Alternative Fuels for Cars

Alternative fuels is an esoteric concept for the average motorist. Use of the term brings forth an image an eccentric putterer powering an old clunker with chicken manure, or of a dotty professor cruising along at 20 miles per hour in a solar powered car. Nevertheless, some fuel alternative to gasoline is likely a part of the future for American motorists. Experimental trials in normal use conditions of various fuel alternatives are underway in several American cities. These trials will assess the technological feasibility of these fuel alternatives for general transportation uses. Once these assessments have been made, it will still be necessary to evaluate the surviving fuel alternatives in relation to environmental acceptability, supply sufficiency, and other factors. These latter evaluations provide the focus for this current study.

Literature relevant to leading fuel alternatives is reviewed in this chapter. This review provides a background and understanding of the development and characteristics of the fuel alternatives that will be evaluated in this study. A brief review of literature relevant to the research methodology that will be applied in this study is also presented.

With deadlines for reducing carbon monoxide and smog coming ever nearer, debates on the merits of alternative fuels (methanol, alcoholgasoline mix, liquid natural gas, propane, and solar power) have intensified (Hass, 1993, p. 50). T

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nment subsidy (54 cents per gallon) to make their gasohol mixture competitive with gasoline, and advantage not enjoyed by methanol producers (Caney, 1992, pp. 5, 12). Alcoholgasoline mixtures are cleaner burning than is gasoline, and conventional automobile engines require little modification to burn the mixture (O'Malley, 1987, pp. 3133). The typical alcoholgasoline mixture is 10 percent alcohol. Ethanol does not hold the production potential to permit alcoholgasoline mixtures to become a major substitute for gasoline (O'Malley, 1987, pp. 3133). By contrast, methanol has the potential to be produced in almost unlimited quantities. Further, as methanol has a higher compression ratio than does either ethanol or gasoline, either methanol or a methanolbased alcoholgasoline mixture results in more efficient engine operation than do ethanol, ethanolbased alcoholgasoline mixtures, or gasoline. The compression ratio in an internal combustion engine refers to the relationship between the maximum and minimum amounts of space enclosed during a full stroke. A higher compression ratio means that more energy is delivered per volume of fuel burned. Even in the face of the operational advantages of alcoholgasoline mixtures ov

Category: Science - A