Liquid fuel
Some common properties of liquid fuels are that they are easy to transport, and can be handled with relative ease.
Scientists generally accept that petroleum formed from the fossilized remains of dead plants and animals by exposure to heat and pressure in the Earth's crust.
However, many aromatic compounds (carbon chains forming rings) such as benzene are found naturally in gasoline and cause the health risks associated with prolonged exposure to the fuel.
The octane number is an empirical measure of the resistance of gasoline to combusting prematurely, known as knocking.
Because of the environmental impact of lead additives, the octane rating is increased today by refining out the impurities that cause knocking.
Some countries (particularly Canada, India and Italy) also have lower tax rates on diesel fuels.
Historically, in Europe lower sulfur levels than in the United States were legally required.
A diesel engine is a type of internal combustion engine which ignites fuel by injecting it into a combustion chamber previously compressed with air (which in turn raises the temperature) as opposed to using an outside ignition source, such as a spark plug.
Kerosene is sometimes used as an additive in diesel fuel to prevent gelling or waxing in cold temperatures.
LP gas is a mixture of propane and butane, both of which are easily compressible gases under standard atmospheric conditions.
Petroleum fuels, when burnt, release carbon dioxide that is necessary for plant growth, but which (given the large scale of global emissions) is potentially harmful to world climate.
The amount of carbon dioxide released when one liter of fuel is combusted can be estimated:[1] As a good approximation the chemical formula of e.g. diesel is CnH2n.
Putting everything together the mass of carbon dioxide that is produced by burning 1 liter of diesel can be calculated as:
The number of 2.63 kg of carbon dioxide from 1 liter of Diesel is close to the values found in the literature.
Synthetic fuels from coal were strategically important during World War II for the German military.
Though it has a much lower flash point than fuels such as gasoline, it is in many ways safer due to its higher autoignition temperature and its low density, which causes it to dissipate when released in air.
For instance, biodiesel has a higher cetane rating (45-60 compared to 45-50 for crude-oil-derived diesel) and it acts as a cleaning agent to get rid of dirt and deposits.
This does, however, depend on locality, economic situation, government stance on biodiesel and a host of other factors- and it has been proven to be viable at much lower costs in some countries.
Analogous to the use of higher compression ratios used for engines burning higher octane alcohols and petrol in spark-ignition engines, taking advantage of biodiesel's high cetane rating can potentially overcome the energy deficit compared to ordinary Number 2 diesel.
Methanol is the lightest and simplest alcohol, produced from the natural gas component methane.
It is typically a product of the fermentation of biomass by the bacterium Clostridium acetobutylicum (also known as the Weizmann organism).
This process was first delineated by Chaim Weizmann in 1916 for the production of acetone from starch for making cordite, a smokeless gunpowder.
On June 20, 2006, DuPont and BP announced that they were converting an existing ethanol plant to produce 9 million gallons (34 000 cubic meters) of butanol per year from sugar beets.
DuPont stated a goal of being competitive with oil at $30–$40 per barrel ($0.19-$0.25 per liter) without subsidies, so the price gap with ethanol is narrowing.
[4] It has a volumetric energy density of 17 Megajoules per liter (compared to 10 for hydrogen, 18 for methanol, 21 for dimethyl ether and 34 for gasoline).
