Ed, & the list, Amidst all the uncertainty, there are two things that I feel fairly confident about:[neither one is immediate] 1. There will be a recession of some degree, and 2. There will be shortages of petroleum products. I haven't seen any discussion here about alternative fuel. For diesel engines you can make bio-diesel from used frier oil, or oil-seed stocks.[HomePower Mag. had a good article on this ...Last year?] For gasoline IC engines you can make a wood gassifier. There are several good references for this. One is:"Construction of a Simplified Wood Gas Generator for Fueling Internal Combustion Engines in a Petroleum Emergency", THE BIOMASS ENERGY FOUNDATION PRESS, 1810 Smith Rd.,Golden, CO 80401. This report was produced by the Oak Ridge N.L. for FEMA. I probably won't get to make one before 1-1-2K, but I hope to have all the parts I need on hand. I'm going to get a small utility trailer to mount the generator on to pull behind my aging Accord. Wynn

-- Wynn Solomon (wynn@ic.org), August 31, 1999

Answers

Wynn

Are we forgetting about alcohol? Easy to make, not as powerful as gasoline. Burns clean, and cleans what it burns in. In fact, I wonder if it's tendency to remove dirt, varnish and oils from metal will mean it removes any lubricant from inside the engine as well. When I become the richest man in the Universe I'm going to try to build electric cars powered by small alcohol fueled turbines turning generators. Should solve alot of our pollution problems. And we can make our own fuel from lawn clippings.

It's nice to dream, ain't it.

Watch six and keep your...

-- eyes_open (best@wishes.net), August 31, 1999.

I expect a severe shortage of fuel much greater than we experienced in the seventies which set the scene for the inflation problem we had later in the seventies, remember the misery index. The one mitigating circumstance may be the few individuals that have stock piled neccesities. What suprises me is that there has been no real inflation to date with many products back ordered and long delivery times. I expect that what ever is being done to keep the lid on this so far cannot hold much longer. Add to that the increased paper the FED is printing I can't see how we can avoid hyper inflation. Most middleaged adults remember the coping techniques necessary in the 70's and so the impact can be softened some but I believe we will see a return to animal and human power for several years. I expect to see full scale rationing of fuels including propane and kerosene. The way back to life as we know it will take several years. We can speed up the recovery by turning to alternative energies and even on the local scale conservation techniques could make a huge difference. Perhaps community organized transportation on a monthly basis from rual areas to needed services is a place to start. We need to find a way to get by on 50% of the fuel we now use. Developing the plans now could reduce the misery by years

-- Sam Hayes (gatheredAR@eritter.net), August 31, 1999.

Hi 'Keep six...' As far as I am aware, anything we can make alcohol from, we can also eat! The eqpt. to ferment and then distill alc. is more complex and energy hungry than a gassifier. I can't eat wood chips, yet I can get a good supply of chips fairly easily. Try convincing a hungry person that a bushel of wheat or potatoes is better used to make fuel, than to feed the person!

during WWII, in some europe countries, 95% of transport was wood gas fueled. Maybe some homemade alc. was also used, but I haven't heard of any. Biggest problems were the inconvenience of having to 'light a fire' to drive, and the danger of CO poisoning from leaking eqpt. Wynn

-- Wynn Solomon (wynn@ic.org), August 31, 1999.

Hi folks,

Good point about Y2k fuel shortages! For years I've been interested and looking into to generating methane and ethanol from biomass. The whole concept is fantastic -- Your foodscraps and body waste go into an apparatus to decompose, and the fuels are drawn off. The mass left over provides fertiliser for your vegies. You eat the vegies, producing more raw materials for your 'refinery'....

-- Jason Quarry (onca@hotmail.com), August 31, 1999.

Another option to consider here is more efficient engine design: Less fuel to generate the same horsepower. Current internal combustion engines are between 10 and 20 percent efficient. That means that 80 percent of the fuel pumped in goes to producing heat, noise, or simply flows unburnt straight out the exhaust pipe.

Some years ago, an Australian inventor developed what's known as the Orbital Engine. I'm not sure what physical principles it is based upon, but it uses far less fuel and is phyisically smaller than current internal combustion engines generating the same horsepower.

AMAZING!! So where does one buy such an engine? Well urban legend has it that some oil company got its grubby hands on the rights....

-- JQ (onca@hotmail.com), August 31, 1999.

Hmmm, seems like the urban myth was just that. http://www.orbeng.com.au

Sorry, I shutup now

-- JQ (onca@hotmail.com), September 01, 1999.

Wynn

Yes, food will be more important than fuel, but you can make alcohol outof all sorts of plant matter. Not just the edible stuff. Grass clippings for instance. Also, see Jasons post.

Watch six and keep your..

-- eyes_open (best@wishes.net), September 01, 1999.

I agree that it looks like the oil business is going to have trouble for a while. One of the miracles of "rationing" is that it immediately causes people to reconsider how important each use is.

Almost 50% of Americas gas is used in recreational driving. Massive amounts of jet fuel are used to fly vacationers. The post office delivers more junk mail by weight than real letters. Take an example in my family...my wife and kids like a hot shower every night. We like to wash our dishes with hot water. If is is "getting hard to get propane" you can bet it won't be hard to convince my wife to take "sponge baths and only get that relaxing shower once a week. I put some solar panels up, but I purposely installed enough only to meet about 15% of our usual needs...we may be quite greatful for having even that small amount.

The ideas on this thread for alternative methods are inspiring. But they are not going to solve the problem in the short term. Producing your own methanol is dangerous, and smells awful. But, after y2k, neighborhoods might see the value in setting up a methane production module at the firehouse or community center where people can bring down their compost.

The entire industrial/business complex since WWII has been dedicated to the economies of central facilities. For example, the costs to buy an install a complete solar electric unit to supply the energy needs of a modern home would cost about $40,000. But, if companies like Ford Motors were building such a unit for every home in the nation, the costs would fall to about $5-10,000 per home. There is an immense amount of surface area on the south facing sides and roofs of homes. Maybe the Marshall Plan of the post y2k era will be to develop these surfaces to produce power. If so, many more of our homes, cars, buses, trucks, tractors would be running on energy from our sun.

Isn't this really the answer (long term) to the petrochemical issue. Save the oil for production of medicines and building materials.

-- Thom Gilligan (thomgill@eznet.net), September 01, 1999.

Good discussion. This is especially appropriate to those of us living in isolated places.

(1) Does anyone know about the conversions of gasoline engines to run on charcoal that the Japanese used during WW II?

(2) Does anyone have a URL for a still to produce methanol? Lots of non-edible plant matter to use in alcohol production. My biggest worry would be to make sure that none of the local kids try to drink the output! Remember, alcohol is a major drag racing fuel! We can keep the quarter mile running...

(3) Does anyone know the cost of the booklet mentioned in the top posting?

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), September 02, 1999.

In answer to my own question above, the Biomass Energy Foundation can be found at www.webpan.com/BEF/. The book entitled CONSTRUCTION OF A SIMPLIFIED GAS GENERATOR is $10. This sounds like a good book for the library...along with a couple of their other choice titles.

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), September 02, 1999.