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Posted by Caleb (Manhattan, KS) [70.184.232.53] on Wednesday, January 02, 2013 at 14:05:25 :
When I was running demolition derby near a decade ago, we would collect what we called "drip gas" off the oil wells and mix it in our fuel. Apparently it is a condensate of light ends from the crude oil and is mostly methane. It really helped keep the buggers running when you took a whallop..also produced a 12"+ flame out the top of the hedder at full throttle so it was good for puttin on on a show..problem was turning them off....sometimes the motor would sit and "diesel" for 10 minutes or more till it cooled off. Only quick way to shut em down when they did that was a CO2 extinguisher. Kind of nasty stuff but free and fun!!
Another thing to research is something called a wood gasifier. There are hundreds of examples of them on the internet. My dad has been talking about building a truck that runs on wood gas for the last 15 years. I know you need full control of your timing and fuel jets. The process works by heating up relatively dry organic waste like wood (pulp, bark, shavings, etc) in a sealed container to the point just before combusion where it begins to offgas (Im thinking some form of wood alcohol) then you collect that gas and pipe it to your engine via the carburetor which then becomes nothing more than a throttle body. Im thinking if there were a way to collect the gas in a home made plant of some kind, it could be compressed and stored similar to propane, then a propane conversion would work with the motor and be a whole lot more friendly to operate.
Personally, I am going to continue to buy diesel vehicles, then join the legalize marijuana movement. I could care less about the social application of pot, but I am very interested in the use of marijuana as a food supplement, source of bio diesel and ethanol, and the other applications for industrial hemp.
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