I Run My Car on Acetylene

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

After all, although propane is fairly inexpensive (it sells for the equivalent of as little as 55d a "gallon" in some areas), it's still a petroleum derivative, and thus both its market price and its availability could be affected by the state of this nation's oil supplies in the future. Acetylene, on the other hand, is a product of calcium carbide ... and that substance can be manufactured from coal and lime, both of which are abundant right here at home!

These days, though, calcium carbide can be rather difficult to find on the store shelves. And when I finally did locate some at a camping and outdoor supply shop-the $6.00-per-pound price nearly floored me. Fortunately, I soon found that such large markups apply only to small quantities, and that the going commercial price for 100 pounds of the rocklike substance is about $20.

Naturally, my next question was, "How long can a given amount of calcium carbide power a car . . . assuming that the theory even works?" And, of course, the only way to find the answer was to do it . . . the best way I knew how: by the seat of my pants! Luckily, I had an old Chevy sedan that'd been sitting in my yard for a while . . . too good to scrap or sell, but just fine to experiment on (and maybe to blow the cylinder heads off of)!

I started rather crudely in an attempt to get the engine to run without driving the car. After locating a calcium carbide generator-and a good supply of the fuel-in Vermont, I began tinkering with the carburetion system. Figuring that a propane carburetor would work best, since it was designed to use a gaseous-rather than a liquid-fuel, I welded up a metal duct pipe to serve two purposes: [1] It provided a mount for the propane (soon to be acetylene) carb that allowed the flammable gas to enter the throat of the original carburetor, and [2] it furnished a convenient dual-fuel capability . . . because I had fabricated an air inlet valve on its upper surface that could be opened when the car was burning gasoline and the acetylene system was shut down.

Then, after I had connected a length of single-strand acetylene hose from the stationary gas generator to the propane carburetor and made a few "guesstimated" adjustments to the latter piece of equipment, I filled my miniature acetylene "factory" with the proper amounts of water and calcium carbide (according to the manufacturer's recommendations) and opened the control valve slightly. As I fully expected, a hissing sound indicated that gas was being produced . . . and the moment of truth was upon me. When I turned the ignition key, the engine came to life . . . my system worked!

My next step was to try to fabricate a calcium carbide generator that would fit in the trunk of my vehicle . .. and-even more important-a unit that was safe enough to use on a regular transportation basis. An automobile can be forced to perform some pretty wild maneuvers in traffic, and I had to be sure that there was no danger of excess gas being produced because of water inadvertently splashing on my supply of fuel pebbles. After several months of work, I've recently come up with a generating unit that works perfectly . . . so well, in fact, that I'm conducting a patent search on its design.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print