Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia (MU) and Midwest Research Institute (MRI) are testing an innovative alternative fuel technology in a pickup truck owned and operated by the Kansas City Office of Environmental Quality. This technology may revolutionize the capacity of natural gas to power vehicles.
Current natural gas vehicles are equipped with bulky, high-pressure tanks that take up premium cargo space, such as the trunk of a car. This new technology, however, enables natural gas to be stored in a smaller, low-pressure tank that can be shaped into a rectangular form and mounted under the floor of a car.
What makes this possible is an MU discovery that fractal pore spaces (spaces created by repetition of similar patterns at different levels of magnificent) are remarkably efficient at storing natural gas. The scientists found a way to “bake” corncobs into carbon briquettes that contain fractal pore spaces and then use the briquettes to store natural gas in a low-pressure tank. MU and MRI researchers are now testing a prototype of this tank in the Kansas City pickup. They hope this will lead to the design of low-pressure tanks that solve the cargo space problem posed by high-pressure tanks.
I live just outside a town where not only a few municipal vehicles are powered by natural gas; but, the public transit buses. They’re clean and cost-effective. The hangup is dispensing the fuel — and storing it in a vehicle. Something that can be changed for the better with this corncob tech.
So these guys are saying that they can store more fuel at a lower pressure in a smaller space by partially filling it with carbonized corn cobs ????
I don’t get it , it goes against the laws of physics
Nicely. From reading the article, it appears that gaseous fuels like methane — available via renewable resources — will work as well as natural gas. I wonder if this would assist the logistics of utilizing NumbNut’s wonder-fuel, hydrogen, as well?
Uh, #1 — try clicking the link and reading. 🙂
Actually, using solids as part of the process of storing gases isn’t new. Just the materials.
What does …pore spaces (spaces created by repetition of similar patterns at different levels of magnificent) mean?
I RTFA and did a google search to try to figure out what ‘magnificent’ is supposed to imply when dealing with fractals, but I’m not finding the answer. I found lots of papers about the mathematics behind pore-spaces but none of them use ‘magnificent’ in this way.
Anyone know?
Todd
The link was dead earlier, now that I have read it ,it makes more sense, but I think the carbon has to be heated to release the gas which negates some of the efficiency but over all it looks like a step in the right direction
now if they could just make an adapter for a cows butt we could end global warming and fuel our cars ( the previous comment was satire and in no way should be taken seriously ) viva la chlorofluorocarbons
Todd, #4 — my best guess is some writer of press releases for Mizzou leaving autocomplete turned on in his copy of Word > and getting “magnificent” instead of something like “magnification”.
Then, when he used his spell/grammar checker, it came out just dandy.
PM, #5 — we could move the center for transport fuel for the United States to just outside of Amarillo. On a hot summer afternoon.
The price of corn is at an all time high. Great for farmers. I overheard someone saying there will be more corn planted this year than any year in history. Get those gardens going people!
Uh, #2, methane is natural gas.
I bet “magnificent” was a case of the writer misreading his own notes. It probably was supposed be “magnitude,” in the sense of being fancy talk for “size.” It’s a characteristic of fractals that they repeat a simple pattern as the space or area they define gets ever smaller, I recall. Mathematically, fractals even wind up worming down between dimensions if I recall correctly – whatever the hell that means in the language of mathematicians.
Worming between dimensions – images of storing unlimited amounts of natural gas in Ford Prefect’s transdimensional purse…
PM, #5 — we could move the center for transport fuel for the United States to just outside of Amarillo. On a hot summer afternoon.
Comment by moss — 2/21/2007 @ 8:48 am
Moss,
They are planning on building an Ethanol plant neer Amarillo, that will use methane from a feedlot to power the plant instead of coal or natural gas. Then the distillers grain will be feed to the cows. So it is one big loop.
I just can’t get this portrait of General Douglas MacArthur out of my head.
#8 — apparently everyone else understood the differentiation between natural gas as methane vs. the product of a renewable resource. But, then…
John, #10 — Amarillo! Please, please, now figure out something useful to do with the flies.
#12 — LOL So if it’s “renewable” it’s methane, if not then it’s natural gas? What a quaint way of teaching chemistry.
“From reading the article, it appears that gaseous fuels like methane — available via renewable resources — will work as well as natural gas.”
So, given your enlighten knowledge — god — could you please explain to me how “renewable” methane wouldn’t work as well as natural gas?
In years gone by corn cobs saw heavy use in the nation’s outhouses, or so I’m told. Like soybeans, they seem to be a versatile crop.
Smith you are such a pedant. In the real world, the marketplace, you get to buy natural gas from a string of firms going back to the extractive process. You know that, we all know that.
Most consumers, retail or corporate, don’t go to their public utility and say, “I’d like to sign a contract to purchase methane”.
But, when firms sell methane produced from other than extractive industries, they don’t advertise the sale of “natural gas”. In fact, your buds at the Natural Gas Producers Council would probably sue for trademark violation.
What a tiny ivory tower you live in. You are an advertisement for what’s wrong with a great deal of technical education. Ignore marketplace reality? Niggle about semantic quirks! Focus on tea-party intellectual quibbling!
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060818-ethanol.html
Moss it was Hereford TX, sorry to give you false hope.
Got my MS at WTAMU and did my research at Bushland.