by Joseph Love

Created on: November 21, 2007

Another day, another news station reporting on fossil fuels. Gas prices are on the rise, global warming is record breaking, and the oil companies are fighting to kill the electric car. Ethanol, Fuel Cells, Clean Coal.. what does it all mean? What can these alternative fuels do to solve the world's problems?

In this article, we'll take a look at fossil fuels and compare them to some of the alternative fuels in development today. We'll address the problems and difficulties, as well as the advantages of each.

So what is a fossil fuel anyway? Fossil fuels are formed when millions of dead plants and animals break down over millions of years. In certain circumstances, natural gas, oil, shale, and coal are left behind. Natural Gas is relatively clean, but the rest of the fossil fuels are full of impurities. Coal and Natural Gas can be burned once mined, but the other materials require refining before being used as a fuel. Crude oil is sent to refineries to be converted into gasoline, diesel, plastics, and even Paraffin wax. The refined products such as Gasoline burn cleaner than before, but still contain impurities and burn worse than some of the alternatives. Natural Gas burns much cleaner than gasoline and emits less harmful gasses into the atmosphere. Coal is a notoriously dirty fuel, and much research has gone in to coal alternatives. Global warming aside, all fossil fuels are unsustainable because these materials are formed over millions of years. With all of this in mind, we now know that we must find an alternative fuel at some point in the future.

Electricity is a cheap, clean and renewable fuel that is being researched. Electric engines can outperform combustion engines in nearly every way you can measure. In a lot of cases, the electricity can be created by solar cells converting sunlight into electricity, or by wind generators. The technology is very close to being within reach. The biggest technological problem holding back the electric car is batteries. Currently, electric cars cannot travel the long distances that cars can between fill ups. Additionally, electric cars take much more time to fill up the tank. Additionally, batteries themselves contain chemicals that are harmful to the environment. One attempt to solve this problem is the Hydrogen Fuel Cell. The Hydrogen fuel cell is simply an electrical generator that runs on a fuel such as pure hydrogen, propane or natural gas. The fuel cells don't actually burn the fuels, but instead, convert the fuels

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