has anyone ever heard anything about a natual petroleum gas (i think made from corn) that is being used by some gas stations? I just heard about it from someone. they said is was extremely cheap to make and does't cause any pollution whatsoever and i was wondering if it is really being used and why aren't we all using it then? I'm sick of paying an arm and a leg for just a little bit of gas! If anyone knows anything about this let me know!

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Originally posted by johnnyrotten04:
i wish their was a cheap gas. as my built car runs only on 92 octane and up. And being a turbo 6cyl doesn't get good milage to begin with

What kind of car do you drive? I had a heavily modified car (head, valves, track only cams, ecu, etc.) I ran 89 and it was fine, if it ever pinged id just retard the timing.

Strangelove: sounds like your friend had a pretty crappy Geo. Mine runs like a dream. Well, okay, there's a squeaky belt, but it's unlikely the thing will ever catch fire while I'm driving (or idling). Gets better gas mileage than a Jeep, at least.

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Originally posted by clpo13:
We should all drive Geos.

The Geo is the smoothest operating car since the Pinto. I got a Jeep Liberty.

I never heard of that kind of gas but I would love it if I knew which gas stations they sell that gas. Gas prices are expensive and places where it used to be cheap are expensive also. I hate that my mom has to pay so much money for a bit of gas.

Man, things are expensive nowadays...

Bye n have a nice day

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We should all drive Geos.

My friend left his Geo idling in the driveway one time when he went into the house. When he came back the engine had severely overheated and set the paint on the hood on fire. Needless to say that's not exactly a feature I look for in a car.

We should all drive Geos. Then I wouldn't feel so bad about owning one. But hey, I only pay $18 to fill it up every two or three weeks. Not too shabby, but I was reading in the latest National Geographic that there's this guy who owns a car that runs on used vegetable oil, and he pays about eight bucks a month to keep it running. Amazing what food products can do for you. I for one am all for ethanol.

check this out... this is what i was talking about. It's called ethanol and its already being used in our gas. I looked up info about it and i can't find any reason good enough not to use it completely. Considering the US produces an over abundance of corn, there really is no way of going wrong with this. Its a much better option than gasoline.

http://www.ethanolfacts.com/index.html

~ its a really simple explanation of it, but has more links on the site if you wanna know more about it

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i wish their was a cheap gas. as my built car runs only on 92 octane and up. And being a turbo 6cyl doesn't get good milage to begin with

That's what you get for driving a ridiculously overpowered car when you can't afford it. I love my Golf.

i wish their was a cheap gas. as my built car runs only on 92 octane and up. And being a turbo 6cyl doesn't get good milage to begin with

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What happened to the inovative spirit of the United States?

We traded it for a false sense of complacent superiority at a swap meet a few years back.

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Originally posted by YoungWorld:
ExxonMobil, Shell, Texaco...They could all make the same arguement. Emissions from gasoline burnoff pollutes the atmosphere period.

Well not really, because they all have basically the same gas. BP Ultimate is entirely different.

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This is a shameless plug for BP.
If you guys do want to save the enviroment, BP ultimate really does reduce emissions and improve car performance, which results in less pollution.

ExxonMobil, Shell, Texaco...They could all make the same arguement. Emissions from gasoline burnoff pollutes the atmosphere period.

It also doesn't help for a counrty that says we need to create new technology for a lesser dependence on foreign-oil that we just spent more on the purchace of OPEC oil. What happened to the inovative spirit of the United States?

This is a shameless plug for BP.
If you guys do want to save the enviroment, BP ultimate really does reduce emissions and improve car performance, which results in less pollution.

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Think of the amount of petrol American cars use. In order to produce enough biodiesel to really make an impact in our oil usage, we'd have to grow massive amounts of corn and soybeans. Assuming we want to preserve currently existing farms for food, we'd have to make new farms. It's common knowledge that creating open land for new farms generally involves a lot of deforestation. Less trees would increase global warming.

I don't think it's common knowladge at all. Without knowing how much corn it takes to make X amount of biodiesel, there's no way you can say that we'd have to vastly expand our farm structure. And if any country on the Earth can afford to do that it is America. We've already got a huge surplus of corn in this country to begin with. We ship boatloads of it to other countries, and basically the sole reason we use High Fructose Corn Syrup instead of real sugar is because it was easier to grow and you didn't have to import it. Not to mention farm subsidies. The result has been an artificially inflated corn crop. Biodesiel or ethanol would be a massive boost to help reduce the need for subsidies, and hell, we might just be able to get real sugar back in our candy again now that we wouldn't have to find something to do with all the extra corn they keep growing.

As for deforestation causing global warming: The "warming" that comes from this is generally an increase in local air temperatures due to land use. Also consider that biodesiel, while still emmitting CO2, gets it's carbon from within the current carbon cycle (growing plants) rather than adding to it (pumping oil). In this way the net amount of carbon in our atmosphere and soil would stay reletively static. Which, if you buy the whole "CO2 is the primary cause for global warming" bit, would, in my opinion, probably outweigh the reletively minor increase caused by deforestation.

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Cheaper to manufacture and produce? I dont know but they charge the same amount for it that is if we are talking about ethanol.

I don't know where you've been getting you gas but every time I've seen ethanol mixed fuel it's been cheaper than regular unleaded. Usually they list it as "Silver" or some such thing.

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The cars in competitions that have gone quite far typically have huge solar panels that would be too big on a normal car.In addition to that problem, they just look bad

They're also made of balsa wood .
I would say that might be a problem in a highway accident, but solar cars rarely make it over 20 mph anyway.

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cheaper

Cheaper to manufacture and produce? I dont know but they charge the same amount for it that is if we are talking about ethanol.

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Originally posted by YoungWorld:

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Agreed. BTW I was also reffering to liquid hydrogen.

At least we were on the same page...Ok...What about Solar Power?, I'm pretty sure it has been thought of, maybe even done before.

What about? On a car? Hmmm....I'm don't know as much about this, so some info may be off. There has been attempts (Many of which have been successful) to create a car that uses solar power. I believe there are a couple of problems. Firstly, I'm not sure manufacturing thm would be simple. That is the cars. As you'd need to add multiple componenets to the assembly line blah blah. Furthermore as with hydrogen, I don't believe we are anywhere near a case where a car can go as far as cars today. In fact almost all alternative power sources have this problem. They simply cannot get cars to run as far as they do today. The cars in competitions that have gone quite far typically have huge solar panels that would be too big on a normal car.In addition to that problem, they just look bad

It isn't from a report. It's common sense.

Think of the amount of petrol American cars use. In order to produce enough biodiesel to really make an impact in our oil usage, we'd have to grow massive amounts of corn and soybeans. Assuming we want to preserve currently existing farms for food, we'd have to make new farms. It's common knowledge that creating open land for new farms generally involves a lot of deforestation. Less trees would increase global warming.

Of course, for individuals to recycle cooking oil makes a lot of sense, but it isn't practical for large amounts of people or as a long term solution.


I agree that ethanol would be a sensible feul to use.

And yeah, hydrogen feul cells are extremely expensive to make, and there are a lot of kinks to be worked out. Don't expect much progress to be made for a good few decades at least.

The Feb. 2005 issue of Scientific American has an excellent article on hydrogen feul cells.

Are you guys talking about biodiesel, or ethanol?

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It's a lost cause. The amount of corn we'd need is so much that we'd have to cut down insane amounts of forests, which would increase global warming, production would cost a lot so the feul would be more expensive and it isn't emission free.

I'd like to see a report on this deforestation thing. Either way, ethanol fuel, while slightly less efficient, is much cleaner and cheaper than pure gasoline. Plus the modifications that allow the car to run on this fuel are minor, if anything is needed at all.

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Agreed. BTW I was also reffering to liquid hydrogen.

At least we were on the same page...Ok...What about Solar Power?, I'm pretty sure it has been thought of, maybe even done before.