There are more than 120,000 vehicles on the road powered by natural gas. Experts say engine design advances promise greater natural gas use for transportation. Historic pursuit of the world land speed record is the heritage of this “fuel of the future.”

Throughout the 20th century, land speed records were set with vehicles powered by steam, electricity, and all manner of petroleum distillates. National pride was often at stake as British, American, French, Belgian, German, and Italian teams fielded competing machines.

By the 1960s, American innovation – at Utah’s famed Bonneville’s Salt Flats – took mankind’s need for speed to a new level. Jet engines began pushing the land record to previously unthinkable levels.

Jet Propellant 4 (JP-4), the U.S. Air Force’s primary jet fuel until the late 1990s, offered a powerful blend of kerosene and naphtha. On the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1963, the fuel proved to be as good on the ground as it was in the air.

In August of 1963, the Spirit of America, a radical new design created by Craig Breedlove, used a $500 surplus jet engine that burned JP-4 to run 407.45 mph. His machine brought the land speed record back to the United States from England after an absence of more than 30 years.

However, just nine months later, Art Arfons, a drag racer from Ohio, took the land record after clocking 434 mph with his Green Monster using JP-4 in an afterburner-equipped F-104 Starfighter jet engine.

Breedlove soon returned to Bonneville with his Spirit of America and pushed to a new record of 526 mph. Arfons responded with a run 10 mph faster. And so it went over three years of competition.

Breedlove’s Spirit of America Sonic 1 ultimately triumphed over Arfons’ Green Monsters and exceeded 600 mph to set a record that would not be bested until 1970 – when natural gas made its spectacular rocket fuel debut at Bonneville.

The Blue Flame Project

The Blue Flame sprang from the imaginations of three Milwaukee men with a passion for speed: Dick Keller, Ray Dausman, and Pete Farnsworth. After building a record-setting rocket dragster, the X-1 Rislone Rocket, they began the Blue Flame project in 1968.

Instead of a jet engine, the 38-foot, 6,500-pound Blue Flame was powered by a rocket motor that combined liquefied natural gas and highly purified hydrogen peroxide. The motor could produce 22,000 pounds of thrust – roughly 58,000 horsepower.

The Institute of Gas Technology, which was the research and development arm of a national association of natural gas companies at that time, was overseeing the project, Farnsworth explained in a 2007 interview.

“It was a promotion of the safety and usefulness of liquefied natural gas.” Farnsworth noted support from the Illinois Institute of Technology as well. “There were nine graduate engineers working on masters degrees for theses on various aspects of the design of the Blue Flame: structures, dynamics, aerodynamics, wheel design, all sorts of things,” Farnsworth added.

The American Gas Association originally budgeted $165,000 for the project with 48 gas utilities and equipment manufacturers contributing. Ultimately more than $250,000 was spent. On October 23, 1970, the Blue Flame rewarded its supporters with a new Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) official record of 622.407 mph. The record stood for 13 years.

Today, the land speed record is again held by the British. Their twin-engine, JP-4 burning Thrust SSC (Super Sonic Car) reached 763 mph on Oct. 15, 1997. It was the first land vehicle to officially break the sound barrier.

The Role of Natural Gas

Natural gas supplies nearly one-fourth of U.S. energy, according to the American Gas Association website. The nation consumed 22.4 trillion cubic feet in 2004; experts say consumption will increase 20 percent by 2030. Most natural gas demand comes from electricity generators (natural gas because it is considered the cleanest-burning fossil fuel).

According to the Natural Gas Vehicles for America, there are more than 120,000 natural gas vehicles on U.S. roads. Fifty different manufacturers produce 150 models of light, medium and heavy-duty vehicles and engines with about 22 percent of all new transit bus orders requesting natural gas. “Ninety-seven percent of the natural gas used in America is produced in North America” (85 percent from the United States and 12 percent from Canada).

Henry Ford’s Land Speed Record

The land speed record came to the United States in 1904 when Henry Ford wanted to prove to the world that his cars were built better than anyone else’s,” notes a speed record website in Australia.

“On Jan. 12 at Lake St. Clair, Mich., near Detroit, Ford bounced his Ford Arrow across the frozen lake to reach an average speed of 91.37 mph. He remarked of the run, after retirement, that it had scared him so bad that he never again wanted to climb into a racing car.”

With the news of his record spread around the country, his new car company got a much needed boost at becoming one of the most successful automobile manufacturers in history.

Electric Cars: Back to the Future

“The available supply of gasoline, as is well known, is quite limited, and it behooves the farseeing men of the motor car industry to look for likely substitutes.” – Horseless Age, 1905

As the American auto industry struggles, 21st century hybrids emulate their predecessors from more than 100 years ago, notes an American Oil & Gas Historical Society article, “America on the Move,” which looks at the transportation exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

In the early days of the industry, electric, steam, and internal combustion automobiles vied for consumers’ attention. The petroleum industry’s rapid transition from kerosene to gasoline provided a powerful fuel, but internal combustion engines of the day were “noxious, noisy, and unreliable.”

Electric cars were practical on level roads, even with their mammoth lead-acid batteries and limited range, but were largely confined to big cities where recharging infrastructure was available. Engineers of the day examined novel ways of combining electric motors and gasoline engines to exploit the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of each.

“In this system an electric generator or dynamo is coupled direct to the petrol motor, and the current furnished is employed to operate electric motors which drive the car,” notes the 1905 Automobile: A Practical Treatise on the Construction of Modern Motor Cars – Steam, Petrol, Electric, and Petro-Electric, by Paul Hasluck.

Modern hybrids are much indebted to Ferdinand Porsche’s 1902 gasoline-electric Mixte. The Mixte used a small four-cylinder gasoline engine to generate electricity – but not to turn its wheels. The engine powered two three-horsepower electric motors mounted in the Mixte’s front wheel hubs that could briefly surge to seven horsepower and carry it to a top speed of 50 mph.

While more than a century of technological evolution separates Mixte from today’s hybrids, both rely upon gasoline to enhance and recall the virtues of “electrics” as automobiles with a future.

Also see “Cantankerous Combustion — First U.S. Auto Show.”