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Add a biodiesel converter and scraper to the front of a standard diesel car.
Just drive along scraping prairie dogs, armadillos, chipmunks, golden retrievers, Mormon missionaries, and slow moving yugos and dump them in the processor! Fuel as you go. Certain parts of Texas or Wyoming may have enough
asphalt meat to completely power the car.
Roadkill refinery
Roadkill_20refinery
Scooped! [bungston, Feb 26 2007]
Thermal Depolymerization
http://en.wikipedia...al_depolymerization
I *think* this is different from a biodiesel plant, it might work well too. [lankybits, Mar 29 2007]
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If you make a roadkill ramjet, can you get up to lightspeed? No, really, can you? CAN YOU!?!?!? |
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A [+] for "asphalt meat". |
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Works great in crowded cities. Jaywalking would stop overnight. |
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The numbers, gentlemen. Suppose that
the average roadkill weighs 1kg
(perhaps an overestimate, but consider
Texas). Suppose also that the average
animal has a calorie content of
something like 4kcal per gram (ie, in
the same region as many foods); then a
typical roadkill represents 4000kcal or
about 17MJ of energy. |
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A gallon of diesel is about 137MJ, so a
single roadkill will give you a maximum
of about 1/8th of a gallon of diesel, in
energy terms. Of course, conversion
efficiencies will be very low. However,
with a reasonable density of roadkills, it
is on the very cusp of feasibility. |
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It would be more efficient to harvest the
asphalt itself, but this would not work
for a convoy. |
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[Maxwell], suppose the average roadkill weighs 1kg... perhaps an overestimate? I'm not sure where you've been driving, but it wasn't Pennsylvania. During certain times in the year, Interstate 81 is festooned with deer carcasses, each weighing on average something closer to 50kg. You couldn't burn them up fast enough. |
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Assuming deer carcasses are similar enough to turkey offal, then you could convert 39% of the deer's mass to oil using thermal depolymerization, according to the chart in my link. You should scoop up the broken pieces of tractor-trailer tires, too-- those convert into oil even better than animals. |
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[Edit: Sorry, had to change my vote to neutral when I read [bungston]'s "Roadkill Refinery".] |
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