The bus company in the southern English town of Reading has claimed a speed record for a standard service town bus whose only modification was the disabling of the speed limiter, which normally kicks in at 56mph and extra driver safety equipment. On a special track, the bus's speed was measured at 76.785 mph. Unfortunately this will not be recorded as a Guiness World record as the company requires land speed records to be over 150mph.
The bus was painted white with black patches (think a Dell computer box) to recognize the source of its fuel - biogas generated from "cow poo". Despite this; it was nicknamed "Bus Hound" after the "Bloodhound SSC", the vehicle being prepared to challenge Thrust SSC's world land speed record of 763 mph this year in South Africa. The Bloodhound team are aiming to break 1000 mph in 2016. This though was a publicity effort to promote biogas and public transport:
Chief engineer John Bickerton said the company wanted the "world's first service bus speed record" to bring to light the viability, power and credibility of buses fuelled by cow poo. "We've laid down a challenge for other bus operators to best our record and we had to make it a bit hard for them. Most importantly we wanted to get the image of bus transport away from being dirty, smelly, and slow," he said.
"We're modern, fast, and at the cutting edge of innovation. It was an impressive sight as it swept by on the track. It sounded like a Vulcan bomber - the aerodynamics isn't designed for going 80mph," he added.
Its fuel is made from animal waste which is broken down in a process called anaerobic digestion to produce biogas, which is then liquefied, Gilbert said.
The liquified gas is stored in tanks on the roof of the bus. The publicity effort appears to have worked as the above is from
an Indian site where presumably they have a lot of sacred cow poo do deal with.
Anaerobic digestion is a "no brainer" to deal with the football field size "lagoons" of waste from factory farms that pollute the waterways in many parts of the USA. Getting rid of Republican male bovine ordure on greenhouse gases is of course another matter.