Alternative Fuel Sources

Biofuels In The U.S. — Just The Facts

Facts About Biofuel & Biodiesel Fuel Production and Consumption in the United States

Biofuels are hot. But how hot? Here are "just the facts." But first, what are biofuels? These are fuels derived from plants or animal fat that can replace such familiar oil-based transportation fuels as gasoline or diesel.

Ethanol can be distilled from corn, sugarcane or even straw and other cellulosic plant materials such as wood chips or grasses. Biodiesel is produced from vegetable oil crops such as palm, soybeans or rapeseed, or animal fats and leftover restaurant grease.

High oil prices, technological advances, concerns about energy security and the environment, and efforts to revitalize rural economies have all intersected to drive the biofuels boom. Ethanol has been used as a gasoline additive or stand-alone fuel in the United States and Brazil since the 1970s, but in recent years there has been an explosion of interest, resulting in substantial investment and steeply increased production.

Biodiesel is relatively new in the U.S., but has attracted strong interest and investment as well. There are 113 ethanol plants producing today in the U.S., with a capacity of 5.6 billion gallons per year or 365,000 barrels per day (bd).

Another 84 ethanol plants are either under construction or expanding, which could add another 6.1 billion gallons of annual production capacity (400,000 bd) in the next few years. A barrel of ethanol contains 3.54 million British Thermal Units (BTUs) of energy, while a barrel of gasoline contains 5.25 million BTUs. This means that a gallon of ethanol only provides about 70 percent of the energy that one gets from a gallon of gasoline. A state-of-the-art ethanol plant today can convert a bushel of corn into about 2.8 gallons of fuel ethanol. Two decades ago, this figure was closer to 2 gallons.

n the United States, blenders of ethanol receive a 51 cent-per gallon tax credit for every gallon of ethanol used in gasoline; for biodiesel, the equivalent credit is $1.00 per gallon. In 1980, the U.S. consumed a grand total of 11,000 barrels of ethanol per day. By early 2007, that demand had reached about 400,000 barrels per day, or over four percent of the total gasoline market by volume.

Current federal legislation requires 7.5 billion gallons (490,000 bd) of biofuel use by 2012. The Bush administration recently proposed a target of 35 billion gallons (2.3 million bd) of renewable and alternative fuels by 2017-a goal that would likely require major advances in cellulosic ethanol technology.

In 2006, the ethanol sector consumed nearly 2.2 billion bushels of corn-about 20 percent of the total U.S. harvest of 10.7 billion bushels. Ethanol can be produced from non-food crops, such as switchgrass and straw. But this approach can't yet compete in the marketplace. There is currently intense interest in making this process-"cellulosic ethanol"-commercially viable.

The US biodiesel industry is much smaller than the ethanol industry. Current annual production is estimated at 250 million gallons (16,000 bd), although it is growing quickly. Europe is currently the world leader in biodiesel production and use. Annual production is currently over 1.5 billion gallons (100,000 bd) with substantial new capacity under construction.

Daniel Yergin, chairman of CERA, received the Pulitzer Prize for "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power" and the United States Energy Award for lifelong achievements in energy and the promotion of international understanding. Vist CERA at http://cera.ecnext.com.

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The Advantages of Using Biodiesel Fuel

Biodiesel Alternative Biofuel Has Many Advantages

By Win Paulson

You might have heard a lot about biodiesel. Biodiesel is diesel than can power up your car that is made from vegetable oils and other natural sources. It does not come from the regular crude oil that usually has to be imported from oil-producing countries.

Biodiesel can be considered a new technology, taking into account all the years consumers have had to settle for traditional diesel. Using biodiesel for your car has many advantages:

Biodiesel is not harmful to the environment. Unlike its counterpart, a car using biodiesel produces fewer emissions. If a vehicle uses traditional diesel, the vehicle emits black, stinky smoke. With biodiesel, the smoke becomes very clean indeed.
Biodiesel may not require an engine modification. Some cars can take advantage of biodiesel without the need to undergo engine alterations. Some mix 20% biodiesel with regular diesel. Doing so enables the car to benefit from the good points of biodiesel without the hassle.
Biodiesel is cheap. You can even make biodiesel in your backyard. If your engine can work with biodiesel fuel alone, then you really need not go to the gas station to buy fuel. You can just manufacture some for your own personal use.
Biodiesel can make the vehicle perform better. It is noted that biodiesel has a cetane number of over 100. Cetane number is used to measure the quality of the fuel’s ignition. If your fuel has a high cetane number, you can be sure that what you get is a very easy cold starting coupled with a low idle noise.
Biodiesel can make your car last longer. Because of the clarity and the purity of biodiesel, you can be sure it will not have too many impurities to harm your car. It is actually more lubrication. A car’s power output is unaffected by this type of diesel.
Biodiesel reduces the environmental effect of a waste product. Because biodiesel is made out of waste products itself, it does not contribute to nature’s garbage at all. Biodiesel can be made out of used cooking oils and lards. So instead of throwing these substances away, the ability to turn them into biodiesel becomes more than welcome.
Biodiesel is energy efficient. If the production of biodiesel is compared with the production of the regular type, producing the latter consumes more energy. Biodiesel does not need to be drilled, transported, or refined like petroleum diesel. Producing biodiesel is easier and is less time consuming.
Biodiesel is produced locally. A locally produced fuel will be more cost efficient. There is no need to pay tariffs or similar taxes to the countries from which oil and petroleum diesel are sourced. Every country has the ability to produce biodiesel.

Biodiesel is surely a viable fuel alternative. Moreover, it is also a sustainable fuel. Using biodiesel not only helps maintain our environment, it also helps in keeping the people around us healthy.

The production of biodiesel all over the world is now being looked upon favorably. In Europe, many biodiesel stations have been set up already. There is also a move to convert or make cars compatible with biodiesel fuel in the near future.

Biodiesel can surely change the way vehicles are manufactured and used. It is surely the best substitute right now, and everyone should consider ways to take advantage of the benefits of biodiesel.

About the Author: Win Paulson is a contributing editor at http://www.info-biodiesel.com where you will find information and resources on biodiesel. Head to FlexFuel-Info.com for information on other biofuels and alternative energy.

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Biomass Energy Basics

Understanding Biomass as a Source of Alternative Energy & Alternative Fuels

Biomass includes all plant and plant-derived material — essentially all energy originally captured by photosynthesis. This means that biomass is a fully renewable resource and that its use for biomass-derived fuels, power, chemicals, materials, or other products essentially generates no net greenhouse gas. (You must consider any fossil-fuel use to grow, collect, and convert the biomass in a full life-cycle analysis, but the carbon dioxide released when biomass is burned is balanced by the carbon dioxide captured when the biomass is grown.) Its production and use will also generally be domestic, so it has substantial environmental, economic, and security benefits.

Cellulose and hemicellulose, two of the three main components of the great bulk of biomass resources, are polymers of sugars and can be broken down to those component sugars for fermentation or other processing to ethanol and other valuable fuels and chemicals.

Biomass is already making key contributions today. It has surpassed hydro-electric power as the largest domestic source of renewable energy. Biomass currently supplies over 3% of the U.S. total energy consumption — mostly through industrial heat and steam production by the pulp and paper industry and electrical generation with forest industry residues and municipal solid waste (MSW). Of growing importance are biomass-derived ethanol and biodiesel which provide the only renewable alternative liquid fuel for transportation, a sector that strongly relies on imported oil.

In addition to today's uses of biomass, and historic ones for food, shelter, and clothing, there is significant potential for new biomass feedstocks to dramatically expand the use of biomass in order to continue to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. The first feedstocks for this "new" biomass might come from opportunities with particular industrial residues, but beyond that, large-scale expansion of biomass is expected to come from forestry and agricultural residues. The latter includes cellulosic stalks, leaves, husks, and straw in addition to the starchy grains and oily seeds currently used. In the longer term, the biomass industry could support dedicated energy crops specifically grown for energy use.

Of the many possible conversion technologies for expanded biomass use, two of the most promising are the sugar platform and the thermochemical platform. These are referred to as "platforms" because the basic technology would generate base or platform chemicals from which industry could make a wide range of fuels, chemicals, materials, and power. These platform chemicals and wide range of products are analogous to the current petrochemicals industry. The promotion of "biorefineries" as a major new domestic biomass industry is, along with reducing dependence on imported oil, the major objective of the Biomass Program.

The Biomass Program process design for sugar platform technology uses thermochemical hydrolysis pretreatment of hemicellulose and enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose to break those two polymeric carbohydrates down to their component sugars for subsequent fermentation or other processing to valuable fuels, chemicals, and materials. Separated lignin — the third component comprising the bulk of biomass material — can also be processed into valuable products or can be burned to provide heat, steam, and electricity for the process operation.

Thermochemical platform technology heats biomass with limited oxygen to gasify it to synthesis gas (a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen) or liquefy it to pyrolysis oil. Because combustion and catalytic conversion processes are a function of the interaction of the individual molecules of feedstock material with oxygen or a catalyst, respectively, work better with liquids and gases than with solids. Therefore, biomass converted to synthesis gas, pyrolysis oil, or hydrothermal liquid (from another thermochemical platform process) burns more efficiently than if it were in its original solid state. Or, instead of burning them, these biomass-derived gases or liquids can be catalytically converted to other valuable fuels, chemicals, or materials.