Nuclear reactors, nappies, dead cats: weirdest alternative fuels

Cow pats, coffee beans, deceased cats and dirty nappies might not sound the sort of stuff you want to fill your car with, but there’s no arguing alternative fuels need some applied lateral thinking as well as logical.

The lengths some people go to in pushing the alternate fuel energy boundaries is applaudable. Laughable in some cases, but still worth d’othing your cap of reason to all the same. Although some don’t seem to have immediate implications to cars, delving a little deeper beneath the surface and using your noggin allows us all to see into the future of alternative fuels and the more abstract avenues and garden-associated paths we could be led up.

For instance what sort of individual dreams of running their car on coffee beans you may ask yourself in a moment of solitude and reflection on life’s great puzzles, yet thankfully MT can fill in the missing blanks. Thinking outside of the box is what’s required as the worldwide population faces up to the necessity to find ways other than petrol and diesel on which to fuel our cars. As this little list proves, some do this with more bizarre results than others.

With the harnessing of wind power and provisions for electric batteries gaining the more column inches when it comes to alternate power sources for your car, that’s not to say more ‘alternative’ means to an internal combustion engine end haven’t been given air space over the past few years. MT travels beyond vegetable oil and chip fat though and pinpoints some of the more leftfield inventions that didn’t quite escape the lab.

Hybrids and biofuels

As we watched Toyota and Honda having initially going down the electric hybrid route with the Prius and Civic Hybrid respectively, other car manufacturers large and small have tinkered around with other sources, materials and schemes of processing to land at what they consider the right way forward at this transitional stage.

That said, Honda’s FCX Clarity is the first dedicated fuel cell vehicle to go into mass production and perhaps will define a growing trend if some of these hardier perennials don’t pay off.

With Lotus seeming to have plumped for bio-ethanol - along with other car manufacturers like Saab BioPower and Ford FlexiFuel being just two exponents of a related theme – looking to kick start alternative fuel adventures on a more conservative footing, it’s left to the following pioneers to deliver alternative solutions to a growing problem. Having said that, we take ethanol as our introduction.

Ethanol

Ethanol is arrived at as a beery by-product, or rather a crucial part of the ale-making process. The fermenting of sugar. It is entirely possible to run your car on pure ethanol – as all the vehicles in America’s IndyCar Racing League do – but sadly cost effectiveness renders a sticky limit to its potential.

The price you pay for raw sugar cane crops for starters. Distilling ethanol is indeed a plausible and viable way in which to power vehicles, yet the likelihood of you doing this in your own back yard remains ambitious. Sweden is amongst those at the forefront of such a movement, and being behind an interesting pilot scheme.

With authorities confiscating 200,000 gallons of beer, wine and spirits that had been illegally imported into the county in 2006, they then used these ill-gotten gains to fire up thousands of cars, buses, taxis and trains, having distilled and having its properties re-organised into biofuel for passenger transport usage.

Wood

This is more workable if you’re born into American parentage and happen to own a sawmill, yet the principle in itself could be adopted by anyone.

It’s reported that the average US saw mill processes 7.1 million board-feet of lumber per year. Which by anyone’s calculations is one heck of a lot of what is effectively labeled, waste wood. Times this by the number of global saw mills and you see the scale.

And with that scale comes potential. Tons of wood waste is discarded – although a percentage is now used to fabricate particle boards – and as such as it rots down actually becomes a danger to the environment by oozing methane from its eroding pores. Which we all know is a harmful greenhouse gas.

However the solution – one that could easily have long-term implications on vehicle-fuelling – isn’t as far-fetched as some of the others mentioned hereabouts. Power plants are being built to specifically burn this excess wood, and the red-hot temperatures involved could easily generate electricity.

Nigeria was at the forefront of this new energy-utilizing industrial revolution, with a 14-megawatt wood waste power plant the fulcrum of the world’s attentions.

By transferring harvested sawdust from local mills the electricity established by the process of pulping would in turn be used to power the whole operation; thus making the facility self-sufficient and moreover a sustainable alternate fuel. In fact so much surplus energy will come about that it could be sold on to power companies, and that way potentially filter its way into the automotive market, if only by association at this juncture.

Second-hand nappies

OK, this might need a good strap line, but the underlying unique selling proposition wouldn’t kick up a stink. A process called Pyrolysis has been found to turn used nappies into raw energy and as such an excellent fuel source with transferable potential for vehicle-powering.

Rubbish – of which nappies constitute, and contribute greatly to – can already be turned into fuel oil with minimum pollutant eventualities. Different from traditional incineration methodology, the bales of soiled materials are exposed to extreme temperatures in an air tight, oxygen free environment which breaks down the molecules inside to re-organize and ultimately create useful byproducts.

Testing has determined that Pyrolysis provides the positive results when it’s been adapted to one particular, consistent material falling under its unique heating powers.

Mixed rubbish contains all manner of differing products constructed from a plethora of materials, whilst nappies provide continuity in terms of the plastics and fabrics used in their construction, as well as having a fair idea as to what extra-curricular human endeavours have gone into their lifecycle.

Something that would normally take 100 years to biodegrade could be put to better use with immediate effect via this closed process that doesn't involve combustion, so emissions are strictly controlled, and three materials emerge at the end of it: a synthetic methane-like gas, a diesel-like oil and carbon-rich char.

Solar paint

Quite possible the best invention ever in MT’s estimation when you think of the application to the car. A special solar paint that encourages and traps the sun’s energies on a vehicle’s surface, which then empowers said vehicle to motorize itself. Genius.

Of course we’re getting ahead of ourselves a little bit here, as so far as we can ascertain this enlightening technology is being talked about – and up – in relation to more static objects. Like very tall buildings that could house a cornucopious amount of heat-attracting shields to generate all the energies it required to serve.

Engineers are said to be looking into what is essentially a paint on solar panel that absorbs extreme temperature, which can be daubed across the steel panels that swaddle any number of buildings in this day and age.

According to fully paid up members of MENSA, the sun’s interaction with the special paint, and - directly beneath its glare, the steel – this triggers a current that can be captured and diverted to instill life into other vital components.

Given the fact we’re in the UK, and that sunlight doesn’t figure too strongly for the most part – coupled with the fact that it would take a lot of steel exposure to harness the sun’s good – this might not seem the most workable solution. Scientists reckon that on an annual basis the solar-teasing coatings would conspire to produce energy equal to that of 50 wind farms in Britain alone, so room for some free thinking there.

Nuclear-powered car

Now we know the word nuclear mind startle a few people out there, and force others to dig out their anti-warfare garb complete with beads and flora and fauna and renew their subscriptions to the CND before heading for their nearest military installation to sit cross-legged in front of, and that’s fair enough.

But this had nothing to do with arming ourselves for a Muscovite invasion, and everything to do with running our cars from here to Lidl without buggering up the atmosphere any more.

Ford knocked up a concept car in 1958 called the ‘Nucleon’, which was powered by a nuclear-charged Power Capsule – containing a radioactive core element - sitting in the car’s boot. Ford created this on the assumption that future nuclear reactors would be small, safe, portable and user-friendly.

And those garages would build nuclear car-charging pumps on their forecourts, for a vehicle that could actually venture 5,000 miles before needing to rethink its route to include a nuclear half-way house.

Electronic torque converters would replace a conventional drive train, yet by and large its exterior aesthetics remaining true to the upswept fins and rakishly-lined ideals of the day.

Pint sized-atomic fission reactors lay beneath a stylised steel disc mounted on the Nucleon’s trunk, that worked on the same premise as nuke powered submarines and aircraft carriers.

For all its promise of silent, mega-miles passenger car travel, the very real threat of being vapourised – complete with most of the postcode you were journeying through at the time of impact - in a fender bender was hard to get past.

Unsurprisingly the Ford Nucleon never went into production, but the notion isn’t as rooted in '50's sci-fi bunkum as it first might seem. Nuclear power is enjoying something of a resurgence in popularity in these days of limited fossil fuels and carbon footprints..

Nuclear-fuelled hydrogen always emerges as the clear favourite to succeed rather than the no-prisoner mentality of the Atomic Age personified by the brave, forward-thinking Nucleon, so much so that some industry analysts are predicting it’ll be ‘the ethanol of 2017’.

Sourcing hydrogen in a carbon-neutral emitting manner will appeal to many manufacturers and consumers, as will the running costs and possible range of such vehicles, although nearly always offset by memories of a inconvenient history peppered by large scale nuclear accidents.

Grass clippings and cow pats

This is an interesting one. As grass mowings deteriorate they expel more of the highly flammable gas known as methane. If you add water to the equation and place it in a sealed container for a few days for the solutions to ‘work’ the methane would ignite with the liquid and theoretically spark your car into action.

Imagine the vacuum-sealed container used in this impromptu experiment to represent a car’s fuel tank to get a fuller picture of the opportunity presenting itself here. Cow effluent is also highly noxious, explosive matter that as a byproduct could be put to some good in the same way.

The story goes that swamps are breeding grounds for methane, and one American chap decided to conduct his own knowledge-broadening by poking a stick into the muddy waters of a nearby swamp and then placing his lighter next to it. Suddenly igniting, it singed the volunteer’s hair and face but went a long way to prove his point. Straight to the trauma ward we believe.

Coffee beans

We all know that caffeine provides us with a sudden burst of adrenalin that can last hours and take us to all sorts of unchartered highs, so the concept of giving your car the caffeine buzz shouldn’t be that alien. Gasification is the name of the game here though, and the resultant process of.

Coffee grounds are the key ingredients utilized, set to maximum heat mode and burnt up to create a combustible gaseous substance. Oxygen plays its part in gasification too, so as to convert biomass into a flammable vapor concoction that can grease a vehicle’s cogs and spinneys enough to provoke not just sudden, but sustained movements and forward-pointing trajectories.

For the unlearned, gasification proved itself as a popular and important part of 19th century life, and was commonly used to spark vital mechanized components into life until the advent of petroleum at the end of World War II.

Salt water

A bloke going by the name of John Kanzius stumbled upon a way to ignite salt water whilst trying to discover a cure for cancer. Employing the external radio wave machine he was attempting to destroy cancerous cells with, he accidentally made another find which could just power up our cars.

During the process of trying to desalinate salt water, the water suddenly ignited, and has been likened by experts to the process of generating hydrogen which can be burned as an alternative fuel.

While the phenomenon is interesting, it’s not yet deemed practical for energy generation and it’s said that more energy is consumed by the radio frequency device than is produced for burning. Efficiency-wise, they are presently at around 76% of Faraday's theoretical limit if that’s of any guide for you considering some home fuel remedying.

Dead cats

Dr Christian Koch from Kleinhartmannsdorf in Germany uses ‘interesting’ methods of determining what materials we can and cannot source with the potential to run our vehicles on as 2008 creeps steadily toward 2009. Old tyres, weeds and animal cadavers being just three of his ideas up for review, with the later catching MT’s attention the most.

The inventor who – crazed or otherwise engaged - turns dead cats into diesel is quite a page header by even the most nonsensical of red top’s standards of decency, but that’s exactly what Dr Koch has gone and done, saying he’s found a way to make cheap diesel fuel out of dead moggies.

They are heated up to 300 Celsius to filter out hydrocarbon which is then turned into diesel by a catalytic converter. He said the resulting "high quality bio-diesel" costs just 15 pence per litre.

However there are drawbacks, not least on the animal rights front. If we – like he clearly has – choose to ignore this then the other main blight is the fact that whilst the cadaver of a fully grown cat can produce 2.5 litres of fuel sounds impressive in some quarters, this physically means that around 20 cats are needed for a full tank.

He said: "I tank my car with my own diesel mixture and have driven it for 105,000 miles without any problems."Annelise Krauss of the

Dresden Animal Protection Association wasn't quite as upbeat mind, and blasted Koch's new diesel saying: "This is as bad as experimenting on animals."

Enter a world of motoring mayhem!

Check out weirdest car stories from around the Web: goose smash terror; rabbits running amok; stupid car thieves; unscheduled 50mph wheelchair rides and an unfortunate end for a Bugatti Veyron.

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