Future Of Biofuels

The History of Biodiesel and How it May Effect Our Future

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Amid all the panic regarding the diminishing supplies of fossil fuel as well as its expense. What would you say, if I told you that the history of biodiesel tells us that the knowledge of this renewable energy source has been available for hundreds of years? They are just as effective as petroleum and they are manufactured from renewable sources such as peanut, canola, hemp and soybean oil.

This history started with Rudolph Diesel when he designed a compression engine. He made use of peanut oil for this purpose, and he wanted to prove that this was the only fuel source which would ever be required. Way back then he knew that using renewable oil resources were a better option than using fossil fuels.

In actual fact biodiesel was used in diesel engines until the 1920’s it was only then that manufacturers decided to make use of petroleum fuel.

Both methanol and ethanol are able to be produced from these fatty acids. Even Henry Ford believed in the concept propounded by Rudolph Diesel and he build a factory which was equipped to mass produce biofuels. He believed that this was the oil of the future and wanted to manufacture all his automobiles to run on this fuel.

When he commenced with this, he was in the top of his market and embarked on partnerships with natural oil companies. However in the 1940’s petroleum based companies started advertising and as petroleum fuel was cheaper at the time, this fossil based fuel soon became the number one best seller.

Biodiesel was originally produced with oils which did not allow a very high yield of fuel, making this fuel expensive. Then they discovered hemp oil. Hemp had been grown for a long time in the US for its many useful purposes. When tested hemp oil was found to be stable and also able to produce greater yield of fuel. Henry Ford went back to the drawing board on manufacturing fuel for his vehicles from hemp oil.

In the same breath, many oil wells had been found in the US and people were getting extremely rich from selling this oil to manufacture petroleum. They were not prepared to give Henry Ford a market share with his products and started a campaign against the hemp oil product, calling it Marijuana.

This campaign was supported by the newspapers of William Randolph Hurst and he had a great amount of sway with the US government. This campaign got the Marijuana Tax Act brought into legislation and people who used hemp oil products were afraid to use it as a certificate was require for any products of this nature. The Government would not issue certificates to anyone and as far as the history of biodiesel goes, this is where the manufacture of this renewable energy source came to an end.

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How Does Renewable Energy Meet Our Future Energy Needs?

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The question of how we are going to meet our future energy needs is something that all energy suppliers have been thinking about for years and are now working out. With the five main sources of renewable energy already being tapped to create the electricity that we need more and more and crops like corn and soybeans being used to create the biofuels that are being used more and more there is no doubt that we will never run out of electricity or fuels to run our vehicles. The main question here is this: can we get rid of our long dependence on fossil fuels and switch totally over to the renewable energy sources that will more than meet our future energy needs? Let’s look at how each of the renewable energy sources will meet out future energy needs.

Solar Energy

Solar energy is one of the most useable and abundant of the renewable energy sources that we have on this planet. The next question that is likely to be coming is how viable is solar power as a future energy source when the Sun’s core will burn out in time thus rendering it useless. Well, put it this way, the Sun’s core will not be burning out any times in the next 100, 1,000 or even 10,000 years! It will take more like a few hundred thousand or a few million years before the Sun even gets close to extinction and goes supernova.

Wind Power

Given the fact that the wind the drives our weather patterns is so prevalent, there really is no question as to how viable wind power is as a future energy provider! As it is, wind power already provides a great deal of the fuel that powers many electric plants. This is why we have been seeing wind turbines popping up all over the place in the past few years. What do you think the wind mills in Holland and the Netherlands are there for? These wind mills aren’t only for decoration; they are actually part of the plan to harness the power of the wind to meet the future energy needs of that area of Europe.

Water/Hydroelectric Power

Using the power of water and waterfalls in creating hydroelectric power is one of the future energy sources that no one can really say is not that effective. When you stop to think about the pure, sheer power that running water possesses and passes along to us in the form of currents; it is any surprise that this renewable energy source is also one of the most dependable sources for our future energy needs? Only having all of the water evaporating and bodies of water disappear will change this.

Biofuels

Biofuels are another great renewable source that can easily meet our future energy needs. This is due to the fact that biofuels are made from corn, soybeans/soybean oil and vegetable oil. How’s that for renewable energy folks?!

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Biomass is both Man’s Oldest Renewable Energy Source and Newest

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Man started to use biomass for energy on the day that our ancestors discovered fire, and used it for cooking. Biomass is actually just another word for biological-mass. Biomass is anything that has been grown or has lived, except for fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas etc). Fossil fuels were of course created by the decay of living organisms many millennia ago in pre-history and are biomass in that sense, but these are not included within the term ‘biomass’ as used by renewable energy experts.

Biomass takes many forms, some of the most well known are wood, straw, biowaste, wood chip, waste paper, organic slurries from the processing of foodstuffs, livestock farming, sewage treatment, chicken litter etc. I guess that most of us can think of a hundred or more examples of biomass with a little thought, and they can all be burnt, or fermented and digested to provide energy. They all contain energy from the sun, which was bound up into their carbon chemistry while they were alive, and that energy can be released for man’s use without increasing the net additional carbon dioxide (greenhouse gas) burden on our planet, as long as we continually replant, breed and re-grow replacement biomass sources in place of those we use.

So biomass can also be grown as a crop for use as fuel. If the biomass is to be grown it will need to be selected to be of high calorific value (give of lots of heat when burnt), grow fast, need little fertilizing or watering, require low power requirements during growing and be cheaply harvested. However, the growing of biomass to use as biofuel on a large scale would have the effect of reducing available land for food crops. This could be a bad thing for the poor, if the cost of food rose.

So where can we find sustainable renewable biomass without taking up good food producing farmland?

Well, as we hinted earlier there is a huge, largely untapped source of biomass, in the waste produced by modern society. Why not use that? (Some purists would say that some waste – like plastics is made from fossil fuel (oil) sources. I would respond that these should, in principle, be removed from the biomass before use, and recycled.)

Biomass can also be separated at source by the public by the rapidly increasing number of councils which provide a separate collection for biowaste, including food waste which is the highest heat producing waste of them all when burnt or digested, and these days comprises between 15% and 25% of all household (domestic) waste by weight. Western societies do throw away an awful lot of food, and in many nations the amount of food discarded is continuing to rise, although overall tonnages of waste created year by year by the public have nearly stabilised.

So society must now rediscover biomass as a significant energy source. We think that we have progressed far away from the simple log fire, which used biomass. In truth we have not. By using fossil fuels in massive quantities, we have simply been raiding the bank, we have been stealing oxygen from the earth’s atmosphere and replacing the oxygen with the greenhouse gas, and global warming gas, carbon dioxide.

We simply cannot go on doing this without reaping climate change disaster on the earth.

We can change our ways. It is possible, but we need thoughtful people like you. People who read articles like this one, to understand this truth, and appreciate the great urgency for change to renewable fuels. The planet needs all of us that do understand to keep ourselves informed and to influence our friends, and persuade them of the value of using biomass as a fuel, and in particular waste biomass is one of the best ways of doing this.

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Is A Biodiesel Plant Worth Investing In?

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Biodiesel is exciting because it has the potential to save an extensive amount of money in fuel costs, not to mention easing our dependency on foreign oil and the impact on the environment that fossil fuel has had. A necessary component to making biodiesel fuel are processing plants. Because this technology is so new, the number of biodiesel plant manufacturers is very low. This is posing somewhat of a problem because mass production of biodiesel fuel cannot occur without a good number of biodiesel plants.

The production of biodiesel fuel can open up great investment opportunities. Think of how many types of vehicles use diesel fuel including cement mixers, school buses and farm vehicles. This is a huge volume of vehicles on the road that use diesel. Now think what the impact would be of all those vehicles using biodiesel. Now can you see the incredible investment opportunity that exists? In my opinion investing in a biodiesel plant is a great way to see tremendous profits come to you in the future.

Because this is such a new technology, you will probably not find the energy giants investing in a biodiesel plant anytime soon. That is why small start up companies are looking for investment capital. They need the funds for research and development. Raising money to build a biodiesel plant for processing purposes would require companies to obtain private equity investment venture capital. This means that you would be investing in a company that is not publicly traded, they are a private company. If you buy stock in a private company, you will sell or withdraw your shares. Instead, you receive dividend payments over a specified amount of time.

This type of investing is something that a lot of people do not have the stomach for because it is a risk. No one can say for certain that investing in a biodiesel plant will reap long term gains. But think of it this way. What are people and companies willing to do to save money of fuel and ease our dependency of foreign oil? It would seem like this technology is going to be around for a long time and may very well be the future of alternative fuel sources.

We’ve all heard of people who got in early on Adobe stock or IBM stock and have marveled at the apparent luck of those people. This may be an opportunity for others to get in on the ground floor of a huge opportunity.

Use a Biodiesel Blend

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Most biodiesel fuel that is sold on the market is a blended fuel. A blended fuel includes additives and may even be partially mixed with petroleum. Pure biodiesel is not the best performing fuel in today’s vehicles that were made for use with traditional fuel and that is why blends are used.

Biodiesel blends are available at different levels. Some may offer only a fraction of actual biodiesel in them. Others may be mostly biodiesel. You should be able to easily find out the blend percentages at the station.

Blended biodiesel is a good option, just like biodiesel. It is still giving you many of the benefits and is still worth using over traditional diesel fuel.

Use a Blend

You should use a biodiesel blend because it is going to give you better performance. If you have used regular diesel before in your vehicle you could have issues if you switch to a pure biodiesel.

You may end up with a clogged fuel filter and the fuel may flow too slowly. You r best choice is a blended fuel.

Additionally, finding pure biodiesel is very difficult. Most pure forms are not approved through standards that allow them to be sold on the market. Short of making it yourself, you will find it very difficult to get pure biodiesel.

The Good Side of a Blend

Biodiesel blends are still beneficial. They still reduce pollution and reliance on petroleum. The use of biodiesel in diesel fuel means less petroleum used. Overall a blend is still as good as using pure biodiesel. The good side is that you will not have to contend with issues that can occur from using pure biodiesel, like clogs or freeze up.

Biodiesel blends are likely to continue to be the norm because manufactures are still making vehicles to run on traditional diesel.

Manufacturers only play to the markets trends. They are not likely to product biodiesel vehicles unless the public starts to really show reliance on biodiesel and that they are willing to use it.

Once the market shows signs on being more apt to use biodiesel then manufactures will respond. It is only then that a pure biodiesel fuel will become more readily available. To make that happen you should use biodiesel as much as possible even if that means using it in a blend. You will be able to help make biodiesel the fuel of the future.

Learn more about Biodiesel today. You can also learn how to make your own biodiesel by visiting this website for more information http://www.biodieselathome.net