Reviving the Wood Stock

Before you let your hair grow the length of your back, don a bandana, place fingers in V position as sign of peace, the wood stock I'm referring to is not from the hippy 1970's era. Actually this wood stock serves a worldwide cause. It fuels more than fireplaces. This pile of wood is part of gasification-- a centuries-old technology to power an automobile. And you thought Doc's inventions from Back to the Future were all fiction.

Gasification dates back to the 1800's and was used to light street lamps and for cooking. It even powered some vehicles during World War II but lost its appeal to the seductive, light-weight black gold--oil soon dominated.

With growing concern for dependence on foreign oil, more gasification projects are sprouting across the country. One team in California modified their Honda Accord and used waste for their gasification as featured below on YouTube. [WARNING: This is not a Hollywood produced film about a modified Delorean that transports you in time. It's a homemade video. The beginning is slow in the beginning but you can jump to 2 minutes 30 seconds to view the car in motion. ]



A Connecticut man, Dave Nichols, turned his 1989 gas guzzling Ford F-150 truck into a wood burning machine to power his vehicle. According to Nichols, he can get it up to 80 mph. He's now logged 10,000 miles without gas. So what is the ratio of fuel to the mile? One pound of wood will fuel his truck for one to two miles which is equivalent to 8 cents the mile. Compare that to 19 cents the mile if the truck ran on gasoline.

Number sound good, but what about looks?

OK so the contraption looks like a mini power plant in the truck flatbed or trunk of your car. All great ideas and inventions are born with purpose in mind, not aesthetics. That comes later.
Was the first automobile a sleek piece of handsome machinery? So the project is still in infancy.

For you science buffs wondering how this works, gasification works by heating organic materials to high temperatures without flames. The resulting chemical reactions produce a hydrogen-hydro-carbon gas mixture in vapor form that is almost as potent as gasoline. Except it expels virtually no pollution.

While mechanics used to laugh at Dave Nichols, today with gas prices escalating this summer again, they're not laughing anymore.

Which gives me an idea--this would be great for your child's next science project!

Tell us what you think! Post a comment below.

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