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Posted by Joe Cimoch on Thursday, August 21, 2008 at 20:04:03 :
From Jalopnik:
Not only has Wayne Keith developed a system that allows a normal automobile to run on burning wood, but he's also planning a coast-to-coast drive from South Carolina to California to prove it's the real deal. Basically the system gassifies the wood and feeds the syngas into the standard engine. It can run on pretty much any biomass material you can burn, including switchgrass, crop residues, and probably dead hobos and hookers too. So how much wood would a wood-burning truck burn if a wood-burning truck could burn wood?
Keith's 1991 Dodge Dakota V8 smokes through about a pound of wood per mile, and his back-up 1987 V6 Dakota gets about 1.5 miles per pound. The V8 tops out at 80 MPH and the V6 can squeeze out 65 MPH. So, if burning wood sounds like a better way to pollute the air than burning gasoline, and your truck doesn't have some newfangled fuel-injection system, this just might be the way to avoid gas pumps and dispose of that annoying forest in your backyard.