Questions About Alternative Fuels?

Fritz Hawkey: Hi Ellie,There are lots of alternative fuels available in the UK including ethanol, autogas, bioethanol, biodiesel, battery and electric power, hydrogen cells, compressed air, methane, propane (variants of, such as propanol, butane etc) and rape seed oil. The drawback with all of these is one of availability. Autogas is probably the most common alternative to petrol or diesel but not that many petrol stations sell it, I don’t know quite how many but I’d guess it’s about one in four garages. It’s not so bad in populated areas but no good in remote locations (according to the FloGas website there’s 65 stockists in London but only 3 in the whole of the Highlands http://www.flogas.co.uk/79/autogas-lpg-map-uk )Electric power is gaining in popularity but the drawback is again one of availability, and also that recharging takes several hours. Some large employers such as hospitals and councils have recharging points - which is great as it means you ca! n recharge your car whilst at work. There are recharging kits so you can power your car up from any domestic socket. Hydrogen fuel cells would seem to be a practical solution. You simply top them up with liquid hydrogen in a similar way to topping up with petrol. The problem is, that according to Wikipedia, there’s only one place in the UK where you can get hydrogen fuel and that’s Birmingham University. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_station#Hydr... BBC News video: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7351915.stm The hydrogen is basically fuel that is used to generate electricity, the vehicles themselves are electric vehicles but without the need for lengthy recharging. The only emissions given off from hydrogen powered cars is water. The developers of the technology are hopeful that in the future hydrogen will be much more widely available. Another plus point is that the vehicles are just like any other standard production model, here for examp! le is a photo of the Honda Clarity:http://en.wikipedia.org/wik! i/File:FCX_Clarity.jpg Cost wise, typically autogas, biofuels and oils are about half the price of regular petrol (£0.70 per litre as opposed to £1.40). There’s no price for hydrogen fuel as the only supplier in the UK uses it to power their own fleet of vehicles. The vehicles themselves are very expensive, standard Japanese models such as Nissan and Honda would be around the £60,000 mark, largely because they’re manufactured in small numbers. With 400 enquiries being received for every one model produced, the manufacturers are looking at making them in much larger numbers; this will reduce the price considerably.There’s also experimental fuels and ones being developed such as photovoltaic and carbon nanotubes, these may become more popular in the future but aren’t available yet. In addition there are a number of experimental and one-off vehicles that can be powered from a variety of products including chip fat, animal dung and discarded food....Show more