Advantages of biofuels, we almost forget that they already been around for decades

When you think about advantages of biofuels, the first thing that comes into mind is that how we could get such a thing in the first place? 

Naturally, this product would offer more environmental friendly elements and would almost never produce toxics of any kind and it has highly biodegradable property. 

Something that you could not find in traditional fossil based fuels.

Anyway, you can extract them from vegetable or cooking oils, animal fats, some other nature based plant that has adequate oil content. As simple as it sound to be you would need to perform additional processes to get a kind of fuel to run a vehicle.

One way to produce it is by applying certain chemical reactions, fermenting, and heating to divide the molecules in the vegetables or plants. Sugar cane is one good example of natural fuel sources, from which you can generate pure ethanol to run a car.




Types of biofuels

You can use vegetable oil in certain type of diesel engines. You can use the same engines to create biodiesel.  For as I know so far the vegetable oil is mix with conventional diesel fuel to reduce its carbon emission and cost at the same time. 

Courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/argonne/4885668940/
Even some car manufacturer can now develop vehicle that can consume 100% pure biodiesel.

Bio alcohols are other types of biofuels.

You can also use them directly in a gasoline based car.  Ethanol fuel is another example which is quite popular in Brazil.

The can be used as a direct replacement of fossil fuels.

However this type of fuels has less energy content, which means to reach the same distance you will need more of this fuels.

So what are the advantages of biofuels would provide to us in comparison to the traditional fossil based fuels?

 

Anyway I think people who invented biodiesel long time ago have also have realized that the huge advantages of using them are the carbon neutral property that they offer. 

Therefore the combustible products like those CO and CO2 would be greatly reduced.    
These greenhouse gases usually will accumulate in the atmosphere which in certain quantity will enhance the global warming issue.

 In fact in some countries, people who are using bio fuel will get certain incentives from their government in form of price and tax reduction as part of promoting global warming solution.

Another key advantage would be its sustainability since they can be renewed in much shorter period of time.

They mostly extracted from plants, or crops which are relatively easy to grow, in comparison to fossil based fuels which take about millions of years to develop. In any cases I think the most advantages that biodiesel can offers is that they definitely will reduce carbon emission from 60% up to 80% most of the time.



What are the disadvantages of biofuels
I believe everything has two sides of stories, when we are talking about advantages there should be at least few disadvantages of biofuels to tag along. After all this is not a perfect world. Pure biofuels are not 100% carbon free, because they need a lot of energy to cultivate from crops into finish product.

There will be fuels consumption involves in the process just like when harvesting, transport, and during production stage. Spaces or lands would be another matter, instead of growing crops to produce foods; the biofuels will also consume the same amount of spaces to grow. So there is this priority issue here, which one should be more important?

 If this problem has no solution, food price will keep on climbing, and soon there will be more food crisis all over the world given the fact that land and plantation are already limited. What about opening new plantations by sacrifice the forests?

That is an idea, but never be a good one. Why? Because you know that cutting trees and opening new spaces will only create another problem, the destruction of natural habitats where animals and wild plants will soon be in endangered zone and you don’t want that to happen.

However above all cases, I think researchers and green companies around the globe still finding the best, more efficient methods of producing biodiesel, which is quite interesting to see.

Using Algae as biofuels source

Some multi-national companies have developed methods of using algae as biofuels source. One of the main considerations is that you can grow algae using land or water that are not compatible for plants and food production in general. 





Some species of algae can generate biodiesel from photosynthesis process using merely sunlight, carbon dioxide and water, which means less energy, involves which will automatically require only less cost. Algae use carbon dioxide which is widely available in the atmosphere as part of the greenhouse gases. This photosynthetic process is still under development should be improved to perfection. 

Once they are ready, it can be applied in a full scale manufacturing facility producing fuels that are friendly to environment at the same time also meet the requirements like those fossil fuels you are using nowadays.