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Unusual Alternative Fuels That Never Made It To Production

The times are very much changing when it comes to the fuel that is stored in tanks with a vacuum relief valve fitted onto them, and there have been efforts to wean the industrial world off of polluting fossil fuels.

However, finding an alternative has become the trickier part, with wind, tidal, solar, hydrogen fuel cells, bioethanol and other alternative ideas besides having managed to leave the laboratory and small-scale testing and are increasingly used in our daily lives.

Not all alternatives made it this far, and some planned alternative fuel sources were truly surreal to see.

 

Nappies

Unpleasant and typically impossible to recycle due to what they are made out of, disposable nappies are sent to landfill in their millions and take centuries to decompose.

However, they could theoretically be converted into fuel relatively easily through pyrolysis, where the nappies are superheated and converted into useful byproducts and fuel.

Unfortunately, whilst a Canadian firm planned to create a nappy-powered power station, ultimately the plans never left the conceptual stage.

 

Coal, Charcoal And Wood Burning Cars

Coal is a fossil fuel, so by rights, it should not count as an alternative fuel, but attempts were made to use coal to power cars directly, through the use of coal gas bags fitted to the top of early cars, with the process theoretically usable with charcoal and burned biomass as well.

Intended as a stopgap during the First World War, research was quickly abandoned due to just how obviously dangerous the idea was.

 

Water

The dream for many alternative fuel researchers is to find a highly plentiful substance and use that to fill the needs of fossil fuels, and for many years water was the dream.

There have been a few attempts, one of which was the subject of a fraud trial, but there is a lot of research into efficient ways to split water into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis that could then be used in hydrogen fuel cells.