Friday, March 26, 2010

Gas 2.0

Gas 2.0

Legendary A-10 Thunderbolt II Makes First Flight On Bio Jet Fuel

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 11:54 AM PDT

I’m a bit of a history buff, and I’ve always found air combat to be particularly interesting. I’m talking about the old fighter jockeys who shot each other’s planes to ribbons with a hail of gunfire and flying prowess. Most fighter craft these days don’t even have machine guns… just lots of missiles and fancy doodads.

But the A-10 Thunderbolt II, perhaps better known as the Warthog because of its heavy machine cannon and armor plating, still gets up close and personal with the enemy. Yesterday an Air Force test pilot flew an A-10 on a blend of bio-mass derived and regular jet fuel… without any modifications to the engine.

Jet fighters costs millions upon millions of dollars already, and while the military is coming up with next generation war machines capable of running on alternative fuels, that doesn’t help us right now. The A-10, for example, costs upwards of $8.8 million per aircraft. To convert it to run a bio jetfuel could cost hundreds of thousands of more dollars. So it was important for the Air Force to find a renewable type of fuel that doesn’t require retrofitting its existing aircraft.

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Will We Ever Know How Much Oil Is Left?

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 11:09 AM PDT

For as long as my father can remember, he claims people have been crying and screaming about peak oil production. He doesn’t seem to believe oil is anything but an infinite resource. I disagree. Unfortunately, neither I nor he nor anyone else on this planet seems to actually know how much oil is truly left in the ground. If we did know, we’d probably have more stable gas prices.

But do we really want to spend what could be limited time trying to figure it out? Or should we just assume we’re on the fast track to emptying our oil reserves?

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GM Working On Twin-Turbo V6 For Upcoming Cadillac XTS

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 11:03 AM PDT

The future of V8-powered cars may be coming to a sudden (if expected) end. Just 5% of cars are purchased with optional V8 engines anymore, and big strides are being made in turbocharging and small displacement engines. Ford has its line of EcoBoost engines, which it says will eventually be available in 90% of its lineup. GM is throwing its hat into the turbocharged, EcoBoost-like ring as well.

The General is said to be working on a twin-turbo version of its 3.0 liter V6 engine, which should make its debut in the upcoming Cadillac XTS. So… is it still going to be a hybrid?

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Low Tech, DIY Plasma Gasifier Makes Fuel From Waste

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 10:59 AM PDT

Some interesting tidbits are coming out of the American Chemical Society conference in San Francisco this week. First we heard about a product made from renewable materials that could substitute a large portion of the crude oil currently used to make tires.

And now comes word from a scientist at the University of Orleans in France that he has constructed a compact, relatively inexpensive, low tech plasma gasifier that can take all sorts of waste materials and turn them into a variety of different drop-in fuels, including diesel, gasoline and kerosene.

The plasma gasifier is based on what is known as “gliding arc” technology. During the process, a gliding arc of electricity creates a plasma inside the reactor. The plasma then creates a cauldron where low temperature chemical reactions can occur that change waste materials such as used cooking oil or agricultural biomass into clean fuels.

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Hyundai Sonata Hybrid Teaser Shot Sports All-New Front End

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 09:52 AM PDT

Hyundai’s Sonata Hybrid, the first hybrid from the company to reach market, will be unveiled next week during the New York Auto Show. We’ll be covering that live, so watch out for more info, but in the meantime, Hyundai has released a teaser shot of the completely redesigned front end.

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California Drops “Cool Cars” Legislation Entirely, Will Start Process Anew

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 09:33 AM PDT

In the ongoing saga of California’s embattled “Cool Cars” regulations that would have been finalized on May 7 of this year, the public safety argument has trumped the environmental argument.

The regulations — which would have required automakers to put a layer of reflective material on most of the glass in cars to reduce air conditioner use and increase fuel economy — first came under a barrage of fire from half a dozen or so public safety, police, and transportation associations claiming the reflective layer would disrupt everything from tracking of GPS-braceleted criminals, to dropped 911 calls, to an inability to track EZ-Pass customers. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) followed up on this criticism by sheepishly saying it would reconsider the impending final rules.

And now CARB has decided decided to scrap the “Cool Cars” rules entirely and start over from scratch trying to to get the various stakeholders to buy in much earlier in the process.

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Tires Made From Renewable Materials Commercially Possible Within 5 Years

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 09:11 AM PDT

There are about 1 billion tires made each year; each and every one of them uses 7 gallons of crude oil to produce. Although 7 billion gallons is just a small blip (0.5%) of the overall global annual use of crude oil (~1.3 trillion gallons), figuring out a way to make tires from something other than crude oil will, nonetheless, clearly help us in our goal to a sustainable transportation future.

At the American Chemical Society Meeting in San Francisco yesterday, Joseph McAuliffe, a scientist from biotech company Genencor, announced that he and his team have discovered a method to produce one of the key ingredients for tires from sugars derived from sugarcane, corn, corn cobs, switchgrass and/or other biomass.

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