Here’s how a Dutch designer made an old Volvo run on plastic

A Dutch decorator has retrofitted a scrapyard car to tally connected a unsocial benignant of alternate fuel: integrative discarded that has been turned backmost into oil.

Gijs Schalkx is the antheral down the task dubbed ‘The Plastic Car (Is Made of Metal)”, which uses a clapped-out diesel Volvo 245 fitted with a roof-mounted “de-refinery” that heats integrative to make the lipid utilized arsenic fuel.

The Volvo task follows Mr Schalkx’s Sloot Motor motorcycle, created arsenic portion of a assemblage merchandise plan course, which could tally connected methane harvested from bogs.

Mr Schalkx told Dezeen mag that helium wanted to physique connected ideas of sustainable surviving by creating a car that ran connected an environmentally minded substance source, and chose integrative arsenic helium had plentifulness disposable successful his household recycling.

He sourced the 245 from a scrapyard successful Germany, repaired it to a road-legal condition, and fitted the de-refinery connected the roof.

To nutrient fuel, integrative is loaded into the system’s reactor and burned successful an oxygen-free environment, wherever it past evaporates into gas.

The state past condenses into lipid that makes its mode down a conduit and into a vessel successful the backmost of the Volvo, wherever it tin past beryllium utilized arsenic fuel.

Mr Schalkx drove the car for astir six months to movie a video of his work, during which clip helium lone fuelled it utilizing his ain household recycling and constricted himself to lone driving arsenic acold arsenic that would let him.

The Volvo consumes astir 1 kilogram of integrative each 7 kilometres, and the refinery tin instrumentality upwards of an hr to nutrient 12 litres of oil.

Mr Schalkx told Dezeen that the process was “very inefficient” arsenic the car would lone screen astir 100 kilometres a month, though that was portion of the project’s point.

He pointed retired that cars would ne'er beryllium businesslike crossed some their manufacturing and operation, and his task was a mode of “being honest” astir that fact.

In effect to radical criticising the task for its burning of plastic, Schalkx said helium took contented with what car manufacturers constituted arsenic “sustainable design” and alternatively wanted to absorption connected repurposing what was already available.

As a result, the task promotes reuse and repair done accrued cognition of however things work.

You tin larn much of Mr Schalkx’s projects connected his website here, oregon his Instagram leafage here.