May 11
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Which is the best Alternative fuel for cars: hydrogen, electric or biofuels? Why? and why Not?

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    This entry was posted on May 21, 2011 at 11:53 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    8 Responses to "Which is the best Alternative fuel for cars: hydrogen, electric or biofuels? Why? and why Not?"

    • i i says:
      May 21, 2011 at 11:53 pm

      Currently I would say bio-fuels. Reason being not too much would need to be changed. The vehicles would not need too much modifying if at all and the infrastructure and delivery system is already here.
      The over all green house gasses would remain the same because plants would be the source of the fuel and it would return to the plants.
      There is already several systems used to make bio-fuels. From as simple as using vegetable oil in slightly modified diesels to a system that takes garbage and makes fuel in a form similar to the way nature does it but far more rapid.
      Additionally alcohol is a bio-fuel. It was used in cars I believe in the 1980s but they created a reason to remove it that the general uneducated population would believe.

      Electric was the first but it was kicked aside by the politicians, oil industry and greed. We have the infrastructure and If you watch "Who Killed the Electric Car?" you will see that it is already possible to have very advanced practical electric cars. It is far cleaner simpler and lighter than fuels. While we still need the storage the same as you would for a gas tank, the cooling, exhaust, oil, ignition systems would not be needed. This removes a lot of complexity and weight from the system. Today we have some very advanced electric vehicles. The Tesla car for one. The EV made by GM was removed from the market against very strong public outcry. Even further after removing the EV from the market GM bought up the electric public transportation in many cities and replaced it with diesel. So when I say forced upon the public I do mean forced.

      Hydrogen needs far more to make it practice under the current system. However I think it is one of the greatest and I hope we do arrive at that destination. It is absolutely clean as long as the production of the hydrogen is also clean. When combusted it becomes water! The storage tank if in a collision has shown to be extremely safe if using carbon fiber. Unlike liquid fuels hydrogen dissipates into the atmosphere at such an incredible speed it could not be any harm. If ignited it burns so fast that the heat is not felt. I was in a hydrogen explosion and all I felt was the compression. And for this reason a hydrogen vehicle would not need cooling or an exhaust system. The oil system i cannot be sure as I have seen systems running without oil.

      I will mention one more you did not. Water. Yes there are, and have been several water cars running in various places in the world. Philippines for one, USA for two.

      It is not however what is the best nor that these systems are not feasible. It is greed and power and corruption that prevents them from getting instituted on a grand scale. The number one thing that holds back progress is corruption. It is so high up that I am certain it will not go away unless god himself takes down these people.

      ————-
      Edit
      In the light of some of the comments that followed mine I would like to add just a few comments.
      You ask about "Alternative fuels". for almost a century any alternative to petroleum has been squashed in one way or another. The thing is we should have a choice. Like having only one way home makes us too dependent on that road. All thought and research has been placed on the one and only road we have been forced down. So of course that road is going to be the most advanced. Currently nothing can compare to petroleum products. If you look at the situation when petroleum was first forced upon the population it was far worse off than the alternative fuels are today. The more science and investment that is put behind these alternatives the better. It seems that the USA is one of the hardest to convince to change. After all look how we accepted the metric system. A far simpler system that the rest of the world uses.

      The USA is one of the worlds top contributes to pollution, second only to china. Yet USA is only 1/10 of the worlds population. If it was as large as China God help us all! #3 on the list is substantially lower in pollution out put. Yet the USA seeks to keep the same while it perpetually seeks to change the rest of the world. Other countries have worked to find alternatives to the high polluting out put of automobiles and other polluting factors. Consider Germany’s solar incentive for one. It is a world landmark program that the citizen, private corporations, and country will all benefit from. IN fact it is working too well and the subsidies are having to be cut sooner than was planned.

      What does all of this say?
      That change come hard for people who are stubborn. While all the excuses are being given others have moved on and made progress profitable. Leaving the stubborn standing there looking stubborn and foolish.

    • campbelp2002 says:
      May 21, 2011 at 11:53 pm

      Right now I say it is a tie between electric and bio fuel. It depends on what technology gets improved first, battery technology or bio fuel production. As it is now, neither is good enough for widespread use, although there are niche applications, like electric golf carts.

    • bill j says:
      May 21, 2011 at 11:53 pm

      This is like asking what is the best implement to use to cut off my hand. Sword, machete or ax? All will work and you can argue the merits of each, but the question you should be asking yourself is "Do I really want to cut off my hand?"

      If you have a car gasoline is the cheapest, most efficient and available fuel you can use. Hydrogen, electric, bio fuels, all will work and we can debate the merits of each, but the question you should be asking yourself is "Do I really want to switch to a fuel that is more expensive, less efficient and harder to find?"

      Hydrogen cars aren’t even available to the general public at this time so that rules them out.

      Electric cars are available but do you really want to spend $40,000 on a car that will save you $30,000 in fuel cost? That’s a loss of $10,000. And that’s assuming you never have to replace the batteries and that electricity is free. Electric cars don’t reduce pollution, they just export it. You still have to burn coal, oil or natural gas to produce the electricity. Electric cars cost more to buy, are smaller, less comfortable, less powerful, have a very limited range, and it’s hard to find a place to recharge them if you are away from home. So you end up paying more for less and you don’t even reduce pollution. Why bother.

      Bio fuels are the best of a bad lot. They are less efficient than gas or diesel powered cars but the fuel is slightly cheaper so it’s a push on fuel cost. Slightly cheaper fuel but slightly less MPG. If you already own a diesel powered car it’s not horribly expensive to convert to bio diesel. If you own a gas powered car it cost nothing to convert to ethanol. Again you get cheaper fuel but lower MPG so you save no money. It turns out that ethanol produces as much and maybe even more pollutants than gas so you don’t reduce pollution. Ethanol is available almost everywhere and bio diesel is available in most large cities so availability is almost as good as gasoline and diesel fuel.

      Bio fuels are ALMOST as cheap, ALMOST as efficient and ALMOST as available as gas and diesel so they are ALMOST as good. Gasoline is the best. Everything else is ALMOST as good or worse.

    • Steam_Kid says:
      May 21, 2011 at 11:53 pm

      this question can not be answered by only 1 choice.

      if you live in an area where wind is not strong enough obviously wind is not an option, now, if the area, has strong enough wind to sustain a small wind turbine farm then, its given that at that specific area wind owns the market. same thing for biofuels, or any other prospect fuel.

      so it all depends of the specific place where a specific fuel becomes best option. its all in the Cost Vs Benefit. Will electricity be the best fuel if there are no big water bodies around to either build a hydroelectric station or that there is not enough water to cool down a nuclear reactor operating station?

      the best prospect fuel is that which cost less to produce at a specific area.

      Hydrogen is at the bottom since there is no cost effective way to store,transport and even produce.

      This whole "ONE" best fuel mentality needs to change(no punn intended). its obvious enough that "one" fuel is not the answer. but the best one for a specific market of any will do.

      just when the government thought Ethanol was the ONE to help, it was proven that many many other things needed to be contemplated. before jumping in the whole this is the "one" mentality. corn derived food went high in price even when food grade corn was not even touched to make ethanol. all because of misinformation and lack of leadership.

      btw. I would not use corn to make Ethanol . switchgrass is far more superior to make Ethanol than corn. imol

    • Mr.357 says:
      May 21, 2011 at 11:53 pm

      Hydrogen is not an energy source, it is only an intermediate holder of energy. There is no naturally occurring elemental hydrogen on Earth. There is not enough known usable lithium deposits on Earth to make enough batteries for all of the cars in the US, let alone the world. Biofuels use land that would be used to produce food for people, so it causes more rain forests to be burned down to make way for more crop production. Currently none of the known alternatives to petroleum are viable.

    • jp10 says:
      May 21, 2011 at 11:53 pm

      i think biofuels BECAUSE, if you learn to make them yourself, then you can become semi-self reliant. making biodiesel and ethanol both are relatively easy, especially with all the HOW-TO and DIY examples everywhere on the internet. with a little bit of common sense and following what others have done, you can make them yourself and fairly cheaply. and have to modify little to nothing on the vehicle that you already own.

    • Breath on the Wind says:
      May 21, 2011 at 11:53 pm

      To someone in the employ of a petrochemical company this question must be like asking to cut off the right hand. For that person what is "best" is to follow their lively hood. For someone who has solar PV panels on their roof or a free charging station available electric may be the "best" because it is cheap or free. For a refinery worker hydrogen might be "best" because this is where they make and use most industrial hydrogen.1 A farmer or restaurant owner might think that bio fuels are "best" because they have the raw materials readily available.

      Others may think the fuel that pollutes the least would be "best:" electricity. The fuel that can be used in an existing internal combustion engine might be "best:" bio fuels. Or maybe the best fuel would be hydrogen simply because they have a system that produces the hydrogen as a means to store energy.2

      By not stating any particular criteria all answers might be equally acceptable… well most answers anyway…

    • Who now? says:
      May 21, 2011 at 11:53 pm

      Hydrogen in theory. I think as of now bio diesel is the best due to a diesel engines high mileage per gallon and because oil can be gathered in much larger quantities from algae as opposed to using food crops.

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