This article discusses why it has become important to search for alternate fuels and explains about some of these fuels in brief.
These days, it is not unusual to see traffic getting held up for hours and hours together. People are having to spend longer durations of time on the road to cover the same distance. The number of vehicles has increased rapidly and so has the quantity of vehicle fuel being consumed every year.
Increased use of oil for transportation purposes has lead to increase in the emission of carbon dioxide, which in turn has lead to increase in the green house effect. Apart from this, crude oil is getting depleted at an extremely fast rate and the costs associated with using it have also increased greatly. Keeping all these reasons in mind, newer, cheaper and pollution-free alternatives to crude oil are being researched.
Some of the available options are:
a) Biodiesel: This fuel is biodegradable, non-toxic and produces comparatively lesser carbon dioxide on combustion than normal fuels. It is processed from biological sources like vegetable oils. Many countries have modified most of their vehicles to run on biodiesel instead of normal diesel.
b) Ethanol: This fuel is mainly produced from fermentation of sugar. However, there are also a number of other methods to produce ethanol. Ethanol is used both as a fuel and also added to fuel as an additive. In countries which experience extremely cold climates, ethanol is used as antifreeze.
c) Electricity: As the name indicates, electricity is used to run these vehicles. This electricity is produced from a number of sources like fuel cells, wind and solar energy, nuclear power, etc. The main advantage of electric vehicle is that they completely eliminate the problem of vehicular exhaust. And they can also be used in combination with any other power source.
d) Solar energy: Solar energy can be harnessed with the help of photovoltaic cells and converted into electrical energy, and this energy can be used to run the vehicles. The advantage of solar energy is that it is basically a renewable and non-polluting source of energy.
e) Hydrogen fuel cell: This type of cell produces electricity by making electrons flow through the external circuit. Firstly, de-ionization takes place leading to disintegration of hydrogen into electrons and protons. The oxygen supplied reacts with the protons and electrons to form water. Hence, the only byproduct of this reaction is water vapor.
Apart from these, many other types of alternate fuels are being researched.
The problem with these fuels that vehicle designs need to be modified to function normally using them. Also, to stop using crude oil compounds like petrol and diesel all of a sudden is not possible.
