Practicality and Reliability of Alternative Fuels and Vehicles
The demand for alternative fuels to substitute current fossil fuels is increasing more that ever. This is because the less availability of fossil fuel and the negative side effects to environment are the main issue that needs to be handled. Renewable energy such as wind, solar, tidal, hydro, geothermal or thermal are gaining more popular. The biomass energy industry in the production of respiration and dead organic matter can be used as industrial production or as fuel. Alcohol fuel is usually consists of methanol and ethanol, which can be easily derived from plants. Hydrogen can also be used as alternative fuel, such as abundant in land and water. The same happens with compressed air. Other fossil fuels such as natural gas and IPL are in abundance on Earth, and the extract is purified. The same applies to nuclear energy. But yet the main issue is the practicality and reliability of these alternative fuels.
When the energy density of the alternative fuels is considerably less than gasoline and diesel fuel, it greatly impacts the practicality of the fuel for transportation. Most of the alternative fuels have a much lower energy density. For vehicles, much more storage space is required to accommodate much larger fuel tanks to achieve comparable range or, for gaseous fuels, storage tanks that can withstand greater compression. Moreover, it will always take longer to refuel a vehicle using a lower-energy-density liquid fuel or a gaseous fuel.
The lower energy density of alternative fuels is even more problematic for aircraft. Methanol has been suggested as a jet fuel replacement. But using methanol would seriously curtail range and payload since the plane’s weight is a principle determinant of how much fuel is needed. A typical four-engine commercial jet will carry 775,000 pounds of aviation fuel to maximize range; to achieve the same range with methanol would require one million more pounds of fuel. Since most of the alternative fuel vehicles burn cleaner, experience has found that this reliability is equal or better than that of comparable gasoline or diesel fuel vehicles.