Good evening and Welcome to the Climate Change Wales website.

05.09.2010 | Cymraeg

Teachers:

Hydrogen

The hydrogen fuel cell was invented by Sir William Robert Grove of Swansea in 1839.

Solar Thermal

Hot water heating accounts for about 25% of domestic energy use. In the Welsh climate solar energy can be used to heat water for about 8 months of the year. More...

What makes up a Carbon Footprint?

This is perhaps the most obvious contribution to our carbon footprint. When fossil fuels are burnt they produce CO₂ which has been locked away for millions of years is released. It is the rapid increase in our fossil fuel use that has caused global warming.More....

What is the problem?

What is the problem?
There are 30 million vehicles on the road in the UK. Each mile a small petrol car travels releases 280 g of CO₂ and for a small diesel car 190g of CO₂ is released. Driving 2400 miles is the equivalent to the total carbon footprint of the average person in the developing world.
Figures from WRI

Bio fuels for transport

Bio fuel for Transport

Vegetable oil

Dan from the vegoil motoring company poring oil into a citoen zx

The diesel engine was originally designed to work with vegetable oil. Diesel cars today are optimized to work with ‘dino’-diesel, which is derived from oil. Diesel is less viscous than vegetable oil so cars have to be modified to cope with this. Typical modifications include heavier duty fuel injectors, upgraded fuel pumps and pre-heaters for the vegetable oil to make it flow better.

No processing other than extracting the vegetable oil is required so this helps keeps the cost of the fuel low. Recycled cooking oil can be filtered and used as fuel.

Bio-Diesel

Bio-diesel is vegetable oil that been processed to make it less viscous. It can be used in diesel engines without them having to be modified. However bio-diesel is corrosive to the materials used in the fuel systems of some cars, so it is always worth checking to see if your vehicle is suitable first.

Bio-diesel can be used safely in all diesel cars when blended with dino-diesel, this has the advantage that governments can make a percentage of all diesel sold bio-diesel a rather than relying on a percentage of the public choosing to use bio-diesel.

Bio-Ethanol

Ethanol is the chemical name for alcohol. Bio-ethanol can be produced from a huge variety of organic matter: sugar beat, grain crops or waste wood from saw mills. Most cars in Brazil already run on ethanol made from sugar cane. The engine in a bio-ethanol car works the same as a petrol engine, but it has to be made stronger than a petrol car engine because there is more energy per litre in bio-ethanol. All petrol sold in France is 5% bio-ethanol.