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."

Supply?

[rsmith-mac]

These methane storage systems may encourage mass-market natural gas cars.

Do we even have enough natural gas for this to work? I thought it was expected to run low about the time petroleum was.

Re:Supply?

[Radon360]

Biomass would be a good way to make methane renewable. However, the trick is removing all the impurities, such as carbon dioxide from the raw gas. Right now, that isn't very cost-effective, compared to some natural gas wells. Heck, the United States would have quite a bit more petroleum-derived natural gas for its use if an inexpensive way to remove carbon dioxide were developed (many sources of natural gas are contaminated with varing levels of carbon dioxide, some to the point that they are unusable).

Re:Natural gas is great fuel

[virtual_mps]

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Sounds like an idiotic idea to me. Natural gas was billed as a cheap, clean fuel years ago. So people started using it, for houses, electricity generation, industry, etc. Now natural gas is an overused resource, with oversubscribed pipelines, severe seasonal price shocks, etc. Why on earth would we start converting cars to use an energy source that's already overutilized? It's going to be a lot easier to deploy a more sensible alternative vehicle fuel (e.g., biodiesel) than to convert tens of millions of furnaces, power plants, and other durable consumers to use something else because the natural gas distribution network can't cope with the demand of a bunch of new cars trying to use it also.

Re:Infrastrucutre in place?

[general scruff]

Different engines react differently to E85. Saab has a 9-5 series car with a turbo that runs differently depending on what fuel is used. With regular Gas, it runs the turbo at around 9 Pounds (if memory serves), but with E85, which has a 105 octane rating, it bumps the PSI to 17-18. The performance numbers are not too shabby. The problem happens when you have these "Flex Fuel" cars that will run both, without changing any parameters. Right now, they are probably statically tuned to get more out of Gas, and not so much E85 (I can't back that statement up). But consider that the octane rating of regular unleaded is around 89. Timing becomes critical depending on the octane rating (the more octane, the more aggressively you can set your timing) and you are bound to have the type of performance degradation you were talking about.

Feel free to rip this unsubstantiated post apart! =)

Re:Natural gas is great fuel

[juancn]

You are forgetting that natural gas can be replaced by gas made from decomposing organic matter (i.e. trash), which is renewable (although the CO2 emmisions are still there, but it's the same with biodiesel).

Adapting a regular gasoline car to natural gas, costs around U$S 700 in Argentina. The equipment pays itself after a year or so.

The economics may be different in the US, though. For example, some year ago, before natural gas was widespread, we used a mixture of regular-gas and ethanol on some parts of the country (no modifications to the engine required, but as with natural gas, a thicker engine oil is needed). The biggest problem was that the fuel hoses and some plastics in the car worn out faster due to the ethanol.

Brazil still has widespread use of ethanol mixed with the gas.

For those hand-wringing about eco issues

[drinkypoo]

...you're a bunch of alarmist buffoons.

Anything you can do with natural gas from a well can be done with methane. It's very easy to produce. Here's how it works. You've got a pond with a tent over it. The pond is full of beneficial bacteria. "Fresh" water (can be contaminated) and sewage are introduced into the bottom center of the pond. Over time the system is colonized with algae. The algae and other organisms digest the sewage, resulting in lots of algae (a resource itself), fairly clean water, and methane (mostly.) The methane can be captured and the algae can be harvested; the algae can be used to make either alcohol or biodiesel depending on what kind it is - some have more carbohydrates, some have more oil.

Right now, a lot of our sewage treatment systems, even the ones that look like oil refineries, are producing and flaring off methane. This is stupid. It should be captured and used. In fact a lot of agricultural producers of shit, like pig farms, are starting to use this technology to power their farms - and in many cases they actually produce enough power not only to run their operation, but to actually make a profit by selling excess to the grid. The resulting effluent has been "cooked" to the point where it can be applied directly to the crops as fertilizer. Normally this is achieved by storing it in an uncovered holding pond for months, where the methane simply escapes.

If we simply applied this technology to waste treatment plants and forced it on those who have a lot of animal shit currently posing a health hazard, we could get a lot of power and it would actually save money for everyone involved.

Methane from Manure Systems

[rohar]

I understand methane from manure systems are fairly common in Europe, but this is a North American example of a methane from pig manure [nationalhogfarmer.com] system, installed in 2001.

I want a corn cob and pig manure powered Ferrari. :)