who need gasoline, lets use aluminum....

dudeinaroom

and put some money back into our economy.

http://news.uns.purdue.edu/x/2007a/070515WoodallHydrogen.html

rskarvan

Kudo's to PURDUE ENGINEERING!!! (Proving once again that there is more than corn in Indiana).

TennesseeOutlaw

Isnt Purdue one of the top engineering schools in the country?? As well as, the top producer of astronauts?

I am a Hoosier originally..

treitz3

OK, why does something like this, which might help us buy more audio gear get ignored, while "schmucks" gets 3 or 4 pages? I understand the tasteful babe thread, but wasn't there a fuel E-83, or some **** that could have been produced for .83/gal [including taxes] a decade ago that cost 383.00 to convert your engine to and yielded ZERO emissions AND slightly better horsepower?

Or did somebody buy them out too and bury the technology? Damn schmucks!

dudeinaroom

No e-85 is still around, and the vehicles that are made that can use it can also use regular pump gas. I know Gm, Ford, and Dodge is making vehicles that can use it, and I believe that they have green gas caps instead of your normal black ones.

rskarvan

TennesseeOutlaw wrote: »

Isnt Purdue one of the top engineering schools in the country?? As well as, the top producer of astronauts?

I am a Hoosier originally..

Correct on both counts!

Jstas

dudeinaroom wrote: »

No e-85 is still around, and the vehicles that are made that can use it can also use regular pump gas. I know Gm, Ford, and Dodge is making vehicles that can use it, and I believe that they have green gas caps instead of your normal black ones.

There is not much you have to do to a car for it to be able to run on E85. Many gaskets and seals need to be replaced because ethanol (a kind of alcohol) carries water which makes it very corrosive to regular steel. Needless to say, your fuel systems need to be completely stainless steel. No rubber or regular steel. The rest of the cost is in converting emissions systems and computer programming. A gasoline engine, if tuned properly can run on E85 as is. However, because of the corrosive nature of the fuel and it's combustion requirements, it will not survive long. Also, E85 doesn't need high compression nor does it need a whole lot of heat to run. Which is why you need fancy computer management to make it flex-fuel and why you need fancy emissions equipment to handle it. A regular catalytic converter will not be heated enough by E85 exhaust to be effective.

However, Ethanol is dirty. Dirtier than gasoline. It has less hydrocarbons but puts out more of the other nasty stuff than gasoline. It's also less efficient. It's not a sustainable resource. If we converted all farmable land to ethanol production, we would only make up about 60% of the total fuel demand in this country. That's more than enough to make a dent but fuel prices would skyrocket anyway because we'd have to import all of our food and transportation costs would quadruple.

I like the Perdue solution better and I hope they work it out. Hydrogen has almost as much potential energy as gasoline and it literally is clean in it's emissions. The biggest difficulty is how to transport hydrogen. Fuel cells are the best bet right now aside from pipelines to houses but there is still the saftey issue. The Perdue solution though, that is stable as the day is long, it's safe and it holds enough hydrogen to make transportation by truck or rail cost effective. It's environmenatally friendly too. The aluminum and gallium in the solution stays in the fuel cell and can be completely recycled. The biggest stop to this technology is finding a way to recycle the aluminum cheaply and building an infrastructure to distribute it. The hydrogen is readily available every where. It is the most common element on this rock. If we can find a cheap way to harness its power, it's potential is enormous. Besides, all those fields of green can do more to feed a hungry mouth somewhere in the world than they can feeding an insatiable thirst for fuel. They also do good at making oxygen and cleaning the air. Those are better ideas for farmland to me.