用咖啡豆驅動的路虎速度破世界紀錄
It’s not just aroma – British engineers built a car that runs entirely on coffee beans and broke the world speed record for a car powered by organic waste。
Earlier this month a modified Rover SD1 averaged 66.5mph at the Elvington Race Track near York, smashing the previous record of 47mph achieved by a US team that built a car fuelled by wood pellets。
Engineer Martin Bacon, with Volunteers of Durham, stripped out the old car and refitted it with a gasifier and filters, which turns waste coffee granules into energy to drive the engine。
The car is not the first to be powered by coffee, though. Mr Bacon and his team based the design of the Rover on a coffee-powered Volkswagen Sirocco built for BBC’s science show Bang Goes The Theory。
That car was driven from London to Manchester in March last year and straight into the Guinness Book of Records, as no car powered by waste material had ever travelled that distance before。
Bang Goes The Theory presenter Jem Stansfield explained that the cars demonstrate a genuine alternative to powering engines using fossil fuels。
He says: "It’s like an old charcoal burner. The coffee is heated up like charcoal. Then the combustion gases, which are generally carbon dioxide and water vapour, are reduced by hot carbon to carbon monoxide and hydrogen. This is then filtered by a cyclone filter and a rock wool filter and cooled down by a radiator."據英國《每日郵報》9月26日報道，英國工程師製造了一輛完全依靠咖啡豆爲動力的汽車，該車不僅芳香撲鼻，還打破了以有機廢料爲驅動的汽車的世界速度記錄。
本月早些時候在約克附近的艾文頓賽道，一輛經改裝的路虎SD1(咖啡豆動力汽車)以平均每小時66.5英里的速度打破世界紀錄。此前，該記錄由美國製造的內置木屑顆粒燃料汽車保持，時速爲47英里每小時。
工程師馬丁•培根和杜克大學的志願者，將一輛舊車進行了拆分，並用氣化爐和過濾器對其進行重裝，將咖啡豆廢渣變成能量驅動發動機。
然而這輛汽車卻不是第一輛以咖啡爲驅動力的汽車。培根和他的團隊是基於英國廣播公司(BBC)的科學節目“爆炸雲理論”中大衆熱風羅孚的一款以咖啡爲動力的汽車所設計的。
去年三月這輛車從倫敦駛到曼徹斯特就直入吉尼斯世界紀錄，此前還沒有以廢料爲動力的汽車行駛過這麼遠的距離。
“爆炸雲理論”欄目的主持人詹姆•史坦斯費爾德解釋說，這種汽車展示的是一個真正能替代化石燃料的可選擇引擎動力。
他說：“這就像古老的木炭燃燒器，咖啡在這裏就像木炭一樣被加熱。然後這種一般爲二氧化碳和水蒸氣的燃燒氣體，會被熱碳轉化成一氧化碳和氫氣 ，然後經旋風過濾器和棉巖的過濾，最後經散熱器冷卻。
