Fuel Tanks Made of Corncob Waste

Roland Piquepaille writes "The National Science Foundation is running a story on how corncob waste can be used to created carbon briquettes with complex nanopores capable of storing natural gas. These methane storage systems may encourage mass-market natural gas cars. In fact, these 'briquettes are the first technology to meet the 180 to 1 storage to volume target set by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2000.' They can lead to flat and compact tanks and have already been installed in a pickup truck used regularly by the Kansas City Office of Environmental Quality. And as the whole natural gas infrastructure exists already, this new technology could be soon adopted by car manufacturers."

Infrastrucutre in place?

[Lockejaw]

There may be a production/distribution infrastructure already active, but we still have to wait for gas stations to actually carry this stuff. If nobody sells it, nobody can buy and use it.
Speaking of which, how many have actually seen a gas station that sells E85?

Natural gas is great fuel

[asadodetira]

Compressed natural gas (mostly methane and low C alkanes) has been in use in Argentina for years, it's cheaper and cleaner than gasoline, the autonomy of compressed gas is lower but for city driving it doesn't matter, and cars can still use gasoline because the engine has only minor modifications. This method seems to admit lower pressure in the tank, and might enable to store more gas without need of thick heavy steel was for containing it. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Re:Further adaptions

[AP2k]

Because engines have to vent exhaust gases through a pipe with very little backpressure, that makes little sense. Can you breate through a brick of charcoal running a marathon, let alone sitting in your chair?

Didnt think so. Thats why engines stall when you plug their exhaust pipes.

As for the topic at hand, I am pretty excited about it. The volume of the average gas tank is 15 gallons, so that makes a 2700 gallon tank for methane thats the same size as a gasoline tank. 2700 gallons of methane makes approxiamately 360,000 BTUs. Unfortunately thats roughly equivalent to only 3 gallons of gasoline. But hey, you can make methane from biomass alot easier than gasoline and propane will yeild higher energy densities, assuming this breakthrough can be adapted to store propane with adequate storage compression.

Re:Further adaptions

[drgonzo59]

A better way to recover the internal combustion dissipated energy is probably through some small steam engine. Didn't BMW try that? http://www.gizmag.com/go/4936/ [gizmag.com]

Re:Infrastrucutre in place?

[LWATCDR]

While I am not a big fan of ethanol I have to say the problems you are having are because E85 cars are flex fuel cars.
If you knew that you where only going to run ethanol you could run a much higher compression ratio in the engine and or much more spark advance. That would give you mileage and performance much closer to gasoline.
You can actually make more power running alcohol than gasoline that is why they use in at Indy and for dragsters. Top alcohol dragsters are faster than gas powered cars. Now Top fuel uses alcohol because it mixes better with nitro.

Re:Pickup truck?

[chill]

To demonstrate to the general public that it works with the vehicles they drive. Small pickup trucks are very popular and have lots of uses. It is a good way to show the public they don't need to drive some California-left-winger-little-wind-up-toy vehicle. Like it or not, that is the perception many people have hybrids and alternative fuel vehicles. It is a lot easier to simply say "no, it's a pickup truck" than try and educate everyone and change their tastes.

How it's made

[Mr.Sharpy]

Here's a neat poster [missouri.edu] (pdf link) about how these briquettes are made.

It looks ultra simple to do. This poster references only 120:1 storage ratio, so maybe there have been process changes that have improved storage capacity. Maybe this will also help with fuel cells that run on methane to provide portable electrical power too. I think this could be an exciting development.

Source, source, source...

[cpotoso]

Here is the source... The "ALL-CRAFT" of the University of Missouri. http://all-craft.missouri.edu/ [missouri.edu]

Re:Between this and corn-derived ethanol...

[drinkypoo]

You're laughing, but Henry Ford made a car out of corn plastic and hemp fiber. Obviously parts of it were still metal but not the chassis or body. A famous picture (should be easy to google) has him attacking it with an ax and failing to make more than scuffs. Unfortunately Hearst and DuPont lobbied against hemp to protect their paper and plastics industries (respectively) and thus helped make marijuana illegal - quite a change from the pre-war "HEMP FOR VICTORY" etc.