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A kilogram of petrol, diesel, kerosene and the like in a vehicle leads to approximately 3.15 kg of [[CO2|CO<sub>2</sub>]] emissions.&nbsp;&nbsp;Additional measures to reduce overall emission includes improvements to the efficiency of [[air conditioner]]s, lights and tires.
A kilogram of petrol, diesel, kerosene and the like in a vehicle leads to approximately 3.15 kg of [[CO2|CO<sub>2</sub>]] emissions.&nbsp;&nbsp;Additional measures to reduce overall emission includes improvements to the efficiency of [[air conditioner]]s, lights and tires.


There is also a growing movement of drivers who practice ways to increase their MPG and save fuel through driving techniques. They are often referred to as [[hypermiler|hypermilers]]. Hypermilers have broken records of fuel efficiency, averaging 109 miles per gallon driving a [[Prius]]. In non-hybrid vehicles these techniques are also beneficial. Hypermiler Wanye Gerdes can get 59 MPG in a [[Honda Accord]] and 30 MPG in an [[Acura MDX]].<ref name="This Guy Can Get 59 MPG in a Plain Old Accord. Beat That, Punk.">{{cite news|last=Gaffney|first=Dennis|title=This Guy Can Get 59 MPG in a Plain Old Accord. Beat That, Punk.|publisher=Mother Jones|date=[[2007-01-01]]|url=http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/01/king_of_the_hypermilers.html|accessdate=2007-04-20}}</ref>
There is also a growing movement of drivers who practice ways to increase their MPG and save fuel through driving techniques. They are often referred to as [[hypermiler|hypermilers]]. Hypermilers have broken records of fuel efficiency, averaging 109 miles per gallon driving a [[Prius]]. In non-hybrid vehicles these techniques are also beneficial. Hypermiler Wayne Gerdes can get 59 MPG in a [[Honda Accord]] and 30 MPG in an [[Acura MDX]].<ref name="This Guy Can Get 59 MPG in a Plain Old Accord. Beat That, Punk.">{{cite news|last=Gaffney|first=Dennis|title=This Guy Can Get 59 MPG in a Plain Old Accord. Beat That, Punk.|publisher=Mother Jones|date=[[2007-01-01]]|url=http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/01/king_of_the_hypermilers.html|accessdate=2007-04-20}}</ref>


[[Hybrid vehicle]]s can spare petroleum fuel and so, be more efficient than nowadays conventional vehicles.
[[Hybrid vehicle]]s can spare petroleum fuel and so, be more efficient than nowadays conventional vehicles.

Revision as of 15:08, 11 June 2007

Fuel efficiency sometimes means the same as thermal efficiency, that is, the efficiency of converting energy contained in a carrier fuel to kinetic energy or work.

Fuel efficiency can also mean the output one gets for a unit amount of fuel input such as "miles per gallon" or "liters per 100 kilometres" (l/100 km) for an automobile (sometimes called fuel economy). Here, vehicle-miles is the output, but for transportation, output can also be measured in terms of passenger-miles or ton-miles (of freight). While the thermal efficiency of petroleum engines has improved in recent decades, this does not necessarily translate into fuel economy of cars, as people in developed countries tend to buy bigger and heavier cars. Nowadays, a hybrid vehicle is more fuel efficient: that is, consumes less fuel (and produces less carbon dioxide grams) than a conventional vehicle with the same engine.

Non-transportation applications, such as industry, benefit from increased fuel efficiency, especially fossil fuel power plants or industries dealing with combustion, such as ammonia production during the Haber process.

When comparing fuel consumption, it should be borne in mind that the use of different kinds of fuels has different consequences in terms of air pollution, greenhouse gas emission, and depletion of resources. When considering electric power produced from nuclear power, there are nuclear wastes produced as well. One cannot automatically say that a form of transportation having a lower fuel consumption than another is necessarily "better".

Energy-efficiency terminology

"Energy efficiency" is similar to fuel efficiency but the input is usually in units of energy such as British thermal units (BTU), megajoules (MJ), gigajoules (GJ), kilocalories (kcal), or kilowatt-hours (kW·h). The inverse of "energy efficiency" is "energy intensity", or the amount of input energy required for a unit of output such as MJ/passenger-km (of passenger transport), BTU/ton-mile (of freight transport, for long/short/metric tons), GJ/t (for steel production), BTU/(kW·h) (for electricity generation), or litres/100 km (of vehicle travel). This last term "litres per 100 km" is also a measure of "fuel economy" where the input is measured by the amount of fuel and the output is measured by the distance travelled. For example: Fuel economy in automobiles.

Given a heat value of a fuel, it would be trivial to convert from fuel units (such as liters of gasoline) to energy units (such as MJ) and conversely. But there are two problems with comparisons made using energy units:

  • There are two different heat values for any hydrogen-containing fuel which can differ by several percent (see below). Which one do we use for converting fuel to energy?
  • When comparing transportation energy costs, it must be remembered that a kilowatt hour of electric energy may require an amount of fuel with heating value of 2 or 3 kilowatt hours to produce it.

Energy content of fuel

The specific energy content of a fuel is the heat energy that is obtained by burning a specific quantity of it (like a gallon, litre, kilogram, etc.). It is sometimes called the "heat of combustion". There exists two different values of specific heat energy for the same batch of fuel. One is the high (or gross) heat of combustion and the other is the low (or net) heat of combustion. The high value is obtained when, after the combustion, the water in the "exhaust" is in liquid form. For the low value, the "exhaust" has all the water in vapor form (steam). Since water vapor gives up heat energy when it changes from vapor to liquid, the high value is larger since it includes the latent heat of vaporization of water. The difference between the high and low values is significant, about 8 or 9%. This accounts for most of the apparent discrepancy in the heat value of gasoline. In the U.S. (and the table below) the high heat values have traditionally been used, but in many other countries, the low heat values are commonly used. (This table originally contained MJ/L values that were too low compared to the BTU/gal figures, with a reference to an Automotive Handbook.[1] These have now been replaced with values from the Transportation Energy Data Book[2], but which does not give the MJ/kg or the densities.)


Fuel type      MJ/L      MJ/kg     BTU/Imp gal     BTU/US gal     Research octane
number (RON)
Regular Gasoline 34.8 ~47 150,100 125,000 Min 91
Premium Gasoline Min 95
Autogas (LPG) (60% Propane + 40% Butane)
Ethanol 23.5 31.1[3] 101,600 84,600 129
Methanol 17.9 19.9 77,600 64,600 123
Gasohol (10% ethanol + 90% gasoline) 33.7 145,200 120,900 93/94
Diesel 38.60 166,600 138,700 N/A (see cetane)
Biodiesel 35.10 39.89 151,600 126,200
Vegetable oil (using 9.00 kcal/g) 34.32 37.66 147,894 123,143
Aviation gasoline 33.5 46.8 144,400 120,200
Jet fuel, naphtha 35.5 46.6 153,100 127,500
Jet fuel, kerosene 37.60 162,100 135,000
Liquefied natural gas 25.3 ~55 109,000 90,800

Neither the gross heat of combustion nor the net heat of combustion gives the theoretical amount of mechanical energy (work) that can be obtained from the reaction. (This is given by the change in Gibbs free energy, and is around 45.7 MJ/kg for gasoline.) The actual amount of mechanical work obtained from fuel (the inverse of the specific fuel consumption) depends on the engine. A figure of 17.6 MJ/kg is possible with a gasoline engine, and 19.1 MJ/kg for a diesel engine. See specific fuel consumption for more information.

Fuel economy

Main article: Fuel economy in automobiles

Fuel economy is usually expressed in one of two ways:

  • The amount of fuel used per unit distance; for example, litres per 100 kilometres (L/100 km). In this case, the lower the value, the more economic a vehicle is (the less fuel it needs to travel a certain distance);
  • The distance travelled per unit volume of fuel used; for example, kilometres per litre (km/L) or miles per gallon (mpg). In this case, the higher the value, the more economic a vehicle is (the more distance it can travel with a certain volume of fuel).

Converting from mpg or to L/100 km (or vice versa) involves the use of the reciprocal function, which is not distributive. Therefore, the average of two fuel economy numbers gives different values if those units are used. If two people calculate the fuel economy average of two groups of cars with different units, the group with better fuel economy may be one or the other.

The formula for converting between miles per US gallon (3.785 L) and L/100 km is , where is value of miles per gallon or L/100km. For miles per Imperial gallon (4.546 L) the formula is .

In Europe, the two standard measuring cycles for "L/100 km" value are motorway travel at 90 km/h and rush hour city traffic. A reasonably modern European supermini may manage motorway travel at 5 L/100 km (47 mpg US) or 6.5 L/100 km in city traffic (36 mpg US), with carbon dioxide emissions of around 140 g/km.

An average North American mid-size car travels 27 mpg (US) (9 L/100 km) highway, 21 mpg (US) (11 L/100 km) city; a full-size SUV usually travels 13 mpg (US) (18 L/100 km) city and 16 mpg (US) (15 L/100 km) highway. Pickup trucks vary considerably; whereas a 4 cylinder-engined light pickup can achieve 28 mpg (8 L/100 km), a V8 full-size pickup with extended cabin only travels 13 mpg (US) (18 L/100 km) city and 15 mpg (US) (15 L/100 km) highway.

An interesting example of fuel economy is the popular microcar Smart Fortwo cdi, which can achieve up to 3.4 L/100 km (69.2 mpg US) using a turbocharged three-cylinder 41 hp (30 kW) Diesel engine. The Fortwo is produced by DaimlerChrysler and is currently only sold by one company in the United States (see external link ZAP). The current record in fuel economy of production cars is held by Volkswagen, with a special production model of the Volkswagen Lupo (the Lupo 3L) that can consume as little as 3 litres per 100 kilometres (78 miles per US gallon or 94 miles per Imperial gallon). The last Lupo was built in July 2005.

Diesel engines often achieve greater fuel efficiency than petrol (gasoline) engines. Diesel engines have energy efficiency of 45% and petrol engines of 30% [4]. That is one of the reasons why diesels have better fuel efficiency that equivalent petrol cars. A common margin is 40% more miles per gallon for an efficient turbodiesel. For example, the current model Skoda Octavia, using Volkswagen engines, has a combined European fuel efficiency of 38.2 mpg for the 102 bhp petrol engine and 53.3 mpg for the 105 bhp — and heavier — diesel engine. The higher compression ratio is helpful in raising efficiency, but diesel fuel also contains approximately 10-20% more energy per unit volume than gasoline.[5]

Fuel efficiency in microgravity

The energy produced from fuels occurs during combustion. However, how well the fuel burns will affect how much energy is produced. Recent research by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has gained possible insights to increasing fuel efficiency if fuel consumption takes place in microgravity.

The common distribution of a flame under normal gravity conditions depends on convection, because soot tends to rise to the top of a flame, such as in a candle, making the flame yellow. In microgravity or zero gravity, such as an environment in outer space, convection no longer occurs, and the flame becomes spherical, with a tendency to become more blue and more efficient. There are several possible explanations for this difference, of which the most likely one given is that the cause is the hypothesis that the temperature is evenly distributed enough that soot is not formed and complete combustion occurs. [6] Experiments by NASA in microgravity reveal that diffusion flames in microgravity allow more soot to be completely oxidised after they are produced than diffusion flames on Earth, because of a series of mechanisms that behaved differently in microgravity when compared to normal gravity conditions. [7] Premixed flames in microgravity burn at a much slower rate and more efficiently than even a candle on Earth, and last much longer. [8]

Transportation

Fuel efficiency in transportation

Main article: Fuel efficiency in transportation

Vehicle efficiency and transportation pollution

Main article: Gas-guzzler

It is important to realise that fuel efficiency does not directly relate to emissions causing pollution and potentially leading to climate change.  Rather, it depends on the fuel source used to drive the vehicle concerned.  Cars can, for example, run on a number of fuel types other than gasoline, such as natural gas LPG or biofuel or electricity which creates various quantities of atmospheric pollution.

A kilogram of petrol, diesel, kerosene and the like in a vehicle leads to approximately 3.15 kg of CO2 emissions.  Additional measures to reduce overall emission includes improvements to the efficiency of air conditioners, lights and tires.

There is also a growing movement of drivers who practice ways to increase their MPG and save fuel through driving techniques. They are often referred to as hypermilers. Hypermilers have broken records of fuel efficiency, averaging 109 miles per gallon driving a Prius. In non-hybrid vehicles these techniques are also beneficial. Hypermiler Wayne Gerdes can get 59 MPG in a Honda Accord and 30 MPG in an Acura MDX.[9]

Hybrid vehicles can spare petroleum fuel and so, be more efficient than nowadays conventional vehicles.

In the future hydrogen cars may be commercially available. Powered by chemical reactions in a fuel cell, that creates electricity to drive very efficient electrical motors; these vehicles promise to have zero pollution from the tailpipe.  Potentially the atmospheric pollution could be near zero, provided the hydrogen is made by sustainable methods using solar, wind power or low CO2 energy sources such as nuclear power plants or hydro electric dams.

Currently railways can be powered using electricity, delivered to trains through an additional running rail or overhead catenary system.  The atmospheric pollution, like electric cars, is no longer "at site", rather at a distant power station.  Some railways, such as SNCF and Swiss federal railways, derive most, if not 100% of their current from hydroelectric or nuclear power stations, therefore atmospheric pollution from their rail networks is very low (although the atmospheric effect of hydroelectric plants is controversial).[10]  This was reflected in a study by AEA Technology between a Eurostar train and airline journeys between London and Paris, which showed the trains on average emitting 10 times less CO2, per passenger, than planes, helped in part by French Nuclear generation.[11]

Controversially, it is thought by scientists that where emissions take place in the Earth's atmosphere has an overall effect on climate change.  Atmospheric changes from aircraft result from three types of processes: direct emission of radiatively active substances (e.g., CO2 or water vapor); emission of chemical species that produce or destroy radiatively active substances (e.g., NOx, which modifies O3 concentration); and emission of substances that trigger the generation of aerosol particles or lead to changes in natural clouds (e.g., contrails).  What this means is that the total warming effect of aircraft emissions is 2.7 times as great as the effect of the carbon dioxide alone.[12]:

See also

References

  1. ^ Automotive Handbook, 4th Edition, Robert Bosch GmbH, 1996. ISBN 0-8376-0333-1
  2. ^ Appendix B, Transportation Energy Data Book from the Center for Transportation Analysis of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
  3. ^ Calculated from heats of formation. Does not correspond exactly to the figure for MJ/L divided by density.
  4. ^ http://www.volvo.com/group/global/en-gb/Volvo+Group/ourvalues/environmentalcare/products/dieselengines.htm
  5. ^ http://www.fusel.com/diesel_engines.html
  6. ^ CFM-1 experiment results, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, April 2005.
  7. ^ LSP-1 experiment results, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, April 2005.
  8. ^ SOFBAL-2 experiment results, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, April 2005.
  9. ^ Gaffney, Dennis (2007-01-01). "This Guy Can Get 59 MPG in a Plain Old Accord. Beat That, Punk". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2007-04-20. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ SBB Environmental Report 2002/2003
  11. ^ European Federation for Transport and Environment
  12. ^ Aviation and the Global Atmosphere, IPCC
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