Forget Ethanol and Gasoline: Fill the Tank with Bananas

There are more fuel options than ethanol and gasoline. Look at what the scientists around the world have been doing.

All over the globe, the discussion of whether people should or shouldn't use Brazilian ethanol or gasoline takes part in every world conference. Although it is a valid discussion, the countries' representatives forget to consider the fuel options scientists are presenting them. This article is the list of 4 bizarre options of fuel.

Cow

Believe it or not, this adorable animal is not only food. In Sweden, there is a train that works mainly on cattle.

Ok… it is not like the Swedish put the cow inside the tank. In fact, the cow is killed, triturated and the product is mixed with water and plants to decompose and produce biogas. This gas is the actual fuel of this train. The responsible company claims that the train moves something like 2 miles per cow.

I believe it is kind of cruel to the poor animals, since we already kill a bunch of them just for eating. Now we have to kill some more to fuel our trains? It doesn't seem much fair to the miserable cow.

Maybe if people renounced their hamburgers, and used cows only to fuel the train, it would keep the balance and be a little fairer, don't you think?

Banana

Do you remember the Delorian? The car from “Back to the Future”?

It used a flux capacitor (next picture) to make it a time machine. Do you remember now?

In “Back to the Future II”, Dr. Emmet Brown (Chisthopher Loyd) improved the Delorian and made it not only fly, but also move with garbage. That's right; garbage fuel.

Nowadays scientists are not too far from it. The SRI institute uses electrochemical oxidation to make fuel from banana peels.

The technique turns the banana peel carbon into electricity. The same scientists believe that banana peel is only the first step; in the future, any kind of organic garbage may be turned to fuel.

Chicken

In Brazil, a biology student created an engine that uses chicken as fuel. The secret is in the chickens' fat.

I don't know how Americans call that machine, but in Brazil we call it Dog TV, because dogs keep standing and looking to that oven, staring the rolling chicken. If you know the name of that machine in English, I would thank very much if you left it in a comment.

The biology student took the fat from the bottom of the machine and mixed it with alcohol, methanol and caustic soda. That mixture is enough to move his jeep; however, whenever the car moves, it exhales food smell.

Fly

There is a project in England, of making planes that fuel on flies. Supposedly, the plane would fuel during flight, while “feeding” of those creatures in the air. The plane would take the raw material, mainly flies, and synthesize it to fuel inside the machine.

It is disgusting, but if it works, would probably be further more ecologic than plane gas. The pollution produced by one single regular plane in one flight is more than a car produces in 6 months.