When will we come up with an alternative fuel?

Question

with gas prices rising i was wondering if there is ever going to be an alternative fuel because im going to start driving soon and the gas prices dont look good.

I knew that we have ethanol and that stuff but i was wondering about like hydrogen and things that don't involve oil

Answer 1

There are basically five alternative fuels to fossil oil fuel based diesel and gasoline, which I will call oil from now on. None of them are well enough developed to replace oil for one reason or another. I will discuss each in some detail considering the pros and cons.

Ethanol: The most talked about lately is ethanol. Most ethanol produced today is corn based but significant quantities are also produced from sugar cane and sugar beets. This process is inefficient from several perspectives. Firstly the amount of ethanol that could be produced this way is extremely limited and could never provide more than a small fraction of our liquid fuel needs. Secondly it encroaches on our food supply and is already driving up corn prices. An alternative method of making ethanol uses the woody part of the plant rather than the sugary/starchy part. That would allow for instance corn stocks to be used to make ethanol while we could still use the corn itself for food. In addition there are excellent very fast growing plants that would provide considerable cellulose feedstock with greatly reduced farming inputs, which greatly improves the overall energy efficiency for generating ethanol. Even so the highest estimates indicate that ethanol could only provide about 40% of our current oil consumption. On the plus side ethanol can be burned in our cars with very minor changes and can be distributed using our existing infrastructure making the rollout of ethanol highly feasible. Ethanol contains less latent energy than does gasoline or diesel and therefore cars using it will get lower mileage. That might be partially compensated for in engines dedicated to ethanol if it becomes ubiquitous because ethanol could be used in very high compression engines that are inherently more efficient. However that is impossible if the engine must be flex-fuel capable.

Biodiesel: Biodiesel basically uses plant oils (animal oils will work too) to make a diesel substitute. Certain types of plants can produce bio diesel economically and quite a few people are making use of waste oils from restaurants but in truth these sources are likely to be even more limited than ethanol. I am not aware of any processes proposed for making biodiesel from cellulose sources and in my opinion that is required to for any plant based fuel to be widely viable. Biodiesel is likely to be a niche product going forward due to limit supplies, but it will certainly be part of the mix because it makes very efficient use of sources that would otherwise merely be waste. It also can be used in existing diesel engines without modification and can make use of the existing distribution system. Biodiesel has a high latent energy and runs in high compression diesel engines and so it achieves comparable mileage to fossil diesel.

Electricity: Electricity has a lot to offer as a fuel because it is extremely clean and because it is extremely efficient within the vehicle. One other great benefit of electricity is that it is much simpler than any other technology and therefore potentially offers the lowest maintenance. With long life batteries electric cars are very nearly zero maintenance. Tires and breaks are likely to be the only components requiring maintenance for the life of the car. Internal combustion engines convert approximately 33% of the latent energy of the fuel to useful work. A battery powered electric vehicle will convert approximately 85% of the latent energy used to charge the battery to useful work. Given that large power plants can be very much more efficient, up to 50%, in converting fossil fuels to electricity the overall efficiency of electric cars is very high. Additionally electric cars effectively make use of energy sources that otherwise could not be used for vehicles, such as geothermal, wind, solar and nuclear power, all of which generate electricity. The primary downside to electric power is limited storage. Currently the best electric cars in service achieved ranges of about 150 miles, which is very marginal. New models under development will achieve ranges up to 250 miles. Battery systems under development promise even greater ranges. Another important downside is slow charging. Current widely used technologies take hours to charge. The combination of limited range and slow charging prevent the current electric car of getting more than about 50 miles from home, which is a very severe limitation. However, batteries that can be charged in as little as 10 minutes with high capacity and thus long range are just now being released. These newer battery technologies also are overcoming the limited deep discharge problems of older battery technology. It used to be that a battery pack could be expected to last less than two years in heavy daily service. The newer batteries have life expectancies in the decade range under similar heavy daily use. Cost is still an issue because batteries are not yet mass production items. Electricity does face a less well-developed infrastructure. While anyone can charge a battery at home gradually over night, there is no developed fast-charge infrastructure. On the plus side this infrastructure is relatively inexpensive compared to that required for gaseous fuels I will be describing next. It would be very feasible to add electric charging capability to gas stations over a decade time period for example. There are some other very interesting benefits to electricity. We already have the required electrical generation capacity to charge a nation worth of electric cars over night. In addition electric cars could be used as a gigantic distributed battery for the countrywide electrical grid and could surprisingly actually strengthen grid reliability rather than imposing an extra burden. The grid needs the ability to temporarily store and supply electricity and that could be done using batteries of cars connected to the grid for charging.

Methane: Methane gas could be used as a transition fuel for fuel cell power cars. A fuel cell is really just a type of battery. In the case of a fuel cell the "fuel" is really part of the battery. Rather than pumping electricity into it to charge the fuel cell, the fuel is replaced as it gets consumed making energy. Fuel cells need very pure fuel to work well and so most use hydrogen as the fuel. Methane can be converted to hydrogen in a tiny chemical reactor right in the car and therefore methane can be used to drive a hydrogen fuel cell. Fuel cells are more efficient that internal combustion engines and in theory can reach the same super high efficiency of batteries. However the technical requirements of fuel cells make them significantly less efficient. Most today are about 40-45% efficient. There are other efficiency issues that I will discuss later. Gaseous fuels have storage issues. You need a high-pressure tank, a cryogenic tank, or some kind of sorbant matrix. These are all both expensive and relatively large. The problem is made worse by the relatively low volumetric latent energy of gaseous fuels compared to much denser liquid fuels. Gaseous fuels are somewhat more dangerous to handle as well because they expand out of their container if it is broken. A leak is much more likely to result in an explosion or fire therefore. The infrastructure for safe handling of gaseous fuels on an everyday basis by untrained persons simply does not exist. It is very likely to be significantly more expensive than the existing infrastructure as well. Probably the very biggest downside to methane though is that the primary source is fossil natural gas. Methane can be generated from the biodigestion of plant mater and sewage but the quantities are likely to be limited just as they are for both ethanol and biodiesel. Furthermore methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas and the creation of a large vehicle-fueling infrastructure is virtually certain to result in far more methane emissions and so even from renewable sources might significantly contribute to global warming. Given the relatively primitive state of fuel cell development and the nonexistent and complex infrastructure requirements, methanol as a vehicle fuel is a very long way off. The final problem for methane is that natural gas is itself nearing peak production world wide at the same time demand for cleaner electricity production has placed very high demand on the fuel. There will very likely not be anywhere near enough natural gas to supply even a small fraction of vehicular demand.

Hydrogen: Hydrogen shares virtually all of the advantages and disadvantages of methanol. There are a couple of additional complications though. One is distribution from generation points to dispensing points. Natural gas has an existing distribution system of pipelines. No such pipeline system exists for hydrogen. Hydrogen is the lowest density of fuel sources and so it takes up the greatest amount of space for the delivered energy of any fuel. It is harder to compress, harder to liquefy, and generally harder to keep contained compared to any other gas or fuel. On the plus side it is pollution free when used in a fuel cell and itself is not a greenhouse gas so inadvertent release does not contribute to global warming. Hydrogen does not exist as a free gas and therefore must be manufactured. This is done in two primary ways. Cracking of methane in a chemical plant as described above. This by far the largest current method of producing hydrogen. As such hydrogen today is simply another type refined of fossil fuel and therefore would contribute to global warming unless the CO2 produced in the cracking of methane is somehow sequestered. The second way to manufacture methane is the electrolysis of water. That if done with renewably generated electricity would not contribute to global warming. Unfortunately that is a very inefficient process. Only about 40% of the energy of the electricity is converted to hydrogen. And then when the hydrogen is converted back to electricity in the fuel cell only 40% of it is converted to work. Thus even ignoring the need to liquefy the hydrogen, itself very energy intensive, and the distribution losses, the overall process only successfully converts about 8% of a fossil fuel to useful work in the car, compare that to about 43% with an electric car. That is a devastating efficiency and even the most optimistic estimates only get that up to about 28% for hydrogen. Some of the disadvantages of fuel cell powered hydrogen cars can be over come by the use of hydrogen as a fuel for an internal combustion engine. But this comes at even a greater price in lost efficiency and this cycle only achieves about 6% total efficiency, which is so bad it can only be of interest for demonstration purposes and would be utterly impractical on a large-scale basis. The low efficiency and daunting infrastructure issues bring the future viability of hydrogen into sharp question. Considerable research is required to make hydrogen even marginally competitive. At the current state of development is it not feasible. Only electrolitically generated hydrogen has a chance at supplying our vehicular needs but at a sharp reduction in efficiency compared to direct use of electricity with batteries. Also the grid stabilizing benefits of electric cars is lost because hydrogen cars will not be connected to the grid.

There is another category, which does not actually use a different fuel but rather combines two: rhe hybrid car. Plug-in hybrids in particular achieve the best of what electric cars currently offer. Which is best in class energy efficiency, best in class pollution emissions, best in class electrical grid friendliness, and best in class maintenance. From liquid fuel vehicles hybrids get best in class range. This is in my opinion the technology that will become dominant within about ten years. Beyond that ethanol and bio diesel will become the liquid fuels of choice. As battery technology advances batteries will become larger and ethanol tanks will become smaller, perhaps eventually fading away entirely leaving just an electric car.

Answer 2

people all over have come up with alternative fuels well before this year.
Oil (fossil or veggie) aside, the best answer seems to be hydrogen fuel cells and DOE has already laid down provisions for more with the recent energy bill.
Seeing as you are a new driver and probobley can't afford a $50,000+/- hydrogen fuelcell car, Your best option is to get an old diesel car (VW rabbit) and get to know the fast food people so you can brew your own biodiesel. It may not solve all the world's problems but it's a cheap way to go

Answer 3

Ethanol has some issues.

Fortunately, biodiesel does not. And a wide variety of new, clean diesel cars and trucks are out, or coming out by fall.

If you're mechanically inclined, it's not too hard to convert a gas car to battery-electric. The next step is make it a "plug in hybrid" by adding a small engine to recharge on the road, so you don't have to worry about range.

Answer 4

There are already available alternative fuels derived from organic materials. And there is now what they call fuel cell. Some buses in Canada are using fuel cells.

Fuel cells generate electricity by way of combining hydrogen and oxygen in a membrane. The by product is water. It's a clean technology.

Answer 5

As soon as the government figures out what, and how much to tax it, we'll see more alternative fuels. But, as we have all ready seen, distilled corn is not a good substitute additive, as it has driven the price of corn through the roof, and allot of second and third world countries depend on corn as a main part of their diet. With the U.S. paying top dollar for raw corn, those folks are left "holding the bag." That, and the cost of re-tooling existing refineries, (government is unwilling to allow building more refineries or drilling on our own soil for crude) and government regulations on fuel formulas that mandate re-tooling semi annually, drives the cost of oil to rise. As you have noticed, the government always points the "finger" at "Big Oil" for "Gouging" the public, but never admits to the fact that the oil industry is the most federally regulated industry in this country. Let's motor up to the law makers and demand that they lower their taxes on the oil industry, and we will see lower prices at the pump. Happy Motoring, and congrats on your license.

Answer 6

I think everyone would agree that the gas prices are insane!!!! If I was in charge, I would have alternative fuel available to everyone immediately. I live in a small town and I doubt E85, or anything else, will be available to me for a long time.

Answer 7

Ethanol, which is adversely affecting several economy's in corn producing country's,

Natural gas which because of the environmental whacos, we cannot access one of the largest known deposits off the coast of Florida.

There is enough methane trapped in the polar ice caps to supply us for 40,000yrs.

Answer 8

First of all, we all ready have alternative cars, like the electric car and Air-powered car or water powered car. But the oil companies don't want that, because they would go out of business. We will have alternative cars once the oil runs out.

Answer 9

We have had alternative fuel longer than you think. The oil industry bought them up or paid them to shelve their fuel until further notice.

Answer 10

soon, when ethanol becomes more widespread. Also, see this link for pending political deliberation regarding gas prices.
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/05/23/house_oks_outrageous_gas_prices_bill/9282/
finally something Democrats and Republicans can agree on, those dang gas prices.

Answer 11

Alternatives are already here.

Get a VW Diesel with a TDI engine.

For one, they get better gas mileage than hybrids.

And second you can use biodiesel, or convert it to use vegetable oil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbocharged_Direct_Injection

Good luck with your first car.