Al­though the gaso­line-pow­ered in­ter­nal com­bus­tion en­gine still con­sti­tutes the most preva­lent form of mod­ern au­to­mo­tive propul­sion, there have been ad­vances in that as­pect of au­to­mo­tive tech­nol­o­gy dri­ven by the quest for cheap­er, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly op­tions.

The quest for al­ter­na­tives didn’t be­gin in the 21st cen­tu­ry but ac­tu­al­ly dates back to the ear­ly years of the au­to­mo­bile. Niko­laus Ot­to patent­ed the in­ter­nal com­bus­tion en­gine al­most 250 years ago and, not long af­ter that, a four-stroke diesel en­gine was in­vent­ed by Rudolf Diesel.

The hy­dro­gen fu­el cell, long hailed as a re­place­ment for gaso­line, was dis­cov­ered in prin­ci­ple by Chris­t­ian Friedrich Schön­bein in 1838, while the bat­tery elec­tric car had its ori­gins in the mid-1800 when Ányos Jed­lik in­vent­ed the elec­tric mo­tor.

Con­cerns about gaso­line as the main source of fu­el for cars has to do with the fact that it is a blend of or­gan­ic com­pounds in­clud­ing hep­tane and oc­tane, plus ad­di­tives like tetraethyl lead which gives it more re­sis­tance to self-ig­ni­tion. Oc­tane has this char­ac­ter­is­tic but is more ex­pen­sive.

Adding lead to the blend al­lowed the use of more hep­tane while stay­ing knock free.

In T&T, cost is now dri­ving mo­torists to ex­plore al­ter­na­tives to gaso­line pow­ered cars. The $1 in­crease in the cost of su­per gaso­line, an­nounced by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in the 2019 Bud­get, is the lat­est move to re­duce sub­si­dies on fu­els sold in this coun­try. The shut­down of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery means that fu­el will have to be im­port­ed, adding to con­cerns about fu­els costs.

On­ly in re­cent years, par­tic­u­lar­ly with talk about the even­tu­al com­plete re­moval of the fu­el sub­sidy, has in­ter­est been in­creas­ing in al­ter­na­tives to gas pow­ered ve­hi­cles.

Lo­cal mo­torists didn’t think twice while fill­ing up at one of the net­work of ser­vices sta­tions across the coun­try op­er­at­ed by the Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd (NP).

NP was in­cor­po­rat­ed in 1972 from as­sets gov­ern­ment pur­chased from the then BP Caribbean Ltd, the lo­cal mar­ket­ing arm of the British Pe­tro­le­um Group. A year lat­er, gov­ern­ment pur­chased 50 per cent of the in­land mar­ket­ing as­sets of ES­SO Stan­dard Oil and vest­ed it in NP.

By 1976, the com­pa­ny was the sole dis­trib­u­tor of pe­tro­le­um fu­els with the ac­qui­si­tion of the mar­ket­ing as­sets of T&T Oil Com­pa­ny (Trin­toc), then the fol­low­ing year the lo­cal mar­ket­ing as­sets of Tex­a­co Trinidad Ltd.

For more than two decades, NP op­er­at­ed as the on­ly sup­pli­er of mo­tor ve­hi­cle fu­els in the coun­try, op­er­a­tion through some 160 ser­vice sta­tions and fish­ing co-op­er­a­tives, of which 60 per cent op­er­at­ed on premis­es owned or leased by NP, and 40 per cent were prop­er­ty owned or leased by deal­ers.

In 1996, the gov­ern­ment-ap­point­ed Pe­tro­le­um Re­tail com­mit­tee rec­om­mend­ed a phase de-mo­nop­o­li­sa­tion of the fu­el sup­ply in­dus­try. A group of in­de­pen­dent own­er deal­ers formed the Unit­ed In­de­pen­dent Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd (Unipet) and was grant­ed a whole­sale mar­ket­ing li­cense in Ju­ly 1999.

The com­pa­ny, a whol­ly owned lo­cal­ly op­er­at­ed com­pa­ny in­volved in mar­ket­ing and whole­sal­ing of liq­uid pe­tro­le­um fu­els, was es­tab­lished in 1997 and now op­er­ates 24 ser­vice sta­tions lo­cat­ed across the coun­try.

Apart from these changes in the dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work, the on­ly sig­nif­i­cant changes un­til now in­clud­ed NP’s com­mis­sion­ing of out­lets for sales of en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly com­pressed nat­ur­al gas (CNG) in 1992, then in­tro­duc­tion of un­lead­ed gaso­line in 1995 to meet the de­mands of mo­torists who pur­chased ve­hi­cles fit­ted with fu­el-in­ject­ed en­gines.

At present, the range of au­to­mo­tive fu­els avail­able in T&T are reg­u­lar, su­per and pre­mi­um gaso­line, diesel and CNG.

How­ev­er, all around the world, the range of op­tions is ex­pand­ing. Here are some of the new and emerg­ing al­ter­na­tive sources of pow­er:

Bio­fu­els such as bioethanol are made from corn and sug­ar­cane. Biodiesel is made from veg­etable oils and an­i­mal fats. The best types are sec­ond gen­er­a­tion bio­fu­els which are pro­duced from sus­tain­able sources rather than those grown for food. These are con­sid­ered to be the best medi­um term so­lu­tion to sus­tain­able fu­els.

Elec­tric­i­ty

Cars pow­ered by elec­tric­i­ty briefly ap­peared at the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry but large­ly dis­ap­peared un­til the turn of the 21st cen­tu­ry, when in­ter­est in low- and ze­ro-emis­sions trans­porta­tion was reignit­ed. The elec­tric car is pow­ered by a mo­tor with en­er­gy sup­plied by bat­ter­ies. How­ev­er, bat­tery ef­fi­cien­cy is lim­it­ed. Most of­fer a max­i­mum range of around 100 miles and take sev­er­al hours to recharge. In ad­di­tion, bat­ter­ies for elec­tric cars are very ex­pen­sive.

Ki­net­ic

Many elec­tric cars have brake en­er­gy re­gen­er­a­tion sys­tems that con­vert en­er­gy nor­mal­ly wast­ed dur­ing brak­ing in­to elec­tric en­er­gy. Use3 of such sys­tems is ex­pect­ed to in­crease in the fu­ture to bet­ter har­ness the mov­ing en­er­gy of a car, and thus use less fu­el over­all.

En­er­gy

Two-thirds of the en­er­gy gen­er­at­ed by gaso­line or diesel is wast­ed as heat. Ther­mo­elec­tric tech­nol­o­gy, which con­verts heat in­to elec­tric­i­ty, can help re­duce this and is al­ready un­der de­vel­op­ment by sev­er­al car mak­ers. One so­lu­tion is to use ther­mo­elec­tric pan­els to con­vert waste ex­haust pipe heat in­to elec­tric­i­ty, which can cut fu­el con­sump­tion by five per cent.

Hy­dro­gen

Hy­dro­gen can be used in­stead of fos­sil fu­els in com­bus­tion en­gines. Hy­dro­gen cars give out no harm­ful tailpipe emis­sions, on­ly wa­ter. How­ev­er, there is cur­rent­ly no hy­dro­gen re­fu­el in­fra­struc­ture in place in T&T. Hy­dro­gen can al­so be used to pow­er a fu­el cell and pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty—con­sid­ered to be one of the best longer-term en­er­gy sources for cars as it pro­duces ze­ro emis­sions and over­comes the lim­i­ta­tions of on­board bat­ter­ies. How­ev­er, fu­el cell tech­nol­o­gy is ex­pen­sive.

Air

Com­pressed air can re­place petrol in a com­bus­tion en­gine to dri­ve the pis­tons and pro­duce pow­er. Stored in 4500psi tanks, air as an en­er­gy source is much less en­er­gy-dense but does pro­duce ze­ro tailpipe emis­sions. Sev­er­al con­cepts have been de­vel­oped over the years and some car mak­ers have even pro­posed main­stream air-pow­ered cars.

Ni­tro­gen

Liq­uid ni­tro­gen stored in a pres­surised tank can be heat­ed to pro­duce high-pres­sure gas. This can be used to dri­ve a pis­ton or ro­tary en­gine. How­ev­er, liq­uid ni­tro­gen is a less ef­fi­cient en­er­gy car­ri­er than fos­sil fu­els and still re­quires elec­tric­i­ty to pro­duce it.

LPG

Liq­ue­fied pe­tro­le­um gas (LPG) and can be used as fu­el for a va­ri­ety of pur­pos­es, in­clud­ing pow­er­ing cars. While tra­di­tion­al­ly it was de­lib­er­ate­ly burnt off and wast­ed, it’s now recog­nised as a ver­sa­tile low-car­bon fu­el than can be used pro­duc­tive­ly.