Mileage with a Motor Home

Raymond C Drouillard cosmic.ray at juno.com
Thu Apr 2 01:20:24 GMT 1998


On Wed, 1 Apr 1998 00:43:41 -0500 (EST) Alain Toussaint
<alaint at boisfrancs.qc.ca> writes:
>> I like to cruise at around 80 :)   Trouble is, my GW has the
aerodynamics
>> of a box.  Ah, well... there's more to life than gas mileage. 
Converting
>> to run propane or methane would help, especially since it's so easy to
>> generate your own methane.
>
>could you explain,i'd like to make my own,but i have some concern such
as
>the price of generating methane mostly,i want to be able to have a big
>motor and cruise at a fairly high speed without costing much $$$.
>
>Alain Toussaint (alaint at boisfrancs.qc.ca)
>

To generate your own methane, just eat lots of beans and other fiberous
foods.  (Unfortunately, you won't get enough to run an engine for very
long.)

All kidding aside, it's easy in princable to generate methane.  You'll
need a large air-tight container, some bacteria (E. Coli will work), and
lots of organic matter.  You could probablly modify your septic tank to
do the trick.

Put the organic matter (grass clippings, leaves, table scraps, manure,
etc) into the airtight container and keep the oxygen out.  As soon as the
oxygen in the container has been used up, the bacteria will start
producing methane.  Use a fitting and a hose at the other end.  You'll
want to filter the methane, perhaps by bubbling it through water and
passing it through an automotive air filter.

I'm sure that there will be more details to work out when you actually
start building the system, but the princable is simple.  (Ray's first law
of engineering and program: It's always more complicated than it looks)

I saw a compresser at the Detroit North American Auto Show that is used
to compress the natural gas that is piped to most urban and suburban
houses and store it in the vehicle's CNG (compressed natural gas) tanks.

Can't beat that... turn grass clippings and du-du into fuel for your car
and home.

One of my later projects is to find a way to use the Holley Pro-Jection
system to control some valves and esentially inject the propane or
methane into the manifold.

By the way, there are other advantages of using propane or methane as a
fuel.  They have high octane values (I have heard 110-120 for propane,
130 for methane).

Also, your oil will last longer and remain cleaner.

The disadvantage is that they contain less energy than Gasoline.  That
can be compensated for by raising the compression, using an engine with
more displacement, or supercharging.  You can get away with a lot because
of the high octane.

Also, some states will let you modify the engine all you want if you burn
these alternate fuels.  You'll just have to pass a tailpipe test, which
is easy to do, since these fuels burn very cleanly.  I don't know the
details because I live in a state where the smog police don't come
calling.

Ray Drouillard


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