Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How Garbage-powered Cars Could Work
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- 0:00Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
- 0:05Speaker 1: stuff you should know from house works dot com. Hey buddy, Yeah,
- 0:15Speaker 1: before we get started, we have a big announcement here
- 0:18Speaker 1: about eight time change on our TV show. Yeah, we again,
- 0:21Speaker 1: we have a TV show that's pretty awesome. Um, we
- 0:24Speaker 1: are now on Saturday's beginning at noon. They're playing it
- 0:27Speaker 1: in blocks, so you can just sit down and basically
- 0:30Speaker 1: like totally lose yourself in the s y s K
- 0:34Speaker 1: TV world. Yeah. I think people marathon like TV shows
- 0:38Speaker 1: these days. I know I do. Well. Yeah, I mean,
- 0:40Speaker 1: you know, Nick and Night originated this kind of thing,
- 0:42Speaker 1: and the world has been eternally grateful ever since. For me,
- 0:46Speaker 1: those were the first marathons I ran into. So yeah,
- 0:48Speaker 1: I call it mainlining. That's what we do at our house.
- 0:52Speaker 1: We'll get there like a new show and we'll watch
- 0:53Speaker 1: like three seasons over two weeks until we just can't
- 0:57Speaker 1: stand it. So so Science Channel they know what they're doing.
- 0:59Speaker 1: They're like, oh, you like to mainline the show. Yeah,
- 1:01Speaker 1: we're gonna give you a taste. We're gonna give you
- 1:03Speaker 1: a taste. They're not gonna put it all on at once. Yeah,
- 1:05Speaker 1: until he run everything, So over the course of three
- 1:08Speaker 1: different Saturdays, Yeah, beginning February night February and in March night,
- 1:13Speaker 1: starting at noon. On all three days, you're gonna see
- 1:16Speaker 1: a couple of new episodes each time, and then some
- 1:19Speaker 1: reruns which classics. And then in the final day was
- 1:23Speaker 1: it March night, Yeah, you're gonna see the Lost Pilot episode, yeah,
- 1:27Speaker 1: which we can't believe. Yeah, the Lost Pilot. Yeah. And
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- 2:00Speaker 1: you see it too. So just hanging there. You're doing
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- 2:04Speaker 1: the support. Watch it. It's funny stuff. Yeah. And if
- 2:07Speaker 1: you just need to get your your fix of stuff,
- 2:09Speaker 1: you should know all the time, you should go to
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- 2:13Speaker 1: our podcasts there, it's got our blog there, it's got
- 2:16Speaker 1: all sorts of fun videos. It's very cool, so check
- 2:18Speaker 1: it out. Great, Okay, get down the business. Let's get
- 2:21Speaker 1: down to business. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
- 2:24Speaker 1: Josh Clark, Charles Chuck, Brian is breathing on his glasses,
- 2:27Speaker 1: which means it's time for stuff. Is that what that means? Yeah,
- 2:32Speaker 1: it means my glasses are just dirty always. I think
- 2:35Speaker 1: I'm just greasy. It happens as a human that just
- 2:39Speaker 1: greased things up everywhere I walk. Everybody who wears glasses
- 2:42Speaker 1: gets their glasses greasy. Really yeah, if you don't, I
- 2:45Speaker 1: mean what, you're like a lizard or something. Okay, you
- 2:48Speaker 1: don't want that. You want to make your glasses greasy.
- 2:49Speaker 1: It's a small price to play for having hydrated skin.
- 2:56Speaker 1: Got you? That should be a T shirt. I'm sure
- 2:58Speaker 1: it will be in the newar feature Are you doing good?
- 3:02Speaker 1: I am doing well, sir. I enjoy these kind of
- 3:05Speaker 1: topics where we hit on some nice environmental things that
- 3:09Speaker 1: can help the environment. Same here. Um. This one's beautiful,
- 3:12Speaker 1: elegant in my opinion, and I apologize straight off for
- 3:16Speaker 1: everyone that was cringing when we couldn't pronounce the river
- 3:19Speaker 1: in Paris, France, the sin, the scene, the sin or
- 3:22Speaker 1: the same the sign, the sign one of those three. Yeah,
- 3:25Speaker 1: our friend and and mortal enemy, Joe and Dazzo hates
- 3:29Speaker 1: us now because of that of thing x dot com. Yeah,
- 3:33Speaker 1: if you haven't checked out thing x dot com, go
- 3:35Speaker 1: because they're certainly watching you. Yeah. Some of the former
- 3:38Speaker 1: Onion folks from New York split off and made this
- 3:41Speaker 1: comedy website and we're gonna be on it soon, but
- 3:43Speaker 1: we'll we'll let you know when that happens. Yeah. It's
- 3:44Speaker 1: an adult swim website too, right, Yeah, So despite the
- 3:47Speaker 1: fact that Joe is angry at us, and what do
- 3:51Speaker 1: you say? How can you guys be adults in the
- 3:52Speaker 1: world and not know how to pronounce that? How? How
- 3:54Speaker 1: do you not know how to pronounce the sin? Yeah?
- 3:57Speaker 1: I'm like, dude, I'm not Mr. Fancy Pants. I'm not
- 3:59Speaker 1: in Paris every other week like you. All right, that's
- 4:04Speaker 1: our Joe. Um, let's see, I've got some horrifying stats
- 4:09Speaker 1: for you. Oh boy, I opening to say the least.
- 4:14Speaker 1: Did you know that one third of the global food
- 4:18Speaker 1: supply goes to waste. One point eight billion tons around
- 4:23Speaker 1: the world of food go to waste. What's interesting is
- 4:26Speaker 1: it's not just developed countries. Developing countries waste about as
- 4:29Speaker 1: much food per person is developed countries too. Yeah. I
- 4:33Speaker 1: wonder if they waste though, because they can't help it,
- 4:35Speaker 1: because they don't have like the refrigerators and the storage
- 4:37Speaker 1: that we do. I don't know. And here we just
- 4:40Speaker 1: you know, toss it away, like so many discarded you know, yeah,
- 4:45Speaker 1: business cards, Well, there's a wow. I was not expecting
- 4:49Speaker 1: business cards trying something you just getting throw away? You
- 4:52Speaker 1: know what business cards? Anyone listening to this podcast if
- 4:55Speaker 1: you were expecting Chuck to say, business cards emailing right
- 4:57Speaker 1: now and let us know. Yeah, and also please don't
- 4:59Speaker 1: ever get business card and if you have, in the
- 5:01Speaker 1: best I apologize. UM. There's like a little dirty secret
- 5:06Speaker 1: among grocery stores where if fruit or vegetable produce it's
- 5:10Speaker 1: called collectively UM. Doesn't really look quite right, but it's
- 5:14Speaker 1: totally fine. Like examples I've seen as UM, like a
- 5:18Speaker 1: slight bruise to a tomato or something like that, or
- 5:21Speaker 1: a carrot that's not straight enough, they just throw it away. Yeah,
- 5:24Speaker 1: we've covered that and something I can't remember what if
- 5:27Speaker 1: it seems like we have, haven't we Yeah, it's sad.
- 5:29Speaker 1: I feel that they should have a well, I want
- 5:31Speaker 1: to bring it out into the light again. Well, they
- 5:32Speaker 1: should have a misshapen fruit and vegetable store where you
- 5:37Speaker 1: can buy a crooked carrot that tastes just as good
- 5:40Speaker 1: like one of the drawings from the Far Side, like
- 5:43Speaker 1: owns and operates this store. Remember the people like they
- 5:46Speaker 1: had like crooked heads and everything. I bet people would
- 5:48Speaker 1: buy this stuff though, if you you know, if you're uh,
- 5:51Speaker 1: don't have as much money, you might want to buy
- 5:53Speaker 1: a tomato that has a bruise and just cut that
- 5:54Speaker 1: little part off. Just a thought. I think it's a
- 5:59Speaker 1: good thought. So one point three, I think I said
- 6:01Speaker 1: one point eight. But one point three billion pounds tons
- 6:04Speaker 1: of food is wasted every year. That's just food, dude. Um.
- 6:09Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty, the average Americans generated two point six
- 6:13Speaker 1: eight pounds of waste a day. Today we're up to
- 6:16Speaker 1: about four point six pounds a day. You know what
- 6:18Speaker 1: it is in Chicago. You know, we mentioned Chicago in
- 6:22Speaker 1: this article as being overrun with garbage. In two thousand ten,
- 6:25Speaker 1: the average Chicago and produced fifteen pounds of waste fifteen
- 6:28Speaker 1: point four pounds per day. Is that garbage? I don't know,
- 6:32Speaker 1: And I think we're up, Like I think Chicago was
- 6:36Speaker 1: up three percent from the nineteen eighties. So I don't
- 6:39Speaker 1: know what's going on there, but they're like double what
- 6:42Speaker 1: they are in the state of Illinois period. That is
- 6:44Speaker 1: really nuts. I'm really curious what's going on there, just
- 6:49Speaker 1: doing UM and so overall we're producing, apparently most of
- 6:53Speaker 1: it from Chicago, two thirty million tons of waste in
- 6:56Speaker 1: the US every year. UM. And there are there is
- 7:00Speaker 1: there are some programs that are set up to where like, uh,
- 7:03Speaker 1: somebody who runs a landfill where all this stuff is
- 7:06Speaker 1: going and decomposing and producing methane, they may capture that methane,
- 7:12Speaker 1: burn it off UM or save it and use it
- 7:15Speaker 1: for you know, productive stuff. Or there's also UM things
- 7:20Speaker 1: called waste of energy facilities that just burn trash and
- 7:24Speaker 1: then the heat from that that incineration power creates steam
- 7:29Speaker 1: that powers turbines that generate electricity that make business cards
- 7:33Speaker 1: so that you throw away the circle of life is complete.
- 7:37Speaker 1: So I mean, there is there are programs in place
- 7:39Speaker 1: that UM that make productive use out of trash. This
- 7:42Speaker 1: is gonna be trashed anyway. But like that waste of
- 7:45Speaker 1: energy facility, that's just burning trash that generates a lot
- 7:49Speaker 1: of horrible stuff, horrible pollution. There are actually programs that
- 7:53Speaker 1: are even better that could someday be used to power
- 7:56Speaker 1: our cars through garbage. It's pretty awesome. Yeah, And of
- 8:01Speaker 1: course this article starts off with a little Back to
- 8:03Speaker 1: the Future reference. How can you not talk about garbage
- 8:06Speaker 1: fueling cars without mentioning Mr Fusion? So you thought about
- 8:09Speaker 1: that too, Yeah, immediately I told you menew what we
- 8:12Speaker 1: were doing. She's like, oh, like back to the Future,
- 8:13Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, really, of course. I mean
- 8:16Speaker 1: I love that movie, but that's not what I think
- 8:17Speaker 1: of with garbage power cars. I forgot that he even
- 8:20Speaker 1: does that. Oh to me, that was a big impactful
- 8:22Speaker 1: scene at the end when he comes back in the
- 8:24Speaker 1: spaceship cracks open the Mr Fusion and puts like a
- 8:27Speaker 1: beer can and old beer and a banana pel in there.
- 8:30Speaker 1: I was like, oh, man, is that what the future
- 8:32Speaker 1: is gonna be like? And the answers, no, well, not
- 8:35Speaker 1: too far off. Maybe, Well let's talk about the how
- 8:38Speaker 1: Steven Spielberg got it wrong. That was is Robert se
- 8:43Speaker 1: mecas he produced it, that Spielberg producing I'm pretty sure
- 8:47Speaker 1: he did. Okay, you just want to blame him for everything.
- 8:50Speaker 1: I get a get a beef Spielberg beef. Um. Alright,
- 8:55Speaker 1: So gasification is what we're talking about, and it is
- 8:58Speaker 1: actually possible in this day and age, right now today
- 9:02Speaker 1: to create liquid fuel that you can burn in your
- 9:05Speaker 1: car from garbage. Yeah. Um. The the basis of this
- 9:09Speaker 1: is something called sin gas or synthesized or synthesis or
- 9:13Speaker 1: synthetic gas. Yes, but it's everybody's calls it sing gas
- 9:16Speaker 1: for sure, and it's the product of oh, I guess,
- 9:21Speaker 1: accelerated decomposition. Yeah, from what they call feedstock, which is
- 9:26Speaker 1: basically just your source fuel. And in this case, feed
- 9:31Speaker 1: stock can be everything from asphalt and sewage, fossil fuels.
- 9:34Speaker 1: Of course we know about uh two plastics, biomass and
- 9:38Speaker 1: agg waste and garbage municipal solid waste. Yeah. As long
- 9:44Speaker 1: as it's not metal or glass yea, and it's carbon
- 9:47Speaker 1: based it, well you can make sing gas out of it.
- 9:50Speaker 1: That should be in your recycling then people. Yeah, that
- 9:53Speaker 1: old bedframe of yours recycling. Um, although would if it's oh,
- 9:59Speaker 1: you mean the battle that frame. Yeah, yeah, you know
- 10:02Speaker 1: that that cheap one. They always it's like, that's so
- 10:05Speaker 1: hard to put together and you like pinch your fingers. Um.
- 10:10Speaker 1: So uh. The process of creating sin gas um uses
- 10:14Speaker 1: not combustion but intense heat, way more heat than it
- 10:18Speaker 1: would take for a normal combustion. I think degrees fahrenheight
- 10:23Speaker 1: um and about a thousand pounds of pressure. But it's
- 10:25Speaker 1: in a very low oxygen environment. So this stuff doesn't ignite,
- 10:29Speaker 1: it doesn't burn, It undergoes a chemical reaction called pyrolysis. Yeah.
- 10:33Speaker 1: The key here is heat without flame or one of
- 10:36Speaker 1: the keys. And this is not new. This sounds like
- 10:38Speaker 1: the future. But um, back in the six hundreds in
- 10:42Speaker 1: Belgium they were using wood and coal to power street
- 10:46Speaker 1: lamp so it was called town gas and they did
- 10:50Speaker 1: this also during World War Two during fuel shortages, they
- 10:53Speaker 1: made sin gas from wood chips and powered vehicles using them.
- 10:57Speaker 1: So it's not like a new thing, no. Pair. The
- 11:00Speaker 1: apartheid era South Africa did the same thing because they
- 11:03Speaker 1: were under international sanctions were basically cut off from the
- 11:07Speaker 1: rest of the world. Yeah remember that. Yeah, what was
- 11:10Speaker 1: the dude from the Eastreet Band he was the consultant
- 11:14Speaker 1: from Springsteen. No, the other guy, Glarence Clemens. No, the
- 11:18Speaker 1: other guy stevens An, Yes, little Stephen, he's who I
- 11:21Speaker 1: associate with. Don't play sun City. Yeah. I think it's
- 11:25Speaker 1: like a big proponent, I always think. And then he
- 11:27Speaker 1: did the Sopranos and forgot about son City, and now
- 11:30Speaker 1: he was a consultant and the guy who created the Sopranos.
- 11:32Speaker 1: Oh to being in a garage band in the sixties. Yeah,
- 11:35Speaker 1: I want to see that. I heard it's good, supposed
- 11:37Speaker 1: to be awesome. Um so okay, So you take your
- 11:40Speaker 1: your feedstock, which is what we're specifically talking about his
- 11:44Speaker 1: garbage today. Um, you take your garbage. Say you're been
- 11:48Speaker 1: an appeals, okay, and you want to dry him out
- 11:51Speaker 1: because that's how it goes. But you you put them
- 11:54Speaker 1: under in this thing called a gas of fire, which
- 11:57Speaker 1: depending on whether you make went at home, which there's
- 11:59Speaker 1: videos on YouTube for how to make them, or you
- 12:02Speaker 1: could go down to Tampa and see one that's that
- 12:04Speaker 1: provides power for sixty homes. But a gas fire is this,
- 12:09Speaker 1: uh in this low oxygen, high pressure, high temperature environment
- 12:13Speaker 1: that produces pyrolysis. Um that chemical change that chemical decomposition
- 12:18Speaker 1: where this carbon based feedstock, uh, the volatile chemicals basically
- 12:24Speaker 1: separate from it and it becomes this thing called char,
- 12:28Speaker 1: and the char is further reduced to um, carbon monoxide,
- 12:34Speaker 1: and hydrogen, and that is sin gas. And that sin
- 12:38Speaker 1: gas alone could power certain types of vehicles. I think
- 12:43Speaker 1: the the Honda Civic in g V and apparently there
- 12:49Speaker 1: are in Toronto. Of course, in Canada they're always doing
- 12:53Speaker 1: great things like this. They have garbage trucks and busses
- 12:56Speaker 1: I think, or no, maybe dis garbage trucks that run
- 12:58Speaker 1: on compressed natural gas. So you could actually fuel it
- 13:02Speaker 1: with sin gas UM. In order to use that fuel,
- 13:06Speaker 1: what more widespread, you have to convert it to ethanol UM.
- 13:10Speaker 1: And there's a company that's interviewed in this article how
- 13:12Speaker 1: garbage powered cars could work. Yeah, I guess that's how
- 13:16Speaker 1: you say it. Yeah. UM. And they take sin gas
- 13:20Speaker 1: and they feed it to a bunch of um bacteria
- 13:24Speaker 1: in a vat of water. That's amazing, and this bacteria,
- 13:27Speaker 1: equally amazing, are patented. Disturbing. I don't think life forms
- 13:32Speaker 1: should be patentable, but yes, it is a patented bacteria
- 13:35Speaker 1: that eats sing gas. And then expels ethanol. And then
- 13:39Speaker 1: they add a little gasoline to the ethanol. The d
- 13:41Speaker 1: nature it so they don't have to pay a twenty
- 13:42Speaker 1: seven dollar a gallon liquor tax. Yeah, that's amazing to me.
- 13:46Speaker 1: It's almost the same thing as moonshine until you d
- 13:48Speaker 1: nature it. So they said, add a little gas to it,
- 13:51Speaker 1: and we don't have to pay that tax, right, spirit tax?
- 13:54Speaker 1: How much is it? Like it's gallon? Yeah, and I
- 14:00Speaker 1: mean they're producing a lot of ethanol as much as
- 14:02Speaker 1: they can. That's a lot of extra money they don't
- 14:03Speaker 1: have to pay just from adding a little gasoline. Um,
- 14:07Speaker 1: and then what you have is engine grade ethanol ready
- 14:11Speaker 1: to be mixed with gasoline, which if you go to
- 14:13Speaker 1: a gas station, there's a pretty good chance you'll see
- 14:15Speaker 1: a sticker that says this gas may contain up the
- 14:18Speaker 1: fifteen percent ethanol. So your car that you're driving now
- 14:22Speaker 1: can run on the sin gas created from garbage, or
- 14:26Speaker 1: if you have a flex fuel car, uh, that that
- 14:29Speaker 1: can use up the ethanol gasoline. So we could use
- 14:33Speaker 1: even more of this stuff. Don't they have ethanol only pumps? Yeah,
- 14:37Speaker 1: like ten or they say, or ethanol only Oh is
- 14:40Speaker 1: that right? I think so I might be wrong there
- 14:43Speaker 1: that maybe flex fuel, which is more I've seen. I
- 14:46Speaker 1: have seen ethanol, but I've seen flex fuel more frequently.
- 14:49Speaker 1: And then you see like that ten mixture eighty five
- 14:53Speaker 1: gas or fifteen percent ethanol mixture like almost everywhere. Yeah,
- 14:58Speaker 1: that's how I screw up, like every eater I've ever had,
- 15:00Speaker 1: because you have to mix the oil and the and
- 15:02Speaker 1: the the two cycles. Gas man, I always do it wrong.
- 15:05Speaker 1: I remember that. He used to be like lawn boy,
- 15:08Speaker 1: why are you so difficult? So? Um, one of the
- 15:11Speaker 1: things you want to do here is well, first you
- 15:13Speaker 1: got to separate all the garbage. That's one of the problems.
- 15:15Speaker 1: But you want stuff that's uniform and stuff that, um,
- 15:20Speaker 1: if it melts, it's not good apparently. So even though
- 15:23Speaker 1: you can use things like diapers for gas and ethanol,
- 15:26Speaker 1: it's pretty awesome. Um, what you want is something more
- 15:29Speaker 1: like would something carbon base that well just sort of
- 15:33Speaker 1: disappear when it gets hot, right, um. And wood is
- 15:37Speaker 1: probably the best feedstock forcing gas because apparently it leaves
- 15:40Speaker 1: about two behind uh. And the rest is the rest
- 15:44Speaker 1: becomes sing gas. Uh. And it's not all sing gas
- 15:47Speaker 1: like there are other things, especially even in wood, something
- 15:50Speaker 1: is pure as would um, there are impurities. Uh, if
- 15:55Speaker 1: you're burning PVC plastic, there's a lot of impurities. But
- 16:01Speaker 1: the beautiful thing about um using a gasifier to produce
- 16:05Speaker 1: sing gas from any kind of feed stock is it's
- 16:07Speaker 1: this closed um system and you can control and separate
- 16:12Speaker 1: all those different chemicals and impurities out, so you just
- 16:16Speaker 1: have piercing gas, which when burned has burned at a
- 16:20Speaker 1: really high temperature, so it has almost no emissions when
- 16:23Speaker 1: you use just the sing gas. And that's no matter
- 16:26Speaker 1: what feed stock is originally used, zero emissions because whatever
- 16:30Speaker 1: feeds like you use, you can you can sort these
- 16:31Speaker 1: impurities out and in some cases you can reuse the impurities,
- 16:35Speaker 1: like if you use discarded tires. Apparently there's a hundred
- 16:39Speaker 1: and eighty eight million scrap tires just sitting around in
- 16:42Speaker 1: the US breeding mosquitoes catching fire randomly for eight months. Yeah. Um,
- 16:48Speaker 1: they figured out that they can use tires, scrap tires
- 16:52Speaker 1: as a feedstock for sing gas and even cooler. After
- 16:55Speaker 1: the sing gas is separated, you still have that char
- 16:58Speaker 1: leftover you can use at and it's more efficient than
- 17:01Speaker 1: regular coal. Really yeah wow, So I mean there's really
- 17:05Speaker 1: not too many downsides to creating sing gas because you're
- 17:09Speaker 1: especially if you're using it as if you're using garbage
- 17:12Speaker 1: as a fizza, because it was gonna go to waste anyway, right, True,
- 17:16Speaker 1: that's a good point, um, And I don't know if
- 17:18Speaker 1: you'd count them as problems. There are some setbacks, Uh.
- 17:21Speaker 1: The reason why this isn't so widespread is there are
- 17:24Speaker 1: setbacks like, um, you know, you gotta sort through this waste.
- 17:29Speaker 1: You can't just go to your landfill and dump a
- 17:31Speaker 1: truckload of garbage. You know, you have to separate it
- 17:34Speaker 1: and make sure it's the right kind of stuff. So
- 17:36Speaker 1: that costs money. You have to get rid of the
- 17:37Speaker 1: bed frames, the glass, that stuff, yep, and so, and
- 17:41Speaker 1: you need to get it fairly uniform. So there is
- 17:43Speaker 1: some money, um, and costs involved in in the like
- 17:46Speaker 1: the preparatory stages that probably I guess aren't feasible right
- 17:50Speaker 1: now in a widespread manner. And then there's also the
- 17:53Speaker 1: thing we've talked about this plenty of times. Remember we
- 17:55Speaker 1: talk about energies, the net energy ratio. Yeah, you want
- 17:58Speaker 1: more energy put out then you put into it or
- 18:01Speaker 1: else it's just not viable. And apparently a study of biofuels,
- 18:04Speaker 1: found that almost all of them require more energy. Like
- 18:08Speaker 1: the lowest they found more sunflower oil. Apparently, like a
- 18:14Speaker 1: biofuel based on that requires more. So you have to
- 18:18Speaker 1: put in two to get out one or one to one.
- 18:21Speaker 1: So that's the battle then to keep making that smaller. Right,
- 18:25Speaker 1: But the beauty thing with sing gases, that's not necessarily
- 18:28Speaker 1: the case. Now I don't know about this this company,
- 18:31Speaker 1: what is it costaca um what how much more coskata?
- 18:37Speaker 1: How much more energy it requires for them to turn
- 18:39Speaker 1: that sing gas into um ethanol? And if they you know,
- 18:45Speaker 1: if there's a net energy loss or a gain or what.
- 18:48Speaker 1: But um, if you're just burning sing gas, there's it's
- 18:52Speaker 1: it's it's very elegant, it's very clean, and there's um
- 18:56Speaker 1: there's like I think it's it's a net energy gain. Awesome. Well,
- 19:01Speaker 1: one of the other problems is you gotta dry it
- 19:03Speaker 1: out to UH. You can't throw like you can use
- 19:06Speaker 1: waste materials like um biomass uh like leftover pulp and
- 19:11Speaker 1: stuff from wood mills, grass and corn. But that's moist
- 19:15Speaker 1: and so you have to remove the moisture, which is
- 19:17Speaker 1: gonna cost a little more money. And then the article
- 19:20Speaker 1: mentions too. On the other end, you're gonna have a
- 19:22Speaker 1: little issue with uh ash producing too much ash, right,
- 19:28Speaker 1: depending on what you use. Yeah, so that's like what
- 19:30Speaker 1: you said, wood is the best because they only produce
- 19:32Speaker 1: about two But um, if you're not using wood, you're
- 19:35Speaker 1: gonna have leftover ash to deal with. But it can,
- 19:38Speaker 1: like we found with tires punting old tires, you you
- 19:41Speaker 1: have that stuff left over, and sometimes it can be
- 19:43Speaker 1: useful depending on what you're doing with that's true. And
- 19:46Speaker 1: I know they recycled the water use in the little
- 19:49Speaker 1: bacterial process, which is kind of cool. Um. Another advantage
- 19:53Speaker 1: of creating sin gases. I read a study that found
- 19:56Speaker 1: you can take c O two and inject it into
- 19:59Speaker 1: a gap a fire and it actually produces more sin gas,
- 20:03Speaker 1: more carbon monoxide. Right, So that if you can sequest
- 20:07Speaker 1: your CEO two from say like a regular cold fire
- 20:09Speaker 1: power plant and bringing it to a sin gas plant,
- 20:12Speaker 1: you can use it for that to convert it into
- 20:14Speaker 1: something useful rather than just polluting it. Interesting. Yeah, yeah,
- 20:19Speaker 1: And I think that this stuff, like, the more you
- 20:23Speaker 1: work toward these problems, the cheaper it's it's gonna get.
- 20:26Speaker 1: I mean, one of the reasons that petroleum is the
- 20:29Speaker 1: way to go is because we've been using it for
- 20:31Speaker 1: so long and it's become like one of the more
- 20:34Speaker 1: uh cost efficient ways to fuel a car. Um may
- 20:38Speaker 1: not seem like it these days, but they've got the
- 20:40Speaker 1: process downpacks they've been doing it for you know, decades,
- 20:44Speaker 1: Like think about fifty or sixty years from now where
- 20:46Speaker 1: we might be with some of this stuff, be using
- 20:48Speaker 1: bananas and beer, just putting it right into our car.
- 20:51Speaker 1: You know, how about this dude, chip Beam? Did you
- 20:53Speaker 1: look this guy up? He's the guy that Yeah, he
- 20:57Speaker 1: took an all this easy trooper and basically cut the
- 21:00Speaker 1: rear um covered portion out to where it has like
- 21:03Speaker 1: a pickup bed and has a big kettle there where
- 21:07Speaker 1: he burns wood chips. And he has been running this
- 21:10Speaker 1: eight eight a scissor trooper on wood for quite a
- 21:13Speaker 1: while now to stop speed not too bad. Yeah it's
- 21:18Speaker 1: good city speed. Yeah it's getting around town car and
- 21:21Speaker 1: uh apparently it's it's it's the original engine. Like he
- 21:24Speaker 1: didn't have to modify the engine at all. And it
- 21:26Speaker 1: smells like faintly of charcoal barbecue. That's really interesting that
- 21:29Speaker 1: he didn't modify the engine, not the least bed and
- 21:32Speaker 1: crazy and he's working on a Mercury and ninety one
- 21:35Speaker 1: Mercury cougar. His goal is to make the fastest wood
- 21:40Speaker 1: burning car in the world. His goal, So I guess
- 21:43Speaker 1: forty five if he wants to go like seventy Didn't
- 21:46Speaker 1: that just the voke images of like Granny Clampit, like
- 21:49Speaker 1: on a rocking chair on top of the Clampit family car. Yeah,
- 21:52Speaker 1: I like this guy that. That's pretty awesome. I do too,
- 21:54Speaker 1: But I had a question about his setup. So, like,
- 21:57Speaker 1: if you're creating sin gas and like this closed and ironment,
- 22:00Speaker 1: you're able to trap impurities and use them or sequester
- 22:04Speaker 1: them or do whatever with them to keep them from
- 22:05Speaker 1: enterning the atmosphere. If you're if you're creating sing gas
- 22:09Speaker 1: as you're burning it, what kind of emissions are there
- 22:12Speaker 1: from that? I had a question about that. I don't know.
- 22:14Speaker 1: I bet we could get in touch with chip Beam. Well,
- 22:16Speaker 1: let's do it. It It seems forgettable. Yeah, do you got anything? Uh? No,
- 22:21Speaker 1: I I think that's it. We touched on everything. Stop
- 22:24Speaker 1: wasting food? What is wrong with you? Stop wasting food? Yeah?
- 22:29Speaker 1: I think that's everything. Okay, Uh, if you want to
- 22:31Speaker 1: learn more about garbage, powered cars, energy, all that kind
- 22:35Speaker 1: of stuff. You can type any of that into the
- 22:37Speaker 1: search bar at how stuffworks dot com. Also try typing
- 22:41Speaker 1: gasification G A S I, F I C A T
- 22:44Speaker 1: I O N into the search bar. They'll bring up
- 22:47Speaker 1: a pretty cool companion article that we worked off of
- 22:50Speaker 1: as well. Um and I said, search barge means it's time,
- 22:52Speaker 1: of course for a listener. Mayo, that's right, Josh, I'm
- 22:58Speaker 1: gonna call this yet another or librarian email unless people
- 23:03Speaker 1: don't want to hear from librarians anymore. I think to charge.
- 23:07Speaker 1: I think they've read like a couple this mix. Three
- 23:11Speaker 1: guys graduated from library school in May and started to
- 23:14Speaker 1: work at a small university library in South Texas. Like
- 23:18Speaker 1: many librarians, I've always been very passionate about banned books
- 23:21Speaker 1: and censorship. While in library school, as a president of
- 23:25Speaker 1: my university student chapter of the American Library Association, our
- 23:28Speaker 1: group decided to sell t shirts as a fundraiser. Several
- 23:32Speaker 1: of the officers created design ideas and we asked students
- 23:34Speaker 1: to vote on their favorite before we started taking orders.
- 23:37Speaker 1: The majority of students voted for a design including quotes
- 23:41Speaker 1: from out of copyright books from out of copyright books,
- 23:45Speaker 1: including many frequently challenged or band books said over a
- 23:49Speaker 1: drawing of an open book. I sent out several emails
- 23:52Speaker 1: and students to promote the design and start taking orders.
- 23:55Speaker 1: After receiving several of these orders, I received an email
- 23:57Speaker 1: from a student was upset about the design. He was
- 24:00Speaker 1: most upset about a Kurt Vonnegut quote. I don't want
- 24:03Speaker 1: to get into specifics of the email, but I was
- 24:05Speaker 1: appalled that a library school student wanted to censor our
- 24:09Speaker 1: library school group. As librarians, we are obligated to provide information,
- 24:12Speaker 1: not limited. We ended up using quotes about intellectual freedom,
- 24:16Speaker 1: the freedom to read, and censorships and libraries to appease
- 24:19Speaker 1: the naysayers. I'm still bitter about the entire situation. You
- 24:23Speaker 1: can't wait to hang out my band Books Week posters
- 24:26Speaker 1: on my office store. So her plan, Megan's plan for
- 24:30Speaker 1: band Books Week is to read as many of them
- 24:32Speaker 1: as she can. The good barriages. Everyone could do the
- 24:35Speaker 1: same thing, and to eat the traditional band book week
- 24:38Speaker 1: Swedish meatballs. That's right, So cheers from South Texas from Megan,
- 24:43Speaker 1: and enjoy those band books and Swedish meatballs. Yeah. Thanks
- 24:46Speaker 1: A lot Megan, Thanks to everybody who celebrates Ban Books Week. Um,
- 24:50Speaker 1: if you have a suggestion for a ban book, your
- 24:54Speaker 1: favorite band book, we want to hear it. We'll tell
- 24:55Speaker 1: everybody about it. Let's just get talking about it, Okay, guys. UM,
- 24:59Speaker 1: you can tweet to us at s y ESK podcast.
- 25:02Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com. UH, you
- 25:05Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery
- 25:08Speaker 1: dot com, and you can visit our home on the web,
- 25:11Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
- 25:19Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
- 25:30Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go Places,