Tire manufacturer Yokohama is now selling a model made with 80 percent non-petroleum material, substituting orange oil as the primary ingredient to make vulcanized rubber.

The new tire is called the Super E-spec™ and has already received the Popular Mechanics Editor’s Choice Award in 2008. Yokohama will initially market the tire for hybrid car models such as the Toyota Prius.

“The eco-focused dB Super E-spec mixes sustainable orange oil and natural rubber to drastically cut the use of petroleum, without compromising performance,” Yokohama vice president of sales Dan King said. “It also helps consumers save money at the gas pump by improving fuel efficiency via a 20-percent reduction in rolling resistance.”

Orange oil is considered sustainable because it is produced from a renewable resource. The same philosophy of reducing petroleum use is utilized in producing plastics from corn starch or vegetable oil.

Yokohama has yet to release the environmental impact of disposing these tires, which typically provides an environmental concern. The petroleum in traditional tires can burn for months in a landfill and is difficult to extinguish. These fires also release black smoke and toxins into the air. Yokohama has not specified whether the orange oil will biodegrade over time.

The process for recycling tires involves devulcanizing the rubber, which would essentially remove the oil and extract natural rubber. Because this is an expensive process, used tires are often shredded and turned into playground surfacing or additives for the soil in sports turf. It can also be reused as artwork.

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Cars could be the solution to the intermittent nature of wind power if a multimillion European project beginning on a Danish island proves successful.

The project on the holiday island of Bornholm will use the batteries of parked electric cars to store excess energy when the wind blows hard, and then feed electricity back into the grid when the weather is calm.

The concept, known as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) is widely cited among greens as a key step towards a low-carbon future, but has never been demonstrated. Now, the 40,000 inhabitants of Bornholm are being recruited into the experiment. Denmark is already a world leader in wind energy and has schemes to replace 10% of all its vehicles with electric cars, but the goal on the island is to replace all petrol cars.

Currently 20% of the island’s electricity comes from wind, even though it has enough turbines installed to meet 40% of its needs. The reason it cannot use the entire capacity is the intermittency of the wind: many turbines are needed to harness sufficient power in breezes, but when gales blow the grid would overload, so some turbines are disconnected.

So the aim of the awkwardly named Electric Vehicles in a Distributed and Integrated Market using Sustainable Energy and Open Networks Project – Edison for short – is to use V2G to allow more turbines to be built and provide up to 50% of the island’s supply without making the grid crash.

Each electric vehicle will have battery capacity reserved to store wind power for the island rather than for travelling. This means it acts like a buffer, says Dieter Gantenbein, a researcher at IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory. IBM is developing the software needed for the island’s smart grid, and will showcase its work next week. When the cars are plugged in and charging their batteries, they will absorb any additional load the grid cannot cope with and then feed it back to power homes when needed, he says.

“It’s never been tried at this scale,” says Hermione Crease of Cambridge-based Sentec, which develops smart grid software. There are plenty of smart grid trials already under way, usually involving the use of software to monitor and manage supply and demand, for example, by temporarily switching off industrial cooling units during periods of peak load, she says. But unlike these so-called “negawatt” approaches, proving that cars can be used as part of the grid has yet to attempted.

Andrew Howe of RLTec in London, another smart grid technology firm, says many important questions need answers. It is not clear, for example, how the cost and lifetime of batteries will influence the economics of such a system.

These are the kinds of issue the project seeks to shed light on, says the project manager Jørgen Christensen of the Danish Energy Association, which with technology companies Siemens and Dong and the government are running the scheme.

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Designs for the Riversimple urban car, capable of a 50mph top speed and a 240 mile range, will be freely available online in a bid to help grow the hydrogen market.

A new hydrogen-powered car, whose designs will be “open source” and posted for free use on the web, was unveiled today in London. The company behind the Riversimple urban car claim the new model proves hydrogen automotive technology is ready for roll-out now rather than in 10 years’ time.

The open-source approach means entrepreneurs around the world could download the designs and manufacture the two-seater prototype locally for free.

The car, which drove in to the launch event, is capable of a 50mph top speed, 0-30mph acceleration in 5.5 seconds, and has a 240 mile range. The car’s backers say it has greenhouse gas emissions of 30g/km CO2, less than a third of the latest hybrid petrol cars such as the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight.

The lightweight Smart car-size vehicle uses hydrogen in a modest 6kW fuel cell, and – in the case of this prototype – uses hydrogen converted from natural gas. Hydrogen can also be created from water using electrolysis and potentially even from biofuels.

The open-source decision was made to speed the car’s commercialisation, with the company hoping entrepreneurs globally will adapt it to local conditions. Hugo Spowers, a motorsport engineer and the founder of Riversimple, said: “We want competitors, even if they’re in the UK. We believe that open source is commercially the best thing for us to do, as it will help grow the market for hydrogen technology, from parts to repairs and the refuelling infrastructure.”

Sebastian Piëch, the finanical backer for Riversimple, added: “Now that we have the basic vehicle in place with practical technology, the challenge is to begin the development of a fuelling infrastructure to accompany it.”

The car, which cost nearly £500,000 to develop in partnership with Oxford University and Cranfield University, is expected to cost £200 a month to lease when it is launched as a production vehicle. The date for UK availability is yet to be announced, but Riversimple is in talks with UK cities including Oxford and Worcester for pilots.

Hydrogen cars have so far enjoyed little real-world success, due in part to a lack of charging infrastructure, cost and – more recently – a political swing towards electric cars.

Gordon Brown has publicly backed electric cars as a way to reduce UK carbon emissions, and in April the government announced plans to offer £5,000 grants towards anyone buying an electric car in 2011.

In the US, the Obama administration recently cut research budgets for hydrogen vehicles. Steven Chu, the US energy secretary, last month said: “We asked ourselves: ‘Is it likely in the next 10 or 15, 20 years that we will convert to a hydrogen car economy?’ The answer, we felt, was ‘no’.”

Spowers disputed the notion that widespread hydrogen technology was a long way off. “I agree the passion is swinging away from hydrogen, but the reason is people are sceptical of the near-term possibilities of hydrogen vehicles – people are still clear that hydrogen is the end-game.”

The Riversimple urban car, he said, proved the technology was available now.

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With ever increasing gas prices I have recently been looking at depth into alternative fuel sources to power my car. All that we here of in the mainstream is bio-diesel – people running their vehicles on cooking fat and suchlike. This is fine if you own a diesel car, but not much use if you’re on gas, like I am.

After a little digging around I came up with a very interesting potential solution – running my car on water. This is not a new idea; the concept was around in the 1930’s but never seemed to take off. It’s seems highly probable to me that the idea was suppressed by the oil and motor companies, through fear of losing their monopoly on fuel and petrol engines. If this is not the case, then it seems very coincidental to me that now people are starting to do their own conversions, suddenly major automobile companies are accepting the technology and starting to use the concept in their own vehicles, notably Honda.

So how does it work? The technology uses a hydrogen fuel cell. The fuel cell separates hydrogen from water, and this is used to power the motor. At the moment it’s just being used as a supplemental fuel alongside gas or diesel, but theoretically a car can run solely on water! This is great for the environment as all that it exhausts is water – zero emissions.

Now obviously a fuel cell backed by millions of dollars of investment and designed and built by a major auto manufacturer will outperform a homemade cell, but thousands of people are making them at home and fitting them themselves – and with these low technology units people are reporting improvements of between 30% and 60% improvement in miles per gallon!

Another great fact about them is that they are inexpensive to build and pretty simple in design; any semi competent DIY advocate can build one, with most items needed being available at Lowes or Home Depot.

The principle behind the technology is simple – you separate the hydrogen in the water from the oxygen, discard the oxygen, and you’re left with a highly explosive gas. A basic cell consists of two stainless steel plates connected to a battery, one plate positive the other negative. When current is passed through the cell the oxygen and hydrogen in the water are pulled apart. The more plates you have the more gas is produced.

Type ‘hho’, browns gas, hydrogen cell or water car into Google and you’ll find a wealth of information on the subject, including actual fuel cell designs and plans, as well as readymade cells for purchase for home fitting.

It seems such a shame to me that this technology is readily available yet not being promoted by governments; a completely emission free, unlimited source of fuel, at very low cost. I feel that cost is the major stumbling block; low cost means low taxes and less profit – the money machine wins again!

I think eventually, especially as people are taking the matter into their own hands and the system is gaining more and more public interest, governments will come up with a reason why taxing us more for water will be a ‘benefit to society’ and the system will become mainstream.

Until such a time I think it’s up to every individual to make the most of the technology while it’s still free!

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With gas and diesel prices continually increasing we recently decided to look at the advantages of using a much cheaper fuel in our car – biodiesel. After a little research it has become obvious to us why it is better to use biodiesel over petro-diesel. Many people are still not familiar with all the biodiesel benefits, perhaps you’re one of them? Well we think the following reasons are a good starting point for understanding why biodiesel is an excellent alternative to presently used fuels.

Bio-Diesel is Economical
Let’s say it loud and clear, making biodiesel saves money! If you make biodiesel at home, you can save more than 50% of your petro-diesel expenses. The fact that making biodiesel is a relatively easy and safe procedure is encouraging more and more people to use biodiesel. Many fast food outlets pay to have used oil disposed of, and would be happy for you to take it off their hands!

Bio Diesel Resources are Reproducible
Biodiesel is generally produced from vegetable oil. These resources can be regrown and are not finite like crude oil, that is running out fast. When using biodiesel instead of petro-diesel the demand for crude oil products is reduced, and as a result their prices decrease.

Using Biodiesel is more Environment Friendly than other Energy Alternatives
When using biodiesel exhaust emissions are significantly less polluting than using petro-diesel. According to studies there are several toxins – like hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide that are reduced when using biodiesel in diesel engines. And the more biodiesel used the less petro-diesel used!

Supporting Agriculture Industry
As the main ingredients for preparing biodiesel are vegetables oils there is a growing need for the main biodiesel resources which are the seeds like canola, corn, soy and others. The growing demand for biodiesel resources enables agriculture in general, and the farmers in particular, to have another market to sell to. This in turn helps to produce stability in the farming industries.
Reducing Dependence on Petro-Diesel and Fuel Companies
The more we use biodiesel instead of petro-diesel the less dependent we are on the dwindling resources of crude oil. This means that these crude oil companies, and in many cases countries, will eventually have less domination over other countries in the aspect of energy resources. This will hopefully lead to a better balanced world.

Better for engine’s health
Experience shows that engines run better on biodiesel. Its lubricity is higher than that of petro-diesel fuel. This higher lubricity enables the engine to work in a smoother manner, and therefore reduce the physical deterioration of the engine.

Best Energy Alternative To Current Fuel
Looking at all the alternatives for diesel engines, there is one major factor where biodiesel shines above the rest. Other alternatives to petrodiesel fuel require adjustments and modifications to vehicles. Sometimes it is in the fuel injection system and sometimes another fuel tank must be installed for example. The majority of diesel engines will work smoothly with biodiesel with no modifications. It is important, however, to mention that there is a small drop in power when compared to using petro-diesel. Biodiesel has a drop in power of around 9%, which most drivers won’t even notice in general driving, as most cars are overpowered anyway.

In Conclusion
As far as we can see biodiesel is cheaper, cleaner, less environmentally damaging and much nicer smelling than petro-diesel – and it doesn’t line the already bulging pockets of the oil industry – let us know what you think!

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