Automakers have a strong interest in understanding and improving the fuel market. After all, without a stable fuel infrastructure in place, their products (the cars they build) are nothing more than big sculptures. So it's not surprising that Audi is involved in a carbon-neutral fuel called e-gas.
Working with an organic waste burning facility, CO2 is captured and then combined with electrolytically produced hydrogen (powered by clean energy sources like wind and solar) to create synthetic methane (which is natural gas). To use this fuel, Audi is building a dual-fuel car called the Audi A3 TCNG which can use either the e-gas or regular gasoline. The feedstock is non-food organic waste, to avoid competition between food and fuel. In addition to the e-gas, Audi is also producing e-diesel and e-ethanol, to provide cleaner fuels for the entire range of its engines.
This is not too different from any number of other biofuel manufacturers. And this is not the first time that an automaker has taken an interest in fuel manufacturing. (GM was an investor in Coskata, a biofuel startup that got a lot of attention in 2008.) The issue with this, and other, biofuel schemes is to make the entire process carbon neutral. Not only the fuel itself, but also the energy used in producing the fuel must all be clean or carbon neutral in order to be sustainable in the long term.
via: Jalopnik
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written by Anderson Ashbaugh, October 15, 2012
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