The world’s demand of fossil fuels is slowly diminishing by the growing use of biofuels. May it be ethanol or biodiesel its one step closer to a greener earth. From peanut oil to bark, science is being done to convert plants into energy.
Creation of Biofuel Some might think that biofuels are new but they have been in use ever since man discovered fire. Wood is a solid biofuel used for cooking and heating. The types of biofuels are solid gas and liquid. The most common is liquid made popular by the automobile industry as a source of fuel. Biofuel is a fuel that contained energy from once living organisms. Biofuel is created by biomass conversion. Biomass is recently deceased organisms. These recently deceased organisms are converted into a substance called biomass that contains the energy. The biomass will be converted into a fuel using one of these methods: thermal conversion, chemical conversion and biochemical conversion. Thermal conversion is also known as thermal depolymerization, a process using high heat to produce biofuel. Chemical conversion uses various chemicals to produce biofuel. Finally, biochemical conversion uses enzymes, microbes, and catalysts to make biofuel.
Generations of Biofuel The two generations of biofuels. The first generation is commonly known as biofuels made from sugar, starch or vegetable oil. These would be ethanol, biodiesel, methanol, butanol, green diesel, vegetable oil, biogas and syngas. Second gen biofuels are also known as
To solve the rigorous threat to earth from global warming, bio-fuels serve as the most feasible source of energy all over the world. The environmental and economical performance of bio-fuel as compared to fossil fuel was analyzed by full Life Cycle Analyses (LCA) in Spain. The Spanish government CIEMAT, carried out two LCA’s so as to compare ethanol-ethanol mixtures with gasoline, and biodiesel-biodiesel mixtures with fuel oil according to ISO 14040-43 standards, these standards evaluate energy and mass balance for two or more objects. It was concluded that carbon dioxide emission during utilization of bio-fuel are lower than fossil fuel and bio-fuel requires less primary energy to be processed than fossil fuels. Bob Dinneen, President and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association submitted the letter to the editor of The Gazette in which he marked that “On an environmental level, conventional ethanol is reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 34% compared to petroleum, including hypothetical land use change emissions” (qtd. in renewable fuel association). As the raw material for
For over forty years now, scientists and researchers have been tirelessly searching for an alternative to fossil fuels. Biofuels have become an interesting contender in the search for the replacement of the non-renewable energy source. Biofuels have been used throughout history for over thousands of years. There is a large debate over biofuels and its true impact on the environment. Those involved in the discussion debating whether biofuels have any real overwhelming benefits compared to fossil fuels could argue for its usage. According to recent research performed by the University of Michigan, biofuels may not be the best alternative for fossil fuels. Regardless of its impact on the environment, biofuels are becoming more popular particularly when the price of oil rises.
Bioprospecting is the investigation for diverse organisms that are capable of producing enzymes, biochemicals, or other compounds that can be intuitively useful in which commercial valuable compounds for humans can be obtained. For instance, bioprospecting can aid the research to find sustainable biofuels. A biofuel is a fuel produced from organic material, including biomass, plants, or ethanol. Ethanol consists of fermenting plant fibers such as cellulose. Therefore, discovering new microbial communities that are capable of degrading cellulose establishes a potential of creating biofuels such as ethanol. Additionally, the abundant availability of cellulose makes this compound an attractive, raw material alternative for fuel. For instance, this would allow the decrease in the dependence on fossil fuels, such as oil, while benefitting the environment by reducing harmful emissions into the atmosphere. If a microbe were discovered that could rapidly break down cellulose, biofuel production could increase, having a positive impact on the environment. Cellulose is composed of a polysaccharide consisting of glucose
Nowadays, biofuels have become essential for future economic development and environmental protection. Primarily, their environment-friendliness and low carbon emissions are emphasized as the main advantages. However, in reality, few investigations were made to find out the disadvantages of such renewable alternative, and it may bring much more negative impacts than its advantages.
The two most used alternative fuels for our transportation needs are bio diesel and ethanol. Ethanol is an alcohol produced from either sugar cane or a form of starch that’s mixed with gasoline that works just like gas, but produces lower carbon monoxide and sulfur oxide than just gasoline. Bio diesel is a fusion of vegetable oil, animal fat, and alcohol. Same as ethanol, bio-diesel can integrate with regular diesel so it can perform as if it was only diesel. Both these types of fuel are fully compliant with the vehicles we have currently today, but to reduce our use of fossil fuel, which we excessively capitalize on and begin using higher quality that provide more advantageous and fitting to our surroundings. Some will have uncertainty on what ways are these alternative fuels made from?
Biodiesel is a renewable, biodegradable fuel that is recycled from vegetable oils, animal fats, and restaurant grease. Used to replace petroleum diesel fuel by its clean burning. It is a liquid fuel often known as B100 or neat biodiesel in its pure, unblended form. It is used to fuel compression-ignition engines like petroleum diesel. Both biodiesel and petroleum have compounds that crystallize in very cold weather. To prevent this, fuel blenders and suppliers use cold flow improvers.
The Biomass energy is an organic matter that is used by photosynthesis. This is used to generate energy and the most common energy is coming from the wood of the trees, corn, municipal solid waste, and sugarcane. The biomass is used to create ethanol, biodiesel, bio oil and biogas. This in turns create electricity with steam turbines and gasifies to produce heat. The advantage of using the biomass over the fossil fuel is that biomass is a renewable carbon source, zero net carbon dioxide emissions, lower methane, sulfate, and hydrocarbon emissions, and the most important is no dependence on foreign oil. Another is the geothermal energy, in which it uses the heat from the earth to warm things up. The common source is cost effective, reliable, and environmentally friendly. The main sources of uses are to heat homes, greenhouse, industrial process heating mineral recovery, fisheries and also mitigate global warnings. Geothermal energy is more valuable than the fossil fuels because it is an inexhaustible energy source, lot less emissions in the atmosphere, more efficient than solar energy, work under any kinds of weather conditions. The fossil fuels are irreplaceable, create massive environmental pollution and are also causes the major factor of the global warming and the ozone layer depletion. Also the Biomass and the Geothermal are very inexpensive compare to the fossil fuels by almost 50 percent.
Jevanni CousinsProfessor ReidSCC 101 Biofuel’s Future in the U.S. and the WorldOne of the major problems confronting the United States and the World today, is the growing lack of fossil fuels and the accrual emissions of carbon into the atmosphere. The United States is still dependent on fossil fuels today such as coal despite numerous efforts to decrease that dependency, and are also relying on imported oil from multiple foreign countries particularly in the Middle East. The use of fossil fuel has generated great anxiety in greenhouse gas emissions and governments from all over the world, including the United States which is leading the effort in combating this issue. The problems have grown so huge in this century that President Barack Obama made it a major initiative during his administration to overcome it. He once said “we cannot drill our way to energy but must fast-track investments in renewable sources of energy like solar power, wind power and advanced biofuels” (Obama). In this paper, I will discuss biofuels, the types biofuels, along with its potential and challenges that it may face in our growing society. In recognition of the issues that exist due to fossil fuels, the United States elective bodies has been preaching the encouragement for the uses of biofuels, which has prompt an increase in
Biofuels, like fossil fuels are hydrocarbons made from a living or once lived organism that humans can use to power something and uses biological carbon fixation, a process that takes inorganic carbon and converts it into organic compounds (Wikipedia). However, unlike fossil fuels, which can take millions of years to form, biofuels are produced in a short period of time such as days, weeks, or months.
In the world of global warming, all kinds of pollution and fuel shortages going on, renewable and clean/ green energy is increasingly the ideal solution of energy related problems we have to solve one way or another. Biofuel is one of the mainstream and highly supported solutions nowadays, an idea to make renewable fuel by living organisms such as fiber, corn, vegetable oil or sugar cane. Unlike nonrenewable fossil fuels over extracted by people causing various environmental problems like generating a considerable amount greenhouse gas, current technology already lets renewable fuel like biofuels to shrink a certain amount of greenhouse gas production, making it a more ‘clean’ source of energy.
Fuels have dominated the way the world operates for decades; with a rising demand for fuel becoming constantly more predominant. Their uses are vast, making them versatile and in high demand around the world. But since most common fuels like diesel and petrol are fossil fuels, the availability of such fuels is decreasing rapidly. Hence alternatives to these fuels are being developed and used worldwide. These alternatives include biofuels. Biofuels are defined as “a hydrocarbon that is made BY or FROM a living organism that we humans can use to power something.” (biofuel.org.uk, 2010) Most biofuels are made using forms of biomass, including algae, sugar cane, seeds, oil, fats etc. (biofuel.org.uk, 2010) Biodiesel is a biofuel alternative to
Unlike gasoline or diesel, biofuels release little pollution. It can also be used to produce electricity by heating water using biofuels and using the steam produced to rotate a turbine. Another method is to allow the biofuel to decay and produce methane. Methane is commonly used as fuel for car, heating, cooking, and producing electricity.
There are two common ways to produce liquid bio fuels. One is to grow crops high in sugar such as sugar cane, sugar beet or corn. They then use yeast to help ferment the crops into ethanol. Ethanol is a bio fuel.
Bioenergy production as one of the sustainable production is expected to offer new opportunities to diversify income and fuel supply sources, to promote employment in rural areas, to develop long term replacement of fossil fuels, and to reduce GHG emissions, boosting the decarburization of transportation fuels and increasing the security of energy supply (Mata, Martins & Caetano 2010).
It has become increasingly obvious that continued relianceon fossil fuel energy resources is unsustainable, owing toboth diminishing world reserves and the greenhouse gasemissions associated with their use. As a result, there arevigorous research initiatives aimed at developing alternativerenewable resources, including potential biofuels, as