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Green Options Fuel Future
By Mr Ethanol | April 17, 2008
Metro Canadá:
Environmentally sound alternative fuel options offer great emissions savings over traditional gasoline, but what are they all about? Here’s a roundup of each:
Battery-electric and hybrid-electric vehicles:
Battery-electric cars draw all their power from an onboard battery, while hybrids use a combination of battery and gas motors to drastically increase fuel efficiency.
Both types produce much lower emissions (or virtually none at all, in the case of battery-electric cars), but hybrids are substantially more expensive than gas-only cars.
Battery-electric cars need to be charged every 100-200 kilometres (charging takes around 8 hours) and the entire battery needs to be replaced after 400-500 charges, making maintenance expensive.
Biodiesel:
A non-toxic fuel made from vegetable oils, animal fats and waste cooking oil. Biodiesel can be mixed with regular diesel fuel in just about any diesel engine and helps reduce emissions by about 60 to 80% in respect to the quantity mixed (a 20% mix will give 12 to 18% lower emissions, for example).
Engines running on biodiesel deliver similar performance to regular diesel engines, but the fuel itself still isn’t commercially available on a large scale.
Biodiesel also tends to freeze (or turn to gel) at higher temperatures than regular diesel in colder weather.
Ethanol:
A fuel made from the fermented sugars and starches found in agricultural products like corn and wheat. Ethanol burns with roughly 40% lower emissions than gasoline and is a renewable fuel source.
Most modern gasoline engines can already run safely and effectively on a blend of up to 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline and many gas stations across Canada already offer gas with 10% ethanol content.
Ethanol does contain slightly less energy than gasoline, increasing fuel consumption marginally (by about 2%) compared to the same amount of gasoline.
Topics: Biofuel, Cars, Energy, Ethanol, Industry, Trends |
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