How are these so called alternative fuels going to help right now?

Question

how many years will it take to develope a fuel i can run in my 2004 camry.

Answer 1

Look up the cost of a gallon  of gasoline and a gallon and a half of ethanol, then you tell me.

Answer 2

The high price of a barrel of oil is long overdue.  We do not "need" oil to live, we want oil and its luxury products.  How important is your camry or any car?  Better get a smaller house, smaller TV, take care of your clothes, learn to grow vegetables, walk to school, cancel the $100 yr gym membership and ride a bike.  Don't eat at Applebees and Olive Garden so much, eat simple foods (A PLATE OF RICE IS STILL 10 CENTS!)

Answer 3

If your camry runs on gas you really can't use alternative fuels in it except E10 (90% gas & 10% ethanol).  

The only good alternative fuel vehicles I have heard of are algae biofuel and this compressed air car I learned about today.  

Links for compressed air car

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmqpGZv0Y...

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Air_car_ru...

-With our current biodiesel feedstocks, like soy and palm, there’s no way we could grow enough to supply all of our transportation needs. In fact, it would actually require twice the land area of the US devoted to soybean production to meet current heating and transportation needs.

-Algae, on the other hand, could supply all U.S. diesel power using a mere 0.2% of the nation’s land.

-Enough algae can be grown to replace all transportation fuels in the U.S. on only 15,000 square miles or 4.5 million acres of land.

- Algae is the highest yielding feedstock for biodiesel, producing 24 times more oil per acre, on average, than the next leading feedstock--palm oil at 635 gallons/acre/year.

-One company can produce 180,000 gallons of biodiesel every year from just one acre of algae. That comes to about 4,000 barrels, at a cost of $25 per barrel or $.59 per gallon.

-To put that in perspective, it takes 3,750 acres of soy to make the same amount of biodiesel at a cost of about $2.50 per barrel for 4,000 barrels.

-It is possible to use human sewage and wastewater from agricultural endeavors to enhance the growth of algae. In fact, when done right, algae can double and even triple overnight with the addition of these fertilizers.

-Plus, as algae grows it absorbs C02 from the air.

-In addition, fertilizer for other food crops can be produced by using the leftover nutrients that aren’t used to make the biofuel.

http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles...

Answer 4

every little bit helps, when your car engine kills over swap to a different engine. cost will be the same by then.

Answer 5

E85 is already available, and it's continuously being made more available to more places.

You're car needs modifications to be able to run it though. Something Toyota isn't doing. Other companies however like GM have "flex-fuel" vehicles available, and also offer conversion kits.

Answer 6

Hay Bill,

It's already here!!!  How many alternative fuels do you want!  My own favorite is alcohol, and it is available now.  Both ethanol and methanol are extremely good fuels that produce very little pollution, and are easy to come by.  The Germans in WW II made methanol for their engines, and nearly cut down the Black Forrest doing it.  The old time moonshiners used ethanol in there cars because it was cheaper than gasoline!  When I was young, the racing jocks all used alcohol in their racing cars.  Your car will run on it without changing anything, but for a steady diet, you should change the jets in the carburetor to a larger size.  Also some rubber parts may go bad.  Alcohol tends to loosen up the c**p in the gas tank, so you need an extra set of fuel filters and know how to change them.  Learn how a moonshine still works, the process is much the same.  Beer, Wine and motor fuel are all the same basic process.

Answer 7

biofuels....still lots of pluses and minuses on this subject, partly due to not appreciating the full context on the related issues, whether technical, social, economics and envirnomental.

then there is the bio-materials for food or for energy issues?... with feedstocks costs in the current open market being higher than the final products its unlikely to make much headway for existing biofuels into the oil markets. Some, like corn in usa for ethanol, is most definitely driven by politics and farm lobbyists and not by economics or envirnomental concerns. And surely not by technical concerns. Tough as they may be, concurrent effort must continue to seek better ways and feedstocks. Here, perhaps the "whole bananas trees", after harveting the fruit, can be utilised as feedstock. these trees usally died and are cleared, and hence there is potential for use as feedstocks, without many of the conflicts currently associated with current feedstocks. Hope someone can explore this route.