wood-gas vehicles

[Anders Hoveland]

All those cars do not need petrol. There are plenty of wood chips (or other organic material) that can be burned instead!

 

http://www.lowtechma...d-gas-cars.html

 

On a weight basis, wood chips have 40 percent of the energy content of petrol.

Edited April 16, 2012 by Anders Hoveland

[CaptainPanic]

All those cars do not need petrol. There are plenty of wood chips (or other organic material) that can be burned instead!

 

http://www.lowtechma...d-gas-cars.html

 

On a weight basis, wood chips have 40 percent of the energy content of petrol.

Except that the total global industrial wood consumption is only 1,600 million m³/year (in 2005).

And the total motor vehicle fuel consumed in the US alone is already 174,930 million gallons/year (in 2006).

 

Let's assume that 1 m³ of wood is 1 ton, and that it contains a maximum of 19 GJ/ton of energy (lower heating value, when it's completely bone-dry).

Let's also assume that 1 liter of vehicle fuel contains 36 MJ/liter.

 

A little conversion into Joules/year gives us:

 

Global industrial wood consumption: 30 * 10¹⁸ J/year

US vehicle fuel consumption: 24 * 10¹⁸ J/year

 

Please note that the energy in wood is an upper estimate. The density of wood is probably lower, and the lower heating value is also lower.

 

So, to replace just the vehicle fuel of the USA, we would have to pretty much double the global wood production. And that's ignoring the fact that the wood cars would have additional losses in the conversion from wood to fuel.

 

Let's not do this. I think it would be the end of the Amazon forest (and I'm usually siding with the greens, and a big fan of sustainable energy).

[JustinW]

First of all, what is the political angle.

 

And secondly would wood chips produce the amount of compression need to turn a motor.

 

And third, a motor would have to be redesigned entirely to compensate for a fuel system.

 

 

 

edit: cross posted with Captain, and completely agree.

Edited April 16, 2012 by JustinW

[CaptainPanic]

Sorry but this does not seem relevant at all.

First of all, what is the political angle.

The article is purely technical. Let's not derail this with the political gibberish that we have in so many other threads.

 

[edit] apologies, this was put in the politics forum. I had not seen that. Political gibberish is of course acceptable in the politics forum.

 

And secondly would wood chips produce the amount of compression need to turn a motor.

Please read the link that Anders Hoveland provided. The answer is yes, it works.

 

And third, a motor would have to be redesigned entirely to compensate for a fuel system.

Please read the link that Anders Hoveland provided. The answer is yes, it works.

 

JustinW, I understand you're probably not the biggest fan of this kind of technology (neither am I, read my post above). But this particular post sounds an awful lot like trolling to me. You did not investigate the article at all, and your points are irrelevant.

[Anders Hoveland]

There are other more sustainable organic materials that could be used, besides wood.

 

Switchgrass, for example, which can be easily grown in dry cold places where other agricultural crops cannot thrive. Switchgrass is also fast growing.

http://farmfutures.c...le-fuel-0-28319

 

wood-gas using switchgrass certainly would be more sustainable than corn or sugar derived ethanol.It takes a significant quantity of energy to convert cellulose biomass into ethanol, so much of the energy content is lost. wood-gas avoids this disadvantage

 

At the very least, wood gas could be used to provide hydrogen to fuel cell powered cars, as the wood gas typically contains about 11 percent hydrogen by volume, and even higher yields can be achieved with specialised high-temperature conversion processes.

http://reviews.cnet....gen-your-trash/

BMW is working on a project to turn the methane gas generated by landfills into hydrogen.

 

article mentions that natural gas could be converted into hydrogen in the actual car itself, using a heated catalyst.

Methanol reformers are being considered as a component of a hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicle, which can produce pure hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide by reacting a methanol (or some other fuel) and water (steam) mixture over a heated catalyst on the car. A prototype car, the NECAR 5, was introduced by Daimler-Chrysler in the year 2000. The primary advantage of a vehicle with a reformer is that it does not need a pressurized gas tank to store hydrogen fuel; instead methanol is stored as a liquid.

 

Probably wood gas could be used as the fuel to generate hydrogen, and this could be done while the car is operating.

 

http://www.scienceda...50323144532.htm

Edited April 20, 2012 by Anders Hoveland

[DrDNA]

This is all pretty well known. On a carborated vehicle, you can basically run the gas directly into the air intake without much modification.

 

There were approximately half a million "wood gas" vehicles in Germany during WW2. And thousands of others over the rest of Europe.

 

When considering the miles/BTU, you will also need to consider that fact that several hundred pounds of equipment (stove, condensers, etc) have to added to the vehicle.

 

PS: it doesn't have to run on wood. I saw a truck operate at a nanotechnology conference (go figure, ehy?) that ran on pecan shells. Also, it should also run on waste paper (junk mail) and other cellulose based trash that would otherwise be bound for the landfill.

Edited April 23, 2012 by DrDNA