What is the best alternative fuel? CNG, hydrogen, ethanol?

Question

CNG, hydrogen, ethanol, or none of the above?

I'm also taking a pole on my blog http://econfuels.blogspot.com/

Answer 1

To me, it's Homemade Biodiesel, currently.

I made 2 important keywords here: HOMEMADE and CURRENTLY.

Currently, many of the alternatives are either too new to be proven, or to expensive to produce.

Biodiesel is proven to work and it is cheap.

Know this for sure, that commercial Biodiesel is not cheap and too much use of commercial Biodiesel will give rise to increasing food price.

However, if you use WASTE vegetable oil and convert it into Biodiesel at the comfort of your home, that is a totally different story.

With homemade biodiesel, you get to:

1) Reuse and recycle waste oil

2) Convert waste oil into Biodiesel for use in your vehicle

3) Depend lesser on commercial sources

4) Save the environment and food prices

And I say CURRENTLY, because I believe that this is the best alternative RIGHT NOW, based on the above benefits.

Around the world now, people are producing prototypes of cars that runs on water, runs on air, runs on solar, etc. And they DO WORK. But it will take them many more years before it is affordable for us.

But at the meantime, making biodiesel at home for use is the best alternative.

Answer 2

CNG would be cleaner than gasoline but it's still a finite resource and could cause a shortage of the natural gas that people use to heat their homes, hot water heaters and ovens. I also worry about the explosion factor. I had a friend who burned to death when his gas tank exploded in a crash so I'm a bit skittish about that.

Hydrogen is promising but the infrastructure would have to be put in place. It would have to either be pipped in, trucked in or each "gas station" would have to build their own hydrogen plant.

Ethanol would be good except it would have to be made from something like switch grass. Making it from corn or other food crops  dips into the food supply. It also takes a lot of energy to produce.

My favorite is the plug-in rechargeable electric car. The technology IS already available for a reliable car that can go 100 miles on a charge and can safely travel at highway speeds and only takes about four hours to fully recharge. A 100 mile range is plenty for most drivers. The infrastructure is already in place and even if you get your home electricity from a dirty old coal plant, it still cuts way back on greenhouse gases.  

Answer 3

For short trips horse power! (with saddle and rider or with carriage or in teams with wagon.

Besides, it would give the sanitation people PERMANENT work.

Answer 4

None of the above! Chlorophyl synthetically produced and exposed to raw sunlight should be the optimal fuel choice! But getting it to release that stored energy is difficult!

Answer 5

i think ethanol for preformance and power but it takes up land so depends on the fuel ecconamy of the car

Answer 6

People power is tops

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aka bicycle powered transportation

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Well you as what is the best other fuel source and we do carry it all the time when we are walking around the house

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So why not put it to a little fat burning use also

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Peddle the pounds away along with save the earth

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Answer 7

I say none of the above.

I say methanol. It is easy to make and can be made from trash, weeds, and almost any organic waste.

Answer 8

Hydrogen.  It can be extracted from water or air and the by-product is water vapor after its use.  Problem in converting to hydrogen is sufficient quantities to have the infrastructure.  Also, having a system that can generate enough hydrogen on demand for a car is too big for the car and tanks present their own problems.  

Answer 9

I prefer cng, which is what my cars currently run on. It saves me gobs of money and it's clean for the environment at the same time. It's also domestically produced, so the money stays in our own economy. I'm biased, though, because I haven't tried the others...   :)  

Answer 10

I can make ethanol at home if I want, but I'd rather drink it.   I can make hydrogen with my little solar panel or box fan I turned into a windmill.  It uses much more electric energy than it makes in hydrogen, but I wouldn't be using that energy anyway.   My pond lets off natural gas from rotting vegitation on the bottom.   None of these will produce enough energy to do me any good, but all are viable alternatives except ethanol if you want to eat too.

Answer 11

Hard to say.

It's not CNG or ethanol though (nor is it people power or horse power both of which have been largely replaced and with good reason).

Hydrogen is a possibility and it's also possible that we'll end up with battery electric cars (hydrogen cars would probably also be electric), synthetic hydrocarbons are also another possibility (and would also have the advantage of being able to run in current cars, trucks and planes with no modification).