ROCKMAN wrote:Actually there's many alternatives for oil. But they are just more expensive than oil so we don't utilize them. And probably never will on a meaningful scale.
Wood gas vehicles were used during World War II, as a consequence of the rationing of fossil fuels. In Germany alone, around 500,000 "producer gas" vehicles were in use at the end of the war. Trucks, buses, tractors, motorcycles, ships and trains were equipped with a wood gasification unit. In 1942 (when wood gas had not yet reached the height of its popularity), there were about 73,000 wood gas vehicles in Sweden,[2] 65,000 in France, 10,000 in Denmark, and almost 8,000 in Switzerland. In 1944, Finland had 43,000 "woodmobiles", of which 30,000 were buses and trucks, 7,000 private vehicles, 4,000 tractors and 600 boats.[3]
Wood gasifiers are still manufactured in China and Russia for automobiles and as power generators for industrial applications. Trucks retrofitted with wood gasifiers are used in North Korea in rural areas, particularly on the roads of the east coast.
Pops wrote:Shanks' Mare
DesuMaiden wrote:We didn't invent fire, agriculture or fossil fuels.
tom_s2 wrote:There have always been many alternatives to oil. For example, cars can use electricity from batteries (most major car companies have released, or are releasing, battery-electric cars). Trains and buses can use electricity from overhead wires; more than half of rail traffic worldwide now uses this. Ships can use steam turbines which can use anything that will burn as fuel, such as coal, peat, wood chips, oil shale, torrefied biomass, etc. Internal combustion engines can use natural gas--even gas from fracking or methane hydrates.
I added a post to my blog about this at bountifulenergy.blogspot.com.
-Tom S
onlooker wrote:Now as for retrofitting our motor vehicles to another energy source, the only other one currently that could work with the common internal combustion engine is natural gas.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 13 guests