Eco-Friendly and Economical Fuels Deserve Top Priority

 

The future we are heading for seems very close to things we currently see in science fiction movies. But there is all the likelihood that what seems fictional today will turn out to be the reality in upcoming days through unprecedented technological boom. Cozy underwater apartments, virtual offices with robots moving around to carry out orders—all these things are set to reshape our future life. However, it goes without saying all these things will require energy to be materialized. For this reason, major firms worldwide are investing billions of dollars for research and for innovating sustainable ways to take care of our needs in future as well as in present time.

Natural gas, coal and petroleum cover almost 80% of the world’s fuelling requisites. But the use of coal, natural gas and petroleum causes emission of carbon dioxide which leads to greenhouse effects with adversely affecting the natural environment around us. Under this circumstance, it would be certainly a great job to detain carbon dioxide before it is emitted into the atmosphere and thus to avoid pollutions.

Exxon Mobil, an American energy firm, is a pioneer on this field. This company has potential interest to implement the idea of capturing carbon dioxide and its storage in a greater portion of the world.

Exxon Mobil in affiliations with its associates have been capturing and insulating carbon dioxide at a gas field in Norway since 1996. It trapped over six million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2014 which equals to elimination of carbon gases emitted by one million cars in a year.

Capturing 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide has been targeted by Gorgon Gas Project of Australia as its future goal to reduce emission of toxic gases. This project also aims to use fuel cells to isolate carbon dioxide from the exhaust flow of power plants to facilitate the task of capturing gas and sending it underground through pipes.

This technology intends to curtail carbon dioxide emissions as well as costs to make it affordable to work for capturing and storing carbon dioxide across the globe.

Cogeneration stands for building technologies able to enhance the application of energy efficient processes in industries. To interpret further, cogeneration is combining heat and power (CHP) to capture a wider level of waste thermal energy generated during the production of electricity, during the process of refining chemicals or during the process of recycling.

Cogeneration makes simultaneous production of electricity and heat from one fuel source which ensures a high level of energy efficiency in industries.
Energy-related research is not confined within fuel sources only. Reducing the use of fuel is another important target and Exxon Mobil has come up with an exceptional way to address this point by introducing rubber tires.

Exxon Mobil wants to produce tires with better air-holding quality including higher resilience and making tires more durable which enables vehicles to spend less fuel. It means economical utility of fuel and reduced emission of carbon dioxide.

Another remarkable fact about Exxon Mobil is that it is a forerunner in tire technology. Scientists of Exxon Mobil manufactured synthetic rubber, also known as butyl rubber in 1937. It was a time while the procurement of natural rubber could not meet mounting demands for this component for industrial purposes.

Now Exxon Mobil focuses on manufacturing more durable tires which would save approximately one billion gallons of fuel and cuts down on carbon emission by eight million tons per year.

Looking ahead, Exxon Mobil is at present concentrating to upgrade the tires manufactured in Asia with special emphasis on Chinese market. The number of automobiles in China is likely to rise by 250% before 2040. So, that would be the right time for energy efficient innovations to address customers’ requirements.

Exxon Mobil is also running programs to develop bio-fuels on top of exploring just oil and gas. It’s likely to introduce the use of algae as fuel. Algae growth is found even in people’s fish tanks.

Another likely process is making biodiesel by recycling agricultural waste. Fuel coming from agricultural waste has the quality to curb carbon dioxide emissions by 86% which make it a much better option that petroleum products.

Scientists and researchers are working with absolute focus on producing economical and eco-friendly fuel to bring about a broadly energy efficient way to deal with the fuel requisites of days to come. We need to trim our consumption of mineral resources to facilitate availability of energy in the future world.


Nasir Uddin Shah is a
Senior Economic
Reporter at The Asian Age.