Car that runs on coffee? Check. Coffee car that beats landspeed records? Not so check, until now. With this update to the original “Carpuccino”, the Teesdale Conservation Volunteers have built a car that can hit 107km/h running just on coffee beans, making it the fast gasification-powered car ever. More »
One of the two engines of this plane is running on biofuel derived from algae. And it managed to stay in the air. More »
Next time you hop on a bus in Oslo, it might not run on regular gas. Instead, it may be running on methane fermented from human waste. Awesome?
Remember back in June how Air New Zealand announced it was going to be trialling a biofuel mix in a 747 aircraft based on the jatropha plant? Well, they did it, and according to The Register, everything went off without a hitch. The plane used a 50-50 mixture of the biofuel and regular fuel in one engine, while the other three all had regular fuel running through them. They tested out a series of mid-air manoeuvres like engines stops, restarts, and got full power from the biofuel mix.
Forget electric cars – let’s start pumping our money into coffee technology. Apparently scientists in Nevada have discovered that ground coffee contains roughly the same amount of oil as other biofuels. What’s more, it has those kinds of levels even after its been used to make that sweet cup of java that gets you going in the morning. Plus, as an added bonus, the resulting biodiesel actually smells like coffee, meaning rather than noxious petrol fumes, streets will smell like a freshly brewed pot of liquid caffeine. I don’t know about you guys, but that’s the world I want to be living in.
[Physorg via Treehugger] More »
Environmentalists who say we shouldn’t cut down the rainforest as it harbours potentially useful lifeforms are finally right: there’s an amazing fungus that can produce biodiesel better than any current methods. Gliocladium roseum was found in the Patagonian rainforest, as a by-product of antibiotics experiments. The scientists were amazed that the fungus was putting out a mist of hydrocarbons and hydrocarbon derivatives. “This is the only organism that has ever been shown to produce such an important combination of fuel substances,” according to one professor, who added that G.roseum can even make fuels from cellulose. With a little genetic tweaking, the team think it’s possible the fungus could become an important green fuel source. [Physorg]
The USAF keeps pushing forward the race towards cleaner skies–and leaner warmachine and potential global mayhem costs–moving from pure oil-derived fuel to a mixture between oil and synthetic fuel. The new benchmark is not a B1 bomber, which they already put through its paces using a similar mix, but a fighter jet: They broke the Mach 2 barrier using the new fuel mix in an F-15, which according to the Air Force is a crucial step:
When we last left gearhead Robert Q. Riley and his three-wheeled DIY 225 MPG XR3 car kit in March 2007, rumour had it drivers would be zipping around roadways in it by May. Turns out the DIY hybrid market is tougher than expected, because just this week word was the XR3 was finally finished and “coming soon”–again. And while the video of the completed car in action made me think of Centauri from The Last Starfighter for some reason, this futuristic looking kit actually uses readily available 21rst century innards to get from A to B. We hope “soon” this year doesn’t mean “in one year” like it did in 2007.
Prince Charles has discovered the perfect use for crappy English wine: He is using it as biofuel for his classic Aston Martin DB6. The Prince converted the 38-year old car to accept ethanol to play his part in reducing carbon emissions in the UK. The wine in question is a white distilled from the excess stock of a vineyard near Swindon, Wiltshire, which has the leftover wine because of EU quota restrictions, and not because it sucks or anything. Chuck’s ride gets an awfully low 10mpg, equal to 4.5bwpm (bottles of wine per mile), but it pairs nicely with his tilapia-powered subwoofer, so who’s to complain? [Daily Mail via Jalopnik]
Nothing screams impeccable taste like having a fireplace in the middle of your coffee table and now, thanks to Planika Fires, you can keep the flames roaring without worrying about smoke or soot. The company makes the magic happen using a proprietary liquid biofuel called Fanola, which burns completely smoke and smell free.
