Home > Article > What You Need to Know About Alternative Fuels

What You Need to Know About Alternative Fuels

Posted on: Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 at 7:47 pm by: Amy Cox
Comments Comments

Share this article!

All alternative fuels are not created the same. If you are interested in powering your vehicle with an alternative fuel, it is important to know the characteristics of each fuel. Some fuels are not worth going through a conversion, while others will greatly help your mileage, along with pollution.

Ethanol

Right now, ethanol is the most readily available alternative fuel. In fact, most of us use ethanol to some extent. Vehicles are approved to operate on up to 10% ethanol, so many gas stations use a blend that consists of mostly gasoline, with a small amount of ethanol.

There has been a push for E85. E85 consists of 85% ethanol, and 15% gasoline. Right now, there are conversion kits available for $400 that allows owners to convert their vehicles to run on E85.

However, there are a lot of drawbacks to using E85. First of all, it gets much lower mileage. Motorists who operate their vehicles on E85 can experience up to a 30% decline in fuel efficiency.

E85 is not the alternative fuel of choice if you want to save money on fuel. In the end, you will end up spending quite a bit more on fuel if you use E85, even though the energy source helps the environment.

Natural Gas

While natural gas is not as popular as E85, there are many reasons to choose this alternative fuel over ethanol. Like ethanol, natural gas can be produced domestically, which of course is a solution to many of the economic problems related to fuel.

Unfortunately, natural gas also gets fewer miles to the gallon than regular fuel. Like ethanol, natural gas is a solution to the pollution problem, but it is not a solution that will save drivers money. While drivers can convert their vehicles to run on natural gas, they should only do this if they are more concerned with pollution than saving cash at the pump.

Propane

Propane is very similar to ethanol and natural gas in the sense that it is a cleaner burning fossil fuel, is predominately produced domestically, and gets fewer miles to the gallon. Propane is not a viable alternative to the current fuel crisis, as it is also not as readily available as other options. In fact, there have not been any propane fueled vehicles produced since 2004. However, like its competition, vehicles can be converted to run on propane.

Hydrogen

If you are seriously considering operating your vehicle with an alternative fuel, hydrogen is the fuel that you need to look into. Out of all of the options, it makes the most sense. The benefits of hydrogen are far greater than the benefits for the other alternative fuels.

If a vehicle ran solely on hydrogen, it would not produce any emissions. Also, the fuel efficiency would be greater than that of a gasoline powered vehicle.

That is not to say that hydrogen does not come with drawbacks as well. Currently, there are not a lot of hydrogen fueling stations available, and flex fuel vehicles are incredibly expensive. Modern technology cannot store as much hydrogen as it can gasoline, so hydrogen powered vehicles will need refueling after shorter distances than their counterparts.

While a reformer can be used inside of the vehicle to convert hydrogen rich gases into hydrogen, it is the hopes of automakers to use pure hydrogen in order to run vehicles. If that is going to turn into a reality, storage options for hydrogen will have to be explored.

Right now, though, hydrogen is the only alternative fuel that will help both the environment and the wallets of consumers. Hydrogen has the strongest possibility to compete with plug-in vehicles. It is expected that both plug-in vehicles and hydrogen vehicles will run side in the near future.