Automotive power

1. Background of automotive power and its development: The report discusses the development of Automotive Power with special reference to the chemical energy of fuels and renewable resources. The chemical energy stored in the fuel is used to produce the power of an automobile. When the fuel is burnt a chemical reaction occurs wherein its chemical energy is converted to heat energy. The chemical reaction is typically a hydrocarbon reacting with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, water and heat. The energy released in this chemical reaction is called the heat of combustion of the fuel. The heat of combustion is expressed in energy per unit mass of the fuel. Thus greater the heating value of the fuel greater will be its work doing capacity for the same mass of the fuel. Thus for example, the consumption of ethanol in an engine is greater than the consumption of gasoline for the same application. [1] There are many factors involved in the selection of the fuel for any application. For the application of automobiles the handling and storage of the fuel must be easy. Hydrogen has the highest value of heat of combustion, but it is also highly explosive and is a gas. It is due to this reason that gasoline and diesel are the most widely used fuels for automobiles. Renewable resources are those which practically do not get depleted. As fossil fuel reserves diminish, efforts have been made to power the automobile using renewable resources. Several tax incentives are given to people by the government to promote the use of renewable fuels for automobiles. The renewable resources being used today for every day applications are solar, wind, hydel, geothermal etc., but using these resources directly to power a vehicle is a challenging task. The energy from these resources could be stored electrically in a battery. Thus
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one method of powering an automobile, using renewable resources, would be by using an electric motor as the prime mover. Fuels such as ethanol, bio diesel or hydrogen can also be considered as a renewable resource. These fuels can be produced artificially and thus are practically unlimited. Ethanol can be produced from corn and other crops. Bio diesel is derived from vegetable oil and animal fat. Many of these resources also produce lesser pollutants than their fossil fuel counter parts. For example, a vehicle, using a fuel cell powered by hydrogen, produces no harmful air pollutants. 2. Past and Current issues in Development of the Chemical energy of fuels and

Renewable resources.
The current section undertakes the review of the issues that lead to the hindrance in the development of the automotive power train technologies based upon fossil fuels and the renewable energy resources in the past and the present. Chemical Energy or the fossil fuels The first car was an invention of a French military engineer Nicolas Cugnot in 1769, which was a steam powered car which could reach a walking speed. Its limitation in its performance due to large weight and bulk, longer starting time and inability to climb uphill it did not have much popularity. In 1858, Lenoir invented the coal-gas engine triggered by spark ignition and fitted it to three-wheeled wagon. Later, after the invention of the internal combustion engine based on the Otto cycle by Nicolas Otto in 1876 early vehicles based on it but were slow and could reach the maximum speed of 3-4 mph. Also they required cranking to start

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the engine. The period between 1880 -1900 witnessed a revolution in IC engine cars and enjoyed lot of popularity and continued developing until today.[2][3]

Fig.1 First Steam Car[2]

The developments were mainly focused on increasing the power output of engine in the 20th century which is called the muscle car era. But due to depleting oil reserves and their environmental impact, the gas guzzling cars started losing popularity. Also since late 20th century the legislation has implemented stringent laws on vehicular emissions and it has become the chief focus ever since. The most recent trend in the cars is to reduce the carbon foot print by aggressive downsizing of the power train. Nevertheless the limitations on the fuel economy that can be achieved by cars running on the fossil fuels have led to a technological race in hybrid electric vehicles and other renewable energy resources based vehicles.[4][3]

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Automotive power

Renewable Resources The electric cars have been around since 1873 and the biggest problem they faced since the earliest year was low range per charge. Also the mass produced low cost gasoline cars nearly knocked out the electric cars from competition in year 1912.Even after the resurgence in the interest in electric cars in since 1960 they faced problem of achieving satisfactory performance at reasonable price. The hydrogen fuel cell technology based vehicles face the problem of the high bulk and weight of the tank and detonating tendency of hydrogen raises serious safety concerns. The solar powered cars face a limitation in terms of their speed, power and cost in contrast to other types.[5] Also they are not efficient under low light conditions .The ethanol based vehicles suffer from the drawback of high cost of ethanol since the transportation of ethanol is not possible via existing network of gasoline pipelines. Also even though it burns cleaner it still produces carbon dioxide emissions.[6] Wind powered carriages were noted in the era of Leonardo da vinci but were not used much since they needed the strong gusts of wind for propulsion. Recently wind energy has been used as supplementary power to generate electricity in electric vehicle XC-75 by Jaguar using micro gas turbines. Yet this technology faces the challenge of high cost.[7]

Fig.2 Jaguar XC-75 with micro turbines[7]

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3. Future Trends: The trends which can be adopted for the development of the technologies, in order to provide better and efficient form of automotive power in the future is a very diverse question. The different types of automotive fuels which have been discussed so far in the report can be either used with some improvements or be replaced by a new technology in the future. Hence in lieu of the report, it can be mentioned that in order to be more efficient in the future, the fuels should produce less emission and be more resourceful. In order to achieve this, not only the development of fuel is required, the development of some of the parts of an automobile are also required, like - optimized combustion engines, drive trains for alternate fuels etc.

Fig.3 Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle [8] The different fuels which could be used are advanced bio fuels, fuel cells (hydrogen/methanol/natural gas) and electric batteries. Progress has been already made in the development of these technologies [9] Hybrid cars, which can be either full/mild/plug-in.

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The capacity of the electric batteries has been increased substantially by the use of Lithium-Ion batteries. Thus, taking these technologies a step ahead and developing improved fuels to power the

automobiles which are more efficient, emission-free etc.

Fig.4 Hybrid Powertrains [10]

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References
[1]. http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/ethanol/e85.html [2]. http://www.yourdiscovery.com/cars/timeline/ [3]. http://www.car-history.org/ [4].Dr Jun Peng Principle of Automotive Design Lecture notes University of Sussex. [5].Dr Shaun Lee Lecture notes University of Brighton. [6].http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/01/10/what-are-the-problems-with-using-corn-ethanolfor-fuel/ [ACCESSED 24/02/12]

[7]. http://www.jaguar.com/gb/en/about_jaguar/project-c-x75/ [8]. http://www.horizonfuelcell.com/automotive.htm [9]. http://www.acea.be/images/uploads/files/20100211_Speech_Dieter_Zetsche.pdf [10].http://www.toyota.co.uk/cgi-bin/toyota/bv/frame_start.jsp?id=CC-Priuslanding&gclid=CPr73LSJm64CFcYNfAod7BR-JA

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