Two decades after the trilogy, the 42-year-old home builder 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.
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"It's a simple science from 130 years ago that can be used today to solve all of our problems ... and it runs on potentially free fuel," Nichols said. "This type of technology has to be developed, and it has to be developed now."
Gasification projects have been sprouting up across the country. Others have also built car gasification systems, including a team in California that has a video on YouTube showing its modified Honda Accord.
Middlebury College in Vermont fired up its biomass heating and power plant last December.
The new interest in gasification comes as President Barack Obama presses to double the nation's use of renewable energy over the next three years, with $15 billion a year to be spent to develop solar power, wind power, advanced biofuels, fuel-efficient cars and other technologies.
Gasification works by heating organic materials to high temperatures without flames. The resulting chemical reactions produce a hydrogen-hydrocarbon gas mixture in vapor form that is almost as potent as gasoline, Nichols said.
His pickup truck appears to run like any other and easily reached 40 mph and above on local roads on a recent day, but it has no gas tanks. Nichols says he can get it up to more than 80 mph. The only noticeable difference is a contraption, right behind the cab's rear window, that takes up some of the back and looks somewhat like a wood stove.
A metal barrel, where the heating occurs, extends just above the cab's roof. The gas is captured from the barrel and a vacuum system sucks it through piping that runs under the truck to the engine.
Nichols says he's driven it 10,000 miles without gas, including a trip about three months ago when he loaded up the back with about 400 pounds of wood and drove some 600 miles across Connecticut, then to New Hampshire and Boston before returning home. A pound of wood or other material will fuel his truck for one to two miles, meaning that the truck costs about 8 cents a mile to fuel, compared to roughly 19 cents per mile if it used gasoline at today's prices.
"This is real. This is no game," said Nichols, who lives in town with his wife and two daughters, ages 15 and 11. "The mechanics at the garage thought I was crazy. They're not laughing anymore."
He started the project about seven years ago, after reading an instruction book about lamp gas technology in the 1800s.
Nichols has been trying to perfect the system ever since, with a few stumbles along the way, and says he's close. One of the final parts is an electronic system that would allow drivers to push a button, instead of having to start it with a propane torch like Nichols does now. He's applied for a federal grant to help with the electronic system and other improvements.
Nichols, a thin, mustachioed man whose hands are very active when he talks, had the "reactor" filled with slicked log pieces about 5 inches in diameter and 1 to 2 inches thick. That's where the gasification starts.
The organic materials in the reactor are exposed to extreme heat, which breaks them down into vapor gases. Then a startup vacuum system (using an old wet-and-dry shop vac) is turned on to get the gases flowing to the engine.
The temperature inside the reactor reaches over 2,000 degrees, but the gas cools to about 150 degrees about 5 feet from the reactor. Passengers in the pickup's cab don't feel the warmth.
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