Alternative fuel
[3] These fuels are intended to substitute for more carbon intensive energy sources like gasoline and diesel in transportation and can help to contribute to decarbonization and reductions in pollution.
Using the current yields, vast amounts of arable land and fresh water would be needed to produce enough oil to completely replace fossil fuel usage.
As an energy source, biomass can either be used directly via combustion to produce heat, or indirectly after converting it to various forms of biofuel.
[citation needed] Algae-based biofuels have been promoted in the media as a potential panacea to crude oil-based transportation problems.
[11] Biodiesel is made from animal fats or vegetable oils, renewable resources that come from plants such as atrophy, soybean, sunflowers, corn, olive, peanut, palm, coconut, safflower, canola, sesame, cottonseed, etc.
Once these fats or oils are filtered from their hydrocarbons and then combined with alcohol like methanol, diesel is produced from this chemical reaction.
Butane has another advantage: it is the only alcohol-based motor fuel that can be transported readily by existing petroleum-product pipeline networks, instead of only by tanker trucks and railroad cars.
[21] Carbon-neutral fuel is synthetic fuel—such as methane, gasoline, diesel fuel or jet fuel—produced from renewable or nuclear energy used to hydrogenate waste carbon dioxide recycled from power plant flue exhaust gas or derived from carbolic acid in seawater.
[22][23][24][25] Such fuels are potentially carbon neutral because they do not result in a net increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases.
[28][29][30] Such carbon neutral and negative fuels can be produced by the electrolysis of water to make hydrogen used in the Sabatier reaction to produce methane which may then be stored to be burned later in power plants as synthetic natural gas, transported by pipeline, truck, or tanker ship, or be used in gas to liquids processes such as the Fischer–Tropsch process to make traditional transportation or heating fuels.
[34][35][36] Audi has constructed a carbon neutral liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Werlte, Germany.
[37] The plant is intended to produce transportation fuel to offset LNG used in their A3 Sportback g-tron automobiles, and can keep 2,800 metric tons of CO2 out of the environment per year at its initial capacity.
[38] Other commercial developments are taking place in Columbia, South Carolina,[39] Camarillo, California,[40] and Darlington, England.
[41] The least expensive source of carbon for recycling into fuel is flue-gas emissions from fossil-fuel combustion, where it can be extracted for about US $7.50 per ton.
[24][27][32] Automobile exhaust gas capture has also been proposed to be economical but would require extensive design changes or retrofitting.
[46] The U.S. Navy estimates that shipboard production of jet fuel from nuclear power would cost about $6 per gallon.
While that was about twice the petroleum fuel cost in 2010, it is expected to be much less than the market price in less than five years if recent trends continue.
Moreover, since the delivery of fuel to a carrier battle group costs about $8 per gallon, shipboard production is already much less expensive.
The cleaner combustion also has fewer particulate emissions, lower NOx due to the complete combustion of the gas within the cylinder, higher exhaust temperatures increasing the efficiency of the catalyst and deposits less acid and carbon inside the engine which extends the useful life of the lubricating oil.
Currently, the only controlled method uses nuclear fission in a fissile fuel (with a small fraction of the power coming from subsequent radioactive decay).
It is being backed by many scientists and researchers, and Professor James Hansen, the former Director at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies has reportedly said, "After studying climate change for over four decades, it's clear to me that the world is heading for a climate catastrophe unless we develop adequate energy sources to replace fossil fuels.
Safer, cleaner and cheaper nuclear power can replace coal and is desperately needed as an essential part of the solution".
[69] Thorium is 3–4 times more abundant within nature than uranium, and its ore, monazite, is commonly found in sands along bodies of water.
[70][71] Monazite is present in countries such as Australia, the United States and India, in quantities large enough to power the earth for thousands of years.
[72] As an alternative to uranium-fuelled nuclear reactors, thorium has been proven to add to proliferation, produces radioactive waste for deep geological repositories like technetium-99 (half-life over 200,000 years),[73] and has a longer fuel cycle.
