(07-12) 04:00 PDT 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 homebuilder and auto shop owner from eastern Connecticut isn't traveling through time in a DeLorean, yet. But he's modified his 1989 Ford F150 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.


Read more: http://tiny.cc/savegas

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