[DMCForum] Alternative fuels

["Dave Stragand" <dave.stragand@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm surprised with all of this discussion, people are missing the
obvious for our cars... natural gas.  Most vehicles can be converted (or
set up for dual fuel) very easily, and last I checked, NG was about $.70
an equivalent gallon.  

 

There are home 'putt putt' compressors to refuel overnight, and there
are a few NG gas stations around.  I have known several people with
these conversions, and they loved them.

 

Here's more info:

 

http://www.ngvc.org/

http://www.ngvi.com/ 

http://www.ngv.org/

 

Also, a REALLY good solution is steam turbines to generate electricity.
Amazingly efficient compared to combustion engines.

 

I'll quote:

 

Bill Lear, on the other hand, moved in different directions. In 1968 he
turned his eyes towards low emission engines for cars and began toying
with steam power. He correctly believed the external combustion engine
could be much more efficient then the internal combustion engine. Lear
vapordyne steamers actually used fluorocarbons (Freon) in place of
water, and ran it in a closed loop so there was no fluid loss. 

Lear recruited English turbine engineer, Ken Wallis, who had been
involved with Andy Granatelli in the STP turbine Indy car. Ken believed
Lear could earn publicity by running two steam cars at Indy in 1969.
Later that idea was shifted to 1970, but Wallis resigned in June 1969
before the cars got on the track. 

One Indy racer was finished before the project was shelved. A former
Lear employee purchased it and stored it for several years, but more
recently it had been standing under a cotton wood tree in a field of
alfalfa in Nevada. After disappearing for 28 years the Indy car
prototype still exists, and was recently fixed up, displayed at a couple
of shows, and was recently sold at auction. 

The "Steam Powered Indy Car" was developed during the gas crunch years
when the petroleum supplies were in question. It was intended to lead
America into the world of steam power and save us from Detroit's dirty,
environment damaging, internal combustible engines. 

Lear actually had a small fleet of vapordyne cars running at Bonneville
and was getting some amazing performance out of them. He even had steam
powered busses running that he used to ferry the press about. I recall
reading reports on a regular basis at the time in either Popular
Science, Popular Mechanics or Mechanics Illustrated on Lear's progress.
The technology looked very promising at the time. 

As I recall, the biggest technical problem was the start up time, that
is the time it took to build up a head of pressure in the boiler from a
cold start. I believe Lear had reduced this down to less then a minute.
The fact that few took Lear's ideas seriously didn't much help either.
[Dave's note: If you use electric motors during the warm-up period, this
argument disappears].

If Lear had been successful you might be driving a vapordyne steam
turbine powered car today that would burn kerosene or alcohol. And it
would get better mileage, and possibly be a lot zippier.

-Dave

 



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

---

YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS

•  Visit your group "DMCForum" on the web.
   
•  To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
   DMCForum-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
   
•  Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.

---