Alternative fuel sources

The car industry started in the United States with only 8,000 registered cars and trucks in 1900, but there were over 215 million by 2000. This growth started with the efforts of hundreds of companies, but it became almost the exclusive domain of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler in the U.S. and a few other companies in Europe and the rest of the world. In Detroit, almost 140 auto companies were formed from 1900 to 1903, but about half of these would fail by 1904. 

In 1921, the DELCO lab, which was now part of GM, found that tetraethyl lead was an excellent antiknock compound. By 1923, leaded gas was being pumped at Dayton, Ohio. In the following year, GM, DuPont 

Hydrogen Fuel Cells Advances in Transportation and Power 

Chemical and Standard Oil of New Jersey combined their patents and produced leaded gasoline under the Ethyl brand name. 

A few months before Ethyl went on sale, the U.S. Public Health Service stated tetraethyl lead was poisonous and had the potential to produce lead oxide which could affect public health in heavily traveled areas. In 1923, General Motors, financed a study by the U.S. Bureau of Mines on the safety of tetraethyl lead. The bureau issued a report downplaying leaded gasoline s potential adverse impact on public health. 

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A cogeneration system may use different fuels including natural gas, residual fuel oil, heating oil, diesel fuel and gasoline. Alternate fuel sources also include coal liquids or wood gas. 

Compressed hydrogen from farmed wood (and other biomasses, such as residual wood) can, in combination with fuel-cell cars, achieve fuel costs that are close to today s costs of untaxed conventional gasoline and diesel, and simultaneously lower overall GHG emissions significantly. If the potential were not limited, farmed wood could be an optimal alternative fuel source. 

Another indirect way that polymers can assist fuel economy is by allowing alternative fuel uses. Plastics can create free space needed to store bulky batteries encouraging their use as alternative fuel sources. 

Methanol has many of the same advantages and disadvantages as ethanol as an alternative fuel source. Listed in TABLE 12-10 is a comparison of methanol and ethanol as alternative fuels. 

Modifications to engine design and fuel system hardware will be needed to effectively evaluate and utilize DME as an alternative fuel source. 

The reason that solid state batteries are potentially useful is that they can perform over a wide temperature range, they have a long shelf life, and it is possible to manufacture them so that they are extremely small. Lightweight rechargeable batteries can be now be made to give sufficient power to maintain mobile phones for several days and laptop computers for several hours. They are used for backup power supplies and may eventually become useful as alternative fuel sources to power cars. 

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