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fossil fuel wont exist anymore. how are the power plants gonna run if it doesnt exist at all? ethanol. Even cars release gases that doesn't really help the global warming crisis. If you think of all the cars in US turning into a care-enviroment cars, thats pretty helpful. Really.

Yeah, I heard about that too. Hopefully they can finally get it right this time. -_- If not, we might end up with zero point energy power first.

It requires electricity to make it? Last I heard they wanted to ferment it with bacteria. It's possible to do the same thing with methane, too, which is another potential fuel source (if not for cars then for power plants).

Hello Mr. Uninformed - Power plants will be nuclear fusion plants in the years of alternative fuels.

This is patently false. What are you talking about?

ADDITION:
Ethanol is a automobile gasoline substitute made from fermented vegetables. The reason it is less harmful to the environment is because when vegetables are grown the remove carbon dioxide from the air, when they are fermented and burned the carbon is released, so a cycle begins. Normal fossil fuels release carbon dioxide that was stored in the crust of the earth, and since there is no ready means to remove this co2, this results in an increase in the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

Ethanol cannot completely solve the problem, however. The wasteful use of gasoline and electricity in general results in an energy need much greater than the amount of ethanol that could be produced using the entire body of land in the united states. Ethanol can help alleviate the problem, however the habits of people must also change drastically.

Biodiesel is a fuel related to ethanol, and basically replaces diesel fuel as ethanol replaces gasoline. However if you are experienced with cars you will note that diesel in general is much more efficent than gasoline (which is to say a mile of gas would take you twenty five miles, a mile of diesel fuel can take you fifty). Biodiesel is actually an even more environmentally intelligent choice than ethanol, however ethanol is still very good.

Hydrogen fuel cells are idiotic.

First of all, hydrogen does not exist on the earth as hydrogen. It exists in more complex molecules, the most economic being water. Hydrogen fuel cells are often created by using electricity on water to break the molecules into basic elements. This brings you to a problem right away. Where does that energy come from? Most often that energy comes from coal. So you are burning coal to make hydrogen to be clean. The hydrogen could be separated with clean energy such as solar power, but why not just charge the batteries of an electric car with that solar energy? The electric car scenario requires less energy to get the car running and is more efficent.

Second, hydrogen has no infrastructure. Those hydrogen cars you see companies making cost the companies on average $1,000,000 each to build. Absolutely impossible to sell at that price.

water isn't hydrogen =/ and it maybe more efficient when it becomes cheaper. it isn't idiotic either. It'd take more than a idiot to figure how to make a hydrogen fuel cell engines.

The H2 in H2O is hydrogen. As yet it is the best source of the stuff.

Ethanol is easier to make and they are building cars that run on it. For less than a million dollars each.

The cars are around the prices of normal cars.

EDIT:: The ethanol/gasoline hybrid cars are around the prices of normal gasoline cars.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/and..._x.htm?csp=N009



Theres many sources to prove that Ethanol doesnt really help the enviroment, but only gets people from buying Middle East exports to the home grown stuff. I like that I got something alot of people argue with it brings me joy.

Electricity
Really. The senate can bill new Nuclear Fission plants. In the near future, Nuclear Fusion generators will support around 1.8~15.6mV per nuclear fusion plant.

Ethanol
Those are distillers. They can capture all those by-products. Methanol, Carbon monoxide, acetic acid, and formaldehyde actually has uses. Besides, when we run out of oil; we're gonna need to find a new road material.

I heard that either with Biodiesol or ethanol that to make it run in cars only takes a simple modification to your car that a know how engineer at your local car shop could do.

Problem is we don't have a large enough ethanol/bio infestructure to popularize this change from gasoline to the alternative energy sources.

Hydrogen power is also a possibility. Such a simple reaction, and it creates a hell of a lot of energy.

Actually, from what I've heard, burning hydrogen actually gets you less energy per volume of hydrogen than burning gasoline does. Not to say it's not a very good alternative fuel, it's just still not perfect.

Unless of course you're talking about fusing it rather than burning it. That way the only problem we have is that there isn't any fusion reactor yet that can give positive feedback.

No, I was talking about the combustion of hydrogen. You were right the first time.

Of course burning mid-chain hydrocarbons such as octane will potentially release more energy, but the fact is that it is very inefficient and incomplete combustion is one of the biggest problems with using fossil fuels. You're a clever person so I'll assume you know why you get incomplete combustion with hydrocarbons.

The combustion of hydrogen is more efficient, but it's not yet more convenient and would be more expensive, at least to begin with. Getting oil out of the ground requires less energy in the long run than creating hydrogen though, so I don't know if it's that feasible until we have a real fuel crisis. The infrastructure for it is also lacking.

You need power to ferment sugar? Thats new in my book. Can you check that please?

We grow corn or sugar cane or any carbohydrate. All you need is yeast and you can ferment it into alcohol and CO2.

Wine is partially ethanol... It would just be a waste of a great tasteing drink when you could use something more crude.

Nope.

Nuclear Fusion is an awful idea. There is way too much radioactive waste left behind which takes I think somewhere around 20 some thousand years for one half-life.

hazel knows what he's talking about. Listen to him : P

I would have guessed that that was the case, yes. How much energy it wastes I'm not sure, I'm not an expert on hydrocarbon fuels.

Ahem. Nuclear fusion is far cleaner even than nuclear fission (which itself is far cleaner than fossil fuels), and the small quantity of byproducts that do exist have relatively short half lives.

You exaggerate way too much without sufficient amount of information.
You would only need 8000 prototype nuclear fusion generators to support the world.

According to Wikipedia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count...ity_consumption

You don't need power to ferment sugar, but you would probably need power to refine the product into pure ethanol. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want all the crap that comes from fermentation in my fuel tank.

Industrial ethanol is created by the nucleophilic addition of an -OH group to ethene with an acid catalyst. This would be pure and I would probably use it as a fuel - it still wouldn't release as much energy as the combustion of an alkane though.

I still think that hydrogen would be the way forward. All you have to do is electrolyse water to produce it (and oxygen as an added bonus), and the only waste product is water - no CO2 to contribute to carbon emissions. In fact, you could probably use the water as coolant for the engine.

or adding some stuff then drinking it.

I still think that liquid compressed Hydrogen would be the most efficient fuel to use for vehicles. It's by far the best for the environment being that its only waste is steam. Not to mention, it's easy to produce by pumping a (naturally) negative electric current through water and harvesting the resulting Hydrogen that will evaporate from the water. A lot of people question where we would get the initial energy from to pump the current into the water, and to that I say-- dams. Hydroelectric power is quite efficient, so it obviously works. All the Hydrogen company would have to do is make their plants near a dam, and there's plenty of dams in the country. Just re-route some of the electricity created, to the Hydrogen plant, problem solved.

The only BIG argument that i've heard so far to the use of Hydrogen as vehicle fuel is, "What if you got into an accident?! Your car would be a Hydrogen bomb!!!" To that I say-- Nay. Anyone who knows anything about physics would know that you can't just blow up Hydrogen and that equal a nuclear fission explosion... Plus, I have an answer for the plausible scenario that you get into an accident and your car explodes from the Hydrogen (non-nuclear of course), because we would like to avoid a small scale Hindenburg if at all possible . Simply have a smaller tank within the Hydrogen tank (which should be thick to begin with, just for overall safety) and fill that smaller tank with liquid compressed O2 (Oxygen). Rig the small O2 tank with a one way valve that will release the compressed Oxygen into the Hydrogen filled tank as soon as enough force is applied to the vehicle that would deploy an airbag. Ta-da! Water. The situation that was once a disaster, would be neutralized in under a hundreth of a second.

Also, with liquid compressed Hydrogen for your fuel, we're talkin about fuel efficiency of around 300-400 miles/gallon

Keeping our own fuel domestic is going to also work wonders on the US economy. After this one, the middle-east is gonna have some fun selling their only other resource: Sand

Hydrogen is overrated. Sure, it's a great idea, but it still takes power to make the fuel cells, so in the end, it'll be a less efficient means of getting power to places than oil until either windfarms become more widespread or more efficient ways are developed.

did u even read my entire argument? i believe i covered ur statement

The best alternative fuel is..... Magic!

However the best fuel I'd have to say would be... electricity. Where the electricity would come from would be a controlled fusion reaction!.....somehow!

Else Solar power. I mean we could have "Light Stations" that turn light -> energy all day and store it for night time use. Cars would have there own light stations during the day then plug into the light stations at night to fuel as needed.


Sand Fuel FTW!!! It pwns oil!

Fossil Fuels
They make tons of CO[sub]2[/sub] and CO, which pollutes our atmosphere, however, they are generally considered safe, are very reliable, and except for the Carbon Mon/dioxide they produce, there are very few side effects. However, engines running on fossil fuels leave very large amounts of heat energy in the exhaust, as well as loads of atomic energy within the exhaust

Renewables
This seems like a good idea, it has no pollution, and is generally endless. However, it is generally quite inefficient, and takes a lot a space, and large building projects. Windmills take up a ton of space, they look ugly, and you need a windy area to use them. Hydro dams cost a lot to build, and tend to damage the sorrounding ecosystems. Solar power is handy, it comes from that big thing in the sky which gives us most of the energy we have, but it takes a ton of space, and is very inefficient.

Nuclear Power(Fission)
This is a very efficient source of power. It uses chain reactions of smashing particles into each other to blow them up. However, it takes tons of Uranium, which is somewhat rare, and emits a lot of radiation. Danger? Hell yes. Also, if the chain reaction can get to a point where the uranium melts, there is a meltdown. Get prepared for chernoble 2. The member name that best applies here: KABOOM!!!.

Nuclear Power(Fusion)
This is very very efficient. It uses the power of E=MC[sup]2[/sup]. It uses such immense force that atoms literally fuse together, and create a new atom, as well as tons of light and heat. This has no wastes, and is very safe. Unfortunatly, this is currently being developped, and nobody knows where to find enough force to fuse atoms. Want a good example, a really big one, millions of times the size of the planet? Look up.

I know I didn't cover hydrogen or ethanol, but my fingers are now sore. Sorry, get it? 'sore - ee'

Not too much, though. Just put it in the right kind of pressure and temperature and it's likely you could get the stuff to separate into layers, sort of like how they get gasoline and diesel and so on out of crude oil. And of course, once the process started it should be able to sustain itself.

Well, once you'd cooled it down, yeah. It would start out as superheated steam, so you'd have to run it through a radiator first.

Hydroelectric dams are still quite environmentally harmful, almost as much as fossil fuel plants are. Personally I'd prefer to go with solar, wind, geothermal, OTEC or something along those lines.

Uh...from what I can tell, this would be an excellent way to guarantee that every single accident would result in the cars involved blowing up. You might make some water, but in the beginning it would be in the form of superheated steam, which would immediately smash the tanks apart, resulting in lots of hydrogen and oxygen being mixed all at once. Boom. No more car.

As a matter of fact, it's actually better just to put the hydrogen tank somewhere up high (such as the top of the hood or trunk) and not have an oxygen tank at all. See, when the hydrogen gets out, it turns from a liquid into a gas because of the low pressure. And hydrogen gas tends to go up, quite quickly. Any fire would likely take place in the air above the car, rather than in it. In fact, this is the reason why most of the people on board the Hindenburg survived the disaster: The fire went up, and everyone in the gondola just got a bumpy ride to the ground where they could get out and run away from the zeppelin. It was primarily the people who jumped before the gondola reached the ground that died.

Either that, or someone will smarten up and start irrigating the place and growing crops.

The problem is getting the electricity to the car. Batteries are actually relatively poor in terms of energy density, and are usually too heavy to be very useful in cars. Gasoline and diesel hold much more energy for their weight, as do hydrogen and flywheels (yes, believe it or not, flywheels are a more effective way to power a vehicle than gasoline).

This means that any way of powering cars on electricity will have to be through some other means than batteries. Solar panels are one idea, but unfortunately they don't work when it's cloudy. Wires, such as those used by streetcars and trolley buses, are also fairly effective but again they will only work, well, where they're installed. As technology improves, microwave beams or lasers may become viable, but so far we can't manage that over very long distances. So for the moment, electricity just plain isn't very effective at all.

Ooops, my bad, I totally mean Nuclear FISSION is a bad idea. I was thinking of quite a few things at once. My bad. As far as I know Fusion leaves behind no radioactive waste.

So power would help refine it how? You can't just filter it with some semi-permeable filter? lol at my 133t redundency.

LMFAO at BlackerWinter. H2 + O2 is still a combustion reaction. Just cause it'll produce water doesn't mean it won't explode. (im not insulting you I just thought it was funny cause you had this huge brilliant solution to nothing)

For the record, wind power and hydro power are forms of solar power (Wind and water flow because of the sun). If we had begun advancing solar energy in the 50's instead of nuclear we would be better off now. I don't think the U.S. is going to create any more reactors anyway, they are letting the old ones just break down, in a sense.

I agree, hydrogen, though I don't know much about it, seems effective if Solar, wind and hydro power were our main sources of energy. Too bad they aren't.

Fusion looks very interesting to me, I wanna find out more about it.