How can gasoline generate electricity?

Answer 1

There are two main ways that gasoline can be used to generate electricity: through a generator, or through a fuel cell. The first method is by far the most common.

In a gasoline generator, the gas is fed into an internal combustion engine, which turns a generator to create electricity. This method is very inefficient due to the number of times that the energy changes forms (from chemical, to heat, to mechanical, to electrical) the engine itself only converts 25-30% of the chemical energy into mechanical energy.

Unfortunately, gasoline fuel cell technology hasn't quite gotten out of the R & D phase, but the idea is to split the gasoline molecules' hydrogen atoms off and guide them across a membrane to the oxygen where they combine to form water. Electricity is produced in this reaction when hydrogen is forced to give up its electron in order to cross the membrane. Viola, electricity. Fuel cells are extremely efficient ranging from converting 75% of the chemical energy into electricity to 95%. Part of this is due to the fact that fuel cells convert the chemical energy of gasoline immediately into electricity. This also reduces the energy lost due to heat in the combustion process.