What type of alternative fuels is the US military exploring/experimenting with?
With this whole push to use alternate fuels in cars, is the US military experiementing with any? As of now most ground vehicles, such as tanks and APC’s, use fuel to run. Is the military looking to use alternate sources also?
The USAF plans to have over the 1/2 the fleet on domestically produced fuel by 2016. Half of that will be synthetic fuel produced from coal.
Current experiments on alternative fuels with B1 and B52s are VERY encouraging.
The Air Force has successfully tested and certified a 50-50 blend of regular petroleum jet fuel and methane derived fuel on a B-52.
The air force is experimenting what coal can do for them. We have an abundance of it in the U.S. We are like the saudia arabia of coal if you know what i mean. So I guess we are gonna start using that a little more. Why? I’m not sure, it takes a lot more energy to produce and just isn’t worth it in my eyes. And I MEAN A LOT of energy. It does burn cleaner however, they have discovered that much about it so far.
The Air Force is the hands down largest consumer of energy in the United States. They also lead the way in energy conservation efforts. For example at my base, our deisel vehicles all run on BioDeisel only. If you go to bases in places like Arizona, you will see many small golf cart like vehicles which are 100% electric.