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Fuel Gas Car

The night before is forgotten as exhaustion had already come and the rush home included forgetting to fill up the gas tank in the car. Another morning has come through in sunshine as children are rushed to the car early in the morning. The first pit stop that has to be made is the gas station. With today being payday there is only 60 dollars at hand to last throughout the day so the first 20 dollars goes into the gas tank. In the highway rush to drop off the children, the gas tank is nearly on empty already. Another pit stop to the gas station leaves only 20 dollars to pocket and just enough gas to make it to work and a short lunch break drive down the street to satisfy a work's day hunger. When the day is almost over, the children are now being picked up from school and brought home, once again leaving the car almost on empty. On the way to the store, another pit stop is taken to fill up the gas tank with the left over money from the grocer store. Each drive is hot and sticky. Air feels like choking heat and smog. Sharp smells of gasoline and engine outputs fill the nostrils. The car to the left has a horrible smell coming from it that is undeterminable but gagging. There has to be a better alternative to paying high gas prices and living in a toxic carbon bubble created over so many years from using fossil fuel. Researchers have found alternative fuels, but cannot support a way of making distribution reasonable after storing disadvantages along with manufacturing mass quantities of vehicles to change overnightcombined with the fact there are so many people still using gasoline operated vehicles. Just what are some of the nation's options?

Not everyone spends the day stopping back at the gas station several times of the day. For some, Stopping at the gas station mean pulling out the credit card or waiting until payday to fill the gas tank up ahead of time. Filling up the gas tank can mean paying anywhere from 50 dollars up to almost 200 dollars each time the gas station is visited depending on what type of vehicle is being used and how much it is being driven. This large amount of money being spent on gasoline adds up throughout the month. Putting gas in the car can mean filling up the tank four or five times a month. This could mean spending up to 800 or 1000 a month just to live life on the go. Gasoline costs add up with bills to exceed a monthly rent bill in some cases.

Gasoline and diesel gas have become a mandatory in the United States and hopefully not a crutch. There is so much gasoline and diesel fuel being used in the United States that our country is economically dependent on these fuels making it difficult to switch to an alternative. Gasoline is used for many different types of transportation and various reasons. Every retail grocery store that receives products has the products transported by trucks that use gasoline. The size of the truck depends whether or not the gasoline is diesel or unleaded. Everyday use vehicles such as luxury cars, economy cars, jeeps, and sport utility vehicles, just to name a few, use unleaded gasoline to power these vehicles. Not to mention, the bigger the vehicle the more gas it will take to operate the vehicle. The more the vehicle pulls in weight combines with the weight of the vehicle to use more gasoline. Almost every American owns at least one vehicle that runs off of gasoline that lets off carbon toxins. With the number of vehicles on the road now, switching to another fuel type could cut smog down drastically improving the earth's atmosphere and preserving way for life. Natural disasters could be reduced.

(U.S. Census Bureau, 2003)

Most mass transit passenger vehicles also use gasoline to power these vehicles. Even most lawn mowers run off of gasoline. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the department spends 500 billion dollars every year on making sure that Americans can conduct their business with the economic demands. (U.S. Department of Energy, 2008).

Gasoline and diesel tear away at the ozone layer profusely. It is now widely accepted that the increased combustion of fossil fuels since the industrialization of the Western world has led to unprecedented changes in the chemical composition of Earth's atmosphere, with multiple consequences for regional air quality and the global climate system.(Schultz M.,Diehl T., Braseur G., Zittel W.2003)Vehicles that use gasoline let off carbon toxins that eat away at the environment's ozone layer. Over time the damage becomes worse. The supply of the oil being used to create gasoline will not last forever. No one knows exactly how long fossil fuels will last. Exceptional precautions to protect the planets plates from shifting when the oil is being pumped out of the earth are taken every time fossil fuel is being produced from under the ground. When the oil is being taken out of the ground it has to be replaced with another liquid so the plate will not collapse. A collapsed plate in the earth could cause mass tremors and earthquakes destroying buildings that have stood for years.

The United States Department of Energy focuses on finding economically safe fuels that protect our environment. There are emergency stocks of fuel for future use. This is the government's way of making sure that if the fossil fuels can no longer be produced from underground; there will be fuel to use in the meantime until a resolution can be made. At the rate gasoline is used, this reserve could be used very quickly leaving no other alternatives at hand. The Department of Energy also focuses on finding ways to keep our environment clean from energy wastes, the most important and most damaging of them being nuclear wastes.

Researchers are trying to find an economically safe alternative for diesel fuel and fossil fuel to protect the environment of the planet earth. Corn crops have become the most successful and reasonable crop considered as an alternative for the fuels to make ethanol. Ethanol is a fuel created that creates a much smaller production of carbon, which tears at environment that protects the atmosphere. The problem with ethanol is finding ways to store the new energy crops of corn. If ethanol is to be produced at an economic level of fuel, farmers would have an astronomical number of crops to produce in order to meet supply and demand.

Therefore, there are some researchers experimenting with switchblade crops as an alternative. (Popp, 2007). Ethanol is more economically friendly than most types of fuel that have been tested and is a type of fuel that does not burn off harsh carbon toxins to eat at the ozone layer. This type of fuel can also be derived from different crops such as soybeans and wheat, but mainly corn has been the most successful for development. Heat and electrical currents would be in less demand when ethanol is produced.

Switching over to ethanol may be more costly than at first perceived. Each American owning a vehicle would have to switch to new manufactured cars that can use ethanol fuel instead of unleaded or diesel gasoline. Finding ways to store the ethanol would be difficult since this particular form of fuel can only be stored for so long before it would have to be replaced. Finding an ethanol fuel station would be a hassle at the moment.

There are not enough ethanol stations without having to drive long distances to get there. A person would have to live nearby a station until enough cars had been switch over to create more fuel stations that vend ethanol at their gasoline pumps. If a person is thinking about buying an ethanol fuel vehicle, it is highly advised that some research about availability of ethanol fuel should be committed to beforehand making a decision. Some websites provide information on how far away ethanol stations are from anyone's current location. Running out of fuel in a car that only takes ethanol could mean paying extra costs for a tow truck to relocate the car to a fuel station.

Fuel cells are already in use by California for two buses in route for a solution to large mass transit solutions. There are also places around the world such as England that also use fuels cells in mass bus transportation. The fuel cell leaves no carbon toxins and runs similarly as a battery operated toy cars do. Fuel cells also run about 12 hours between refueling, so fleets refuel two times a day instead of three.(Brown, 2007, para.19.) These cells have also been used in forklifts inside of warehouses and factories.

Even though using fuel cells sound like an excellent idea, there are still drawbacks to promoting and making a good use of this alternative to gasoline. Since batteries can not just be thrown away, they would need to be disposed of properly which means paying high prices for disposal fees. Fuel cells can also be bulky and heavy making them difficult to change in and out of vehicles. Depending upon the size of the vehicle also depends on how many fuel cells will be needed to run the vehicle efficiently. Fuel cells only stay charged for so many hours before dying. Using fuel cells for common vehicles would mean paying high prices for new vehicles that are compatible. The fuel cell pack is placed under the trunk conveniently.

There are so many different routes that alternative fuels can take, it could be a very long time before any route of change is conceivable. There are ups and downs to all sources of fuel. No government grant, no donation, and no act of community service or volunteer work can change our gas problems overnight without damaging the economy after becoming so dependent on the fuel that is currently used. A change as absolute as switching fuels would mean every vehicle owner would have to change vehicles. Changing to new vehicles could be even a costly expense to have each car turned into a hybrid to recycle the vehicles now used. Every gas station would have to change products to the new fuel. Fuel plants would have to be rebuilt. Even worse, how can the world dispose of so many fossil fuel using gasoline vehicles? How much sacrifice is willing to be taken to make this world a healthier, breathe easy world before this world is damaged beyond repair? There are several feasible and wonderful solutions to alternative fuel researcher have found. Deciding on which route is the most sound is something that should not be decided overnight. A solution will be reached one day and only when it is time and absolute.

Brown, A. (2007).Fuel cells down the road. Mechanical Engineering, 129(10), 36-39.

Retrieved July 11, 2008 from Proquest Central database.

Popp, M. (2007). Assessment of alternative fuel production from switch grass: an

example from Arkansas. Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics. 39(2),

373-380. Retrieved July 11, 2008 from Proquest Central database.

Schultz M.,Diehl T., Braseur G., Zittel W.(2003). Air pollution and climate-forcing

impacts of a global hydrogen economy.Science ,302(5645),624-7. Retrieved

August 7, 2008, from Proquestdatabase.

Unknown (July 27, 2008) Retrieved from http://www.fuelcellpartnership.org/fuel -

vehl_buses.html

Unknown (July 27, 2008) Retrieved from

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/photos /uncategorized/biobutanol_research

U.S Census Bureau. (2003) American community services. Retrieved August 7, 2008

from http://www.census.gov/.

U.S. Department of Energy. (2008) Energy sources. Retrieved July 11, 2008 from

http://www.energy.gov/energysources /index.htm.

Axia College Material

Appendix G

Peer Review Checklist*

*Adapted from Reinking, J. A., Hart, A. W., & Von der Osten, R. (2003). Strategies for successful writing: A rhetoric, research guide, reader, and handbook (6th ed.). Boston: Prentice-Hall/Pearson Custom Publishing.

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