Man has driven 10,000 miles without gas

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Conn. man uses old technology to run truck on wood, waste





KILLINGLY, Conn. — From the first time he saw Emmett "Doc" Brown fire up the Mr. Fusion home energy reactor in the Back to the Future movies, Dave Nichols has always wanted to make a vehicle run on garbage.

Two decades after the trilogy, the 42-year-old home builder and auto shop owner from eastern Connecticut isn't traveling through time in a DeLorean, yet. But he's modified his 1989 Ford F-150 pickup truck to run on wood, leaves, cardboard and other "biomass" with a fuel system that he says expels virtually no pollution.

The technology is called gasification, and it's been around since the 1800s, when it was used for street lamps and cooking. It even powered some vehicles during World War II, but faded away under oil's dominance.

Nichols and others say reviving gasification, which can also heat and power homes, has exciting possibilities, from reducing dependence on foreign oil to cutting pollution.

"It's a simple science from 130 years ago that can be used today to solve all of our problems … and it runs on potentially free fuel," Nichols said. "This type of technology has to be developed, and it has to be developed now."

The new interest in gasification comes as President Barack Obama presses to double the nation's use of renewable energy over the next three years, with $15 billion a year to be spent to develop solar power, wind power, advanced biofuels, fuel-efficient cars and other technologies.

Gasification works by heating organic materials to high temperatures without flames. The resulting chemical reactions produce a hydrogen-hydrocarbon gas mixture in vapor form that is almost as potent as gasoline, Nichols said.

His pickup appears to run like any other and easily reached 40 mph and above on local roads on a recent day, but it has no gas tanks. Nichols says he can get it up to more than 80 mph. The only noticeable difference is a contraption, right behind the cab's rear window, that takes up some of the back and looks somewhat like a wood stove.

Nichols says he has driven 10,000 miles without gas, including a trip about three months ago when he loaded up the back with about 400 pounds of wood and drove 600 miles across Connecticut, then to New Hampshire and Boston before returning home. A pound of wood or other material will fuel his truck for 1 to 2 miles, meaning that the truck costs about 8 cents a mile to fuel, compared to roughly 19 cents per mile if it used gasoline at today's prices.

"This is real. This is no game," Nichols said. "The mechanics at the garage thought I was crazy. They're not laughing anymore."

Nichols said he eventually wants to patent his reactor core, and build a smaller version of the vehicle fueling system, so it could be more practical for cars.

"Now if I could get a hold of a DeLorean," Nichols said.

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