A Truck That Runs on Coffee Grounds (and How Wood-Gas Powers Cars With Garbage)
Photo Credits: deborah sherman photography
The Cafe Racer Truck Runs on 100% Recycled Coffee Grounds
A commenter on Ben’s wood-powered truck post pointed us to a similar car hack. The truck above is also powered by a wood gas generator, except this one runs on coffee grounds. The Cafe Racer is a 1975 GMC pickup that essentially burns up used coffee to create a combustible gas. The gas is filtered on its way to the engine and, Viola, a caffeine-powered truck.
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It’s interesting to note that this and the last vehicle mentioned are promoting a specific fuel (wood and coffee grounds), since the onboard wood gas generators can gasify almost any type of combustible material.
Gasification is a non-selective method using heat and a controlled amount of oxygen to convert biomass into a flammable vapor. In addition to Coffee Grounds, the Cafe Racer could use wood chips, old tires, and municipal trash, almost anything—which, by the way, is the same technology Coskata is using to make cellulosic ethanol out of garbage.
As Wikipedia puts it, gasification “was an important and familiar 19th century technology” that was commonly used until petroleum took over around the close of WWII. Although popular at that time, wood gas conversions are a bit of a throw back, but you never know what could gain popularity as gas prices continue to rise. Additionally, wood gas generators aren’t restricted to vehicles, and have found use in heating, cooking, and electricity production.
So how can a wood gas generator power a truck?
The reason a wood gas generator can power cars and trucks is that the internal combustion engine is actually powered by vapor, not liquid. In a gasoline-powered engine, gasoline is vaporized before entering the combustion chamber. Diesel is a little different; it’s sprayed into the combustion chamber as fine droplets which burn as they vaporize. Either way, if you can put a clean combustible vapor into the engine, you’ve got power*.
(*Just to mention where this information is coming from, I thought I’d point out this interesting factoid: back in 1989, FEMA sponsored a series of “emergency technology assessments” that included a book on gasification conversions. The title of the book is “Construction of a Simplified Wood Gas Generator for Fueling Internal Combustion Engines in a Petroleum emergency.”)
Gasifying a solid material partially burns it, which preserves some of the energy that would normally be wasted in the gas (otherwise there wouldn’t be anything left for the engine to burn). The gas contains a mixture of carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen (H2), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen (N), and a small amount of methane (CH4).
The big question for wood gas use is (as usual), how do these systems compare to other petroleum alternatives in terms of environmental impact? The group behind Cafe Racer claims that it’s a carbon-negative demonstration vehicle, but they don’t substantiate that on their website. I wasn’t able to find much on the issue, except the risk of death from carbon monoxide poisoning in poorly designed systems, but my gut instinct tells me this isn’t the cleanest way to get around. If you know of a resource on the emissions of wood gas generators, please send it my way.
The important point here isn’t so much that you can run a truck on wood gas produced from waste materials (even though that’s pretty cool), but that this technology could play a major role in producing petroleum alternatives in the near future (more on that later).
If you enjoyed reading about this, check out these links, and see more pictures of the Cafe Racer below:
Posts Related To Wood Gas Generators and Other Car Hacks:
- Run Your Car on Wood? No Joke.
- Car Hacker’s Hummer Gets 60 MPG
- How to Get 76 MPG
- Six New Technologies Will Help Manufacturers Reach the 35 MPG Goal (Without Hybrids)
- The Cleanest Cars on Earth: Honda Civic GX and Other Natural Gas Vehicles (NGVs)
- 376.59 MPG Car Found In Museum (It Was Built In 1959)
- Car and Driver Increase Pinto Fuel Economy with $11 of Ecomods
- Sick of Gas?: Convert Your Car To Run On Electricity
Photo Credit: deborah sherman photography: http://www.deborahsherman.com/, (studiodeb on Flickr). Used by permission (thanks!).
not exactly back to the future looking, is it?
I have been reading about this subject and gathering links for quite a while. Here are my notes, and some of the more interesting looking vehicles:
http://rgr.freeshell.org/woodgas/
A really cool 1940s style Swedish car with a hang-over-the-bumper gasifier: http://www.gengas.nu/bilder/finbil.shtml
WWII German Kubelwagen and Volkswagen Beetles: http://ww2.whidbey.net/jameslux/woodgas.htm (click on the links in that page to see the pictures)
A variety of different vehicles, mostly experiments from the ’70s energy crisis time: http://woodgas.com/History.htm
I would like to see a stationary gasifier built, where the synthesis gas could be fed into a refinery-style “upgrader” and produce gasoline or diesel.
Hi Guys,
this is a wonderful thing
i am really amazed to read about it
good luck !!!!!!
Only one question needs to be answered:
What kind of MPCC ( Miles Per Cup of Coffee ) does it get?
Back in the 70’s the Mother Earth News produced a wood gas truck that won the alterative fuels coast to coastRace The truck was a monster 454 big block . the gasification was not very big the fuel source was wood chips .The plans were available for a long time from them ,they still may be
This seems like a obvious thing to ask, but doesn’t burning something create CO2? To make gasification possible you have to heat the material, right. Unless you’re using a battery powered electric burner, you have to burn something else to produce the heat, making more CO2, to burn some gasified material, which makes even more CO2. Kinda defeats the purpose of reducing CO2. Does anyone have a stupid hammer around, so that I can smack myself in the forehead in order to understand this insane concept?
Is it legal to do all this stuff? Burn would and coffee grounds? I mean it probably causes quite a lot of smell and air pollution. On the same question, there’s all this talk about running cars on oxyhydrogen, which is supposed to be safer than hydrogen, according to this website http://www.water4gas-scam.com My question is even that stuff illegal or are people allowed to do any kind of modification to their cars and run on the streets. Who cares if they harm their own car or health? But what about the innocent bystanders? What’s the law on that in the USA?
I have submitted your article to http://www.autocar-live.com which is a social site where users can submit car/auto articles and vote for already submitted articles.
Well to answer the CO2 question and provide you with the hammer you require, think of a gasifier as a stove, and the engine of the car as a re-burner. The temperature of the fires are very differnt, the car engine being more then twice as hot. So the exaust of the pyrolosis of the gasifier is introduced as fuel to the car engine, but with a hotter fire. There is hardly anyting left after the re-burner. The CO2 produced is the same CO2 that the coffee would have off-gassed had it been thrown on the ground. There is no methane that I am aware of. It’s all in the tuning, of course. And there are many problems. But if you take the ash that is left after the fire and throw it in your garden, the mineral element left is like crack cocaine to plants, making them grow faster. Removing CO2 from the air, closed loop and potentially carbon negative. Yea, well I’m workin’ over here… enjoy.
chicken
Wow! This would be easy for me to fill. All those cups of coffee would come in handy.
Rosemary
http://her-home-blog.com