The global oil and gas
industry has always been
affected by a potentially
explosive mix of technology and
politics. Fossil fuel reserves have
been the privilege enjoyed by a
few countries in the Middle East,
South America and Central Asia.
A number of crises have taken
place in the past over oil
production with the oil cartel
resorting to cuts in production
to increase the price of oil in
the market.
We have also realised over the
years that these oil reserves are in
a constant state of depletion and
going by current projections, these
reserves may last just for another
50 years.
Another key factor has been
that these fossil fuels, upon
combustion, produce greenhouse
gas emissions that have clearly
damaged the protective layer
around the earth's atmosphere -
the ozone layer.
This has led to a global change
in the overall climate, due to the
melting of polar icecaps and
increased risks of being exposed to
the powerful ultraviolet (UV) rays
of the sun.
The signing of the Kyoto
Protocol in 1997 and it's coming
into effect in February 2005 was
one of the major steps taken by
governments around the world
(excluding US) to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions and to
look for alternative fuels.
The 1970s saw a major thrust
to the biofuels market by Brazil's
imports and recent European
Commission (EC) directives to
make alternative fuels 22 per cent
of the energy supply in Europe by
2020 have only propelled the
development of technologies for
the production and distribution of
fuels such as hydrogen, natural gas,
and methanol.
Alternate fuels have captured
the interest of the scientific
community for a number of years
now. The first car to run on ethanol
was the Ford Model T designed by
Henry Ford in 1916. Ever since then
driven by depleting fossil fuel
reserves, major oil crises and
alarming pollution levels, there has
been a search for alternatives to
gasoline and other fossil fuels to
power automobile and power
generation applications.
The two main fuels that will
be discussed in further sections of
this write-up with respect to
their feasibility as alternatives
to gasoline are hydrogen
and biofuels.
Feasibility of the 'hydrogen
economy'
Hydrogen has been proposed by
scientists all over the world as the
fuel that facilitates an alternate
and greener economy.
Hydrogen has an excellent
energy density by weight. Since
hydrogen is an energy transfer
medium, not an energy source, it
requires other fuels or energy
sources to produce and each of
these has energy conversion
efficiencies, which may pose
limitations on their use in
hydrogen manufacture versus
more direct use. A hydrogen
economy is proposed to be the
....CONTD
