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Biofuels: Important Options for Cleaner Transportation
Biogasoline
Oil soars to $125 per barrel and economies around the world sputter or fall into recession. Enough is enough. Many biofuels can be blended with gasoline and diesel refined from oil, then pumped into our existing vehicles. The new biofuels have the potential to encourage sustainable reforesting and soil enrichment. Biofuel 2.0 provides a path to fuel from wood and waste, not food and haste. See the article “Biofuel Innovators with Alternatives to Oil“.
Biodiesel
Diesel engines are the standard for heavy vehicles, such as trucks and buses. Biodiesel is a blend of diesel, which is processed from oil, and fuel from biological sources such as soy or food waste. Blends of 5, 10, and 20% biofuel are popular because they run in most current diesel engines. Look for wide use of B20 in heavy vehicles.
Ethanol
When you drive a car, there is most likely an ethanol blend in your fuel tank. Ethanol is a fuel from a plant source that is normally mixed with gasoline. All U.S. gasoline vehicles can run on a blend of up to 10% ethanol (E10). Ethanol has the potential to reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil. We are growing our own fuel. Ethanol—a form of alcohol—is the predominant biofuel in use today. The United States and Brazil together produce about 90 percent of global fuel ethanol. Brazil has used ethanol to reduce its dependency on gasoline by 40%. In the U.S., the vast majority of ethanol is processed from corn. Unfortunately the most fuel-efficient gasoline hybrids get far better mileage than U.S. flex-fuel E85 vehicles; these poor mileage flex-fuel vehicles are causing an acceleration of global warming.
- Ethanol Statistics
- Dedicated U.S. Energy Crops Could Replace 30% of Gasoline
- Time Magazine Front Cover Story
- Nature Conservancy
- From Wood and Waste not Food and Haste
- Khosla Ventures Papers and Presentations
- Ethanol, Energy, Greenhouse Gas Paper – Science
- Letter to Science by Michael Wang
Butanol
BP is spending millions running TV ads about fuel from sugar beets. BP and Dupont is looking for the type of funding assistance that is given to ethanol. They are also looking for millions of customers. Butanol has a much higher energy content than ethanol. Butanol can most likely be blended with gasoline in higher percentages than ethanol and run in non-flexfuel engines. Butanol may get transported in the same pipelines as gasoline.
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