What alternative fuel do you believe will replace petrol as the most common fuel at the pumps in the future?

Question

What alternative fuel do you believe will replace petrol as the most common fuel at the pumps in the future?

Answer 1

i did hear on the tv, a couple of weeks ago, about cars using water to run on. That would be a good idea, but I suppose the government will put it on the back burner as no money will be made out of it.

Answer 2

the flux capacitor

Answer 3

E85 as a biofuel.

Answer 4

Soilant Green

Answer 5

electricity

Answer 6

Hydrogen...

Answer 7

Methane syphoned off from politicians B**LS**T!

Answer 8

Public transport.

Private transport will become too expensive when oil hits $500 a barrel.

Answer 9

Hydrogen, the world is 70% water so we cna extract it and its an inffinate amount. The only reason we dont have hydrogen cars in the market is becasue of the oil companies and there deal with care makers.

Answer 10

Hydrogen.

Answer 11

In the future cars will not need tyres as they will just hover

they will be wedge shaped and will be silver metallic in colour.

You will just pop a "power pellet" into the fuel tank and it will last for approx 1000 miles (1600 kms)

A "power pellet" will cost you approx £8

The contents of a "power pellet" are top secret!!!!

You will just key into the on-board computer where you are going and the car will automatically drive you to your destination and will interact with ALL of the other cars/buses/lorries on the road so they will NEVER collided,therefore road crashes will be a thing of the past.

This will be coming to the UK in around about 2015.

Answer 12

It depends on the time scale.  Electric cars and electric - gas hybrids are already here.  The next step for hybrid cars will be models which will run the first 40 or so, miles all on electric before they begin using their other fuel.  This will greatly reduce their use of petroleum.   However, you mentioned "pumps", so here is what the pumps of the future will hold:

In the near term in looks like ethanol biofuel will be the most common alternative fuel.  It is already in major use in Brazil.  In countries like the USA many auto manufacturers have designed their cars to use 85% ethanol.  Within a year people will be able to have mini refineries in their yard to produce ethanol fuel at less than 50 cents per gallon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/techno...

After this the next step will be greener... it will be diesel fuel made from algae.  It is called oilgae.  Algae will be used to every scale from mini backyard refiners to huge fields in the desert.  It will not use up farmland.  It will only use sunlight and carbon dioxide and the product will be oils.  It will produce oils at tens times the efficiency of ethanol production.  And it consumes CO2 which will reduce global warming.  Currently oilgae has a ten year horizon.  In fact, Boeing has recently announced that in ten years it will be flying its jets on biofuel (oilgae).

After the oilgae period we will move into the hydrogen economy.  This will be enhanced through the development of artificial photosynthesis.  This will allow cars to run on water or even water vapor in the air.  In photosynthesis water is split into hydrogen and oxygen.  The hydrogen will be collected and used for fuel while the byproducts will be oxygen.

Answer 13

yeah .. i go with hydrogen

Answer 14

Hydrogen is good though at the moment the technology is expensive for most people. It would have been great if we could have electric powered cars but some of the car manufacturers put a stop to that.

in the short future i think gas LPG

Answer 15

Here in Italy we use propane. You guys need to catch on.

My car (SEAT ALTEA) came with the system, and my husband had it put in his car (HONDA CR-V).

Less emissions, and we pay 1/4 of regular gasoline (which, BTW, costs $8.70 a gallon here)

Answer 16

Well.. i hope this news will help u..

Scientists at University of Massachusetts-Amherst in the US have announced the creation of petrol from plant matter, with almost no carbon footprint.

The “green petrol” – as the researchers describe it – is identical to standard petrol, yet created from sustainable biomass sources like switchgrass and poplar trees.

The man behind this breakthrough is George Huber, who worked with his graduate students Torren Carlson and Tushar Vispute.

Huber says that though it may take five to 10 years for the green petrol to arrive at the pump or find its way into a fighter jet, his team’s work has bypassed significant hurdles to bringing green petrol biofuels to market.

“It is likely that the future consumer will not even know that they are putting biofuels into their car,” Huber said. “Biofuels in the future will most likely be similar in chemical composition to petrol and diesel fuel used today.

The challenge for chemical engineers is to efficiently produce liquid fuels from biomass while fitting into the existing infrastructure today.”

For their new approach, the researchers rapidly heated cellulose in the presence of solid catalysts – materials that speed up reactions without sacrificing themselves in the process – and then rapidly cooled the products to create a liquid that contains many of the compounds found in petrol.

The entire process was completed in about two minutes using relatively moderate amounts of heat, said the researchers.

According to them, the compounds that formed in that single step, like naphthalene and toluene, make up one fourth of the suite of chemicals found in petrol.

The liquid can be further treated to form the remaining fuel components or can be used “as is” for a high-octane petrol blend, they add.

“Green petrol is an attractive alternative to bioethanol since it can be used in existing engines,” said John Regalbuto, director of the Catalysis and Biocatalysis Program at the National Science Foundation (NSF), which supported this research. “In theory it requires much less energy to make than ethanol, giving it a smaller carbon footprint and making it cheaper to produce.”

He added that Huber’s new method did not require any external energy.

“In fact, from the extra heat that will be released, you can generate electricity in addition to the biofuel. There will not be just a small carbon footprint for the process; by recovering heat and generating electricity, there won’t be any footprint,” he said.

Huber is now working with a host of leaders from academia, industry and government to make green petrol a practical solution for the impending fuel crisis.

“We are currently working on understanding the chemistry of this process and designing new catalysts and reactors for this single step technique. This fundamental chemical understanding will allow us to design more efficient processes that will accelerate the commercialisation of green petrol,” Huber said.

Answer 17

Electricity and some form of biofuel combo.

Answer 18

Hydrogen or some sort of vegetable oil extract

Answer 19

Hydrogen, I hope.

Answer 20

Gas.....

something bl**dy cheaper anyway !!!

Answer 21

The most viable will probably be liquid fuels derived from coal because there is enough coal in the ground to last several centuries and no major changes to the distribution infrastructure or automobile technology will be needed.

Answer 22

Liquid petroleum Gas or Hydrogen.

Biofuels are fine on paper, but will ultimately mean that we take over areas of third world land for fuel production whilst the locals starve cos they have no farmland left

I think we will see a severe drop in the use of cars, particularly large engined ones

Answer 23

Many propose hydrogen, but forget to mention this gas is highly explosive, and is NOT easily extractable from water at low cost - the process would require lots of energy, which burns fuel, which is the issue here.

Using gas is okay for now, very popular in England, half the price of petrol or diesel but the concerns are the same - it produces greenhouse gases and is a finite resource.

For me the way forward for cars in the future is the electric motor and batteries. Maybe the fuel stations will have a stock of batteries on charge, you drive around, discharge your battery and then pay to change it for a charged one. Some work will have to be done on electric motor performance and on battery capacity, but I think this sounds more likely than hydrogen from water, which would also be very dangerous.

Answer 24

Deisel will become as popular in N.America as it is in Europe....