Fuel from rubbish?

Broken Cambelt

Torque Junkie
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0
Location
Somerset, UK
Car
Fiesta 1.4
We all know about ethanol, E85 is an alcohol gasoline mix than burns cleaner than petrol and costs a third less ( in some places ), most cars could run on it, so why don't they.

We all hear the sob stories about how the Amazon will be burnt down to make way for sugar cane to make into fuel, but E85 could be made from waste food/sawdust/garden materials. basically anything containing sugar.

My local council now charges at the tip for bags of wood and garden waste, up to £2.90 for a kitchen bin bag sized load. what if, instead of heading for the landfill or the incinerator. it went to a mill, then a still, to produce fuel.

what are the opinions on this, how could it work, would the government build such facilities? would they still charge me at the tip? then again at the pumps?

Britain throws away a phenomenal amount of food, not enough to satisfy our fuel habit (probably), but any cut to the price of motoring would be a good move in these times surely ?
 
We definately have the resources to cope but we (humans) at the moment are squandering and wasting them.

It is a sensible idea but I don't think it will ever get off the ground.

Yes they would charge you to dispose of your waste and then again to use the recycled product.

We waste about 1/3 of all the food we buy. That is a fair amount and should cover a good few journeys, add to this all the commercial food waste and bye products and you'll have quite a supply of ethenol juice.

Now the problem for me is getting my car to run on ethenol, it would need a fair bit of work, the FSi engines do not like bio fuels.
 
Sad but true, if an official has the opportunity to save the motorist or raise more tax revenue its quite obvious what route they would take. sigh.

true as well the difficulty of altering an engine already tuned to a good degree for petrol, even after changing the seals and plastics within the engine so they don't corrode, you'd still have to alter the compression ratio and timing to get the best out of the alcohol. pretty severe stuff. not appealing if you already spent time and money doing the same for gasoline.

diesel, would be even more difficult, I guess, seeing as alcohol doesn't ignite well without a spark system.

Ah well, just an idea to pass time on this windy rainy day....
 
maybe, if you get it before its mixed with trace amounts of gasoline. its the same principal of any other distilling.

just got to ask yourself how you feel about drinking essence of rotten veg garnished with wood - shavings, and if your liver would mind something three times more potent than scotch.

or you could go by Homer Simpson standards, the first test - does it it make me go blind ?
 
maybe, if you get it before its mixed with trace amounts of gasoline. its the same principal of any other distilling.

just got to ask yourself how you feel about drinking essence of rotten veg garnished with wood - shavings, and if your liver would mind something three times more potent than scotch.

or you could go by Homer Simpson standards, the first test - does it it make me go blind ?

I've had the proper local rum in St Lucia. The 70% alchohol stuff. That was "interesting".
 
Bioethanol generally cannot be used in high concentrations without different injectors, seals, valve seats etc. It's not yet widely available in the UK so there's little incentive for makers to offer compatible cars.

Saab, however, does have compatible cars available for retail sale.

I have no objection to using fuel laced with bioethanol but the quality of the base fuel is where I start to squeak. Tesco's very own Momentum 99 Unleaded (perhaps should be called Tesco Finest Unleaded to bring it into line with its poor quality Finest labelled food products) uses bioethanol to boost the RON to 99.
 
If you took before being mixed with small amounts of gasoline. is the same principle to other distillation.
 

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