| Cellulosic Ethanol Car is a Winner |
| Written by Philip Proefrock | ||
| Sunday, 09 December 2007 | ||
|
A new racing team called Green Alternative Motorsports took part in the 25 Hours of Thunderhill at Willows, California. The team was interested in proving that cellulosic ethanol could compete in a performance event. They certainly made their mark on the event. Of particular interest were two Norma M20F racers entered by Team Green Alternative/Alliance Financial that were powered by eco-friendly E-85 fuel for the race. They do point out that any benefit from running with E-85 in this race was more than completely offset (in the bad sense) by having to ship the fuel from Ottawa, Canada, to California for the race. But the second place finish shows that cellulosic E-85 ethanol can be a performance fuel, and that it is more than just a curiosity for hobbyists and researchers. And more to the point, it demonstrated that cellulosic ethanol has the potential to be a mainstream fuel if it can meet the rigors of an endurance auto racing event. Via: cleantech
Comments
(5)
offset
written by supergreen , December 09, 2007
It could have been offset (in the good sense) by just not having the race at all. Well so what? Its demonstrated that its good fuel, and that's (probably..er hopefully) a good thing.
Green MotorSport
written by Gordon Foat , December 10, 2007
Look forward to seeing more.
ethanol eco-friendly?
written by nicesocks , December 12, 2007
ethanol, an alcohol derived from corn. most likely corn grown within the united states. you know how that corn is grown?
it's fed with ammonium nitrate -a fixed nitrogen source and explosive- for fertilizer. this permits them to skip that crop rotation cycle. not that they don't swap out for soybeans (your processed food's main protein source) still, but this lets the subsidized farmers skip that step for greater corn (food, livestock food, processed sugar, processed fuel) yields. and do you know how they fix all that nitrogen? oil or natural gas. this ammonium nitrate washes into the watershed, and trickles down the mighty mississippi and on into the gulf of mexico. something else that this fertilizer does is feed green algae. this algae, much like the corn on land, is a power-hungry blight that dominates the landscape and kills off would be competitors. granted, the corn has our help, but the algae displaces other plants and animals all on it's own. so whoop-dee-fruity-doo. you now can have your combustion engines in their little polluting races, this time they are also polluting rivers and tides as well as the air. go team ethanol!  can we please keep these eco geek topics away from all the auto industry kowtowing? unless these are sun powered cars winning these races, don't think it's green. and even then, the base materials that go into making a car for racing purposes are equally not green. if anything this practice should be considered brown, or yellow.
Engineer
written by Yohan , December 18, 2007
Nicesocks, note the headline in this article. Cellulosic ethanol not corn based ethanol.
Fire ready, aim.
hi
written by sam , April 21, 2008
hi this is a great website ever i am doing a project on ethanol cars and i need some more ideas pelease
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They didn't actually take first place, but finishing in second place overall in the "longest race in the world" is pretty damn good.
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