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Originally Posted by ChefSalad  Our cars' (gasoline) engines were actually originally designed to run on alcohol. While, today, there are issues with running on straight alcohol (mostly due to parts that corrode easily in the presense of water and/or pure alcohol), these issues are cheaply solved by manufacturers. Futhermore, both wood and grain alcohol (methanol and ethanol, respectively) can be converted to a gasoline substitute very cheaply. |
Interesting. We actually run 10% ethanol fuel, but I didn't realise existing engines could be so easily converted to 100%.
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Originally Posted by ChefSalad Now the real question is why don't we run on these fuels. The truth is because the gasoline distributors won't distribute these alternate fuels. In most cities, you can buy filtered cooking grease and motor oil from a number of "semi-commercial" sources. Where I live, I know of at least three people who buy used motor oil and used cooking grease, filter it and sell it to local deisel truck and car owners. |
Isn't there a scalability problem? Running a car on used cooking grease is awesome, but there isn't enough of it to run millions of cars. Similarly, I recall hearing that growing alcohol uses too much space to scale to the quantity required. But correct me if I'm wrong.