Las Vegas Age

WILL USE MEAL
AS MOTOR FUEL

By O. PAUL JACOB
(Associated Press Staff Writer)
GOERLITZ, Germany, April 6.
(AP)-The time is not far off when American farmers will use meal as fuel for their motors, says Rudopin Pawlikowski, head of the Kosmos Machine works.
The forecast of the German motor engineer is based on 12 years' successful experiments with powdered fuels. He explains that his forecast is based on the ease with which meal may be employed. Vast crops of maize or sweet corn will furnish all the fuel needed by the simple expedient of grinding the residue in a mill and feeding the product into motors as fuel.
Not only meal, but rice husks, pulverized coal, wood dust, charcoal and furnace coke have been used by Dr. Pawlikowski in his motor. The success and efficiency of these fuels is due to the fact that in the motor they explode by the heat generated by compression, without aid of a spark. Pawlikowski has adapted their use to a Diesel engine by a contrivance whereby the piston action compresses and explodes the powder in the firing chamber.
Rice husks and peat did not at first appear readily combustible because of a comparatively large percentage of moisture, but after the watery ingredients had been extracted rice husk proved as valuable a substitute for benzine as any of the other pulverized substances.
The rice husks have the advantage of cheapness, Herr Pawlikowski estimating them at one-fiftieth of the price of benzine in Germany.
To the existing assortment of vegetable fuels, others are constantly being added, like sugar cane fiber. Even pulverized aluminum has been used. None of these fuels noticeably wears piston rings, Herr Pawlikowski says.
A Diesel motor operated on any of these fuels, says Herr Pawlikowski, can continue to run smoothly for years. In confirmation he pointed to his 80 horse power Diesel motor, with which experiments on pulverized coal and vegetable fuels have been carried on for the past 12 years. The engine starts without any preparatory heating. Pawlikowski says its coal dust fuel is about 75 per cent cheaper than German gasoline.