The American customers have shown lower appetite for gasoline products since the increase in price to around $4 per gallon. The harmful effects of the greenhouse gases being released through exhaust pipes and the resulting smog covering wide population areas inspired the public to research new ways to manage the environment. The smog is a haze or fog that, together with smoke and other atmospheric pollutants, makes it difficult to breathe and leads to various health issues. The greenhouse gasses also contribute to the greenhouse effect by absorbing infrared radiation through carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons, which in turn, trap the infrared radiation of the sun. This heats up the planet because the infrared radiation cannot escape into the space after bouncing off the earth’s atmosphere. The majority of the greenhouse gases are produced by the vehicles’ exhaust. Thus, cars with gasoline engines have become a major contributor to the global warming crisis and the issue cannot be addressed without addressing the gasoline cars. The global convention of the world leaders agreed to lower their countries’ emissions by a particular date. When the leaders met again, some of the countries had achieved lower emissions while the others failed to do so. While the later countries escaped fines, the leaders agreed to impose fines on those countries who have failed to meet their quota by the next convention.
Most countries raised the fuel efficiency requirement such as more miles per gallon as well as stricter emissions test. They also introduced other laws such as requiring tax drivers to drive more fuel efficient vehicles in heavily populated areas. Some countries started investigating alternative energy technologies such as biodiesel, compressed natural gas, electric vehicles, ethanol, flex fuel, hydrogen, fuel cell, liquefied natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, and propane. But the easy gas supply and the wide gasoline network meant most consumers stayed loyal to the gasoline. Thus, some national governments increased the price of gasoline and lowered the prices of other energy products such as the biodiesel, natural gas, and ethanol. The countries also introduced the clean air act which required the gasoline engines to produce lower emissions as a result of combustion of the gasoline engines. The car manufacturers added catalytic converters, oxygen sensors, and other devices to limit the amount of environmental pollution.
Tesla is a new idea for electric cars. They are mostly used to transport people from one location to another. Since the company didn’t have a network to support the long distance travel, some people wanted used the car for few purposes only. Telsa had plans to create stations where the electrical battery could be swapped but this idea would have required a large stockpile of batteries. The company later settled on charging stations which could charge the car’s battery in under 30 minutes. Other countries decided to improve the existing engine designs by making them more efficient and less polluting such as Eco boost, hybrids, and flex fuel. These ideas have worked since they are simple in design and the consumer can still use gasoline which means such cars are good for both short distance and long distance travel.
We, as a society, seek instance gratification and more bang for the buck or efforts. The consumers’ needs drive innovations that shape the world around us. The other countries have beaten the United States in the miles per gallon race with vehicles that average 30 Mpg to 50 Mpg in many Europe and Asian countries. Since Americans use the most gasoline and have the most vehicles on the road as compared to other countries, Americans also have the highest demand for gasoline. In order to find ways to obtain more gasoline, the gasoline industry improved the process of refining crude oil into 5 different products such as gasoline 6-10 carbons, kerosene 12-15 carbons, diesel 15-18 carbons, lubricating oils 18-20 carbons, and semi solid 20+ carbons. This process took over 100 years to refine the original byproduct which used to involve heating crude oil to create gasoline and kerosene.
In older times, the gasoline would be discarded into the local river. Later, Henry Ford developed Model T that used gasoline and the growing demand for gasoline created the need to extract more gasoline by introducing lead into the process which gave higher octane level and boosted the reliability of the combustion process. In later years, the gasoline manufacturers discovered the lead deposits on the streets which made them change the process again. They added hydrocarbons to the mixture. Not long after they developed a process called thermal cracking by converting the higher carbon chains into 6-10 carbon chains that yields gasoline. Since thermal cracking requires higher heat and atmospheric pressures, the manufacturers put the process into a vacuum to reduce the cost of heating between 400*F and 700*F. This helped keep the gasoline prices low. The gasoline has come a long way since its discovery in Pennsylvania as well as Deep Ocean drilling.
- California Energy Commission. Alternative Fuel Vehicles. 21 September 2016
- Deaton, Jamie Page. Top 10 Alternative Fuels on the Road Right Now. 21 September 2016
- University of Delaware Sea Grant Program. What is crude oil, and what is it used for? 2004. 21 September 2016
