It’s a well-known fact: bacon makes everything better. From martinis and ice cream to filet mignon and asparagus, there’s pretty much nothing you can include this gift of the swine to that it doesn’t improve.
Being that this is an automotive enthusiast site, you may be wondering: How does bacon improve transportation? Clearly it must, if the axiom quoted at the beginning is correct (and we’ve established that it is), but how?
For the answer, we turn to the crew from Hormel, which is a name you might recognize from the chilled meats section of your favorite grocery store. The Austin-based food empire has assembled a motorcycle that runs on bacon grease that would otherwise have been discarded, with the goal in mind of traveling from Austin, MN, to San Diego, CA, in time for the International Bacon Film Festival, which we didn’t know existed, but in retrospect, of course exists.
The machine started life as an EVA Track T800CDI diesel-powered motorcycle, hailing from The Netherlands, and a bacon-grease conversion was performed by the crew from CSE Engineering, who are accompanying the procession as it crosses the western half of the United States as part of a 12-person team that is filming and documenting the adventure…And rest easy this evening with the knowledge that bacon does indeed make the world of transportation a better place to be.
The best thing about diesel engines is that you can run them on just about anything greasy enough.
Dang. Without first reading the drop-down, I thought it was a remake of CHiPs.
I know a little of the grease conversion to biodiesel and someone who bought big tanks to get started. Unfortunately, the DEA likes to come poking around on the pretense of why anyone would need so much sodium hydroxide {lye}.
ps If anyone is interested in making their own lye for soapmaking, then it can be done in small batches through the electrolysis of salt water. A ‘salt bridge’ must be employed to keep the lye and the salt water side seperate, otherwise one gets clorox. I can make about 14 grams a day from a couple pastic processed ham tubs and a battery charger. Most of the time is spent removing the water — Hot lye is incredibly dangerous and eats glass and ceramic.
So… what is hot lye kept in? Old ham cans?
stainless steel
IDKY–but I just assume that a glass container will hold more compounds than any other material? Why would that be? Silicone is…what? “Non Reactive” for the most part? Or is it the glassification that “fixes” something?
Ceramics too, but more variable in chemical make up than glass…or just a variant thereof, or is it vice versa and glass is a type of ceramic?
Defined: anything fired at high temp? I a brick a ceramic? I’d have to say…. yes, but its not a glass.
You gotta love those Venn Diagrams.
“”Sodium hydroxide, aka solid drain cleaner or lye, can easily be stored in glass as a solid, but when molten, it reacts violently with glass and can actually dissolve it away!
http://mad-science.wonderhowto.com/how-to/glass-cutters-are-for-tools-dissolve-glass-using-sodium-hydroxide-0134213/
“”Lyes have been used for removing the ink from $10 bills with the intent of reusing the fabric for counterfeit bills of a higher denomination, such as $100 bills.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lye#Illegal_uses
HA! I bet you thought I was talking about making uncontaminated methamphetamine precursors.
“”I just assume that a glass container will hold more compounds than any other material?
For the most part, that is correct. But, consider hydrofloric acid — technically, it is a *weak* acid and yet it dissolves glass. Silicon has some funny properties that way. I know of an incident in Calvert City, KY. where there was an illegal disposal of floride wastes in an incinerator plant there and the whole town east of that had the cars obtain a permanent windshield ‘frosting’ after the fog came up that night.
That is another topic — floride waste is so toxic that there is no way to safely dispose of it so that those industries {started with DuPont when making the H-bomb} lobbied to spread the waste out evenly amongst the populace which is A OK because it’s good for teeth (not really), and eating out the spiritual seat of the human being {pineal gland}. Of course, plastics based on hemp did not produce these wastes nor does the growing of it require the mined fertilizer which produces more…..
HA! In chemistry, we had a little saying… “nitric acid turns your skin yellow; hydrofloric turns it loose.”
I don’t know where you live, but around here you can still purchase 100% lye (in the Drano aisle) at the food store for dirt cheap. Probably way cheaper than the cost of the electric and inconvenience of making your own.
Also, there are much better ways to make NaOH.
I suspect you are mistaken, plus/minus… That lye is contaminated with sodium nitrate and aluminum.
we still have a presence, but it comes with a knock on the door.
“”If you buy sodium hydroxide and you live in the US, be very careful who you buy it from. SWIM* is not joking about that. He has friends currently in federal prison who extracted DMT for home use by using sodium hydroxide and got busted because they bought sodium hydroxide on-line from a soap supply store. This was used as evidence in court. According to SWIM’s friends they stated in court that buying sodium hydroxide on-line as well as internet sites visited was what triggered a search warrant!
https://dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=1751
*SWIM == someone who isn’t me
Well, it wasn’t me.
who taught these scrubs how to make a teaser trailer? M.Night Shamalamadingdong? if you want people to care about your bacon-powered motorcycle, at least show the damned bacon-powered motorcycle.
[img] http://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/img/editorial/2014/08/12/101914622-BuSARggIgAA387f.530×298.jpg?v=1407868518%5B/img%5D
No joy on the image linkage… try this instead: http://www.foodbeast.com/2014/08/12/bacon-fueled-motorcycle-sets-to-roadtrip-across-united-states/
[url]http://www.foodbeast.com/2014/08/12/bacon-fueled-motorcycle-sets-to-roadtrip-across-united-states/[/url]
Kiwini , there are too many scripts to work through on that page, whether there is an actual image, or not. I gave up after trying to enable 16 of them… I’ll just picture my KZ1300 with some space shaved down off the head and some ceramic inserts for the cylinder walls and call it surrealism…
That’s nothing.
Most corporate America email systems are driven by SPAM!
And most politicians are driven by money and emit BULLSH*T.
And some politicians even get canned.
The fumes from the exhaust must be heavenly.