Alternate Fuel Sources

Alternate Fuel Sources for Vehicles

Introduction

This project investigates alternative fuel source cars, such as Biodiesel, Hydrogen Fuel Cell, Natural Gas, Ethanol (e85), and Hybrid. I choose this topic when I realized how much people are paying for a fuel (gasoline) that only gives you 30% efficiency per gallon. This means that for every $100.00 that you spend on gas, you are wasting $70.00.

Purpose

My goal is to educate people about current fuel sources, so they can make more educated decisions regarding fuel use and consumption. In addition, I will like to see our nation changing the habits of energy sources from outside this nation.

Background Research

The research for this project was conducted on the Internet. The first step was to investigate the gasoline. As I started my research I discovered that gasoline has more disadvantages than benefits. For example, cars are the biggest source of air pollution. Air pollution causes 60,000 early deaths per year in the United States according to the American Lung Association. Also, Americans are too dependent on other countries for fuel. Only 10% of the gasoline that Americans use is produced in the United States. Learning about these drawbacks helped me understand why the world needs a better fuel source.

After, researching gasoline I began to study alternative fuel sources. For each alternative fuel source I studied; how it works, its advantages and disadvantages, cost of alternative fuel, alternative fuel car prices, and the availability of the alternative fuel. My research consisted of five alternative fuels:

· Hydrogen Fuel Cell

· Biodiesel

· Natural Gas

· Hybrid

· Ethanol (E85)

Hydrogen Fuel Cell

Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars makes water by combining two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule this makes electricity. It works like a regular battery; it stores chemicals inside its cell and converts them into an electric charge. With Fuel Cell, the flow in its cell is steady, so it never dies like a regular battery. Sir William Grove invented Fuel Cell in 1839. It did not become popular because of the success of internal combustion motor.

Fuel Cell has significant advantages for example:

· It produces 90% less pollution then a regular car.

· It only releases water that is clean enough to drink. As a matter of fact, Fuel Cell was used during the 1960’s Gemini space program to make electricity and drinking water for the astronauts.