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Ecological fuels, also known as biofuels, are a source for debate for several reasons. Some argue that biofuels are not cost effective and will slowly deplete important life sustaining products at a rate that is too fast to be feasible. Others, however, argue that biofuels are the only solution to an oil problem and more money should be allocated into research and development efforts. The fact of the matter is, oil is a finite commodity and eventually, an alternative fuel solution must be investigated. This article will provide some basic background information about biofuels in hopes to educate those who may be new to the topic.

Biofuels are fuels that can be either solid, liquid, or gaseous that come from recently dead biological materials. This is in stark contrast to fossil fuels, which come from older and long dead biological materials. The most common type of biofuels come from photosynthetic plants and are increasingly being used across the globe. There several types of first generation biofuels, which include fuels made from sugar, starch, vegetable oil, or animal fats.

Second generation biofuels are derived from non food crops. Because one of the issues surrounding biofuel is the fact that it may deplete essential food crops, second generation biofuels may be a more viable solution in order to appease people on both sides of the debate. One issue with second generation biofuels, however, is the fact that producing ethanol from non food crops is technically quite difficult. Therefore, more research must be done in order to make second generation biofuels feasible.

Third generation biofuel is fuel from Algae. Again, algae would politically be a more popular choice than first generation biofuels, but extracting oil from third generation biofuels like algae is really difficult.

A brief introduction and overview of ecological fuels has been provided with a description of first, second, and third generation biofuels. Now, a brief case study of biofuels in use will be presented.

Recently, stories of people converting their diesel engines into engines that can run on straight vegetable oil (SVO). There are several ways of obtaining vegetable oil including buying it straight from the bottle, which can be quite expensive. Another possibility of obtaining vegetable oil is to get old vegetable oil from restaurants. This is known as waste vegetable oil (WVO). Although it may sound like a great alternative, waste vegetable oil must be filtered before being used in a diesel engine because it contains an excess of food particles. Recently, the Dave Matthews Band, an American touring band, ran their diesel tour bus strictly on vegetable oil. Case studies like these can provide hope for biofuels. Unfortunately, however, for a regular citizen, gaining access to vegetable oil and the filtering process may be too much of an obstacle to make vegetable oil feasible.


Jason Grace
on behalf of the
BascoTec Internet Limited
Technologie Park 13
33100 Paderborn
Germany

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