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Originally Posted by RedDevil
I read that the Toyota Mirai, which was designed as a hydrogen car using fuel cells to convert that to electicity for its motors, can run on biogas as well.
That would be a win-win. Not only can it prevent letting all the animal waste go to waste, it can also put the hydrogen cars to good use. If affordable hydrogen never happens there is still biogas. Not enough to power a nation, but ample to fuel the few experimental showcase hydrogen cars.
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I haven't seen anything about the Mirai being able to run on anything other than hydrogen, but Nissan is testing what they call "solid-oxide fuel cell" that is capable to use some hydrocarbons such as ethanol. It's even been reported to be able to operate with hydrated ethanol at a concentration of 45% by volume instead of the minimum 80% required for a piston engine to operate. In my country, the standard for hydrated ethanol is 96% by volume.
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Originally Posted by oil pan 4
If natural gas was cost effective to run farm equipment they would already have been using it.
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It's quite predictable that handling a gaseous fuel is going to be more difficult than a liquid fuel, but it's far from being impossible. Considering that some older tractors are currently running on LPG, a switch to natural gas doesn't sound so unlikely. Even forklifts have been converted to CNG in my country.
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Bio gas is some pretty nasty stuff. You do not want to be putting that into a piston engine with out essentially refining it.
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In my country, there are some equipments such as gensets that come from the factory already prepared to use biogas. They use some sort of filter to handle it, but I don't know exactly how that filter works. OTOH in countries like Germany and Sweden some fuel stations already sell biomethane, though I don't know what is the most common method to treat it for impurities. I've even been aware of a method that resorts to algae to provide the treatment to turn straight biogas into pure biomethane.