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10 everyday fuels found in your garbage can
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The average price of regular gasoline in the U.S. is $3.50 per gallon. That's the figure that the U.S. Energy Information Administration provided on Oct. 7, 2013.
Approximately two-thirds of that price is due to the cost of crude oil. If fuel came from a less precious resource, such as sewage or sawdust, motorists would almost certainly see lower prices at the pump.
We're not there yet, but the capability already exists to turn several everyday resources into a component of fuel. Many of these resources may in fact be sitting in your garbage can, in an office recycling bin or in a city landfill at this moment.
Read ahead and see what substances that we take for granted today can be turned into the automotive fuel of tomorrow.
1. Corn
According to Discovery News, corn is the largest source of biofuel in the U.S. today. Unfortunately, it's expensive to process, so it would carry high costs at the pump.
Corn is used in the creation of ethanol, an alcohol fuel. It derives from the sugars found in the grain, and all sugar crops can be fermented to produce it, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
2. Sawdust
Gasoline that derives from wood waste may sound like a fantasy, but in 2009 a University of Massachusetts at Amherst professor named George Huber made it happen. According to The Boston Globe, Huber had his students load sawdust into one end of a complex contraption that he had invented, and moments later, a brown liquid that he called "grassoline" dripped out of the other side. That means that someday, the dumpster behind Home Depot could yield a treasure trove of energy independence.
Creating fuel from wood isn't just for the universities. Beaver Energy is a company that researches and develops alternative fuels, and has made a wood-powered car, a 1988 Isuzu Trooper with an engine that runs on wood chips. According to the company's website, it can go "20 miles on 25 pounds of wood chips," and it can be seen in this YouTube video.
3. French fries
French fries may be bad for you, but you can always justify eating them by saying that you're doing it for the environment. The cooking oil in which they're fried is a component of biodiesel, which the U.S. Energy Information Administration says "produces lower levels of most air pollutants than petroleum-based products."
In 2009, a student research project at New York University studied the conversion of fryer oil from the school's own cafeterias into biodiesel. It found that "the percentage of biodiesel that can be produced from the fryer oil is approximately 75 percent."
4. Soybeans
On Sept. 30, 2013, The Minnesota State Register reported that the state's Pollution Control Agency and its Departments of Agriculture and Commerce had announced a move to a B10 biodiesel mandate, meaning that every gallon of diesel sold in the state had to be 10 percent biodiesel
The Minnesota Soybean Growers Association supported this move wholeheartedly. After all, soybeans are a popular component in biodiesel production, thanks to an easily performed organic chemistry process called transesterification. This process is also used in the synthesis of polyester.
