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A Volkswagen Beetle That Runs On Methane


Sylvi

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Members of the forum I received this note by E mail this morning 11Th August.

A Volkswagen Beetle that runs on methane produced from human waste in sewage sludge has been unveiled in Bristol.

Bath-based Green fuel Company converted the ‘bug’ so it could run on biogas generated at the Bristol sewage treatment works in Avonmouth.

With support from the South West Regional Development Agency, GENeco, a Wessex Water-owned company, imported specialist equipment to purify biomethane in a way that doesn’t affect the vehicle performance.

If both tanks were filled up with methane the car would travel for 250 miles

The bio-gas is enough to power a conventional two-litre VW Beetle convertible to 114mph.

According to GENeco, waste flushed down the toilets of just 70 homes in Bristol is enough to power the ‘Bio-Bug’ for a year, based on an annual mileage of 10,000 miles.

Countries including India and China use compressed natural gas (CNG) to power vehicles and a number of companies in the UK are now using CNG mainly to fuel buses and commercial vehicles. In Sweden, more than 11,500 vehicles already run on bio methane produced from sewage plants.

But using bio-gas from sewage sludge is yet to take off in the UK despite a significant amount being produced everyday at sewage plants around the country.

In order to produce methane from sewage, it first must be treated with anaerobic digestion, a process in which microorganisms - in the absence of oxygen - break down biodegradable material to produce methane.

In an extra step to purify the methane, the GENeco engineers used specialist equipment to strip carbon dioxide from the bio-gas.

The methane is stored in two pressurized storage tanks in the boot of the Bio-Bug vehicle. If both tanks were filled up with methane the car would be able to travel for 250 miles.

Ingram Legge, director at Green fuel Company, which converted the car, said filling it up with methane is fairly simple. ‘The storage tanks are pressurized to about 200 bar and you connect the vehicle up and it basically equalizes pressure so the tanks in the vehicle are 200 bar with methane in them,’ he explained. ‘There’s no pump in effect, which is quite clever.’

The vehicle still depends on petrol but only for a moment after starting the engine. Once the engine’s temperature reaches 30ºC, the petrol injectors shut down and the methane ones open up. If methane runs out, the car will switch back to running on petrol.

While the Bio-Bug is being touted as environmentally friendly, Legge acknowledged that does not mean the vehicle produces no emissions. ‘It’s producing CO2 out the tailpipe but it’s important to know where that CO2 is coming from,’ he said. ‘Of course it’s not coming from yesterday’s CO2 buried in the ground as oil, it’s today’s CO2 from waste. So it’s very environmentally friendly.’

Mohammed Saddiq, GENeco’s general manager, said he was confident that methane from sewage sludge could be used as an alternative energy source and was an innovative way of powering company vehicles.

He added: ‘Our site at Avonmouth has been producing bio-gas for many years, which we use to generate electricity to power the site and export to the National Grid.

‘With surplus gas available, we wanted to put it to good use in a sustainable and efficient way.

‘We decided to power a vehicle on the gas offering a sustainable alternative to using fossil fuels that we so heavily rely on in the UK.

‘If you were to drive the car, you wouldn’t know it was powered by bio-gas as it performs just like any conventional car. It is probably the most sustainable car around.’

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err methane has ben collected from waste for quite some time now. It's even been done in Sri Lanka.

Methane cars have been around for a while too including the volvo 850 in 1995.

Idnet,

Thank you for the information there is one person in Srilanka trying to compress Methane gas.

He wanted some advice how to compress to store in to a gas cylinder and run his motor cycle

He had spend around Rupees 100000.00 building a big methane tank it is producing gas at present with Hay for filling the tank.

Using for cooking and lighting and will run his motor cycle in near future.

Very Talented Technician.

Wijesinghe.

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Idnet,

Thank you for the information there is one person in Srilanka trying to compress Methane gas.

He wanted some advice how to compress to store in to a gas cylinder and run his motor cycle

He had spend around Rupees 100000.00 building a big methane tank it is producing gas at present with Hay for filling the tank.

Using for cooking and lighting and will run his motor cycle in near future.

Very Talented Technician.

Wijesinghe.

Again not a news. one of our O/L labs had all burners used for chemical tests running from methane generated from a small reactor using waste from the school itself. This was about 15 years back. :D

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Again not a news. one of our O/L labs had all burners used for chemical tests running from methane generated from a small reactor using waste from the school itself. This was about 15 years back. :D

Lol hey Harshan did you know that some guy in Sri Lanka is going to be the first to use hydrogen to powedr his car?

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Lol hey Harshan did you know that some guy in Sri Lanka is going to be the first to use hydrogen to powedr his car?

what? these buggers can fool majority as long as they aren't really updated and keep up with the innovations, and these jokes apply for patent and our patent office accepts and process the request for patenting too. :D

I wonder what's the feedback they're getting from the main body.

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