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Kxan-TV : Innovative Ways to Fuel Cars If you're tired of rising gas prices, listen to this. Some of the nation's brightest college students are testing cars that run on cheaper alternatives: chemical reactions. The competition is put together by the American Institute for Chemical Engineers. Sing your petroleum blues away. This is a race to come up with innovative ways to fuel cars. "The fuel is incredibly interesting," Bill Byers with American Institute for Chemical Engineers said. They are fuels created by controlled chemical reactions, using stuff most of us have in the kitchen, like beef liver and Hydrogen Peroxide. "The two put together produce a gas, and the gas drives the car," Byers said. Coming up with futuristic fuels is a little too much pressure for some students. However, students at the University of Houston are moving forward with their car which runs strictly on water. That fuel will only get you so far. However, the team from the University of Alabama in Huntsville is still in the running with this car. "This is an internal combustion engine that runs on ethanol and castor oil. Both of them are renewable resources," Bart Johnson with the University of Alabama in Huntsville said. It's a fuel they can really load up on. Ethanol is known to many college students here as the grain alcohol: everclear, but it works. "This is a very practical application of this car. It can be modified to exist in technologies to actually run present-day automobiles." johnson said. That's the idea behind this competition. "Our country is dependent on petroleum, and that's a national security issue, as well as an energy balance for the country issue, and so by thinking about alternative ways to fuel cars," Byers said, "I'm sure some of these students will go forward and produce life-changing drivers for cars or other things that affect their life in the future." Source : www.kxan.com/Global/story.asp?S=2536871&nav=0s3dSsuW Please click here for Japanese Auto Auctions |