Weirdest fuels to power cars

Alternatives to oil-based fuels for vehicles are becoming something we are increasingly concerned about, but what are the alternatives? Well, there are actually plenty of them – here are five of the weirdest!

Wood

While you may think we are talking about simply burning wood the old fashioned way, we are not. A Finnish politician called Juha Sipila actually runs his 1987 Chev El Camino using a wood gasification system, broadly similar to systems that were in widespread use across Europe during WWII when oil was scarce. The gasification is a process that converts organic matter into carbon monoxide and hydrogen, with the hydrogen then used to power the car. A wellengineered system is said to be cleaner and more efficient than a petrol engine, but we imagine having to haul all that wood around would offset most of the advantages…

Coffee

A man by the name of Martin Bacon currently holds the world record for the fastest caffe-powered vehicle. Yes, really. Bacon’s converted Ford P100 ute (a Ford Sierra ute! Again; yes, really!) uses a gasification system similar to the one mentioned previously to run his Sierra ute on pellets made from coffee waste. According to Bacon, more than 100,000 vehicles ran on the gasification system in the UK during the war and that the technology can be applied to any vehicle. A coffee one would smell the best though. And in case you were wondering, Bacon’s coffee-powered speed record stands at 65.6mph, or 105.7kmh.

Compressed air

While it might seem like the answer to everything (particularly rapid balloon inflation), compressed air is actually a terribly inefficient way to power a car. Not that that has stopped people trying, as cars powered this way have been around since the 1920s. A compressed air motor works using the expansion of compressed air in a similar way to the expansion of the steam in a steam engine, but the problem is in compressing the air in the first place. A compressed air engine needs the air to be stored at an incredibly high pressure (4500psi) meaning that it requires a lot of energy to compress it, making it less energy efficient than an internal combustion engine.

Faeces

Yep, that’s right – good old poo is actually capable of running a car. Handy that, because we all have a steady supply of it! Engineers have actually built a car that runs on methane extracted from human waste (or ‘‘bio-gas’’ to give it a friendlier name) and performs almost exactly the same as a conventional car, but is much more efficient and environmentally friendly. There is even a bus in regular use in the UK that runs of bio-gas created from household and human waste. And we know what you are all thinking – no, it doesn’t smell at all!

Dead cats

Back in 2007 a German scientist called Dr Christian Koch enraged cat lovers the world over by inventing a system for creating bio-diesel from waste products, including (but not limited to) dead animals. The process involves heating the biowaste to 300 degrees Celsius, which filters out hydrocarbons. The mix is then converted to diesel fuel by use of a catalytic converter. His mistake was to admit that he used dead cats to do it. This made PETA angry, but imagine that after you got over Fluffy getting run over by a car, you could use what was left of him to run YOURS!