Running your car on used cooking oil is so 2008. The hottest feedstock for home-grown vehicle fuels is wood chips.
Well, maybe not everyone’s doing it. But at least one resident of Alabama is, and he’s trying to spread the word about his innovation.
Wayne Keith of Springville, Alabama, who’s a cattle rancher and a partner in Renewable Energy Systems LLC, was inspired to develop his Bio-Truck back in 2003, when gas prices reached $2 a gallon. Looking for a better way to fuel his 1984 Ford truck, which he uses extensively on his ranch, he started building a gasifier that produces syngas from the partial combustion of wood.
Now in its third incarnation, which is lighter and more user-friendly than the first version, Keith’s gasifier powered his truck on a coast-to-coast tour last fall. Today, he has two trucks that have driven a total of 40,000 miles on wood-chip-based syngas, and says he hasn’t used petroleum-based fuel in them for two years.
Keith recently helped Maine businessman Ford Reiche convert his pickup truck into a gasifier-powered vehicle, too. Reiche and his son George blogged about their experiences driving back from Alabama to Maine via wood power in their blog, “Migration of the Termite.”
An article about their trip in a Maine newspaper says their truck now gets 5,000 miles per cord of wood. (A cord of wood is a stack measuring four feet by four feet by eight feet.)
You can learn more about Keith’s invention, and the adventures he’s had using wood-chip fuel, at his Bio-Truck blog.
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