Alternatives To Internal-Combustion Engines Essay, Research Paper
In the past decade there has been a great deal of worrying about what will happen when the world?s oil supply becomes depleted. The main reason for concern is that almost all of the automobiles in use now require an oil based gasoline to run their internal-combustion engines. In the next few decades it is predicted that all of the world?s oil will have already been mined, and combustion engines will be unable to function. For this reason many companies such as Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Chrysler, Toyota, BMW, and others have started to create engines that do not require oil based gasoline. Such engines include the battery-powered engine and the hydrogen-powered engine. These engines require different fuels and all have their own good and bad qualities. This essay will describe these engines and how they work.
The battery-powered engine is run using solely battery power. The battery-powered engine, along with all the other engines mentioned in this essay pollute much less than the combustion engine. The battery-powered engine is more efficient than the combustion engine for a variety of reasons. One reason includes how the electric motor is directly connected to the wheels; this lets the vehicle consume no energy while the car is at rest or coasting. Another way the battery engine is more efficient than the combustion engine is the fact that the battery engine converts more than 90 percent of the storage cell energy into driving force, while the combustion engine converts only a mere 25 percent of the energy in a liter of gasoline into driving force.
The battery-powered engine also has its drawbacks. What is keeping this engine from being mass-produced is the lowness of energy storage that it has. Today?s technology only allows battery-powered vehicles to drive around 120 miles until its needs to be recharged. This number will obviously increase as new technology is invented. Along with the small distance the battery engine can operate, its takes several hours to recharge. The battery-powered engine cannot operate under the same rechargeable battery its entire life; the battery must eventually be replaced. The battery is expensive, but does not need changing very often. The price of gasoline it requires to run a combustion car for as long as it takes a battery-powered car to run-down a battery, is about equal to the price of a battery.
Primarily hydrogen cells fuel the hydrogen-powered engine. The fuel cells inside the engine use the hydrogen to generate electricity to power the vehicle. The engine uses the hydrogen to power the car in a very unique way. The hydrogen, along with oxygen is brought into opposite sides of the fuel cell. A plastic membrane separates the two. A metallic coating on the plastic membrane acts as a catalyst to separate the hydrogen electron from its proton. The free hydrogen electron follows the electrical circuit to the oxygen on the other side of the fuel cell. On its way around the circuit, it powers an electric motor that powers the car. The remaining charged hydrogen proton is pulled through tiny pores in the plastic membrane to join with the oppositely charged oxygen which together form water vapor. Water vapor is the only exhaust the hydrogen engine emits.
One drawback of this engine is the extremely volatile fuel, hydrogen gas. Another drawback is the lack of hydrogen fuel pumps, there simply aren?t any. One radical solution proposed to this problem would be to have hydrogen piped to homes like natural gas and used to provide home electricity and heat along with providing the fuel for the car.
The battery-powered engine and the hydrogen-powered engine both require alternate sources of energy rather than the gasoline we use today. But what if you wanted to take a cross-country trip and you had a battery-powered engine? Or what would you do if you owned a hydrogen-powered engine and there wasn?t a hydrogen fuel station near your house? Both are bad situations to be in. An engine, which runs on the gasoline that we use today, and gets three, four, or even five times as many miles to the gallon as most people?s car gets right now, is the hybrid-electric engine. The hybrid-electric engine is the link between the time when battery-powered cars can drive all day and require only an hour to charge, or when hydrogen fuel stations are as common as gasoline fuel stations.
The hybrid-electric engine combines the internal combustion engine of a regular car with the battery and electric motor of an electric car. The engine is set up like the battery-powered engine, but the battery is charged using an onboard generator, which is powered by the combustion engine. This makes the fuel usage of today?s cars cut in half. Along with lowering the amount of fuel needed, it also dramatically lowers the amount of pollution that the exhaust emits.
The only drawback to this engine is does not contain the power required to run a large truck. This engine can only be placed in mini-vans, cars, and small load bearing trucks. Large trucks and diesels would still have the same engines that use the same amount of gasoline required now.
With these three engines the amount of gasoline that is used will dramatically decrease. The problem now is distributing these engines all around the world, and convincing people to purchase cars that have these smaller engines, instead of cars that use gasoline very quickly. Given that cars with small motors that get good gas mileage aren?t as popular as vehicles with large motors that use gas quickly, it will take a very long time for people to adapt to buying future gasoline saving vehicles.