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The New Oil Companies
March 28, 2008

Photo: Department of Soil and Crop Sciences at Colorado State University
http://www.soilcrop.colostate.edu/

YES, LEADING EDGE R&D - BUT WHAT WILL YOU RUN IT ON?
Or perhaps a better question is: What will we be able to afford to run our technology demonstration vehicle on? As Team Leader working AIM's automatic guided vehicle project, http://aimagic.org/html/agv_wendy_darling.html the rise in fuel prices with the added prospect of them never going down again has moved the fuel an issue to the top of the list of things that need to be considered. As it turns out there is an expert on the subject of wood gasification, conducting experiments right here in Traverse City, so I will let you know more about what I find out about it over the next few weeks. Using wood scraps, tires, and other things that can be gasified into combustible vapor while not the Mr. Fusion device from the movie Back To The Future that ran on garbage, it certainly comes close.

SCRAP TIRES - VAPORIZED
While not of part of the project’s original outline, the possibility of using vaporized tires and wood as a fuel for our technology demonstration for our 5,552 mile publicity run from Traverse City to Los Angeles and back does have some “being green” appeal. Alternative fuel options is both an economic and a defense issue. The DoD is interested in the ability of some vehicles to "live off the land" or in other words, power them with whatever is available in the field to use as fuel. From a recycling standpoint, if old tires can be safely disposed of by vaporizing them and then using the vapor as fuel, the country will be that much farther ahead. The metal recovered from the tires can be recycled. I will let you know more about this as we look farther into it.

OLD OIL - NEW OIL
This morning when taking a few minutes out to make breakfast, I opened the cabinet door above the stove and was greeted by a series of brand names on bottles of oil. It dawned on me that the familiar company names associated with old oil fossil fuels, like Exxon, Shell, BP etc., would soon be yielding ground to renewable vegetable oil giants like Wesson, Crisco, etc. The new fuel oils will be canola oil, soybean oil, sunflower, corn oil, and other high oil yield crops. In the case of canola, it has been carefully bread to produce high quality oil in large amounts. In fact, the yield is about 119 gallons per acre and can be used as diesel engine fuel without blending it with petroleum products.

119 GALLONS PER ACRE
While not all the figures are in, it is estimated that it takes about 5% of that or about 6 gallons to produce the 119 gallons for a net result of about 113 gallons per acre. When you consider that diesel fuel is about $4.19 per gallon (3/28/2008) those 113 gallons are worth $473.47 per acre or when you consider the 1,000 acres of my neighbor farm, which is $473,470.00 per year if he only brings in one crop a year. The 1,000-acre (small) farm could produce 113,000 gallons of canola oil for use in diesel engines, per year. Canola oil is extracted from the seeds by pressing them in an auger style press, much like how a meat grinder works. After pressing, the seed-meal left over has a variety of uses so it is not wasted. Canola grows well in Canada and USA so it is a crop that can be grown near the AIM shop here in Michigan. I have two acres here around the AIM shop. That would be 226 gallons a year we could contribute toward supporting ourselves. http://www.columbiabasin.edu/docs/ag_bs1_pdf_madison_farms_biodiesel.pdf  

GO ROBOTS !

Paul F. Grayson - Chief Engineer
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC, LLC
Racing to build technology that saves soldier's lives.
390 4-Mile Rd. S.
Traverse City, MI 49686-8411
(231) 946-0187, (231) 883-4463 Cell
pgrayson@aimagic.org
http://aimagic.org
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/robotcluboftraversecitymi/
http://www.controleng.com/blog/1180000318.html 

Posted by Paul Grayson on March 28, 2008 | Comments (0)