Gas - 10 Cents per Gallon

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Gas - 10 cents/Gallon

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Gas - 10 Cents per GALLON - YES!!!

Volvo's S-60 methane burning car

You can run your car, if you wish, on fuel which would cost you about 2.5 cents per litre - or about 10 cents per gallon - and get 5 miles per gallon more than you do now. And there will be much cleaner exhaust - plus a very substantial reduction of carbon dioxide emissions as well, which will be a considerable contribution to the reduction of the greenhouse effect.

This gas is methane, a pure, clean, high powered gas which every country has in great abundance and is all but inexhaustible. Methane can be obtained from 'digesting' chicken and pig manure in a 'digester' adapted from a discarded hot water tank, and which will run your car with no other modification than to get the methane to the engine. Indeed, the car is started on gasoline, and once running, is switched over to methane.

Since methane is a gas, it is 'dry' - as opposed to fluid gasoline - and therefore does not dilute the engine oil. Consequently, your car runs much, much cleaner, and the engine oil lasts almost 'forever'. Methane also has a combustion of 97% to 98% - compared to the 27% combustion of gasoline, with the rest going out the exhaust in the form of carbon and pollution. Consequently, there is hardly any pollution from methane fuel, and the exhaust consists of a bit of water, and a bit of carbon dioxide.

Do It Yourself. You can go ahead and do it, if you like. A 'digester' or two from old hot water tanks in the garage (each yields about 62 gallons of methane from one load of manure and straw), a source of chicken and/or pig manure (other manures, including human manure work as well), some straw (which can be obtained from sheared weeds) for carbon (about 75% - 25% ratio), some simple "off the shelf" items to drain the methane from the 'digester' and fill a pressure bottle, and the hook-up of the methane bottle to the carburator of your car. Should come to no more than a one time expenditure of about $300.00 these days, and then your only cost, if any, is the manure of choice. [see ORIGINAL ARTICLE]

Thousands of people have done this. There are 400.000 methane burning cars in Italy, and in one town in Italy (I forgot which), all the taxis run on methane, on a commercially produced fuel called Metano.

Ready Built. Or, you can buy a Volvo car, or truck, which has been specifically built to run on both methane and gasoline. This is a mature technology and Volvo is now (2005) celebrating its 10th year of building "Bi-Fuel" cars, and has built and sold over 12.000 cars (also trucks and buses) which run on both methane and gasoline. [see original VOLVO press release].

Methane Sources. Fortunately for us, and as it happens, North Carolina, a major producer of hogs, has a huge manure problem - to the tune of 9.5 million tons of manure from 10 million swine - both in terms of what can only be described as an all pervasive "stink" from the manure lagoons, plus a severe pollution problem of ground water from those manure lagoons [ see THE BIG STINK in these pages].

This huge problem can be turned into a huge benefit and profit centre by producing huge quantities of methane for combustion engine fuel - it works just as well in truck, tractor and stationary gasoline engines - plus a rich fertilizer, some sulphur (also a fertilizer), and some ammonia (also a fertilizer). Small quantities of sulphur and ammonia are by-products of the methane digesting process and are easily filtered out and collected.

And while North Carolina State University has been considering 'gasifying' pig manure - burning it at 1.100 degrees F. and collecting the gasses - the digester mentioned here is far superior as it operates similar to compost pile at naturally generated heat of 80 - 90 degrees F. relying first on aerobic and then on anaerobic bacteria for methane production [see the advanced bio-digesters developed by the FOLKECENTER FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY, Lithuania] . Moisture is also far less of a problem in the digestion method, than it is in the 'gasification' of the manure.

So, North Carolina can come out smelling like roses - turn their immense health and environmental problem into a huge profit center and an immense benefit by providing a cheaper, better, cleaner and far less polluting fuel than gasoline - with all the far reaching implications thereof - and reap huge profits from the sale of methane and a wonderful and potent fertilizer.

And then there are the cattle, lamb, chicken and turkey producers who have the same massive problem, and the same opportunity at turning it into an equally massive profit and immense benefit.

Further, we can also consider the equally immense problem of human manure - and turn it into an equally immense profit and benefit. 'Tis about time, I say, that the immense profit potential of our poop is realized.

And then there are garbage dumps and land fills from which methane can be extracted as well [see METHANE FROM LANDFILLS in these pages].

Altogether, methane from manures, sewerage and garbage is a cheap and inexhaustible source of fuel for all internal combustion engines. As long as people and animals eat and excrete, there will be manure; and as long as there is manure, there is methane.

Methane can also be extracted from the ground (Natural Gas), and from coal mines. The deadly gas found in coal mines is methane.

Now then, as China and India, the two most populous nations in this world - are just on the threshold where every one of their people have begun to dream of owning an automobile - gasoline burning cars would be a planetary disaster for three reasons. First of all in massive carbon dioxide emissions which will drive up the greenhouse effect, plus a massive increase in the smog of air pollution, and then the immense world wide economic problems caused by a rapacious demand for crude oil to make gasoline.

However, this too can be turned into an immense benefit by turning their human and livestock wastes into methane, plus a potent fertilizer. It would not only make China and India independent of crude oil, and it would make a immense difference in the health and viability of our planetary biosphere.

And then there is Russia and all the other Eastern Nations whose people are also beginning to dream of owning a car.

Let's face it. Owning a car is such a convenient method of personal transportation, and carries such powerful personal prestige among people of the undeveloped and developing nations that people dream of owning a car, regardless of any environmental and health consequences. And they will get their cars - whether it is a planetary disaster or not. In methane though, we have a cheap, clean, powerful, readily useable and inexhaustible fuel - all we need to do is use it.