Page - 18 - in Our Car as Power Plant

18 ENERGY EFFICIENCY FROM A TO B BY CAR This fuel economy is even more disappointing when we actually examine the energy efficiency to move ourselves from A to B, using a modern car. Let us try to estimate the various energy losses. First of all we need a fuel, gasoline in our tank, but we have to produce this gasoline from oil. We drill in the ground and get oil out of it at several places around the world. We treat the oil and put it in a ship to bring the oil to a refinery. In the refinery we refine the oil in several products, one of them is gasoline. This gasoline is then transported by a truck to a fueling station where we put it in the tank of our car. There are losses, but overall the efficiency from well to tank is between 80-85%. Now the gasoline is in our tank, our engine has to convert the gasoline in a rotating movement. A gasoline car engine has an efficiency of 25 to 40% when it comes to converting gasoline into a rotating motion. The remaining 60 to 75% of the fuel’s energy is wasted in the form of heat, which has to be removed through cooling. Everyone is familiar with this phenomenon: the hood of a car will burn your hand – that’s the energy loss of your engine.