to convert your tank system. Most cars (except one or two) require two tanks. You have to start the car on regular diesel, then switch it to oil, then switch back to regular just before you shut it down. If most of your trips are short ones, this isn't worth it. The conversion also requires a tank heater, because the oil has to be heated enough to melt the trans fats.

With clean oil, what they call SVO, you don't need the tank heater (though it wouldn't hurt), but you still need the dual tank system, except on a few cars (old Mercedes five cylinders fromt the 80s being the main one).

You can find conversion kits for these vehicles, and they don't require too much to be done to the car. Look up greasecar and greasel, for instance.

This vegetable oil conversion still lets you run regular or bio diesel with no problem.

That's an overview. There's a ton of research on the net, and it's been done for decades, and it is somewhat common in Europe, so there's nothing experimental about it. Google "biodiesel" or "WVO" (waste vegeteble oil) or "SVO" (though you'll get a lot about mustangs and tauruses with that one). I don't have my bookmarks on this computer, or I'd give you a few links.

There's one other method, of mixing SVO with some type of fuel, like diesel, or kerosine. This supposedly gums up some engines after a while, though there is much debate.

Here are two links: http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel.html (this has lots of info on SVO and WVO as well. Search around the whole website)

http://www.biodiesel.org/

[battleknight24]

5. Are you serious?

I don't know anything about cars, so this sounds really foreign to me...


Peace,

[jobycom]

11. Yes. The diesel engine was invented to run off vegetable oil

Read my other post, it's longer.

[Hello_Kitty]

8. Wow!! Did you modify it yourself? How does it work? n/t

[jobycom]

12. You can convert almost any model diesel pretty easily

See my longer post above.

I have an 82 Mercedes five cylinder diesel. That car has the perfect arrangement of components to run off just about anything without conversion. I still haven't gotten the courage to pour vegetable oil into my tank, though. I do use biodiesel whenever I can get it.

[The Jacobin]

3. Not so much prevented as made seem unnecessary

Why spend billions on research when gaw wasn't that expensive anyway?

I expect the hydrogen storage and transport problems that hold back fuel cell deployment to get lots of private research money in a hurry.

[Hello_Kitty]

6. One justification I hear for the lack of alternatives

Is how expensive they are to develop and how costly the prototype vehicles would be. Well, that's been true of practically every technological advance in history. The first models are hideously expensive and then mass-production reduces the costs and makes them accessible for consumers. This has been the case with cars, radios, televisions, computers, and numerous other invention. So it's a bogus argument IMO. Safe, non-polluting, and non-fossil fuel dependent alternative energy will be difficult to develop but we need to get on it.

[Holly_Hobby]

7. I don't think

Henry Ford and Dr. Diesel intended for cars to run on gasoline. The original diesel engine ran on peanut oil. Ford actually made a hemp car and ran on ethanol made from hemp. Of course, the oil companies had a hissy fit and hemp was made illegal to grow and possess.

Even potatoes! -

"There's enough alcohol in one year's yeild of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for one hundred years." - Henry Ford

Too bad Henry lost the war with the oil companies.

http://www.hempcar.org/ford.shtml

[Qibing Zero]

9. Working on hydrogen power would be a good start, but...

..people just don't care about the future. Everything is now, now, now - money, money, money.

Wish I could find the JFK quote that applies here.

[wli]

13. Fischer-Tropsch is economical at ca. 35 USD/barrel

That produces real oil the same way the Nazis et al did during WWII.