Mechanical Engineering Open Access Journals

The energy revolution advocates for gradual transition from fossil fuels to alternative or renewable forms of energy. The increased technological activities across the globe, the global nature of economy and increasing world population require proactive measures to meet the future world energy requirements. There is a wide spread concern for air quality and health issues associated with environmental pollution from automobiles. Every car on the road today outputs oxides of nitrogen- NOx, carbon monoxide-CO, hydrocarbon-HC, particulate matter-Pm, oxides of sulfur-SOx and greenhouse gases-GHG into the atmosphere. Hydrocarbon and NOx in the presence of sunlight cause photochemical smog. While SOx and NOx in the presence of moisture form acids. All these environmental pollutants impact health, vegetation, acidicity of our surroundings and are a grave concern to the society. Two–thirds of our daily oil consumption in the U.S., is in the transportation sector. While we value our inalienable freedom to movement without the Congress telling us our rights, the subtle issue is that the oil pool is dwindling as the Rest of the World (ROW) is reaching out for the same barrel of oil. This seamless demand makes the crude oil price to go up. The solution is to find alternatives to replace the current fossil-fuel based source of energy. United States uses 20, 680,000 barrels/day of crude oil which translates into $1, 78 billion per day at $86.4/barrel [1]. While U.S. produces 10.7% of the world oil and occupies 4% of the world population it uses 25.9% of the world oil. The solution to this lies in finding a domestic product that is renewable, sustainable and less polluting. That means an energy economy that supports alternative fuels and renewable energy for the 21st century economy. We will review the current alternative fuel options and their potentials.[Ubong EU (2012) Alternative Fuels and Renewable Energy Strategies in the Energy Revolution. Adv Automob Eng 2:e113]

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Last date updated on April, 2024