– What is our paper about?
This paper is to contrast the pro’s and con’s of including alternative fuel vehicles into a fleet of rental vehicles.
What are alternative fuels?
Alternative fuels are different fuels compared to what we use today as our most common types of fuels. The most common fuels of today are diesel and gasoline. In the past decade, there has been a climbing trend of electric vehicles and research on other types of combustible fuels. All of which, together, are in the minority of fuel consuming vehicles. (As a quick guess, I feel ALL alternative fuel vehicles are 1 to 2% of ALL fuel consuming vehicles. Not man powered like a bicycle. We need to back this up and I will try to find something.)
I cannot find anything to back this up. These alternative fuels include electricity, ethanol, methanol, natural gas (methane), Liquefied Petroleum Gas, hydrogen, propane and reformulated and oxygenated gasoline.
Pro’s & Cons for fuels
Pro’s we are looking for cleaner exhaust or less by-products being emitted from all of the alternative fuels above compared to our immediate types. Our market will depend on ease of obtaining the fuel and distance the consumer will travel.
“GM’s all-electric two-seat Impact could debut by 1993. The concept electric car uses 32 auto batteries that require eight to 10 hours to recharge and has an estimated driving range of 130 miles between recharges. The fastest electric car now reaches 65 miles per hour, and batteries need replacement every 25,000 miles. On the positive side, operation is very quiet and emissions are near zero.” (Moskal, 1991) “In 1995, the Impact (now called the EV1) hit the streets – the first modern EV built from the ground up.” (SCE, 1990)
The Term Paper on Alternative Vehicle Fuel Sources
Alternative Vehicle Fuel Sources For last years there is a tendency to increasing the number of vehicles in the United States. According to National Household Travel Survey this number tripled from 1969 to 2001. The same tendency is noticed in other progressive countries. Almost all of them use hydrocarbon fuels. But the sources of hydrocarbon fuels will come to end; and, most of all, carbon ...
Con’s toward alternative fuels, our infrastructure of fuel stations is not equipped to immediately handle other fuels thus causing more cost to the fuel itself.
Fueling stations for the alt fuels
– Cost
– Size
– Availability
– Volatility
Which alt fuel would we recommend?
(From all I have been reading, Natural Gas or LPG/Propane would be the way to go. Less to change, not too expensive, about the same volatility as Gasoline.)
Fuel cells promise to be the next generation in fuel technology, offering better and more environmentally friendly designs. The best way to describe a fuel cell is as a battery; both create energy via silent electrochemical reactions. A fuel cell doesn’t need recharging and can run indefinitely as long as it gets more fuel. Fuel cell technology has be available, international tourism would most likely also be positively effected by a cleaner US environment. As with any large developments or changes in the way the world does business the move to a new technology is never a fast or smooth one and fuel cell technology is no exception. Although fuel cell research has been going on for many years only recently have revolutionary developments occurred which made the likelihood of a fuel cell powered world a possibility.
Closing / Summary
After analyzing many sources of the types of alternative fuels, we can conclude that each type of fuel has a different market. Most of these fuel types are expensive at this time except for propane and Liquefied Petroleum Gas. These vehicles only amount to approximately 2.5 to 3 million vehicles back around year 1990. (This statement needs to be revised for accuracy and updated but will show the direction I would like to take.) Now we have (gotten better or worse) with natural gas and propane vehicles.
The Term Paper on Fuel Cell Technology Power Cells Energy
Fuel cell technology 1 Running head: FUEL CELL TECHNOLOGY: TRANSPORTATION AND RESIDENTIAL/ COMMERICAL APPLICATIONS Fuel Cell Technology: Transportation and residential / commercial applications Monique University 2 A fuel cell is an electrochemical energy conversion device. A fuel cell converts the chemicals hydrogen and oxygen into water, and in the process it produces electricity. With a fuel ...
References
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency office of Mobil Sources. (1994, August).
Clean Fuels: An Overview. Retrieved May 15, 2005 from http://www.epa.gov/otaq/consumer/06-clean.pdf
N.A. (2005).
Auto News: High Fuel Prices Starting to Hurt [Electronic Version]. Motor Trend, 112, 28. Retrieved May 15, 2005 from http://motortrend.com/features/news/112_news28/
LPG Review. National Alternative Fuels Training Consortium.
Moskal, B.S. (1991, July).
Auto Technologies Seek Out Economy [Electronic Version]. Industry Week. 240(13), 56-61
Southern California Edison, 1990: GM Impact and Beyond retrieved May 16, 2005 from http://www.sce.com/PowerandEnvironment/ElectricTransportation/ElectricTransportationStory/1990GMImpactandBeyond.htm
Online Fuel Cell Information resource: retrieved May 17, 2005 from http://www.fuelcells.org/
