If you are looking for an alternative to gasoline look no further than ethanol fuel which can be pure ethanol or be combined with gasoline in concentrations that vary according to desired levels. With anhydrous ethanol or ethanol not containing water you may find that it being blended along with gasoline in different levels of concentration ensures that consumption of petroleum gets reduced and it will also lessen pollution in the air.
The advantage of using ethanol fuel lies in it being a particulate-free burning fuel source which forms carbon dioxide and water through clean combustion and it produces less carbon monoxide than gasoline. However, some of the benefits of clean environment using ethanol fuel are negated when one considers the pollution that producing ethanol creates and many environmentalists have objected to modern farming practices, especially factory farming. This would lead to substituting automobile pollution with
Flexible-Fuel Vehicles That May Be Run On both Gasoline and Ethanol Fuel
US vehicles have different levels of ethanol fuel tolerance and vary from individual vehicle to vehicle, while in Brazil there are many flexible-fuel vehicles that can run on hydrated ethanol and also by using a combination of ethanol fuel as well as gasoline so long as there is at least twenty percent ethanol contained in the mixture. There are also some flexible-fuel cars that can also run on pure gasoline and Renault and Fiat also produce such types of cars.
To mass produce ethanol fuel, one would need to ferment sugar or hydrate ethylene from petroleum as well as some additional sources. At present, ethanol fuel is produced from crops and is a sustainable energy resource having many advantages pertaining to cleaner environment as well as long term economic benefits over fossil fuels such as gasoline or diesel. Extraction is from sugar or starch using many different crops and is mainly dependent on how much land is available as well as soil conditions and availability of adequate water and sunlight.
The prime use for ethanol fuel is in powering cars though it can also be used to drive a tractor and even airplanes and one can get ethanol engines that are customized gasoline engines which do not need many adjustments to function consistently. Though ethanol fuel consumption is a third higher than that of gasoline one may, through higher compression rates, get better power output. In the case of flexible-fuel cars, the power output is the same whether it is gasoline or hydrated ethanol driven.