Entwerfer des Audis over at VWVortex has come up with an excellent alternative to our dependence on foreign oil. I'll let his words and design sketch speak for themselves.
Our addiction to oil has gotten completely out of control, and ethanol and biodiesel require growing things to produce. Hydrogen is good, but we have to use lots of water and energy to produce it, so we should combine it with something else to use it more efficiently. Batteries are nice, but they're very heavy and expensive, and they're not as durable as many of us would like.
My proposal is this: Think about how much raw sewage we waste when it burns so well. Why not power cars with feces? Use a fuel cell to produce water, which can be used to move fecal matter away from the vehicle's occupants and allow it to sit in a U-bend to keep odors out of the interior of the car. The feces are carried to a burn chamber and incinerated, and the heat produced is used to convert water to steam, which is then run through a turbine and used to generate electricity. The energy lost from the steam when travelling through the turbine cools it and returns it to a liquid state, allowing it to be run through the system again. These are the driving ideas behind the Turdbiodiesel!® Hydrogen Sh*t Hybrid†.
†Turdbiodiesel® Hydrogen Sh*t Hybrid is a registered trademark of DoubleNaught, Turbiodiesel!, and Entwerfer des Audis. Note: The seats feature large side bolsters for use in case of constipation. Turdbiodiesel® S will include the standard vehicle, ten 50-lb. sacks of Dipstick County pinto beans, and ten gallons of green chiles.
I grabbed my favorite little local rag this morning to find one of my favorite types of car pics above the fold: the "standing in the empty engine bay" shot. The remarkable thing about this one is that it was Neil Young standing in the empty engine bay of his 1959 Lincoln Continental. He's working with UQM Technologies and H-Line Conversions to put a "bio-hydro-electric" series hybrid drivetrain in what is pretty much America's largest production car ever. The 1959 Continental Mark IV is a whopping nineteen and a half feet long, keeping it out of countless garages built in the 80s and 90s. The "Linc-Volt," as Young is calling the car, will debut in a documetary that Young is expecting to start shooting in April. The biodiesel-fired ICE from H-line will drive a 200bhp/480ft-lb UQM electric motor that will supply the power to the transmission. The conversion has already started, and H-Line has a couple of pictures of Young up on their website as the work was getting started. Young follows in the alternative-fuel footsteps of rocker Willie Nelson, who now runs his entire road crew on biodiesel.
Remember the VW Jetta TDI Cup Series we told you about not too long ago? You know, the one where VW is looking for 40 drivers (30 drivers, 10 backup) between the ages of 16-26 to participate in the series? The one where the winner will walk away with $1500, and the Series Point Champion will nab
a cool hundred grand? And then we mentioned that if the Series Champ is selected for a professional Motorsport series within six months, the
prize is upped to $250,000? Starting to sound familiar? No? Huh.... I could have sworn we mentioned it. Well, it's an incredible opportunity. If you like to drive, and really like to drive fast, and want to do it in a professional environment in a specially equipped factory race car, you might want to head over to VW's website and sign up. The deadline is fast approaching - February 29th! You can check out the full press release after the jump.
Two studies published recently in the prestigious journal Science concluded that biofuels make greenhouse gases worse. Though many groups have touted the environmental benefits of biofuel, these two studies took a close look at the total global environmental impact of producing these so-called "green" fuels.
"Corn-based ethanol almost doubles greenhouse-gas output over 30 years when the land-use changes to grow corn are considered. Cellulosic ethanol made in the U.S. from switchgrass, a fuel that has been singled out by President Bush as a way to reduce the country's dependence on oil, produces 50 percent more emissions than gasoline does, the study said."
Yep, you sure heard that right. These two crazies made the trip from England to West Africa in a ragtag collection of junkyard-salvaged diesel trucks—including this Ford Iveco Cargo flatbed that spent a good part of the journey hauling the Land Cruisers—converted to run on "waste chocolate." Their goal was for the trip to be "carbon-negative," which in biodiesel terms means that the plants used to "grow" the fuel took more carbon dioxide out of the air than the vehicle exhaust was able to put in. Once they made it to Timbuktu, one of the trucks was donated to locals to run on used cooking oil. Everyone wins! Read more at Kicking Tires, and check out the official site of the Biotruck Drive to Timbuktu.
This is an interesting little tutorial on how to make biodiesel. Here, it doesn't even look that messy. Of course, the really ugly part of the process is procuring the waste oil from the local Taco Bell. That probably doesn't look too pretty on video.
Chevy built a diesel version of the El Camino in '83 and '84. Daryl Hannah got one, converted it to biodiesel, drove it around a bit, and now she's selling it. Why? "i love it soo much + I wanna share the love." Sale info will be posted on her site next week.
